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A Magic Still Dwells
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Book Synopsis A Magic Still Dwells by : Kimberley C. Patton
Download or read book A Magic Still Dwells written by Kimberley C. Patton and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first thorough assessment of the field of comparative religion in forty years, this groundbreaking volume surmounts the seemingly intractable division between postmodern scholars who reject the comparative endeavor and those who affirm it. The contributors demonstrate that a broader vision of religion, involving different scales of comparison for different purposes, is both justifiable and necessary. A Magic Still Dwells brings together leading historians of religions from a wide range of backgrounds and vantage points, and draws from traditions as diverse as Indo-European mythology, ancient Greek religion, Judaism, Buddhism, Ndembu ritual, and the spectrum of religions practiced in America. The contributors take seriously the postmodern critique, explain its impact on their work, uphold or reject various premises, and in several cases demonstrate new comparative approaches. Together, the essays represent a state-of-the-art assessment of current issues in the comparative study of religion.
Book Synopsis Imagining Religion by : Jonathan Z. Smith
Download or read book Imagining Religion written by Jonathan Z. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1982 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With this influential book of essays, Jonathan Z. Smith has pointed the academic study of religion in a new theoretical direction, one neither theological nor willfully ideological. Making use of examples as apparently diverse and exotic as the Maori cults in nineteenth-century New Zealand and the events of Jonestown, Smith shows that religion must be construed as conventional, anthropological, historical, and as an exercise of imagination. In his analyses, religion emerges as the product of historically and geographically situated human ingenuity, cognition, and curiosity—simply put, as the result of human labor, one of the decisive but wholly ordinary ways human beings create the worlds in which they live and make sense of them. "These seven essays . . . display the critical intelligence, creativity, and sheer common sense that make Smith one of the most methodologically sophisticated and suggestive historians of religion writing today. . . . Smith scrutinizes the fundamental problems of taxonomy and comparison in religious studies, suggestively redescribes such basic categories as canon and ritual, and shows how frequently studied myths may more likely reflect situational incongruities than vaunted mimetic congruities. His final essay, on Jonestown, demonstrates the interpretive power of the historian of religion to render intelligible that in our own day which seems most bizarre."—Richard S. Sarason, Religious Studies Review
Book Synopsis Religion is Not about God by : Loyal D. Rue
Download or read book Religion is Not about God written by Loyal D. Rue and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation If religion is not about God, then what on earth is it about? Loyal Rue contends that religion is a series of strategies that aims to influence human nature so that we might think, feel, and act in ways that are good for us, both individually and collectively.
Download or read book A Common Word written by Miroslav Volf and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A letter printed in the pages of The New York times in 2007 acknowledged differences between Christianity and Islam but contended that "righteousness and good works" should be the only areas in which the two compete. That letter and a collaborative Christian response appear in this volume, which includes subsequent dialogue between Muslim and Christian scholars.
Book Synopsis Dark Green Religion by : Bron Raymond Taylor
Download or read book Dark Green Religion written by Bron Raymond Taylor and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A love of green may be a human universal. Deepening the palette of green scholarship, Bron Taylor proves remarkably to be both an encyclopedist and a visionary."--Jonathan Benthall, author of Returning to Religion: Why a Secular Age is Haunted by Faith "This important book provides insight into how a profound sense of relation to nature offers many in the modern world a vehicle for attaining a spiritual wholeness akin to what has been historically associated with established religion. In this sense, Dark Green Religion offers both understanding and hope for a world struggling for meaning and purpose beyond the isolation of the material here and now."--Stephen Kellert, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies "In this thought-provoking volume, Bron Taylor explores the seemingly boundless efforts by human beings to understand the nature of life and our place in the universe. Examining in depth the ways in which influential philosophers and naturalists have viewed this relationship, Taylor contributes to the further development of thought in this critically important area, where our depth of understanding will play a critical role in our survival."--Peter H. Raven, President, Missouri Botanical Garden "Carefully researched, strongly argued, originally conceived, and very well executed, this book is a vital contribution on a subject of immense religious, political, and environmental importance. It's also a great read."