Download or read book The Sensuous and the Sacred written by Vidya Dehejia and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Sumptuous Book Is A Significant Addition To The Literature On The Exquisite Temple Bronzes Of The Chola Period, From The Ninth To The Thirteenth Centuries, A Time Of Unparalleled Creativity In The History Of The Indian Subcontinent. During The Golden

Download or read book The Sensuous in the Counter Reformation Church written by Marcia B. Hall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-22 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the promotion of the sensuous as part of religious experience in the Roman Catholic Church of the early modern period. During the Counter-Reformation, every aspect of religious and devotional practice was reviewed, including the role of art and architecture, and the invocation of the five senses to incite devotion became a hotly contested topic. The Protestants condemned the material cult of veneration of relics and images, rejecting the importance of emotion and the senses and instead promoting the power of reason in receiving the Word of God. After much debate, the Church concluded that the senses are necessary to appreciate the sublime, and that they derive from the Holy Spirit. As part of its attempt to win back the faithful, the Church embraced the sensuous and promoted the use of images, relics, liturgy, processions, music, and theater as important parts of religious experience.

Download or read book The Sensual God written by Aviad M. Kleinberg and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-08 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Old Testament, God wrestles with a man (and loses). In the Talmud, God wriggles his toes to make thunder and takes human form to shave the king of Assyria. In the New Testament, God is made flesh and dwells among humans. For religious thinkers trained in Greek philosophy and its deep distaste for matter, sacred scripture can be distressing. A philosophically respectable God should be untainted by sensuality, yet the God of sacred texts is often embarrassingly sensual. Setting experts' minds at ease was neither easy nor simple, and often faith and logic were stretched to their limits. Focusing on examples from both Christian and Jewish sources, from the Bible to sources from the Late Middle Ages, Aviad Kleinberg examines the way Christian and Jewish philosophers, exegetes, and theologians attempted to reconcile God's supposed ineffability with numerous biblical and postbiblical accounts of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and even tasting the almighty. The conceptual entanglements ensnaring religious thinkers, and the strange, ingenious solutions they used to extricate themselves, tell us something profound about human needs and divine attributes, about faith, hope, and cognitive dissonance.

Download or read book The Thief Who Stole My Heart written by Vidya Dehejia and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to put the sacred and sensuous bronze statues from India’s Chola dynasty in social context From the ninth through the thirteenth century, the Chola dynasty of southern India produced thousands of statues of Hindu deities, whose physical perfection was meant to reflect spiritual beauty and divine transcendence. During festivals, these bronze sculptures—including Shiva, referred to in a saintly vision as “the thief who stole my heart”—were adorned with jewels and flowers and paraded through towns as active participants in Chola worship. In this richly illustrated book, leading art historian Vidya Dehejia introduces the bronzes within the full context of Chola history, culture, and religion. In doing so, she brings the bronzes and Chola society to life before our very eyes. Dehejia presents the bronzes as material objects that interacted in meaningful ways with the people and practices of their era. Describing the role of the statues in everyday activities, she reveals not only the importance of the bronzes for the empire, but also little-known facets of Chola life. She considers the source of the copper and jewels used for the deities, proposing that the need for such resources may have influenced the Chola empire’s political engagement with Sri Lanka. She also investigates the role of women patrons in bronze commissions and discusses the vast public records, many appearing here in translation for the first time, inscribed on temple walls. From the Cholas’ religious customs to their agriculture, politics, and even food, The Thief Who Stole My Heart offers an expansive and complete immersion in a community still accessible to us through its exquisite sacred art. Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Download or read book The Spell of the Sensuous written by David Abram and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

Download or read book The Place of Devotion written by Sukanya Sarbadhikary and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Hindu devotional traditions have long been recognized for their sacred geographies as well as the sensuous aspects of their devotees' experiences. Largely overlooked, however, are the subtle links between these religious expressions. Based on intensive fieldwork conducted among worshippers in Bengal’s Navadvip-Mayapur sacred complex, this book discusses the diverse and contrasting ways in which Bengal-Vaishnava devotees experience sacred geography and divinity. Sukanya Sarbadhikary documents an extensive range of practices, which draw on the interactions of mind, body, and viscera. She shows how perspectives on religion, embodiment, affect, and space are enriched when sacred spatialities of internal and external forms are studied at once.

