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 Celebrating the Rites of Initiation written by James F. Turrell and published by Church Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2013-04 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrating the Rites of Initiation continues the standard of scholarship set by Patrick Malloy’s Celebrating the Eucharist, and offers similar aids around issues of baptism and confirmation. It is an ideal book for students and practicing clergy who seek to strengthen their knowledge—and parochial practice—of baptismal theology.
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 286 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 Understanding the Sacraments of Initiation written by Randy Stice and published by LiturgyTrainingPublications. This book was released on 2017-04-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guiding readers through the rites of Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, Understanding the Sacraments of Initiation explores the way in which the sacraments of Initiation affect and influence one’s daily Christian life.
Download or read book The Rites of Christian Initiation written by Maxwell E. Johnson and published by Liturgical Press. This book was released on 2016-03-24 with total page 610 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1999, The Rites of Christian Initiation was haled for its clarity and comprehensiveness. Kalian McDonnell, OSB, called it the best overall treatment of Christian initiation available, and Paul Bradshaw predicted it would be the standard textbook on the subject for very many years to come." The current edition draws on new translations of early texts on baptism as well as recent scholarship on the early traditions in the East and West. It is sure to replace itself as the new standard reference on the rites of Christian initiation. Maxwell E. Johnson's expanded and revised text provides a more complete view of the history and interpretation of the rites in the Eastern Church, including two chapters that explore the pre-Nicene Eastern and Western traditions in detail. Revisiting the theology of baptism, this edition also provides more nuanced positions on the Eastern and Western traditions. Finally, recent liturgical developments in American Protestant churches, particularly Lutheran, as well as the ongoing development of the RCIA and confirmation practices of Catholics, made it necessary to revisit the place and meaning of these rites in the church today. Maxwell E. Johnson, PhD, is professor of liturgy at the University of Notre Dame and an ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He has published in Worship and is the editor of and contributor to Living Water, Sealing Spirit: Readings on Christian Initiation (Liturgical Press, 1995) and the revised and expanded edition of E.C. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy (Liturgical Press and S.P.C.K., 2003), to which this study serves as a companion volume. "
Download or read book The Bush Burnt the Stones Remain written by Thera Rasing and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2002 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interpretation of female initiation rites among Christian women in contemporary urban Zambia. These rites are examined in the context of socio-economic changes. The emphasis is on ethnographic data gathered in the field.
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 Death and the Maiden written by Ken Dowden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-18 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable number of Greek myths concern the plight of virgins – slaughtered, sacrificed, hanged, transformed into birds, cows, dear, bears, trees, and punished in Hades. Death and the Maiden, first published in 1989, contextualises this mythology in terms of geography, history and culture, and offers a comprehensive theory firmly grounded in an ubiquitous ritual: pubescent girls’ rites of passage. By means of comparative anthropology, it is argued that many local ceremonies are echoed throughout the whole range of myths, both famous and obscure. Further, Professor Dowden examines boys’ rites, as well as the renewal of entire communities at regular intervals. The first full-length work in English devoted to passage-rites in Greek myth, Death and the Maiden is an important contribution to the exciting developments in the study of the interrelation between myth and ritual: from it an innovative view on the origination of many Greek myths emerges.
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 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 200 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 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 Initiation written by Jean Sybil La Fontaine and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Birth and Rebirth written by Mircea Eliade and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rituals of Manhood written by Gilbert H. Herdt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rituals of Manhood provides some of the most dramatic and richly textured accounts of ritual passages known to anthropologists of the late twentieth century. When in an earlier time anthropologists and sociologists described collective initiation rituals, the political and gender aspects of these practices were seldom underscored. Today, the power relationships of the body and domination, and the social arena of gender politics are widely regarded as critical to the cultural meaning and interpretation.
Download or read book Sacraments of Initiation Second Edition written by Liam G. Walsh OP and published by LiturgyTrainingPublications. This book was released on 2022-01-07 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original edition of this book presented a theology of sacraments that emerged out of a Church stirred into new life by the Second Vatican Council. It is a theology that can claim to have been continuously received in the Catholic Church since then. It is the theology that has been widely practiced and preached in pastoral life, has been given catechetical shape in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. However, during the past 23 years, some trends developed in pastoral theology and practice that were taking directions that seemed hard to reconcile with the decisions of the Council. This new edition examines the way some theological counter-currents have developed over those years, both in theory and in practice. The sacramental theology contained in this study maintains the broad on-going agreement between what it proposes and mainstream Church teaching and practice. The book examines the tradition of sacramental practice and teaching. Biblical and historical studies continue to uncover new riches of the tradition, and recent findings are discussed. A careful listening to the tradition of rite and word is truly indispensable for sacramental theology. It was out of such listening that Vatican II teaching on sacraments emerged and provision was made for recovering the full richness of the tradition. Not all of the recent theological speculations and pastoral strategies given an equally serious acknowledgement to the tradition. The liturgies that are studied in this book have been given to the Church in the wake of Vatican II. The historical chapters will show the liturgies to be a contemporary expression of fidelity to core values of the Apostolic Tradition. The chapters on the rite of each sacrament are mainly descriptive and historical, but also include anthropological reflections that unveil the human significances of the various rites. The chapters on the word examine the biblical and traditional word spoken in the churches about each sacrament, and conclude with what is called a 'systematic essay'. The bibiography has updated to reflect the development in the field.
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 Chisungu written by Audrey Richards and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-03-28 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Audrey Richards (1899-1984) was a leading British anthropologist of the twentieth century and the first woman president of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Based on fieldwork conducted at a time when the discipline was dominated by male anthropologists, Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia is widely hailed as a classic of anthropology and African and gender studies. Underpinned by painstaking research carried out by Richards among the Bemba people in northern Zambia in the 1930s, Chisungu focuses on the initiation ceremonies for young Bemba girls. Pioneering the study of women’s rituals and challenging the prevailing theory that rites of passage served merely to transfer individuals from one status to another, Richards writes about the incredibly rich and diverse aspects of ritual that characterised Chisungu: its concern with matriliny; deference to elders; sex and reproduction; the birth of children; ideas about the continuity between past, present and future; and the centrality of emotional conflict. On a deeper level, Chisungu is a crucial work for the role it accords to the meaning of symbolism in explaining the structure of society, paving the way for much subsequent understanding of the role of symbolic meaning and kinship. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Jessica Johnson and an introduction by Jean La Fontaine.
