Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets provides an ethnographic study of varmakkalai, or "e;the art of the vital spots,"e; a South Indian esoteric tradition that combines medical practice and martial arts.
A powerful story of spiritual awakening, reconnection with Nature, and rekindling of ancestral wisdom *; Details the author's encounters with ancestral spirits and animal teachers, such as Coy-Wolf, and profound moments of direct connection with the natural world *; Shows how ancestral connections and intimate communications with Nature are not unique or restricted to those with indigenous cultural roots *; Reveals how reconnection with ancestors and the natural world offers insight and solutions for the complex problems we face We are but a few generations removed from millennia spent living in intimate contact with the natural world and in close commune with ancestral spirits.
50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists presents a collection of original essays drawn from an international group of prominent voices in the fields of academia, science, literature, media and politics who offer carefully considered statements of why they are atheists.
Carly Gelsinger is an awkward and lonely thirteen-year-old when she stumbles into Pine Canyon Assemblies of God, the cracked stucco church on the outskirts of her remote small town.
The worlds leading psychiatric authority on demonic possession delves into the hidden world of exorcisms and his own transformation from cynic to believer over the course of his twenty-five-year career.
While atheists such as Richard Dawkins have now become public figures, there is another and perhaps darker strain of religious rebellion that has remained out of sight--people who hate God.
New Religious Movements: A Guide for the Perplexed examines the phenomenon of new faiths and alternative spiritualities which has become a feature of the contemporary world.
This unparalleled introduction to cults and new religious movements has been completely up-dated and expanded to reflect the latest developments; each chapter reviews the origins, leaders, beliefs, rituals and practices of a NRM, highlighting the specific controversies surrounding each group.
Exploring the inner motivations of one of America's greatest religious thinkers, this book analyses the ways in which Jonathan Edwards' intense personal piety and deep experience of divine sovereignty drove an introverted intellectual along a course that would eventually develop into a mature and respected public intellectual.
This innovative book offers an original insight into the context and times of St Teresa of Avila (1515 - 1582) as well as exploring her contemporary relevance from the perspective of some of the foremost thinkers and scholars in the Teresian field today including Professors Julia Kristeva, Rowan Williams and Bernard McGinn.
A step-by-step guide to working with the spirits of ancient northern Europe *; Explains how to build relationships with Earth, Sun, Moon, Plants, Animals, Water, Fire, Craft, Air, and the Ancestors through 83 practical exercises *; Explores the role of altered states in spirit work *; Outlines the ancient cultural rules and taboos to avoid spiritual debt or offense We are all surrounded by spirits.
Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.
Spirit Possession and Communication in Religious and Cultural Contexts explores the phenomenon of spirit possession, focusing on the religious and cultural functions it serves as a means of communication.
The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts analyzes a large corpus of early Christian texts and Pseudepigraphic materials to understand how the authors of these texts used, abused and silenced enslaved characters to articulate their own social, political, and theological visions.
The relationship between early Mormons and the United States was marked by anxiety and hostility, heightened over the course of the nineteenth century by the assassination of Mormon leaders, the Saints' exile from Missouri and Illinois, the military occupation of the Utah territory, and the national crusade against those who practiced plural marriage.
Spirits without Borders is an ethnographic study of the transnational and multicultural expansion of Vietnam's Mother Goddess Religion and its spirit possession ritual.
In this book the approach of the natural sciences is adopted to confront the ontological question of how far mystical experiences can be considered as reports of an objective reality rather than reports of subjective delusions.
Because of illness and age the Jesuit theologian and philosopher Bernard Lonergan never completed the systematic study on Christology, the doctrine concerning the person of Christ, that he had planned to write.
A practical guide to the ancient magical tradition of Russian sorcery and Eastern Slavic magical rites *; Offers step-by-step instructions for more than 300 spells, incantations, charms, amulets, and practical rituals for love, career success, protection, healing, divination, communicating with spirits and ancestors, and other challenges and situations *; Reveals specific places of magical power in the natural world as well as the profound power of graveyards and churches for casting spells *; Explores the folk history of this ancient magical tradition, including how the pagan gods gained new life as Eastern Orthodox saints, and shares folktales of magical beings, including sorceresses shapeshifting into animals and household objects Passed down through generations, the Slavic practice of magic, witchcraft, and sorcery is still alive and well in Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus, as well as the Balkans and the Baltic states.
This book is an extrapolation of the research I conducted for my doctoral thesis about my people's struggle to come to terms with native title claim processes, in which we are required to prove our connection to land, culture and kin.
In a supposedly 'global age,' which not everyone accepts, the late Dr Jennifer Crawford has brought together a range of disciplines in her creation of a unified, sensitive 'way of knowing' for the global era.
Beginning in China in the search for the secret of immortality, and appearing independently in Egypt as an attempt to produce gold through the arts of smelting and alloying metals, alchemy received a great boost in Europe from studies by Islamic and Jewish alchemists.
Peabody Award-winning broadcaster and National Humanities Medalist Krista Tippett has interviewed the most extraordinary voices examining the great questions of meaning for our time.
Giordano Bruno's visit to Elizabethan England in the 1580s left its imprint on many fields of contemporary culture, ranging from the newly-developing science, the philosophy of knowledge and language, to the extraordinary flowering of Elizabethan poetry and drama.
Reveals the tradition of goddess worship in early Judaism and how Jesus attempted to restore the feminine side of the faith *; Provides historical and archaeological evidence for an earlier form of Hebrew worship with both male and female gods, including a 20th-century discovery of a Hebrew temple dedicated to both Yahweh and the warrior goddess Anat *; Explores the Hebrew pantheon of goddesses, including Yahweh's wife, Asherah, goddess of fertility and childbirth *; Shows how both Jesus and his great rival Simon Magus were attempting to restore the ancient, goddess-worshipping religion of the Israelites Despite what Jews and Christians--and indeed most people--believe, the ancient Israelites venerated several deities besides the Old Testament god Yahweh, including the goddess Asherah, Yahweh's wife, who was worshipped openly in the Jerusalem Temple.
From the shelves of mainstream bookstores and the pages of teen magazines, to popular films and television series, contemporary culture at the turn of the twenty-first century has been fascinated with teenage identity and the presence of magic and the occult.
Containing ten essays by anthropologists on the beliefs and practices associated with witches and sorcerers in Eastern Africa, the chapters in this book are all based on field research and new information which is studied within its wider social context.
From being on the margins of scholarly debate for much of the past century and a half, religion is being recognized once again as an area of concern for scholars, politicians, and public policy makers, and thus, the role of religious and spiritual education has taken on a new importance.
Anthropologists have long sought to engage and describe foreign or "e;alien"e; societies, yet few have considered the fluid communities centered around a shared belief in alien beings and UFO sightings and their effect on popular and expressive culture.
