Download or read book Rites and Symbols of Initiation The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth written by Michael Meade and published by Spring Publications. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizing data from cultures the world over, Mircea Eliade, one ofthe preeminent interpreters of world religion in the twentieth century, lays out the basic patterns of initiation: group puberty rites, entranceinto secret cults, shamanic instruction, individual visions, and heroicrites of passage. The vast information assembled here transcendsusual scholarship. Eliade always affirms the greater experience in allinitiation - the indissoluble tie between humans and the cosmos ofgods, spirits, animals, ancestors, and nature.As Michael Meade writes in his foreword, Eliade "fervently workedat keeping the doors of perception open to the world of sacred symbolsand creative ritual. Through his insistence that we are each thenecessary inheritors of a vast sacred heritage, he has acted as a spiritualelder and distant mentor to me and many students of myth andritual. Like an archeologist of symbols, he has unearthed, preserved, and found new meanings in the rites of our ancestors."
Download or read book Rituals of Initiation and Consecration in Premodern Japan written by Fabio Rambelli and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-01-19 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In premodern Japan, legitimization of power and knowledge in various contexts was sanctioned by consecration rituals (kanjō) of Buddhist origin. This is the first book to address in a comprehensive way the multiple forms and aspects of these rituals also in relation to other Asian contexts. The multidisciplinary chapters in the book address the origins of these rituals in ancient Persia and India and their developments in China and Tibet, before discussing in depth their transformations in medieval Japan. In particular, kanjō rituals are examined from various perspectives: imperial ceremonies, Buddhist monastic rituals, vernacular religious forms (Shugendō mountain cults, Shinto lineages), rituals of bodily transformation involving sexual practice, and the performing arts: a history of these developments, descriptions of actual rituals, and reference to religious and intellectual arguments based on under-examined primary sources. No other book presents so many cases of kanjō in such depth and breadth. This book is relevant to readers interested in Buddhist studies, Japanese religions, the history of Japanese culture, and in the intersections between religious doctrines, rituals, legitimization, and performance.
Download or read book Chisungu written by Audrey Richards and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there have been a number of descriptions and interpretations of boys' initiation rituals, Audrey Richards's classic study of initiation rites among the Bemba remains one of the few studies to deal in detail with the initiation of girls into adult life. Dr Richards observed the entire chisungu or female initiation rite, an almost continuous series of complex ceremonies lasting for a month. Her detailed description of the elements of the ritual, and her analysis of it in terms of the culture of matrilineal society, have made this a classic ethnographic and theoretical text. Celebrating the attainment of sexual and social maturity, the puberty rituals reflect tribal attitudes to sex, fertility, marriage, and the rearing of children. We see how women's ceremonies portray and try to enforce the social obligations of marriage and the setting up of the kinship group, and the conflicts of interest that are involved.
Download or read book Chisungu written by Audrey Isabel Richards and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there have been a number of descriptions and interpretations of boys' initiation rituals, Audrey Richards's classic study of initiation rites among the Bemba remains one of the few studies to deal in detail with the initiation of girls into adult life. Dr Richards observed the entire chisungu or female initiation rite, an almost continuous series of complex ceremonies lasting for a month. Her detailed description of the elements of the ritual, and her analysis of it in terms of the culture of matrilineal society, have made this a classic ethnographic and theoretical text. Celebrating the attainment of sexual and social maturity, the puberty rituals reflect tribal attitudes to sex, fertility, marriage, and the rearing of children. We see how women's ceremonies portray and try to enforce the social obligations of marriage and the setting up of the kinship group, and the conflicts of interest that are involved.
Download or read book Gender Rituals written by Nancy Lutkehaus and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume draws together ethnographies of female initiation rites in Melanesia which require anthropologists to rethink their analysis of initiations and their perceptions of gender. The contributors argue that female initiation rites express more than cultural notions of femininity, narrow definitions of reproduction, or coming of age rituals - instead they play an important role in other life cycle rituals and in the political and economic organization of society.
Download or read book Ritual A Very Short Introduction written by Barry Stephenson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-28 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ritual is part of what it means to be human. Like sports, music, and drama, ritual defines and enriches culture, putting those who practice it in touch with sources of value and meaning larger than themselves. Ritual is unavoidable, yet it holds a place in modern life that is decidedly ambiguous. What is ritual? What does it do? Is it useful? What are the various kinds of ritual? Is ritual tradition bound and conservative or innovative and transformational? Alongside description of a number of specific rites, this Very Short Introduction explores ritual from both theoretical and historical perspectives. Barry Stephenson focuses on the places where ritual touches everyday life: in politics and power; moments of transformation in the life cycle; as performance and embodiment. He also discusses the boundaries of ritual, and how and why certain behaviors have been studied as ritual while others have not. Stephenson shows how ritual is an important vehicle for group and identity formation; how it generates and transmits beliefs and values; how it can be used to exploit and oppress; and how it has served as a touchstone for thinking about cultural origins and historical change. Encompassing the breadth and depth of modern ritual studies, Barry Stephenson's Very Short Introduction also develops a narrative of ritual's place in social and cultural life. 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.
