Download or read book The Bonding Ritual written by Spencer Baum and published by Spencer Baum. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a new semester at Thorndike Academy, and a time for new beginnings. For Daciana Samarin, it is a time to take control of the school after a lengthy absence. Eager to inject some excitement into a contest that has one girl far ahead of the others, Daciana rolls out a relic from her past, and invites the girls wearing black to explore its mysteries. For Jill Wentworth, it is a time to evaluate priorities, and determine if the potential rewards of her assignment at Thorndike are worth the risks. Ever the rationalist, Jill believes Washington has become too hot for the mission to continue. But with a changing of the guard atop the clan, there are new opportunities for the Network to explore, including one that just might keep Jill in town, despite the danger. For Nicky Bloom, it is a time of discovery. Having learned the truth about her family, and the memories that drew her across the ocean, she is prepared to face the truth about herself, and what she wants most in life. When she was in Italy, she had a chance to kill Sergio Alonzo and she didn’t take it. Now it is time for her find out why. The fourth and final book of Girls Wearing Black follows the seniors of Thorndike Academy in their final semester, when they will conclude the contest that will see one of them become a vampire, and another the vampire’s first victim.
Download or read book Brand Rituals written by Zain Raj and published by Spyglass Publishing Group. This book was released on 2012-01-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Brand Rituals: How Successful Brands Bond with Customers for Life, Zain Raj, a recognized leader in the marketing and strategy space, posits that companies and their brands have the ability to drive significant business impact by creating a bond with their most loyal customers. Raj calls this a Brand Ritual, a deep, abiding relationship that customers build with brands that becomes an integral part of their lives. The book discusses how it's no longer about consumer beliefs; it's all about customer behavior. It challenges the five existing marketing myths that no longer serve us and provides a clearly defined four-stage approach to a Brand Ritual. A higher number of bonded customers is not only possible but absolutely necessary if you and your company want to create sustainable brands that defy competitors for decades.
Download or read book I Love You Rituals written by Becky Bailey and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dream Teams written by Shane Snow and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow reveals the counterintuitive reasons why so many partnerships and groups break down--and why some break through. The best teams are more than the sum of their parts, but why does collaboration so often fail to fulfill this promise? In Dream Teams, Snow takes us on an adventure through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business, exploring what separates groups that simply get by together from those that get better together. You'll learn: * How ragtag teams--from soccer clubs to startups to gangs of pirates--beat the odds throughout history. * Why DaimlerChrysler flopped while the Wu-Tang Clan succeeded, and the surprising factor behind most failed mergers, marriages, and partnerships. * What the Wright Brothers' daily arguments can teach us about group problem solving. * Pioneering women in law enforcement, unlikely civil rights collaborators, and underdog armies that did the incredible together. * The team players behind great social movements in history, and the science of becoming open-minded. Provocative and entertaining, Dream Teams is a landmark work that will change the way we think about people, progress, and collaboration.
Download or read book The Ritual Animal written by Harvey Whitehouse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical exploration of how rituals have influenced history over thousands of years. From infancy, we copy those around us in order to be like others, to be one with the tribe. Other primates will copy behaviour that leads to transparent benefits, such as access to food, but only humans promiscuously copy actions that have no obvious instrumental purpose. The copying of causally opaque behaviour (rituals) has allowed cultural groups to proliferate over time and space. The frequency and emotional intensity of ritual performances constrains the scale and structure of cultural groups. Rare, traumatic rituals (e.g. painful initiations) produce very strong social cohesion in small, relational groups such as military battalions or local cults whereas daily and weekly rituals (e.g. collective praying in mosques, churches, and synagogues) produce diffuse cohesion in indefinitely expandable communities. This pioneering study presents a theory of how these two 'ritual modes' have influenced the course of human history over many thousands of years and continue to shape the groups we live in today. The resulting programme of research offers a radically new paradigm for the social sciences, one that bridges across disciplinary silos, samples the full diversity of the world's populations, and plumbs our richest sources of information about cultural systems, past and present. In doing so, leading anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse shows how we can modify the way we tackle some of the most pressing challenges of our day, from violent extremism to global heating. All the problems humanity creates are ultimately problems of cooperation. Solving these problems will require social glue. Whitehouse suggests various practical ways in which our growing knowledge about the role of ritual in group bonding can help us achieve a more peaceful and prosperous future, not only for ourselves but for all species who share the planet with us.