--Roger S. Gottlieb, author of A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and our Planet's Future "A fascinating analysis of our emotional and spiritual relationship to nature. Whether you call it dark green religion or something else, Bron Taylor takes us through our spiritual relationship with our planet, its ecosystems and evolution, in an enlightened and completely undogmatic manner."--Dr. Claude Martin, Former Director General, World Wildlife Fund "An excellent collection of guideposts for perplexed students and scholars about the relationships of nature religions, spirituality, animism, pantheism, deep ecology, Gaia, and land ethics--and for the environmentalist seeking to make the world a better place through green religion as a social force."--Fikret Berkes, author of Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management "Dark Green Religion shows conclusively how nature has inspired a growing religious movement on the planet, contesting the long reign of many older faiths. Taylor expertly guides us through an astonishing array of thinkers, past and present, who have embraced, in part or whole, the new religion. I was thoroughly convinced that this movement has indeed become a major force on Earth, with great potential consequences for our environmental ethics."--Donald Worster, University of Kansas "In this exceptionally interesting and informative book, Bron Taylor has harvested the fruits of years of pioneering research in what amounts to a new field in religious studies: the study of how religious/spiritual themes show up in the work of people concerned about nature in many diverse ways. Taylor persuasively argues that appreciation of nature's sacred or spiritual dimension both informs and motivates the work of individuals ranging from radical environmentalists and surfers, to eco-tourism leaders and museum curators. I highly recommend this book for everyone interested learning more about the surprising extent to which religious/spiritual influences many of those who work to protect, to exhibit, or to represent the natural world."--Michael E. Zimmerman, Director, Center for Humanities and the Arts, University of Colorado at Boulder
Download or read book Religion written by James Thrower and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ""Why theories of religion?" After raising and answering this question the author begins his examination of theories of religion by first looking at the explanations given by religious believers (Revelation and Religious Experience). He then considers the view of thinkers who have sought to transform religion into philosophy (Plato, Kant and Hegel), before reviewing the theories of those who have seen religion as arising out of errors in primitive thinking (Tyler, Frazer and Levy-Bruhl) and those 'masters of suspicion', as Paul Ricoeur has called them, (Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Marx and Freud) who offered what they believed to be exhaustive psychological and sociological theories of the origin and nature of religion. In the course of his discussion the author also engages with many contemporary thinkers whose discussions of religion have been based on these classical accounts."--BOOK JACKET.
Book Synopsis Religion of the Gods by : Kimberley Christine Patton
Download or read book Religion of the Gods written by Kimberley Christine Patton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many of the world's religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, a seemingly enigmatic and paradoxical image is found--that of the god who worships. Various interpretations of this seeming paradox have been advanced. Some suggest that it represents sacrifice to a higher deity. Proponents of anthropomorphic projection say that the gods are just "big people" and that images of human religious action are simply projected onto the deities. However, such explanations do not do justice to the complexity and diversity of this phenomenon. In Religion of the Gods, Kimberley C. Patton uses a comparative approach to take up anew a longstanding challenge in ancient Greek religious iconography: why are the Olympian gods depicted on classical pottery making libations? The sacrificing gods in ancient Greece are compared to gods who perform rituals in six other religious traditions: the Vedic gods, the heterodox god Zurvan of early Zoroastrianism, the Old Norse god Odin, the Christian God and Christ, the God of Judaism, and Islam's Allah. Patton examines the comparative evidence from a cultural and historical perspective, uncovering deep structural resonances while also revealing crucial differences. Instead of looking for invisible recipients or lost myths, Patton proposes the new category of "divine reflexivity." Divinely performed ritual is a self-reflexive, self-expressive action that signals the origin of ritual in the divine and not the human realm. Above all, divine ritual is generative, both instigating and inspiring human religious activity. The religion practiced by the gods is both like and unlike human religious action. Seen from within the religious tradition, gods are not "big people," but other than human. Human ritual is directed outward to a divine being, but the gods practice ritual on their own behalf. "Cultic time," the symbiotic performance of ritual both in heaven and on earth, collapses the distinction between cult and theology each time ritual is performed. Offering the first comprehensive study and a new theory of this fascinating phenomenon, Religion of the Gods is a significant contribution to the fields of classics and comparative religion. Patton shows that the god who performs religious action is not an anomaly, but holds a meaningful place in the category of ritual and points to a phenomenologically universal structure within religion itself.