Download or read book The Sacred Prostitute written by Nancy Qualls-Corbett and published by Inner City Books. This book was released on 1988 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The disconnection between spirituality and passionate love leaves a broad sense of dissatisfaction and boredom in relationships. The author illustrates how our vitality and capacity for joy depend on restoring the soul of the sacred prostitute to its rightful place in consciousness.

Download or read book The Body Adorned written by Vidya Dehejia and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-26 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sensuous human form-elegant and eye-catching-is the dominant feature of premodern Indian art. From the powerful god Shiva, greatest of all yogis and most beautiful of all beings, to stone dancers twisting along temple walls, the body in Indian art is always richly adorned. Alankara (ornament) protects the body and makes it complete and attractive; to be unornamented is to invite misfortune. In The Body Adorned, Vidya Dehejia, who has dedicated her career to the study of Indian art, draws on the literature of court poets, the hymns of saints and acharyas, and verses from inscriptions to illuminate premodern India's unique treatment of the sculpted and painted form. She focuses on the coexistence of sacred and sensuous images within the common boundaries of Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu "sacred spaces," redefining terms like "sacred" and "secular" in relation to Indian architecture. She also considers the paradox of passionate poetry, in which saints praised the sheer bodily beauty of the divine form, and nonsacred Rajput painted manuscripts, which freely inserted gods into the earthly realm of the courts. By juxtaposing visual and literary sources, Dehejia demonstrates the harmony between the sacred and the profane in classical Indian culture. Her synthesis of art, literature, and cultural materials not only generates an all-inclusive picture of the period but also revolutionizes our understanding of the cultural ethos of premodern India.

Download or read book The sensual icon written by Bissera V and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explores the Byzantine aesthetic of fugitive appearances by placing and filming art objects in spaces of changing light, and by uncovering the shifting appearances expressed in poetry, descriptions of art, and liturgical performance"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Sensuous Worship written by Jeffrey Chipps Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It provides the first comprehensive treatment of the Jesuits' poorly understood but remarkable revitalization of German religious art and culture - an accomplishment that would guide the direction of both religious life and subsequent German Baroque art."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book Divine Communion written by Jay Emerson Johnson and published by Church Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Food, sex, and God– these intertwine at the heart of Christian faith and practice. This book invites Christian communities to reflect theologically and spiritually on the desire for God and the desire for sexual intimacy as the same fundamental desire for communion. This is likewise God’s own desire to be in communion with us, which Christians celebrate whenever we share a simple meal of bread and wine at the Eucharistic table. The longing for intimacy and its disruptions echo throughout our political contestations, economic systems, racial and ethnic conflicts, and ecological crises. In no small measure, the vitality of Christian witness to the Gospel in the twenty-first century depends on exploring the depths of desire itself in the ancient hope for Divine Communion made new.

Download or read book Sacred River written by Syl Cheney-Coker and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-11 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reincarnation of a legendary nineteenth-century Caribbean emperor as a contemporary African leader is at the heart of this novel. Sacred River deals with the extraordinary lives, hopes, powerful myths, stories, and tragedies of the people of a modern West African nation. It is also the compelling love story of an idealistic philosophy professor and an ex-courtesan of incomparable beauty. Two hundred years after his death, the great Haitian emperor Henri Christophe miraculously appears in a dream to Tankor Satani, president of the fictional West African country of Kissi, with instructions for Tankor to continue Henri Christophe’s rule, which had been interrupted by “that damned Napoleon.” Ambitious in scope, Sacred River is a diaspora-inspired novel, in which Cheney-Coker has tackled the major themes of politics, social strife, crime and punishment, and human frailty and redemption in Malagueta, the fictional, magical town and its surroundings first created by the author in The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, for which he was awarded the coveted Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Sacred River is equally about love and politics, and marks the return to fiction of one of Africa’s major writers.