Download or read book Ritual written by Malidoma Patrice Some and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-12-01 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The stories within these books have the poignancy of new discoveries as well as the unworn imagination of the ancestors. The commentary has the sharp edge of modern thought and the intricacy which results from the intellect being woven through the ritual complexities of tribal life. The purpose of constructing thresholds that bring this world together is to find the powers that can heal the rends in tribal as well as modern communities.? --Michael Meade, from the Introduction Versed in the languages of psychology, comparative literature, as well as ancient mythology, healing, and divination, Malidoma Patrice Some bridges paths between the ancient tribal world of the West African Dagara culture and modern Western society. Ritual is written with wild imagination, careful critical reflection, and intuitive insights that will force the reader to encounter the world anew.
Download or read book Rituals for Work written by Kursat Ozenc and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience the transformative power of creative rituals in the workplace Rituals for Work shows us how creative rituals can make our personal and business lives more meaningful and rewarding. Rituals are powerful tools: they reinforce good habits, motivate personal and professional achievement, create a common bond between co-workers and build shared values; they can transform an organization’s culture and provide a foundation to achieve common goals. Focusing on real-world examples, this book takes a practical approach to the power and benefits of workplace rituals. This insightful guide presents 50 creative rituals, from business and management to design and personal development. Specific case studies highlight the use of rituals and their positive impact to real-world organizations, while vivid visuals allow us to feel their energy and emotion. A ritual is only effective when its purpose is clearly defined. This book goes beyond simple analysis to provide actual recipes for individual rituals designed to promote specific habits, change negative behaviors, and instill values. Each ritual can be adapted to achieve a multitude of goals and tailored to fit your organization or team’s specific needs. ● Change behaviors, form positive habits, and assign meaning to shared goals ● Build shared values, foster innovation, and encourage strong teamwork ● Deal with conflicts effectively and engage others to work on resolutions ● Learn the fundamental concepts of ritual-building and share your knowledge with your team An informative and inspirational resource for executives, managers, team leaders, and employees of every level, Rituals for Work provides a blueprint for building a culture of engagement, innovation, and shared purpose for organizations of all sizes, across industries.
Download or read book Ritual America written by Craig Heimbichner and published by Feral House. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Adam Parfrey is one of the nation's most provocative publishers."—Seattle Weekly "Secret society historian Craig Heimbichner follows the Middle Path to wisdom. He works the graveyard shift in the secret lodge."—Joan d'Arc, Paranoia magazine Secret societies—now a staple of bestseller novels—are pictured as sinister cults that use hooded albinos to menace truth-seekers. Some conspiracy books claim that fraternal orders are the work of serpentine aliens and interbred humans who wish to supplant earth of its energy, and later, its very existence. On the other side of the aisle, books by high-ranked Freemasons—skeptical in tone but no less partisan in approach—protect their organization's public image by denying the existence of its most contentious ideas. Ritual America reveals the biggest secret of them all: that the influence of fraternal brotherhoods on this country is vast, fundamental, and hidden in plain view. In the early twentieth century, as many as one-third of America belonged to a secret society. And though fezzes and tiny car parades are almost a thing of the past, the Gnostic beliefs of Masonic orders are now so much a part of the American mind that the surrounding pomp and circumstance has become faintly unnecessary. The authors of Ritual America contextualize hundreds of rare and many never-before printed images with entertaining and far-reaching commentary, making an esoteric subject provocative, exciting, and approachable. Adam Parfrey is the author of Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind and It's a Man's World: Men's Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps. He is editor of the influential Apocalypse Culture series Love, Sex, Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Craig Heimbichner has recently appeared on a National Geographic documentary about the Bohemian Grove, contributed to the Feral House compilation Secret and Suppressed II, and wrote about the famous occult order the O.T.O. in Blood and Altar.
