Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance centers on an insular community of Smarta Brahmin men from the Kuchipudi village in Telugu-speaking South India who are required to don stri-vesam (woman's guise) and impersonate female characters from Hindu religious narratives. Impersonation is not simply a gender performance circumscribed to the Kuchipudi stage, but a practice of power that enables the construction of hegemonic Brahmin masculinity in everyday village life. However, the power of the Brahmin male body in stri-vesam is highly contingent, particularly on account of the expansion of Kuchipudi in the latter half of the twentieth century from a localized village performance to a transnational Indian dance form. This book analyzes the practice of impersonation across a series of boundaries-village to urban, Brahmin to non-Brahmin, hegemonic to non-normative-to explore the artifice of Brahmin masculinity in contemporary South Indian dance.

The comprehensive 2005 study of rituals in early modern Europe argues that between about 1400 and 1700 a revolution in ritual theory took place that utterly transformed concepts about time, the body, and the presence of spiritual forces in the world. Edward Muir draws on extensive historical research to emphasize the persistence of traditional Christian ritual practices even as educated elites attempted to privilege reason over passion, textual interpretation over ritual action, and moral rectitude over gaining access to supernatural powers. Edward Muir discusses wide ranging themes such as rites of passage, carnivalesque festivity, the rise of manners, Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the alleged anti-Christian rituals of Jews and witches. This edition examines the impact on the European understanding of ritual from the discoveries of new civilizations in the Americas and missionary efforts in China and adds more material about rituals peculiar to women.

Ritual is one of the most pervasive religious phenomena in the Tibetan cultural world. Despite its ubiquity and importance to Tibetan cultural life, however, only in recent years has Tibetan ritual been given the attention it deserves. This is the first scholarly collection to focus on this important subject. Unique in its historical, geographical and disciplinary breadth, this book brings together eleven essays by an international cast of scholars working on ritual texts, institutions and practices in the greater Tibetan cultural world - Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia. While most of the chapters focus on Buddhism, two deal with ritual in Tibet's indigenous Bon religion. All of the essays are original to this volume. An extensive introduction by the editor provides a broad overview of Tibetan ritual and contextualizes the chapters within the field of Buddhist and Tibetan studies. The book should find use in advanced undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on Tibetan religion. It will also be of interest to students and scholars of ritual generally.

Ancient Jewish sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Some find in sacrifice the key to the mysterious and violent origins of human culture. Others see these cultic rituals as merely the fossilized vestiges of primitive superstition. Some believe that ancient Jewish sacrifice was doomed from the start, destined to be replaced by the Christian eucharist. Others think that the temple was fated to be superseded by the synagogue. In Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple Jonathan Klawans demonstrates that these supersessionist ideologies have prevented scholars from recognizing the Jerusalem temple as a powerful source of meaning and symbolism to the ancient Jews who worshiped there. Klawans exposes and counters such ideologies by reviewing the theoretical literature on sacrifice and taking a fresh look at a broad range of evidence concerning ancient Jewish attitudes toward the temple and its sacrificial cult. The first step toward reaching a more balanced view is to integrate the study of sacrifice with the study of purity-a ritual structure that has commonly been understood as symbolic by scholars and laypeople alike. The second step is to rehabilitate sacrificial metaphors, with the understanding that these metaphors are windows into the ways sacrifice was understood by ancient Jews. By taking these steps-and by removing contemporary religious and cultural biases-Klawans allows us to better understand what sacrifice meant to the early communities who practiced it. Armed with this new understanding, Klawans reevaluates the ideas about the temple articulated in a wide array of ancient sources, including Josephus, Philo, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, and Rabbinic literature. Klawans mines these sources with an eye toward illuminating the symbolic meanings of sacrifice for ancient Jews. Along the way, he reconsiders the ostensible rejection of the cult by the biblical prophets, the Qumran sect, and Jesus. While these figures may have seen the temple in their time as tainted or even defiled, Klawans argues, they too-like practically all ancient Jews-believed in the cult, accepted its symbolic significance, and hoped for its ultimate efficacy.

Meditation from Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist Perspectives engages readers with its original philosophical and pragmatic analysis of traditional Asian religions, philosophy, meditation practice, and the supreme spiritual ideals associated with the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions. The text boldly bridges the theory/practice distinction. A central underpinning of Meditation from Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist Perspectives rests on the assumption that meditation practice without theory is groundless and that theory without practice is useless. Robert Altobello identifies and analyzes common elements found across traditions in which the practice of meditation plays a central role in human development, and readers will find a wealth of detailed reflection on the relationship between spiritual growth and meditation practice from the Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist perspectives. In the spirit of these traditions, the exploration of meditation practice requires examination of the principal elements that sustain the core worldviews as well as the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical presumptions that animate these traditions. Throughout the text, the author demonstrates why these philosophies are all best understood as psychologies of happiness and/or contentment and that by viewing them as such, practitioners can reap the great promises of all these traditions without the need to accept any compromising metaphysical assumptions.

