The interpretation of animal sacrifice, now considered the most important ancient Greek and Roman religious ritual, has long been dominated by the views of Walter Burkert, the late J.-P. Vernant, and Marcel Detienne. No penetrating and general critique of their views has appeared and, in particular, no critique of the application of these views to Roman religion. Nor has any critique dealt with the use of literary and visual sources by these writers. This book, a collection of essays by leading scholars, incorporates all these subjects and provides a theoretical background for the study of animal sacrifice in an ancient context.

Black Elk of the Sioux has been recognized as one of the truly remarkable men of his time in the matter of religious belief and practice. Shortly before his death in August, 1950, when he was the "keeper of the sacred pipe," he said, "It is my prayer that, through our sacred pipe, and through this book in which I shall explain what our pipe really is, peace may come to those peoples who can understand, and understanding which must be of the heart and not of the head alone. Then they will realize that we Indians know the One true God, and that we pray to Him continually."

Black Elk was the only qualified priest of the older Oglala Sioux still living when "The Sacred Pipe "was written. This is his book: he gave it orally to Joseph Epes Brown during the latter's eight month's residence on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where Black Elk lived. Beginning with the story of White Buffalo Cow Woman's first visit to the Sioux to give them the sacred pip, Black Elk describes and discusses the details and meanings of the seven rites, which were disclosed, one by one, to the Sioux through visions. He takes the reader through the sun dance, the purification rite, the "keeping of the soul," and other rites, showing how the Sioux have come to terms with God and nature and their fellow men through a rare spirit of sacrifice and determination.

The "wakan "Mysteries of the Siouan peoples have been a subject of interest and study by explorers and scholars from the period of earliest contact between whites and Indians in North America, but Black Elk's account is without doubt the most highly developed on this religion and cosmography. "The Sacred Pipe, "published as volume thirty-six in the Civilization of the American Indian Series, will be greeted enthusiastically by students of comparative religion, ethnologists, historians, philosophers, and everyone interested in American Indian life.

This book offers a fresh and challenging multi-disciplinary interpretation of Aristophanes' Frogs. Drawing on a wide range of literary and anthropological approaches, it seeks to explore how membership of Greek fifth-century society would have shaped one's understanding of the play, and, more specifically, of Dionysus as a dramatic figure.

In past centuries, human responses to death were largely shaped by religious beliefs. Ralph Houlbrooke shows how the religious upheavals of the early modern period brought dramatic changes to this response, affecting the last rites, funerals, and ways of remembering the dead. He examines the interaction between religious innovation and the continuing need for reassurance and consolation on the part of the dying and the bereaved.

Japanese Buddhist Pilgrimage explores the ritual practice of "circulatory pilgrimages" - the visiting of many temples in a numbered sequence. Every year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims travel such temple routes, seeking peace of mind, health and wellbeing for themselves and others as the benefits of such meritorious endeavour. This form of pilgrimage appears to be unique to Japan. The practice began centuries ago and involved visiting 33 temples devoted to the Bodhisattva Kannon, spread widely over western Japan. Soon afterwards the equally famous pilgrimage to 88 temples on Japan's fourth island of Shikoku came into prominence. This is the first comprehensive study of all the major and many of the minor routes, The book also examines how the practice of circulatory pilgrimage developed among the shrines and temples for the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, and beyond them to the rather different world of Shinto. The varying significance of the different pilgrimages is also explored. In addition to all the information about the routes, the book includes numerous illustrations and examples of the short Buddhist texts chanted by the pilgrims on their rounds.

There has recently been much interest in the relationship between science and religion, and how they combine to give us a 'binocular' perspective on things. One important phenomenon which has been neglected in recent work is the concept of spiritual healing. This edited collection explores a variety of approaches to spiritual healing from different religious points of view, identifying both what it is and how it works. The authors also explore the biological and psychological processes, open to scientific enquiry, through which healing may be mediated. As such, this book indicates the central proposition that religious and scientific perspectives answer different questions about healing, and there is not necessarily any conflict between them.

