Download or read book The Culture of the Sacred written by Michael V. Angrosino and published by Waveland PressInc. This book was released on 2004 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of religion and culture explores religion's role in social, economic, and political affairs, considering both religion and culture to be holistic systems comprised of interrelated elements including mythology, ritual, belief, and ethics.
Download or read book In Search of the Sacred Book written by Aníbal González and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2018-05-03 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Search of the Sacred Book studies the artistic incorporation of religious concepts such as prophecy, eternity, and the afterlife in the contemporary Latin American novel. It departs from sociopolitical readings by noting the continued relevance of religion in Latin American life and culture, despite modernity's powerful secularizing influence. Analyzing Jorge Luis Borges's secularized "narrative theology" in his essays and short stories, the book follows the development of the Latin American novel from the early twentieth century until today by examining the attempts of major novelists, from María Luisa Bombal, Alejo Carpentier, and Juan Rulfo, to Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and José Lezama Lima, to "sacralize" the novel by incorporating traits present in the sacred texts of many religions. It concludes with a view of the "desacralization" of the novel by more recent authors, from Elena Poniatowska and Fernando Vallejo to Roberto Bolaño.
Download or read book Creation of the Sacred written by Walter Burkert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-13 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacrifice is essential to all religions. Could there be a natural, even biological, reason? Why are sacrifice and numerous other religious rituals and concepts shared by so many different cultures? In this extraordinary book, one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient religions explores the possibility of natural religion.
Download or read book The Sacred Gaze written by David Morgan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sacred gaze" denotes any way of seeing that invests its object—an image, a person, a time, a place—with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious traditions. His lively, innovative book explores how viewers absorb and process religious imagery and how their experience contributes to the social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality. Ranging widely from thirteenth-century Japan and eighteenth-century Tibet to contemporary America, Thailand, and Africa, The Sacred Gaze discusses the religious functions of images and the tools viewers use to interpret them. Morgan questions how fear and disgust of images relate to one another and explains how scholars study the long and evolving histories of images as they pass from culture to culture. An intriguing strand of the narrative details how images have helped to shape popular conceptions of gender and masculinity. The opening chapter considers definitions of "visual culture" and how these relate to the traditional practice of art history. Amply illustrated with more than seventy images from diverse religious traditions, this masterful interdisciplinary study provides a comprehensive and accessible resource for everyone interested in how religious images and visual practice order space and time, communicate with the transcendent, and embody forms of communion with the divine. The Sacred Gaze is a vital introduction to the study of the visual culture of religions.
Download or read book The Sacred Act of Reading written by Anne Margaret Castro and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2020-01-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Zora Neale Hurston to Derek Walcott to Toni Morrison, New World black authors have written about African-derived religious traditions and spiritual practices. The Sacred Act of Reading examines religion and sociopolitical power in modern and contemporary texts of a variety of genres from the black Americas. By engaging with spiritual traditions such as Vodou, Kumina, and Protestant Christianity while drawing on canonical Eurocentric literary theory, Anne Margaret Castro presents a novel, nuanced reading of power through the physical and metaphysical relationships portrayed in these great works of New World black literature. Castro examines prophecy in the dramas of Derek Walcott, preaching in the ethnography of Zora Neale Hurston, and liturgy in the novels of Toni Morrison, offering comparative readings alongside the works of Afro-Colombian anthropologist Manuel Zapata Olivella, Jamaican sociologist Erna Brodber, and Canadian fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson. The Sacred Act of Reading is the first book to bring together literary texts, historical and contemporary anthropological studies, theology, and critical theory to show how black authors in the Americas employ spiritual phenomena as theoretical frameworks for thinking within, against, and beyond structures of political dominance, dependence, and power.
Download or read book A Sacred Look Becoming Cultural Mystics written by Nancy Usselmann and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-04-18 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How should a follower of Christ engage the popular media culture? By becoming a mystic! Sr. Nancy challenges Christians today to delve deep into the rich theological tradition of the church as the root and foundation for recognizing the beauty of God present in all that is truly human. The artists of popular culture sometimes unwittingly seek transcendence while grappling with some of humanity's most profound existential longings. The cultural mystics of today point out those needs of humanity in the culture's artifacts in order to enter into dialogue with those who seek something beyond what this world satisfies. The anthropological-sacramental-incarnational paradigm presented gives us this ability to take a sacred look of the culture and offer the joy of the Gospel, Christ who is the answer of all humanity's yearnings!
Download or read book The Sacred Origin and Nature of Sports and Culture written by Ghazi Bin Muhammed and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique study defines two aspects of modern society--sports and culture--from a traditional perspective, carefully examining their sacred origin and their relevance throughout history in philosophical and religious thought.