The town of Deopatan, three kilometers northeast of Kathmandu, is above all famous for its main sanctum, the temple of Pasupati, the "lord of the animals," a form of Siva and the tutelary deity of the kings of Nepal since ancient times. By its name alone, the temple attracts thousands of pilgrims each year and has made itself known far beyond the Kathamndu Valley. However, for the dominant Newar population the town is by no means merely the seat of Siva or Pasupati. It is also a city of wild goddesses and other deities. Due to this tension between two strands of Hinduism -- the pure, vegetarian Smarta Hinduism and the Newar Hinduism which implies alcohol and blood sacrifices -- Siva/Pasupati has more than once been in trouble, as the many festivals and rituals descripbed and analyzed in this book reveal. Deopatan is a contested field. Different deities, agents social groups, ritual specialists, and institutions are constantly seeking dominance, challenging and even fighting each other, thus contributing to social and political dynamics and tensions that are indeed distinct in South Asia. It is these aspects on which Axel Michaels concentrates in this book.

This pioneering, interdisciplinary work shows how rituals allow us to live in a perennially imperfect world. Drawing on a variety of cultural settings, the authors utilize psychoanalytic and anthropological perspectives to describe how ritual--like play--creates "as if" worlds, rooted in the imaginative capacity of the human mind to create a subjunctive universe. The ability to cross between imagined worlds is central to the human capacity for empathy. Ritual, they claim, defines the boundaries of these imagined worlds, including those of empathy and other realms of human creativity, such as music, architecture and literature.
The authors juxtapose this ritual orientation to a "sincere" search for unity and wholeness. The sincere world sees fragmentation and incoherence as signs of inauthenticity that must be overcome. Our modern world has accepted the sincere viewpoint at the expense of ritual, dismissing ritual as mere convention. In response, the authors show how the conventions of ritual allow us to live together in a broken world. Ritual is work, endless work. But it is among the most important things that we humans do.

This book presents a range of case-studies of pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman antiquity, drawing on a wide variety of evidence. It rejects the usual reluctance to accept the category of pilgrimage in pagan polytheism and affirms the significance of sacred mobility not only as an important factor in understanding ancient religion and its topographies but also as vitally ancestral to later Christian practice.

Surah Yusuf, a chapter of the Qur'an (Koran), was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad at a critical juncture of his life. This was the time when he had gone through ten to eleven years of ridicule and rejection in Makkah, a time when he lost his wife and partner, Khadija, a time when he lost his dear uncle Abu Talib. Allah revealed this precious surah to strengthen the Prophet Muhammad's heart. To remind him that he lives in the footsteps of the great prophets of the past and that Allah's help and support is there. This surah is full of meaningful messages of patience, reliance on Allah and how to overcome hardship and betrayal. It was also educational, teaching the Prophet Muhammad the answers to queries that were posed to him by the local Jews and Muslims. Finally this surah was a timely morale booster for the Prophet and his companions in a time of need. Yasir Qadhi has clearly divided the surah into related themes, as per the revelations, so that the reader can easily understand and grasp the great wealth of knowledge relayed through this surah to all.

The book examines the history of the genesis of those texts in the Old Testament where a oeThe Ark of the Covenanta occurs. In these texts, fewer sources have turned out to be historically reliable than was hitherto assumed. It can be assumed that the Ark never stood in King Solomona (TM)s Temple. Rather, the majority of the texts bear witness to the struggle of nascent Judaism with the old traditions. This can be seen in exemplary fashion in the (unsuccessful) research into the contents of the Ark. One final chapter is then devoted to the incidence of the Ark in the texts from Qumran on the Dead Sea.

Religious icons have been a contested terrain across the world. Their implications and understanding travel further than the artistic or the aesthetic and inform contemporary preoccupations.This book traces the lives of religious sculptures beyond the moment of their creation. It lays bare their purpose and evolution by contextualising them in their original architectural or ritual setting while also following their displacement. The work examines how these images may have moved during different spates of temple renovation and acquired new identities by being relocated either within sacred precincts or in private collections and museums, art markets or even desecrated and lost. The book highlights contentious issues in Indian archaeology such as renegotiating identities of religious images, reuse and sharing of sacred space by adherents of different faiths, rebuilding of temples and consequent reinvention of these sites. The author also engages with postcolonial debates surrounding history writing and knowledge creation in British India and how colonial archaeology, archival practices, official surveys and institutionalisation of museums has influenced the current understanding of religion, sacred space and religious icons. In doing so it bridges the historiographical divide between the ancient and the modern as well as socio-religious practices and their institutional memory and preservation. Drawn from a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary study of religious sculptures, classical texts, colonial archival records, British travelogues, official correspondences and fieldwork, the book will interest scholars and researchers of history, archaeology, religion, art history, museums studies, South Asian studies and Buddhist studies.