Download or read book Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity written by Roy A. Rappaport and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-25 with total page 566 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roy Rappaport argues that religion is central to the continuing evolution of life, although it has been been displaced from its original position of intellectual authority by the rise of modern science. His book, which could be construed as in some degree religious as well as about religion, insists that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches to the study of humankind, he mounts a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, seeing it as co-extensive with the invention of language and hence of culture as we know it. At the same time he assembles the fullest study yet of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions which we take to be religious and has been central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from anthropology, history, philosophy, comparative religion, and elsewhere.
Download or read book The Joy of Family Rituals written by Barbara Biziou and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FAMILIES PERFORM RITUALS each day without knowing it. Celebrating birthdays, eating a meal together, taking daily walks to the park, making French toast on Sunday mornings, donating to the homeless during the holidays; all are examples of the rituals families use to become closer and strengthen their bond. The Joy of Family Rituals is a recipe book for families who wish to enrich their lives with rituals by reflecting on their significance and making them a part of daily life. Rituals can help a family communicate, foster spiritual connections, and provide a secure foundation for growth. The Joy of Family Rituals makes it easy to incorporate rituals into family life. Barbara Biziou explains the meaning and history of each ritual, many of which date back to our ancestors, and gives advice on purpose, timing, ingredients and follow-up. Biziou encourages readers to adjust the rituals and introduce their own traditions to suit the family's needs. Finally, each ritual contains a true-life story of how it has affected a family, providing a template for ways in which your family's life might also be enriched and strengthened. "Consciously creating rituals can work miracles in our lives. The Joy of Ritual tells you exactly how to get started."-Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom "The Joy of Ritual is a road map to celebrating life. This book will be a great companion on your journey to attaining clarity, balance, and calmness amid the chaos of life."-Donna Karan BARBARA BIZIOU is an internationally acclaimed teacher of practical spirituality and global rituals. She is a life coach, voice dialogue facilitator, interfaith minister, and motivational speaker. She has lectured and taught around the world. She currently resides in New York managing her company, Blue Lotus Productions.
Download or read book RitualCraft written by Azrael Arynn K and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2006 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Sabbat events to magick ceremonies to handfastings, ritual is at the heart of Pagan worship and celebration. Whether you''re planning a simple coven initiation or an elaborate outdoor event for hundreds, "RitualCraft" can help you create and conduct meaningful rituals. Far from a recipe book of rote readings, this modern text explores rituals from many cultures and offers a step-by-step Neopagan framework for creating your own. The authors share their own ritual experiences-the best and the worst-illustrating the elements that contribute to successful ritual. "RitualCraft" covers all kinds of occasions: celebrations for families, a few people or large groups; rites of passage; Esbats and Sabbats; and personal transformation. Costumes, ethics, music, physical environment, ritual tools, safety, speech, and timing are all discussed in this all-inclusive guidebook to ritual.
Download or read book Brother making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium written by Claudia Rapp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among medieval Christian societies, Byzantium is unique in preserving an ecclesiastical ritual of adelphopoiesis, which pronounces two men, not related by birth, as brothers for life. It has its origin as a spiritual blessing in the monastic world of late antiquity, and it becomes a popular social networking strategy among lay people from the ninth century onwards, even finding application in recent times. Located at the intersection of religion and society, brother-making exemplifies how social practice can become ritualized and subsequently subjected to attempts of ecclesiastical and legal control. Controversially, adelphopoiesis was at the center of a modern debate about the existence of same-sex unions in medieval Europe. This book, the first ever comprehensive history of this unique feature of Byzantine life, argues persuasively that the ecclesiastical ritual to bless a relationship between two men bears no resemblance to marriage. Wide-ranging in its use of sources, from a complete census of the manuscripts containing the ritual of adelphopoiesis to the literature and archaeology of early monasticism, and from the works of hagiographers, historiographers, and legal experts in Byzantium to comparative material in the Latin West and the Slavic world, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium examines the fascinating religious and social features of the ritual, shedding light on little known aspects of Byzantine society.
Download or read book Cross Culture written by Cordelia Wood and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet Dr. Philadelphia “Deli” Barnum. She is a young scientist whose expertise is needed to save another world. She teams up with Dr. Galen Tursiops, a sexy dolphin shifter from the world of Cetoceania, and together they join forces to save his dying planet. Can they find love amidst all the chaos of re-terraforming this once-beautiful realm?