Download or read book Sacred written by Chris Rainier and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacred presents photographs of locations cloaked in mysticism and imbued with a spiritual energy, exploring the meaning of the sacred in a global, multicultural context. Countless cultures have found it in the magnificence of nature and what can be called the divine gestures of the nature landscape. We looked to the majesty of snowcapped mountains, the glow of the full moon, the power of a magical waterfall, the endless sands of the Sahara Desert, the towering height of the tallest trees and the subtle essence of a lotus flower. We created remarkable buildings to the essence of what we felt to be sacred. What is sacred and what do cultures around the world consider sacred? What is sacred to a Muslim, a Tibetan monk, a Native American, a Christian elder, an atheist, a mountaineer, a poet or an artist? Chris Rainier has spent the last forty years in search of the sacred––from the peaks of Tibet to the icebergs of Antarctica, from the vibrant mysticism of India to the mysteries of the Silk Road, from the jungles of New Guinea to the druid stones of Scotland, and from the deserts of the Southwest United States to the rock art of aboriginal Australia and Africa. Rainier’s photographs masterfully capture the wonder and awe inherent to all these sites. Sacred presents photographs from this lifelong journey. The collection offers spiritually driven glimpses of ancient monuments and haunting landscapes from around the world––each echoing with the energy of timeless and sacred power places. RENOWN PHOTOGRAPHER AND AUTHOR: Chris Rainier is a documentary photographer and National Geographic explorer who is highly respected for his documentation of endangered cultures and traditional languages around the globe. AWARD-WINNING PHOTOGRAPHY: Rainier was Ansel Adams last photo assistant and has contributed numerous photographs for the United Nations, UNESCO, Amnesty International, Conservation International, the Smithsonian Institution, CNN, BBC, NPR, National Geographic, TIME magazine, the New York Times, and LIFE magazine. CELEBRATED CONTRIBUTORS: Over twelve internationally recognized contributors discuss what sacred means to them and include British essayist and novelist Pico Iyer; ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker Wade Davis; and Pulitzer Prize winner and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek.
Download or read book Nature Culture and the Sacred written by Nina Simons and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons offers inspiration for anyone who aspires to grow into their own unique form of leadership with resilience and joy. Informed by her extensive experience with multicultural women's leadership development, Simons replaces the old patriarchal leadership paradigm with a more feminine-inflected style that illustrates the interconnected nature of the issues we face today. Sharing moving stories of women around the world joining together to reconnect people, nature and the land--both practically and spiritually--Nature, Culture and the Sacred is necessary reading for anyone who wants to learn from and be inspired by women who are leading the way towards transformational change by cultivating vibrant movements for social and environmental justice.
Download or read book The Sacred and the Profane written by Mircea Eliade and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1959 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famed historian of religion Mircea Eliade observes that even moderns who proclaim themselves residents of a completely profane world are still unconsciously nourished by the memory of the sacred. Eliade traces manifestations of the sacred from primitive to modern times in terms of space, time, nature, and the cosmos. In doing so he shows how the total human experience of the religious man compares with that of the nonreligious. This book serves as an excellent introduction to the history of religion, but its perspective also emcompasses philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and psychology. It will appeal to anyone seeking to discover the potential dimensions of human existence. -- P. [4] of cover.
Download or read book Sociology of the Sacred written by Philip A Mellor and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "About time! Two key experts in the field remind us of the significance and power of religion as bio-political and bio-economic." - Beverley Skeggs, Goldsmiths, University of London "A welcome addition to a continuing body of work by two distinguished theorists of religion." - Grace Davie, University of Exeter "Mellor and Shilling cement their place at the pinnacle of the contemporary sociological theorisation of religion and the sacred. If sociological work is going to have any future it is to be found in the inspiration and excitement of this sophisticated and intelligent book." - Keith Tester, University of Hull "This book is ambitious, refreshing and rewarding. It offers the best available analysis of the complex interlacing of the sacred, religion, secularization and embodied experience." - James A. Beckford, University of Warwick Drawing on classical and contemporary social theory, Sociology of the Sacred presents a bold and original account of how interactions between religious and secular forms of the sacred underpin major conflicts in the world today, and illuminate broader patterns of social and cultural change inherent to global modernity. It demonstrates: How the bodily capacities help religions adapt to social change but also facilitate their internal transformation That the ‘sacred’ includes a diverse range of phenomena, with variable implications for questions of social order and change How proponents of a ‘post-secular’ age have failed to grasp the ways in which sacralization can advance secularization Why the sociology of the sacred needs to be a key part of attempts to make sense of the nature and directionality of social change in global modernity today. This book is key reading for the sociology of religion, the body and modern culture.