Book Synopsis The Dark That Dwells by : Matt Digman
Download or read book The Dark That Dwells written by Matt Digman and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-10 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An immersive new space opera featuring an unforgettable ensemble cast, set in a sci-fi world with a fantasy twist. In this evocative science fiction series, four strangers are swept up in a gripping adventure of thrilling battles, ravenous creatures, and the return of forbidden magic. Ranger. Warrior. Tyrant. Arcanist. As their paths interweave in love and hate, redemption and revenge, one threat will eclipse their greatest fears: a being of utter darkness and its imminent return. THE DARK THAT DWELLS: essential for readers craving robust, character-driven adventures on fantastic alien worlds, bullet-ridden spaceships barely held together, and the expansive infinity of space-time itself.
Book Synopsis An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion by : Claire White
Download or read book An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion written by Claire White and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-14 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing to fight—and die—for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God. An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points. This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses.
Book Synopsis The Magic Three of Solatia by : Jane Yolen
Download or read book The Magic Three of Solatia written by Jane Yolen and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIVDIVAll magic has consequences/divDIV Long ago, the seawitch Dread Mary fell in love with a hard-hearted prince and gave him the Magic Three of Solatia: three silver buttons that could fulfill any wish—but at a price. Centuries later, the buttons belong to Sianna of the Song, a button maker’s daughter and heir to all of Dread Mary’s magic secrets. But the cruel King Blaggard of Solatia seeks to wed the lovely Sianna and steal her power. Sianna will need her wits, her magic, and the silver buttons to save herself and Solatia from the evil Blaggard . . . but what will it cost her?/divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features a personal history by Jane Yolen including rare images from the author’s personal collection, as well as a note from the author about the making of the book./div/div/div
Book Synopsis The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils by : Kimberley Christine Patton
Download or read book The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils written by Kimberley Christine Patton and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kimberley Patton examines the environmental crises facing the world's oceans from the perspective of religious history. Much as the ancient Greeks believed, and Euripides wrote, that "the sea can wash away all evils," a wide range of cultures have sacralized the sea, trusting in its power to wash away what is dangerous, dirty, and morally contaminating. The sea makes life on land possible by keeping it "pure." Patton sets out to learn whether the treatment of the world's oceans by industrialized nations arises from the same faith in their infinite and regenerative qualities. Indeed, the sea's natural characteristics, such as its vast size and depth, chronic motion and chaos, seeming biotic inexhaustibility, and unique composition of powerful purifiers-salt and water-support a view of the sea as a "no place" capable of swallowing limitless amounts of waste. And despite evidence to the contrary, the idea that the oceans could be harmed by wasteful and reckless practices has been slow to take hold. Patton believes that environmental scientists and ecological advocates ignore this relationship at great cost. She bases her argument on three influential stories: Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris; an Inuit myth about the wild and angry sea spirit Sedna who lives on the ocean floor with hair dirtied by human transgression; and a disturbing medieval Hindu tale of a lethal underwater mare. She also studies narratives in which the sea spits back its contents-sins, corpses, evidence of guilt long sequestered-suggesting that there are limits to the ocean's vast, salty heart. In these stories, the sea is either an agent of destruction or a giver of life, yet it is also treated as a passive receptacle. Combining a history of this ambivalence toward the world's oceans with a serious scientific analysis of modern marine pollution, Patton writes a compelling, cross-disciplinary study that couldn't be more urgent or timely.
Book Synopsis Introducing Religion by : Daniel L. Pals
Download or read book Introducing Religion written by Daniel L. Pals and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Introducing Religion' presents the key writings of 11 theorists that explain the phenomenon of religion - its origin, historical growth, and world-wide variations - without relying on the authority of the Bible or the articles of dogma.
Book Synopsis New Patterns for Comparative Religion by : William E. Paden
Download or read book New Patterns for Comparative Religion written by William E. Paden and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cross-cultural study of religion has always gone hand in hand with the worldview, sciences, or intellectual frameworks of the time. These frames, whether focused on psychology or politics, gender or colonialism, bring out perspectives for understanding religious behavior. Today one of our common civic worldviews is represented in the shift from scriptural to evolutionary history. This volume brings together in one place key essays by professor emeritus William Paden, showing a progression of steps he has taken in exploring bridgeworks between comparative religion and evolutionary models of religious behavior. One of the leading scholars in religious studies, Paden shows ways that religion can be contextualized as part of the natural world and thus seen as reflecting the ingrained sociality and world-making drive of the human species. Paden argues that although comparativism has been challenged as too culture-bound, too western, or too gendered, cross-over categories and concepts between religious traditions cannot be avoided. Arguing that there are recurrent patterns of human behavior common to our species and that thereby underlie all cultures, he proposes that the missing link in the Religion Evolution debate is comparative religion, a global, cross-cultural perspective on religious behaviours throughout time. Each article is contextualized within this overall trajectory of thought within Paden's work and the history of the discipline as a whole.