The dawn of the modern age posed challenges to all of the world's religions - and since then, religions have countered with challenges to modernity. In Religious Responses to Modernity, seven leading scholars from Germany and Israel explore specific instances of the face-off between religious thought and modernity, in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. As co-editor Christoph Markschies remarks in his Foreword, it may seem almost trivial to say that different religions, and the various currents within them, have reacted in very different ways to the "multiple modernities" described by S.N. Eisenstadt. However, things become more interesting when the comparative perspective leads us to discover surprising similarities. Disparate encounters are connected by their transnational or national perspectives, with the one side criticizing in the interest of rationality as a model of authorization, and the other presenting revelation as a critique of a depraved form of rationality. The thoughtful essays presented herein, by Simon Gerber, Johannes Zachhuber, Jonathan Garb, Rivka Feldhay, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Israel Gershoni and Christoph Schmidt, provide a counterweight to the popularity of some all-too-simplified models of modernization.

Hinduism is practised by nearly eighty per cent of India's population, and by some seventy million people outside India. In this Very Short Introduction, Kim Knott offers a succinct and authoritative overview of this major religion, and analyses the challenges facing it in the twenty-first century. She discusses key preoccupations of Hinduism such as the centrality of the Veda as religious texts, the role of Brahmins, gurus, and storytellers in the transmission of divine truths, and the cultural and moral importance of epics such as the Ramayana. In this second edition Knott considers the impact of changes in technology and the flourishing of social media on Hinduism, and looks at the presence of Hinduism in popular culture, considering pieces such as Sita Sings the Blues. She also analyses recent developments in India, and the impact issues such as Hindu nationalism and the politicization of Hinduism have on Hindus worldwide. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Drawing primarily on oral sources from the author's own research carried out between 1993 and 1997, this book outlines the settlement history of Pashto speakers in Pakistan's Northern Areas over the last 150 years, concentrating on the decades following the opening of the Karakoram Highway in 1978. Besides this, it looks at how the migrants' language situation had developed by the mid 1990s. It investigates how Pashto speakers communicated with each other and with members of their respective Shina-, Khowar-, Balti- and Burushaski-speaking host communities, focussing in particular on cross-dialectal communication and language shift. The book also aims to define how the trends related to Pashtun migration to the Northern Areas in the mid 1990s could develop in the near future. Interwoven with this analysis are childhood memories and life stories recounted by the Pashto speakers interviewed by the author. All interviewees were ordinary people leading ordinary lives - traders, cobblers, tea boys, farmers and porters. Their stories provide a voice to the Pashto speaking migrants themselves and give the reader a fascinating insight into their lives.

In this groundbreaking study, Michael Willis examines how the gods of early Hinduism came to be established in temples, how their cults were organized, and how the ruling elite supported their worship. Examining the emergence of these key historical developments in the fourth and fifth centuries, Willis combines Sanskrit textual evidence with archaeological data from inscriptions, sculptures, temples, and sacred sites. The centre-piece of this study is Udayagiri in central India, the only surviving imperial site of the Gupta dynasty. Through a judicious use of landscape archaeology and archaeo-astronomy, Willis reconstructs how Udayagiri was connected to the Festival of the Rainy Season and the Royal Consecration. Under Gupta patronage, these rituals were integrated into the cult of Vishnu, a deity regarded as the source of creation and of cosmic time. As special devotees of Vishnu, the Gupta kings used Udayagiri to advertise their unique devotional relationship with him. Through his meticulous study of the site, its sculptures and its inscriptions, Willis shows how the Guptas presented themselves as universal sovereigns and how they advanced new systems of religious patronage that shaped the world of medieval India.