A groundbreaking anthropological analysis of Islam as experienced by Muslims, "By Noon Prayer" builds a conceptual model of Islam as a whole, while traveling along a comparative path of biblical, Egyptological, ethnographic, poetic, scriptural, and visual materials. Grounded in long-term observation of Arabo-Islamic culture and society, this study captures the rhythm of Islam weaving through the lives of Muslim women and men. Examples of the rhythmic nature of Islam can be seen in all aspects of Muslims' everyday lives. Muslims break their Ramadan fast upon the sun setting, and they receive Ramadan by sighting the new moon. Prayer for their dead is by noon and burial is before sunset. This is space and time in Islam--moon, sun, dawn and sunset are all part of a unique and unified rhythm, interweaving the sacred and the ordinary, nature and culture in a pattern that is characteristically Islamic.

A groundbreaking anthropological analysis of Islam as experienced by Muslims, "By Noon Prayer" builds a conceptual model of Islam as a whole, while traveling along a comparative path of biblical, Egyptological, ethnographic, poetic, scriptural, and visual materials. Grounded in long-term observation of Arabo-Islamic culture and society, this study captures the rhythm of Islam weaving through the lives of Muslim women and men. Examples of the rhythmic nature of Islam can be seen in all aspects of Muslims' everyday lives. Muslims break their Ramadan fast upon the sun setting, and they receive Ramadan by sighting the new moon. Prayer for their dead is by noon and burial is before sunset. This is space and time in Islam--moon, sun, dawn and sunset are all part of a unique and unified rhythm, interweaving the sacred and the ordinary, nature and culture in a pattern that is characteristically Islamic.

There is a great deal of interest in bringing a better appreciation of ritual into religious studies classes, but many teachers are uncertain how to go about doing this. Religious studies faculty know how to teach texts, but they are often unprepared to teach something for which the meaning lies in the doing. How much doing should a class do? How does the teacher talk about religious concepts that exist in practical relationships, not textual descriptions? These practical issues also give rise to theoretical questions. Giving more attention to ritual effectively suggests a reinterpretation of religion itselfless focused on what people have thought and written, and more focused on how they order their universe. Much of the useful analysis of ritual derives from anthropological and sociological premises, which are often foreign to religious studies faculty and are seen by some as theologically problematic. This is the first resource to address the issues specific to teaching this subject. A stellar cast of contributors, who teach ritual in a wide variety of courses and settings, explain what has worked for them in the classroom, what hasn't, and what they've learned from experience. Their voices range from personal to formal, and their topics from Japanese theatre to using field trips. The result is a thoughtful guide for teachers who are new to the subject as well as experienced ones looking for fresh angles and approaches.

Social scientists sometimes seem not to know what to do with religion. In the first century of sociology's history as a discipline, the reigning concern was explaining the emergence of the modern world, and that brought with it an expectation that religion would simply fade from the scene as societies became diverse, complex, and enlightened. As the century approached its end, however, a variety of global phenomena remained dramatically unexplained by these theories. Among the leading contenders for explanatory power to emerge at this time were rational choice theories of religious behavior. Researchers who have spent time in the field observing religious groups and interviewing practitioners, however, have questioned the sufficiency of these market models. Studies abound that describe thriving religious phenomena that fit neither the old secularization paradigm nor the equations predicting vitality only among organizational entrepreneurs with strict orthodoxies. In this collection of previously unpublished essays, scholars who have been immersed in field research in a wide variety of settings draw on those observations from the field to begin to develop more helpful ways to study religion in modern lives. The authors examine how religion functions on the ground in a pluralistic society, how it is experienced by individuals, and how it is expressed in social institutions. Taken as a whole, these essays point to a new approach to the study of religion, one that emphasizes individual experience and social context over strict categorization and data collection.

The challenges of Late Modernism form the shared horizon of Christian and Buddhist religious-hermeneutic efforts to demonstrate the relevance to everyday life of their respective transmitted doctrines. This work applies an interreligious comparison based on the implicit homiletics of Paul Tillich to examine how a particular understanding of faith and reality affects religious communication. This approach reveals that Buddhism has been a kerygmatic religion from the start, as is especially clear in the tradition of Japanese Shin Buddhism.

Award-winning author, inspirational speaker and contributing writer of "Today's Christian Woman" Cheri Fuller writes about prayer with vulnerability and hope. As a woman who juggles many roles, Fuller shares her secrets of living and continual prayer that is a deep joy.