Choosing Magic. Contexts, Objects, Meanings. The Archaeology of Instrumental Religion in the Latin West

Choosing Magic. Contexts, Objects, Meanings. The Archaeology of Instrumental Religion in the Latin West PDF Author: Richard Gordon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788865572863
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Choosing Magic. Contexts, Objects, Meanings. The Archaeology of Instrumental Religion in the Latin West

Choosing Magic. Contexts, Objects, Meanings. The Archaeology of Instrumental Religion in the Latin West PDF Author: Richard Gordon
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788865572863
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description


Living and Cursing in the Roman West

Living and Cursing in the Roman West PDF Author: Stuart McKie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350103012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Focusing on the Roman west, this book examines the rituals of cursing, their cultural contexts, and their impact on the lives of those who practised them. A huge number of Roman curse tablets have been discovered, showing their importance for helping ancient people to cope with various aspects of life. Curse tablets have been relatively neglected by archaeologists and historians. This study not only encourages greater understanding of the individual practice of curse rituals but also reveals how these objects can inform ongoing debates surrounding power, agency and social relationships in the Roman provinces. McKie uses new theoretical models to examine the curse tablets and focuses particularly on the concept of 'lived religion'. This framework reconfigures our understanding of religious and magical practices, allowing much greater appreciation of them as creative processes. Our awareness of the lived experiences of individuals is also encouraged by the application of theoretical approaches from sensory and material turns and through the consideration of comparable ritual practices in modern social contexts. These stimulate new questions of the ancient evidence, especially regarding the motives and motivations behind the curses.

Religious Individualisation

Religious Individualisation PDF Author: Ralph Haeussler
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789259665
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
The Roman world was diverse and complex. And so were religious understandings and practices as mirrored in the enormous variety presented by archaeological, iconographic, and epigraphic evidence. Conventional approaches principally focus on the political role of civic cults as a means of social cohesion, often considered to be instrumentalized by elites. But by doing so, religious diversity is frequently overlooked, marginalizing ‘deviating’ cult activities that do not fit the Classical canon, as well as the multitude of funerary practices and other religious activities that were all part of everyday life. In the Roman Empire, a person’s religious experiences were shaped by many and sometimes seemingly incompatible cult practices, whereby the ‘civic’ and ‘imperial’ cults might have had the least impact of all. Our goal therefore is to rethink our methodologies, aiming for a more dynamic image of religion that takes into account the varied and often contradictory choices and actions of individual, which reflects the discrepant religious experiences in the Roman world. Is it possible to ‘poke into the mind’ of an individual in Roman times, whatever his/her status and ethnicity, and try to understand the individual’s diverse experiences in such a complex, interconnected empire, exploring the choices that were open to an individual? This also raises the question whether the concept of individuality is valid for Roman times. In some periods, the impact of individual actions can be more momentous: the very first adoption of Roman-style sculpture, cult practices or Latin theonyms for indigenous deities can set in motion long-term processes that will significantly influence people’s perceptions of local deities, their characteristics, and functions. Do individual choices and preferences prevail over collective identities in the Roman Empire compared to pre-Roman times? To examine these questions, this volume presents case studies that analyze individual actions in the religious sphere.

Flawed Commanders and Strategy in the Battles for Italy, 1943–45

Flawed Commanders and Strategy in the Battles for Italy, 1943–45 PDF Author: Andrew Sangster
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1636243134
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Wars never run according to plan, perhaps never more so than during the Italian campaign, 1943–45, where necessary coordination between the different armies added additional complexity to Allied plans. Errors in the strategies, tactics, the coalition tensions, and operations at campaign command level can clearly be seen in firsthand accounts of the period. This new account examines the Italian campaign, from Sicily to surrender in 1945, exploring the strategy, intentions, motives, plans, and deeds. It then offers a detailed insight into the five commanders who led the battles in Italy—the two British commanders, Montgomery and Alexander; two American, Patton and Clark; and the leading German commander, Field Marshal Kesselring. Their personal notes and accounts, taken alongside archival material, provides some surprising conclusions—Montgomery was not quite the master of war he is portrayed as; Patton had serious flaws, exposed by wasting men’s lives to save a relative and overlooking the shooting of prisoners of war; Clark lost lives to bolster his image; Alexander the gentleman was far too vague to be effective as a senior leader. Meanwhile, condemned war criminal Kesselring appears to be the most efficient and also, like Alexander, one of the most popular leaders.