The origins of Christian holy places in Palestine and the beginnings of Christian pilgrimage to these sites have seemed obscure. From a detailed examination of the literature and archaeology pertaining to specific sites and the region in general, the present author finds no evidence that Christians of any kind venerated 'holy places' before the fourth century. It appears that scholarly Christians had visited certain Biblical sites out of historical and exegetical concerns, but that these sites were not considered holy, or the visitors as 'pilgrims'. Instead, the origins of Christian pilgrimage and holy places rest with the emperor Constantine, who established four basilicas in Palestine c. 325-30 and provided two imperial matrons, Helena and Eutropia, as examples of a new kind of pious pilgrim. Pilgrimage to intrinsically sacred shrines had been a pagan practice, which was grafted on to Christianity. Many Jewish, Samaritan, and pagan sites were thereafter appropriated by the church and turned into Christian holy places. This process helped to destroy the widespread paganism of Palestine and mark the country as a 'holy land'. Very few sites are genuine, the most important being the cave (not Garden) of Gethsemane, in which Jesus was probably arrested.

Asi como nuestros padres y abuelos tienen sus libros de oraciones que pasaron de generacion en generacion, este libro pretende ser el libro de oraciones en espanol de la generacion mas joven de la iglesia. Oracion Comun para Ninos y Familias es una coleccion de oraciones y liturgias escritas para ninos y para los adultos o comunidades que oran con ellos. Imaginativamente ilustrado a plumilla, este libro contiene oraciones para la manana, el mediodia y la noche; oraciones para usar a traves del ano en la Iglesia y oraciones para todo tipo de ocasiones. En el centro de este libro esta la creencia de que la oracion forma nuestras vidas, por lo que debe ser accesible y significativa para los ninos y ninas. Las oraciones en este libro son llamadas "comunes" por diversas razones. Como el Libro de Oracion Comun, este busca proveer lenguaje, forma y teologia que reune a los episcopales en la oracion compartida. Ademas, las oraciones reflejan temas familiares para los ninos como el hogar, la escuela y el campamento. Pero mas que todo, estas oraciones son dichas en comunidad -siempre como parte de la comunidad santa de Dios que incluye a la familia y los amigos, los vivos y los fallecidos, los santos y los pecadores, los angeles, arcangeles y la compania de los cielos. Common Prayer for Children and Families is a collection of prayers and liturgies written for kids and the adults or communities who pray with them. Whimsically illustrated with pen and ink, this book contains prayers for morning, midday, and evening; prayers throughout the Church year; and prayers for all sorts of occasions. At the heart of this book is the belief that prayer shapes our lives and should be accessible and meaningful for children. The prayers in this book are called "common" for a variety of reasons; like the Book of Common Prayer, it seeks to provide a language, form, and theology that binds Episcopalians in shared prayer. In addition, prayers reflect themes with which children are commonly familiar, like home, school, and camps. Most of all, these prayers are held in common-always done within God's holy community that includes family and friends, the living and the dead, saints and sinners, angels, archangels, and the company of heaven.

This is a motivating, provocative look at the awesome potential trapped within you, waiting to be realized. This book will cause you to be uncomfortable with your present state of accomplishment and dissatisfied with resting on your past success. Includes a study guide for personal or group use.

Connecting to Our Ancestral Past is a pragmatic, spiritual journey that introduces a variety of specific rituals and conversations in connection with Constellations work, an experiential process that explores one’s history and powerful events of the past in order to understand and resolve problems of the present. Constellations facilitator and author Francesca Mason Boring presents this therapeutic method in the context of cultures like the Shoshone, of which she is a member, that have seen the world through a prism of interrelationships for millennia. In Constellations work there is an organic quality that requires a discipline of non-judgment, one that is embraced in traditional native circles, where the whole truth of a person’s life, roots, and trans-generational trauma or challenge is understood and included.