Download or read book Russian Magic written by Cherry Gilchrist and published by Quest Books. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the heart of Russia, old ways of perceiving the spirits of home and nature still prevail. Fairy stories, folk art, and calendar customs carry hints of the old gods and offer a now rare way of linking human life to the landscape. This is as true for city dwellers and villagers, for the Russian soul is open to the power of myth and the mysteries of the universe. This book explains how Russia's concept of soul ("dusha") and sensitivity to the landscape extends to archaeologists, scientists, and doctors in Russia, who retain an open-minded approach and a keen interest in psychic phenomena, along with folk traditions and faith healing. Author Cherry Gilchrist has traveled often to Russia and researched its traditional lore, gaining knowledge she interweaves into this book. She blends that first-hand knowledge with serious research to paint a lively picture of these remarkable magical traditions and their enduring power.
Book Synopsis Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays by : Bronislaw Malinowski
Download or read book Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays written by Bronislaw Malinowski and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This vintage book comprises three famous Malinowski essays on the subject of religion. Malinowski is one of the most important and influential anthropologists of all time. He is particularly renowned for his ability to combine the reality of human experience, with the cold calculations of science. An important collection of three of his most famous essays, "Magic, Science and Religion" provides its reader with a series of concepts concerning religion, magic, science, rite and myth. This is undertaken in an attempt to form a definite impression and understanding of the Trobrianders of New Guinea. The chapters of this book include: "Magic, Science and Religion", "Primitive Man and his Religion", "Rational Mastery by Man of his Surroundings", "Faith and Cult", "The Creative Acts of Religion", "Providence in Primitive Life", "Man's Selective Interest in Nature", etcetera. This book is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition - complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.
Download or read book Giving Up the Ghost written by Eric Nuzum and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At once hilarious and incredibly moving, Giving Up the Ghost is a memoir of lost love and second chances, and a ghost story like no other. Eric Nuzum is afraid of the supernatural, and for good reason: As a high school oddball in Canton, Ohio, during the early 1980s, he became convinced that he was being haunted by the ghost of a little girl in a blue dress who lived in his parents’ attic. It began as a weird premonition during his dreams, something that his quickly diminishing circle of friends chalked up as a way to get attention. It ended with Eric in a mental ward, having apparently destroyed his life before it truly began. The only thing that kept him from the brink: his friendship with a girl named Laura, a classmate who was equal parts devoted friend and enigmatic crush. With the kind of strange connection you can only forge when you’re young, Laura walked Eric back to “normal”—only to become a ghost herself in a tragic twist of fate. Years later, a fully functioning member of society with a great job and family, Eric still can’t stand to have any shut doors in his house for fear of what’s on the other side. In order to finally confront his phobia, he enlists some friends on a journey to America’s most haunted places. But deep down he knows it’s only when he digs up the ghosts of his past, especially Laura, that he’ll find the peace he’s looking for.
Book Synopsis Rethinking Greek Religion by : Julia Kindt
Download or read book Rethinking Greek Religion written by Julia Kindt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who marched in religious processions and why? How were blood sacrifice and communal feasting related to identities in the ancient Greek city? With questions such as these, current scholarship aims to demonstrate the ways in which religion maps on to the socio-political structures of the Greek polis ('polis religion'). In this book Dr Kindt explores a more comprehensive conception of ancient Greek religion beyond this traditional paradigm. Comparative in method and outlook, the book invites its readers to embark on an interdisciplinary journey touching upon such diverse topics as religious belief, personal religion, magic and theology. Specific examples include the transformation of tyrant property into ritual objects, the cultural practice of setting up dedications at Olympia, and a man attempting to make love to Praxiteles' famous statue of Aphrodite. The book will be valuable for all students and scholars seeking to understand the complex phenomenon of ancient Greek religion.