Download or read book Sacred Consumption written by Elizabeth Morán and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making a foundational contribution to Mesoamerican studies, this book explores Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptures, as well as indigenous and colonial Spanish texts, to offer the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Aztec painted manuscripts and sculptural works, as well as indigenous and Spanish sixteenth-century texts, were filled with images of foodstuffs and food processing and consumption. Both gods and humans were depicted feasting, and food and eating clearly played a pervasive, integral role in Aztec rituals. Basic foods were transformed into sacred elements within particular rituals, while food in turn gave meaning to the ritual performance. This pioneering book offers the first integrated study of food and ritual in Aztec art. Elizabeth Morán asserts that while feasting and consumption are often seen as a secondary aspect of ritual performance, a close examination of images of food rites in Aztec ceremonies demonstrates that the presence—or, in some cases, the absence—of food in the rituals gave them significance. She traces the ritual use of food from the beginning of Aztec mythic history through contact with Europeans, demonstrating how food and ritual activity, the everyday and the sacred, blended in ceremonies that ranged from observances of births, marriages, and deaths to sacrificial offerings of human hearts and blood to feed the gods and maintain the cosmic order. Morán also briefly considers continuities in the use of pre-Hispanic foods in the daily life and ritual practices of contemporary Mexico. Bringing together two domains that have previously been studied in isolation, Sacred Consumption promises to be a foundational work in Mesoamerican studies.
Download or read book Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age written by Christopher Deacy and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2009 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, there has been growing awareness across a range of academic disciplines of the value of exploring issues of religion and the sacred in relation to cultures of everyday life. Exploring Religion and the Sacred in a Media Age offers inter-di
Download or read book Defend the Sacred written by Michael D. McNally and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 2016, thousands of people travelled to North Dakota to camp out near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation to protest the construction of an oil pipeline that is projected to cross underneath the Missouri River a half mile upstream from the Reservation. The Standing Rock Sioux consider the pipeline a threat to the region's clean water and to the Sioux's sacred sites (such as its ancient burial grounds). The encamped protests garnered front-page headlines and international attention, and the resolve of the protesters was made clear in a red banner that flew above the camp: "Defend the Sacred". What does it mean when Native communities and their allies make such claims? What is the history of such claim-making, and why has this rhetorical and legal strategy - based on appeals to religious freedom - failed to gain much traction in American courts? As Michael McNally recounts in this book, Native Americans have repeatedly been inspired to assert claims to sacred places, practices, objects, knowledge, and ancestral remains by appealing to the discourse of religious freedom. But such claims based on alleged violations of the First Amendment "free exercise of religion" clause of the US Constitution have met with little success in US courts, largely because Native American communal traditions have been difficult to capture by the modern Western category of "religion." In light of this poor track record Native communities have gone beyond religious freedom-based legal strategies in articulating their sacred claims: in (e.g.) the technocratic language of "cultural resource" under American environmental and historic preservation law; in terms of the limited sovereignty accorded to Native tribes under federal Indian law; and (increasingly) in the political language of "indigenous rights" according to international human rights law (especially in light of the 2007 U.N. Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). And yet the language of religious freedom, which resonates powerfully in the US, continues to be deployed, propelling some remarkably useful legislative and administrative accommodations such as the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act. As McNally's book shows, native communities draw on the continued rhetorical power of religious freedom language to attain legislative and regulatory victories beyond the First Amendment"--
Download or read book The Sacred Self written by Thomas J. Csordas and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1997-05-07 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does religious healing work, if indeed it does? In this study of the contemporary North American movement known as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Thomas Csordas investigates the healing practices of a modern religious movement to provide a rich cultural analysis of the healing experience. This is not only a book about healing, however, but also one about the nature of self and self- transformation. Blending ethnographic data and detailed case studies, Csordas examines processes of sensory imagery, performative utterance, orientation, and embodiment. His book forms the basis for a rapprochement between phenomenology and semiotics in culture theory that will interest anthropologists, philosophers, psychologists, physicians, and students of comparative religion and healing.
Download or read book Sacred Natural Sites written by Bas Verschuuren and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacred Natural Sites are the world's oldest protected places. This book focuses on a wide spread of both iconic and lesser known examples such as sacred groves of the Western Ghats (India), Sagarmatha /Chomolongma (Mt Everest, Nepal, Tibet - and China), the Golden Mountains of Altai (Russia), Holy Island of Lindisfarne (UK) and the sacred lakes of the Niger Delta (Nigeria). The book illustrates that sacred natural sites, although often under threat, exist within and outside formally recognised protected areas, heritage sites. Sacred natural sites may well be some of the last strongholds for building resilient networks of connected landscapes. They also form important nodes for maintaining a dynamic socio-cultural fabric in the face of global change. The diverse authors bridge the gap between approaches to the conservation of cultural and biological diversity by taking into account cultural and spiritual values together with the socio-economic interests of the custodian communities and other relevant stakeholders.
Download or read book Reinventing the Sacred written by Stuart A. Kauffman and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-11-29 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consider the complexity of a living cell after 3.8 billion years of evolution. Is it more awesome to suppose that a transcendent God fashioned the cell at a stroke, or to realize that it evolved with no Almighty Hand, but arose on its own in the c...