Download or read book Initiation Rites and Rituals written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation written by Henrik Bogdan and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than three hundred years the practice of Masonic rituals of initiation has been part of Western culture, spreading far beyond the boundaries of traditional Freemasonry. Henrik Bogdan explores the historical development of these rituals and their relationship with Western esotericism. Beginning with the Craft degrees of Freemasonry—the blueprints, as it were, of all later Masonic rituals of initiation—Bogdan examines the development of the Masonic High Degrees, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—the most influential of all nineteenth-century occultist initiatory societies—and Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft movement of the 1950s, one of the first large-scale Western esoteric New Religions Movements.
Download or read book Mystical Rites and Rituals Initiation and Fertility Rites Sacrifice and Burial Customs Incantation and Ritual Magic written by and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives written by David Dodd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-05 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholars of classical history and literature have for more than a century accepted `initiation' as a tool for understanding a variety of obscure rituals and myths, ranging from the ancient Greek wedding and adolescent haircutting rituals to initiatory motifs or structures in Greek myth, comedy and tragedy. In this books an international group of experts including Gloria Ferrari, Fritz Graf and Bruce Lincoln, critique many of these past studies, and challenge strongly the tradition of privileging the concept of initiation as a tool for studying social performances and literary texts, in which changes in status or group membership occur in unusual ways. These new modes of research mark an important turning point in the modern study of the religion and myths of ancient Greece and Rome, making this a valuable collection across a number of classical subjects.
Download or read book Emerging from the Chrysalis written by Bruce Lincoln and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Coming to the Edge of the Circle written by Nikki Bado and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-04 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine yourself sitting on the cool damp earth, surrounded by deep night sky and fields full of fireflies, anticipating the ritual of initiation that you are about to undergo. Suddenly you hear the sounds of far-off singing and chanting, drums booming, rattles "snaking," voices raised in harmony. The casting of the Circle is complete. You are led to the edge of the Circle, where Death, your challenge, is waiting for you. With the passwords of "perfect love" and "perfect trust" you enter Death's realm. The Guardians of the four quarters purify you, and you are finally reborn into the Circle as a newly made Witch. Coming to the Edge of the Circle offers an ethnographic study of the initiation ritual practiced by one coven of Witches located in Ohio. As a High Priestess within the coven as well as a scholar of religion, Nikki Bado is in a unique position to contribute to our understanding of this ceremony and the tradition to which it belongs. Bado's analysis of this coven's initiation ceremony offers an important challenge to the commonly accepted model of "rites of passage." Rather than a single linear event, initiation is deeply embedded within a total process of becoming a Witch in practice and in community with others. Coming to the Edge of the Circle expands our concept of initiation while giving us insight into one coven's practice of Wicca. An important addition to Ritual Studies, it also introduces readers to the contemporary nature religion variously called Wicca, Witchcraft, the Old Religion, or the Craft.
Download or read book Mystical Rites and Rituals written by Octopus Publishing Group and published by Conran Octopus. This book was released on 1975 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Initiations written by Joannes Augustinus Maria Snoek and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Anthropology and mysticism in the making of initiation written by Andy Hilton and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-09-14 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the 1980s, interest in initiation was at its peak; it was being employed both theoretically and practically, in gender politics and humanistic therapy. How did that come to be, how should we understand 'initiation', and what can be its future? This wide-ranging book looks at the history, evolution and contemporary idea of initiation. It traces origins in the ancient Mysteries and early Christian texts, through Renaissance rediscoveries to admission in Freemasonry and anthropological investigations in French Canada and British Australia. It introduces the 'initiation discourse', as something that was constructed through centuries of translations and nineteenth century human science leading to the making of the modern concept. It argues for a subject, 'initiation studies', that effectively secularised the eighteenth-century rites of admission to produce the twentieth-century rites of passage. And it details, as compensation for this hollowing out of the mystery, the study of shaman 'spirit-workers', the idea of death and rebirth, and the later sacralisation of the liminal in adolescent/adult initiation. Finally, a contemporary revision is explored that incorporates neglected aspects like depth psychology and education for an idea of youth as a life-stage. And while ritual is now deemphasised, the religious dimension is reaffirmed with a critical analysis of cosmic consciousness, the enduring Great Mystery.
Download or read book The Rites of Passage written by Arnold van Gennep and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Van Gennep was the first observer of human behaviour to note that the ritual ceremonies that accompany the landmarks of human life differ only in detail from one culture to another, and that they are in essence universal. Originally published in English in 1960. This edition reprints the paperback edition of 1977.
Download or read book Initiation Rites for Boys in Lomwe Society in Malawi and Other Essays written by J. C. Chakanza and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2005 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research in traditional religion in Malawi has shifted from broad ecological religions to communal rituals, as traditional rituals are scrutinised, partly in connection with the study of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and transmission of the virus. The eight essays in the collection demonstrate ample attempts to understand communal rituals in their various contexts.
