Download or read book Reciting the Goddess written by Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reciting the Goddess is the first book-length study of Nepal's goddess Svasthani and the popular Svasthanivratakatha textual tradition. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, it examines the making of Hinduism in Nepal, a history that is largely neglected in master narratives of Hinduism on the Indian subcontinent.
Download or read book Reciting the Goddess written by Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reciting the Goddess presents the first critical study of the Svasthanivratakatha (SVK), a sixteenth-century Hindu narrative textual tradition. The extensive SVK manuscript tradition offers a rare opportunity to observe the making of a specific, distinct Hindu religious tradition. Jessica Vantine Birkenholtz argues that the SVK serves as a lens through which we can observe the creation of modern 'Hinduism' in the Himalayas, as the text both mirrored and informed key moments in the self-conscious creation of Nepal as the 'world's only Hindu kingdom' in the late medieval and early modern period. Birkenholtz mines the literary historiography that is contained within the SVK text itself, chronicling the text's literary and narrative development as well as the development of the Svasthani goddess tradition. She outlines the process whereby the SVK gradually transformed into a Purana text, and became a critical source for Nepali Hindu belief and identity. She also examines the elusive character of the goddess Svasthani whose identity is tied to the pan-Hindu goddess tradition, and the representation of women in the SVK and the ways in which the text influenced local and regional debates on the ideal of Hindu womanhood. Reciting the Goddess presents Nepal's celebrated SVK as a micro-level illustration of the powerful ways in which people, place, and literature intersect to produce new ideas and concepts of identity and place, even in a historically non-literate culture.
Download or read book Reciting the Goddess written by Jessica Lynn Vantine Birkenholtz and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Invoking Lakshmi written by Constantina Rhodes and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-09-29 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multi-faceted portrait of Lakshmi, Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity. Includes translations of verses used to invoke this goddess.
Download or read book The Goddess Companion written by Patricia Monaghan and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 1999 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now you can turn every day into a day dedicated to the goddess and your own personal spiritual evolution, when you get The Goddess Companion by Patricia Monaghan. Turn to The Goddess Companion each day for a clearer insight into how the divine flows through your life. This spirit-nourishing collection of 366 authentic goddess prayers, invocations, chants, and songs was culled from dozens of diverse eras and cultures. Each ancient prayer rings out in clear language that maintains the sacred spirit of the originals. A different traditional prayer, invocation, or chant to the goddess for each day of the year Each is illuminated by readings about the ancient quote that offer rich material for reflection, inspiration, and bliss Multiple indices allow you to find information by goddess name, subject, or cultural origin Explore the goddess as envisioned by 68 different cultures throughout the ages--including the Americas, classical Greece and Rome, Asia, ancient Sumeria and Babylonia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa Find prayers that encompass nearly 130 aspects of the goddess, from Aida Weydo and Amaterasu to White Buffalo Calf Woman and Zemyna Use the perpetual calendar to meditate upon one goddess prayer each day The Goddess Companion does far more than simply give you meditations and prayers. The readings associated with each will give you incredible insights into a wide variety of cultures and, just as importantly, into your very nature. Written by one of the leaders of the contemporary goddess movement, The Goddess Companion will help you on your spiritual path to self-understanding.
Download or read book The Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture written by Mary J. Magoulick and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2022-02-04 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention for the 2022 Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize awarded by the Women's Section of the American Folklore Society Goddess characters are revered as feminist heroes in the popular media of many cultures. However, these goddess characters often prove to be less promising and more regressive than most people initially perceive. Goddesses in film, television, and fiction project worldviews and messages that reflect mostly patriarchal culture (included essentialized gender assumptions), in contrast to the feminist, empowering levels many fans and critics observe. Building on critiques of other skeptical scholars, this feminist, folkloristic approach deepens how our remythologizing of the ancient past reflects a contemporary worldview and rhetoric. Structures of contemporary goddess myths often fit typical extremes as either vilified, destructive, dark, and chaotic (typical in film or television); or romanticized, positive, even utopian (typical in women’s speculative fiction). This goddess spectrum persistently essentializes gender, stereotyping women as emotional, intuitive, sexual, motherly beings (good or bad), precluded from complex potential and fuller natures. Within apparent good-over-evil, pop-culture narrative frames, these goddesses all suffer significantly. However, a few recent intersectional writers, like N. K. Jemisin, break through these dark reflections of contemporary power dynamics to offer complex characters who evince “hopepunk.” They resist typical simplified, reductionist absolutes to offer messages that resonate with potential for today’s world. Mythic narratives featuring goddesses often do, but need not, serve merely as ideological mirrors of our culture’s still problematically reductionist approach to women and all humanity.
Download or read book Aphrodite the Diva written by Joan Holub and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-08-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Original publication and copyright date: 2011.
Download or read book When God Was A Woman written by Merlin Stone and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2012-05-09 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, archaeologically documented,is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Under her, women’s roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women’s status.
Download or read book In Praise of Adya Kali written by Aditi Devi and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2013-12-12 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Praise of Adya Kali details the goddess Kali, and her culture of devotion in West Bengal and South Asia. Different from most contemporary books about this Dark Goddess, this book offers a liturgy of worship—a spiritual practice, the Song of the Hundred Names of Adya Kali, that readers can use to cultivate a direct devotional relationship to Kali. In Praise of Adya Kali is also a context-setting guide, establishing this practice as a general orientation to life. Most compelling, the text of this liturgy and Commentaries contain an intimate revelation of how the goddess establishes herself in her devotees’ bodies and thus intervenes, by unconditional love and acceptance, in their lives. A lengthy Introduction, both scholarly and personal, describes the goddess and the possibilities that these prayers will offer. Aditi Devi guides us in how to build a shrine to Kali, various types of offerings to make to her, and suggests a schedule for how to use this liturgy with a long-term commitment over the course of 108 nights. “This Song of the Hundred Names is a powerful teaching that all forms are her forms,” the author notes. Male, female, or other gendered, readers are presented with the possibility to experience the depths of their own internal feminine energies, and thereby come into greater healing and wholeness, more readily able to express this often neglected part of ourselves.