Download or read book Chup written by Deepa Narayan and published by Juggernaut Books. This book was released on 2018 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Sacred Sex written by Gabriela Herstik and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-07-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern, nonjudgmental guide to reclaiming and embodying your sexuality as nothing short of divine. There has never been a more vital time to embrace the union of sex and spirit. With Gabriela Herstik’s expert and inclusive guidance, learn to shed societally ingrained shame and reclaim your birthright to sacred sex as a foundational part of your spiritual path. Sacred Sex covers topics including: • how to work with the divine erotic and sex magick • how mystical traditions from around the world, such as tantra, kundalini, Kabbalah, and Taoism, work with sexuality in a mystical context • how to use the tarot as an archetypal framework to go deeper in your practice • how honoring your boundaries, tuning into your intuition, and having a personal set of values around sex are necessities • why releasing judgment and shame is a vital piece of the puzzle • rituals to activate self-love and self-lust, to embody your higher sexual self, to heal, to manifest your power, and to release judgment • the paths available for your individual journey, such as the union of the self and the higher self, sexual alchemy, devotion, sacred kink, glamour and embodiment, and redefining the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine • guided journaling and affirmations for each chapter • interviews with sex therapists, sex workers, and sexuality professionals • and much more Honoring the sexual as a path to the sacred is life- and heart-changing work that begins with you, respecting your desires, and standing in your erotic power. Whether you are single or in a relationship(s), embracing the divine erotic can infuse your life with purpose, love, self-lust, and plenty of magick, which you can then share with partners, lovers, and the world.

Download or read book Re envisioning iva Na ar ja written by Anna Slaczka and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Re-envisioning Śiva Naṭarāja. A Multidisciplinary Perspective the contributors work with hitherto unexplored visual, textual, and epigraphic material and analytical techniques, presenting new insights into the dancing Śiva as icon and concept.

Download or read book The Redemption of the Feminine Erotic Soul written by Rachel Hillel and published by Nicolas-Hays, Inc.. This book was released on 1997 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rachel Hillel brings the skills, discipline, & understanding of a therapist trained in clinical psychology & Jungian analysis to the service of the redemption of the erotic soul by looking into women analysand's dreams. The exiled terrain of female passion, erotic & sensuous, is explored in chapters such as The Vulva Dream, Healing the Wounded Vulva Dream, The Holy Communion Dream. The Sacred Priestess, a votary of the goddess divinity, & the ordinary prostitute are themes in Hillel's search for feminine balance. The sacred transformative principles of the love goddess point to an ultimate reality to be restored in human consciousness. Hillel's penetrating insight reveals ways that modern day women can relate to their own erotic-sensual energies & regain soulful unity.

Download or read book Sex and the Intelligence of the Heart written by Julie McIntyre and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-04-26 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how Nature underlies sexuality and intimacy • Examines how to regain intimacy in our relationships in a way that embraces our hidden wild nature and restores the sacred to our lives • Provides sacred sex and intimacy-building practices for partners and exercises to reconnect with the intuitive intelligence of the heart, remove our emotional armor, and cultivate a deeper relationship with the Earth • Shows how by healing our relationship with Nature and our sexuality, we move toward healing the whole planet Nature is having sex all the time--that’s one of the reasons we feel so alive when we are immersed in it. Sexuality is essential to the sensation of Nature in your own body, of connecting to the piece of Earth closest to you--your own flesh and bones. Many a couple has been overcome by passion while walking in the woods or on the beach; many a soul has found solace or epiphany in Nature. Living in accordance with Nature depends on you being your true, whole self--a sexual, sensual, erotic, fully alive human being. Exploring the territory of intimacy, sacred sex, and emotional healing as a journey to wholeness, Julie McIntyre examines the sacred relationship between sexuality and the Earth and reveals how to create deep, lasting intimacy with your lover by recapturing the wild, spontaneous, natural sexuality that is your birthright. Detailing the process of moving from your head to the secret garden of your heart, she provides exercises to heal your psyche of old emotional trauma, reconnect with the intuitive intelligence of the heart, and cultivate a deeper relationship with the Earth in order to trust yourself and become vulnerable and open with your lover and thus truly intimate. She shows how there is a direct relationship between our beliefs and values about sex and intimacy and our beliefs and values about the environment and the Earth. She reveals how, by healing our separation from Nature and our sexuality, we can bring the sacred back into our lives, shape our own ecstatic sexual experiences, and move toward healing the whole planet.