Mason Boring provides a transformational walk through the universal indigenous field— that place of healing and knowledge used by Native healers and teachers for centuries—by describing stories and rituals designed to help people with their particular struggles. These rituals, such as “Facing the Good Men”—designed to help women who have suffered abuse in relationships with men—reject Western notions of over-the-counter medication. Instead, they stress a comfortable environment whereby the “client,” with the help of a facilitator, interacts with people chosen to represent concepts, things, and other people. In Western culture the word “medicine” is thought of as a concrete object, but Mason Boring explains that indigenous cultures favor a process of healing as opposed to an itemized substance. She re-opens doors that have been closed due to the exclusion of indigenous technology in the development of many Western healing traditions and introduces new concepts to the lexicon of Western psychology.

A range of voices from around the world—leaders in the fields of systems constellations, theoretical physics, and tribal traditions—contribute to this exploration of aboriginal perspectives that will benefit facilitators of Constellations work, therapists, and human beings who are trying to walk with open eyes and hearts.

Christopher Melchert proposes to historicize Islamic renunciant piety (zuhd). As the conquest period wound down in the early eighth century c.e., renunciants set out to maintain the contempt of worldly comfort and loyalty to a greater cause that had characterized the community of Muslims in the seventh century. Instead of reckless endangerment on the battlefield, they cultivated intense fear of the Last Judgement to come. They spent nights weeping, reciting the Qur'an, and performing supererogatory ritual prayers. They stressed other-worldliness to the extent of minimizing good works in this world. Then the decline of tribute from the conquered peoples and conversion to Islam made it increasingly unfeasible for most Muslims to keep up any such regime. Professional differentiation also provoked increasing criticism of austerity. Finally, in the later ninth century, a form of Sufism emerged that would accommodate those willing and able to spend most of their time on religious devotions, those willing and able to spend their time on other religious pursuits such as law and hadith, and those unwilling or unable to do either.

Martin Prechtel's experiences growing up on a Pueblo Indian reservation, his years of apprenticing to a Guatemalan shaman, and his flight from Guatemala's brutal civil war inform this lyrical blend of memoir, cultural mythology, and spiritual call to arms. "The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic "is both an epic story and a cry to the heart of humanity based on the author's realization that human survival depends on keeping alive the seeds of our "original forgotten spiritual excellence."
Prechtel relates the current eco-crisis to the rapid disappearance of biodiversity, indigenous cultures, and shared human values. He demonstrates how real human culture is exterminated when real (not genetically modified) seeds are lost. Like plants that become extinct once their required conditions are no longer met, authentic, unmonetized human cultures can no longer survive in the modern world. To "keep the seeds alive"--both literally and metaphorically--they must be planted, harvested, and replanted, just as human culture must become truly engaging and meaningful to the soul, as necessary as food is to the body. The viable seeds of spirituality and culture that lie dormant within us need to "sprout" into broad daylight to create real sets of cultures welcome on Earth.

Children can explore the world of yoga and the stories of the Bible and find meaning in both.

Burning the Dead traces the evolution of cremation in India and the South Asian diaspora across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through interconnected histories of movement, space, identity, and affect, it examines how the so-called traditional practice of Hindu cremation on an open-air funeral pyre was culturally transformed and materially refashioned under British rule, following intense Western hostility, colonial sanitary acceptance, and Indian adaptation. David Arnold examines the critical reception of Hindu cremation abroad, particularly in Britain, where India formed a primary reference point for the cremation debates of the late nineteenth century, and explores the struggle for official recognition of cremation among Hindu and Sikh communities around the globe. Above all, Arnold foregrounds the growing public presence and assertive political use made of Hindu cremation, its increasing social inclusivity, and its close identification with Hindu reform movements and modern Indian nationhood.

How, in this age of belief, can we make sense of the act of Christian worship? Convinced that people shape their meanings from those available to them, Graham Hughes inquires into liturgical constructions of meaning, within the larger context of late twentieth-century meaning theory. Drawing particularly upon the work of Charles Peirce, Hughes employs semiotic theory to analyze the construction, transmission and apprehension of meaning within an actual worship service. This book will appeal to teachers and students of theology, clergy and informed lay Christians.