Download or read book Interaction Ritual written by Erving Goffman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-12 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Not then, men and their moments. Rather, moment and their men," writes Erving Goffman in the introduction to his groundbreaking 1967 Interaction Ritual, a study of face-to-face interaction in natural settings, that class of events which occurs during co-presence and by virtue of co-presence. The ultimate behavioral materials are the glances, gestures, positionings, and verbal statements that people continuously feed into situations, whether intended or not. A sociology of occasions is here advocated. Social organization is the central theme, but what is organized is the co-mingling of persons and the temporary interactional enterprises that can arise therefrom. A normatively stabilized structure is at issue, a "social gathering," but this is a shifting entity, necessarily evanescent, created by arrivals and killed by departures. The major section of the book is the essay "Where the Action Is," drawing on Goffman's last major ethnographic project observation of Nevada casinos. Tom Burns says of Goffman's work "The eleven books form a singularly compact body of writing. All his published work was devoted to topics and themes which were closely connected, and the methodology, angles of approach and of course style of writing remained characteristically his own throughout. Interaction Ritual in particular is an interesting account of daily social interaction viewed with a new perspective for the logic of our behavior in such ordinary circumstances as entering a crowded elevator or bus." In his new introduction, Joel Best considers Goffman's work in toto and places Interaction Ritual in that total context as one of Goffman's pivotal works: "His subject matter was unique. In sharp contrast to the natural tendency of many scholars to tackle big, important topics, Goffman was a minimalist, working on a small scale, and concentrating on the most mundane, ordinary social contacts, on everyday life.'"
Download or read book The Power of Moments written by Chip Heath and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work. While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children? This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.” And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth. Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?) Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.
Download or read book Children of Ethereal Lights Protecting The Lights written by Sherry Hutchison and published by Sherry Hutchison. This book was released on 2023-06-18 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Johnny and I had no idea when we rescued two human babies, from the clutches of a witch and a dark fae, that our lives would be further changed even more so than they already had been. The wish I made that was granted years ago had changed not only our lives but the lives of all we loved. We retracted our wings as we left the lavender cobbled path, stepping through the protective portal shield into Eadrom Castle where we would welcome our newest proteges Celinda and Zephyr to their new home. A war was upon us; they were the chosen ones to lead. Enter Fairies, Trolls, Ghosts, Witches & Demons, Angels, and now powerful Nephilim’s. Mix in a little maturity with age & lots of fairy dust and you have my story of an amazing adventure. This is where Johnny and CT’s story ends, and Celinda & Zephyr begins. Now comes the grand conclusion to the epic Coming of Age Fantasy Series starring beloved Chelsea Thomas AKA CT and Johnny Granger AKA Grasshopper. First came Chasing the Lights, books one-four, Embracing the Lights Saga, and now Protecting the Lights.
Download or read book Avatar and Nature Spirituality written by Bron Taylor and published by Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. This book was released on 2013-08-14 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Avatar and Nature Spirituality explores the cultural and religious significance of James Cameron's film Avatar (2010), one of the most commercially successful motion pictures of all time. Its success was due in no small measure to the beauty of the Pandora landscape and the dramatic, heart-wrenching plight of its nature-venerating inhabitants. To some audience members, the film was inspirational, leading them to express affinity with the film's message of ecological interdependence and animistic spirituality. Some were moved to support the efforts of indigenous peoples, who were metaphorically and sympathetically depicted in the film, to protect their cultures and environments. To others, the film was politically, ethically, or spiritually dangerous. Indeed, the global reception to the film was intense, contested, and often confusing. To illuminate the film and its reception, this book draws on an interdisciplinary team of scholars, experts in indigenous traditions, religious studies, anthropology, literature and film, and post-colonial studies. Readers will learn about the cultural and religious trends that gave rise to the film and the reasons these trends are feared, resisted, and criticized, enabling them to wrestle with their own views, not only about the film but about the controversy surrounding it. Like the film itself, Avatar and Nature Spirituality provides an opportunity for considering afresh the ongoing struggle to determine how we should live on our home planet, and what sorts of political, economic, and spiritual values and practices would best guide us.