Download or read book In Praise of the Goddess written by and published by Nicolas-Hays, Inc.. This book was released on 2003-12-01 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About 16 centuries ago, an unknown Indian author or authors gathered together the diverse threads of already ancient traditions and wove them into a verbal tapestry that today is still the central text for worshippers of the Hindu Devi, the Divine Mother. This spiritual classic, the Devimahatmya, addresses the perennial questions of the nature of the universe, humankind, and divinity. How are they related, how do we live in a world torn between good and evil, and how do we find lasting satisfaction and inner peace? These questions and their answers form the substance of the Devimahatmya. Its narrative of a dispossessed king, a merchant betrayed by the family he loves, and a seer whose teaching leads beyond existential suffering sets the stage for a trilogy of myths concerning the all-powerful Divine Mother, Durga, and the fierce battles she wages against throngs of demonic foes. In these allegories, her adversaries represent our all-too-human impulses toward power, possessions, and pleasure. The battlefields symbolize the field of human consciousness on which our lives' dramas play out in joy and sorrow, in wisdom and folly. The Devimahatmya speaks to us across the ages of the experiences and beliefs of our ancient ancestors. We sense their enchantment at nature's bounty and their terror before its destructive fury, their recognition of the good and evil in the human heart, and their understanding that everything in our experience is the expression of a greater reality, personified as the Divine Mother.
Download or read book The Goddess You written by and published by . This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Devi written by Mr̥ṇāla Pāṇḍe and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 1996 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writer and journalist Mrinal Pande sees in strong passionate women who defy the strictures of a male-dominated world, shades of the Goddess. There were many such women in her life, women who succeeded beyond the expectations of men. First, there was her forceful mother, the writer Shivani. Then came Badi Amma, the most colourful woman in this book, her domineering, intellectual aunt. There were the friends who silently lived lives of emotional deprivation till they opted out of the world altogether. There were women who made the news--among them prostitutes, activists and reformers. And there were also the women who preyed on men, in conscious contempt of their vulnerability in the grip of sexual passion. In all these women, the writer sees the original Devi, created by the Gods to quell the forces of evil that they had themselves failed to contain, but quickly dismissed by them once victory was theirs. But the Devi keeps coming back in a myriad manifestations of herself, sorrowing, vengeful, but always the prime mover in the lives of men through the ages...
Download or read book The Goddess Pose written by Michelle Goldberg and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times best-selling author Michelle Goldberg tells the globetrotting story of the incredible woman who brought yoga to the West. When Indra Devi was born in Russia in 1899, yoga was virtually unknown outside of India. By the time of her death, in 2002, it was being practiced around the world. Here Michelle Goldberg tells the globetrotting story of the incredible woman who helped usher in a craze that continues unabated to this day. A sweeping picture of the twentieth century that travels from the cabarets of Berlin to the Mysore Palace to Golden Age Hollywood and beyond, The Goddess Pose brings the Devi’s little known but extraordinary adventures vividly to life.
Download or read book The Goddess of Nothing At All written by Cat Rector and published by Tychis Media. This book was released on 2021-10 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dark fantasy LGBTQA+ Norse Myth Retelling from the eyes of Sigyn, Loki's wife. It challenges the ideas of right and wrong, fate and choice, love and loyalty and asks if we've been on the wrong side all along.
Download or read book Receptacle of the Sacred written by Jinah Kim and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In considering medieval illustrated Buddhist manuscripts as sacred objects of cultic innovation, Receptacle of the Sacred explores how and why the South Asian Buddhist book-cult has survived for almost two millennia to the present. A book “manuscript” should be understood as a form of sacred space: a temple in microcosm, not only imbued with divine presence but also layered with the memories of many generations of users. Jinah Kim argues that illustrating a manuscript with Buddhist imagery not only empowered it as a three-dimensional sacred object, but also made it a suitable tool for the spiritual transformation of medieval Indian practitioners. Through a detailed historical analysis of Sanskrit colophons on patronage, production, and use of illustrated manuscripts, she suggests that while Buddhism’s disappearance in eastern India was a slow and gradual process, the Buddhist book-cult played an important role in sustaining its identity. In addition, by examining the physical traces left by later Nepalese users and the contemporary ritual use of the book in Nepal, Kim shows how human agency was critical in perpetuating and intensifying the potency of a manuscript as a sacred object throughout time.
Download or read book Dev written by John Stratton Hawley and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1998 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have severely limited the portrayal of the divine as feminine. But in Hinduism "God" very often means "Goddess." This extraordinary collection explores twelve different Hindu goddesses, all of whom are in some way related to Devi, the Great Goddess. They range from the liquid goddess-energy of the River Ganges to the possessing, entrancing heat of Bhagavati and Seranvali. They are local, like Vindhyavasini, and global, like Kali; ancient, like Saranyu, and modern, like "Mother India." The collection combines analysis of texts with intensive fieldwork, allowing the reader to see how goddesses are worshiped in everyday life. In these compelling essays, the divine feminine in Hinduism is revealed as never before--fascinating, contradictory, powerful.
Download or read book From Material to Deity written by Shingo Einoo and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Collection Of Essays Based On The Study Of Vedic And Post-Vedic Texts, By Japanese Scholars Deals With The Subject Of Pratisha Ritual The Most Important Ritual In Hinduism Through Which An Image Changes From Material To A Deity.