Ritual Boundaries

Ritual Boundaries PDF Author: Joseph E. Sanzo
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520399188
Category : Church history
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In Ritual Boundaries, Joseph E. Sanzo transforms our understanding of how early Christians experienced religion in lived practice through the study of magical objects, such as amulets and grimoires. Against the prevailing view of late antiquity as a time when only so-called elites were interested in religious and ritual differentiation, the evidence presented here reveals that the desire to distinguish between religious and ritual insiders and outsiders cut across diverse social strata. The magical evidence also offers unique insight into early biblical reception, exposing a textual world in which scriptural reading was multisensory and multitraditional. As they addressed sickness, demonic struggle, and interpersonal conflicts, Mediterranean people thus acted in ways that challenge our conceptual boundaries between Christians and non-Christians; elites and non-elites; and words, materials, and images. Sanzo helps us rethink how early Christians imagined similarity and difference among texts, traditions, groups, and rituals as they went about their daily lives.

Johnny Magory Joins the Irish Legends

Johnny Magory Joins the Irish Legends PDF Author: Emma-Jane Leeson
Publisher: Johnny Magory
ISBN: 1739165748
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
Irish legends need to have their stories heard… Who better to help than Johnny Magory, Lily-May and Ruairi? Johnny, Lily-May, Ruairi, and of course, Mammy and Daddy, go on holiday around Ireland in their old campervan. Before beginning their journey, they meet an old man Finegas who is fishing for “The Salmon of Knowledge”. He tells Johnny and Lily-May of an important mission; they need to make sure Irish legends have their stories heard. Can they succeed? Meet Fionn MacCumhall, Queen Medh, Oisín, Niamh Chinn Óir and Brian Boru in this beautiful book telling precious tales of Irish heritage in English and as Gaeilge.

Esotericism and Deviance

Esotericism and Deviance PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004681043
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
The concept of deviance has been central to the academic study of (Western) esotericism since its inception. This book, being the proceedings of the 6th Biennial Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), explores the relationship between esotericism and various forms of deviance (as concept, category, and practice) from antiquity until late modernity. The volume is the first to combine incisive conceptual explorations of the concept of deviance and how it informs and challenges the study of esotericism alongside a wide range of empirically grounded case discussions.

Lists and Catalogues in Ancient Literature and Beyond

Lists and Catalogues in Ancient Literature and Beyond PDF Author: Rebecca Laemmle
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110712288
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
Lists and catalogues have been en vogue in philosophy, cultural, media and literary studies for more than a decade. These explorations of enumerative modes, however, have not yet had the impact on classical scholarship that they deserve. While they routinely take (a limited set of) ancient models as their starting point, there is no comparably comprehensive study that focuses on antiquity; conversely, studies on lists and catalogues in Classics remain largely limited to individual texts, and – with some notable exceptions – offer little in terms of explicit theorising. The present volume is an attempt to close this gap and foster the dialogue between the recent theoretical re-appraisal of enumerative modes and scholarship on ancient cultures. The 16 contributions to the volume juxtapose literary forms of enumeration with an abundance of ancient non-, sub- or para-literary practices of listing and cataloguing. In their different approaches to this vast and heterogenous corpus, they offer a sense of the hermeneutic, epistemic and methodological challenges with which the study of enumeration is faced, and elucidate how pragmatics, materiality, performativity and aesthetics are mediated in lists and catalogues.

Magical Practice in the Latin West

Magical Practice in the Latin West PDF Author: Richard Lindsay Gordon
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004179046
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 737

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Book Description
Most studies of Graeco-Roman magic focus on the Greek texts. Stimulated by important recent finds of Latin curse-tablets, this collection of essays for the first time tries to define the nature and extent of the originality of magical practice in the Latin West

Passion of the Western Mind

Passion of the Western Mind PDF Author: Richard Tarnas
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307804526
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.