Author: Rachel Fell McDermott
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe
ISBN: 9788120820418
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
Encountering Kali explores one of the most ramarkable divinities the world has seen. The Hindu goddess Kali is simultaneously understood as a blood thirsty warrior a deity of ritual possession a tantric sexual partner and an all loving compassionate mothe. Popular and scholarly interest in her has been on the rise in the west in recent years. Responding to this phenomenon McDermott and Kripal`s volume focuses on the complexities involved in interpreting Kali in both her indigenous south Asian settings and her more recent Western incarnation. Through the shifting lenses of scriptural history temple architecture political reflection and the goddess`s recent guises on the Internet the contributors pose questions that illuminate our understanding of Kali while addressing the problems and promises inherent in every act of cross cultural interpretation.
Author: Rachel Fell McDermott
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520232396
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
"The editors have assembled a South Asian/History of Religions dream team, and the result is a book that captures the sexy, gory power of the dark goddess who is the most exciting of all Hindu deities-and perhaps the most controversial and notorious of all deities. Academically profound and theoretically subtle, these essays are also vivid and juicy."--Wendy Doniger, author of The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade "If any subject ever called for a book of many parts, it is Kali. These original and provocative essays, well chosen and thoughtfully organized, point to all sides of the Goddess's character. The result is a sharp and challenging book-the essential starting point for a new century of encountering Kali."--John Stratton Hawley, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Religion, Columbia University and co-editor of Devi: Goddesses of India
Author: Rachel Fell McDermott
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023112919X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
Annually during the months of autumn, Bengal hosts three interlinked festivals to honor its most important goddesses: Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatri. While each of these deities possesses a distinct iconography, myth, and character, they are all martial. Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatri often demand blood sacrifice as part of their worship and offer material and spiritual benefits to their votaries. Richly represented in straw, clay, paint, and decoration, they are similarly displayed in elaborately festooned temples, thronged by thousands of admirers. The first book to recount the history of these festivals and their revelry, rivalry, and nostalgic power, this volume marks an unprecedented achievement in the mapping of a major public event. Rachel Fell McDermott describes the festivals' origins and growth under British rule. She identifies their iconographic conventions and carnivalesque qualities and their relationship to the fierce, Tantric sides of ritual practice. McDermott confronts controversies over the tradition of blood sacrifice and the status-seekers who compete for symbolic capital. Expanding her narrative, she takes readers beyond Bengal's borders to trace the transformation of the goddesses and their festivals across the world. McDermott's work underscores the role of holidays in cultural memory, specifically the Bengali evocation of an ideal, culturally rich past. Under the thrall of the goddess, the social, political, economic, and religious identity of Bengalis takes shape.
Author: Karen Tate
Publisher: CCC Publishing
ISBN: 1888729341
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 425
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Book Description
Uncovering the past through the lens of sacred travel, this travel book includes both academic and popular religious perspectives, and is filled with photographs of both famous and lesser-known locales from every corner of the world. Each site-specific explanation of the significance of Goddess today and in centuries past deftly combines current trends, academic theories, and historical insights. From the Middle East, to Europe, Africa, and the Americas, the images of feminine divinity presented in this work are as uniform in their beauty as they are diverse in cultural tradition. For each location-be it the shrines in Kyoto and Kamakura or the sites worshipping the Virgin Mary in Bolivia, France, Trinidad, and the Saut D'Eau Waterfalls of Haiti-this book provides a history of each site in conjunction with the photography.
Author: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0525511342
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 353
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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “dazzling, cinematic, intimate, lyrical” (Roxane Gay) epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of the National Book Award finalist Sabrina & Corina “Sometimes you just step into a book and let it wash over you, like you’re swimming under a big, sparkling night sky.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You A PHENOMENAL BOOK CLUB PICK AND AN AUDACIOUS BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Book Riot There is one every generation, a seer who keeps the stories. Luz “Little Light” Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors’ origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion. Written in Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s singular voice, the wildly entertaining and complex lives of the Lopez family fill the pages of this multigenerational western saga. Woman of Light is a transfixing novel about survival, family secrets, and love—filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz. LONGLISTED FOR THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION
Author: Zai Whitaker
Publisher: Kane/Miller Book Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1933605103
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 19
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Book Description
Kali's father is a snake catcher - the best in the village. Kali knows that is really something to be proud of, but at school he sometimes gets embarrassed. The other children seem to think there is something very strange about having a snake catcher for a father and eating things like fried termites for a snack. Plus, Kali is the teacher's pet. How will he ever make friends?
Author: Thomas B. Coburn
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791404454
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Coburn provides a fresh and careful translation from the Sanskrit of this fifteen-hundred-year-old text. Drawing on field work and literary evidence, he illuminates the process by which the Devī-Māhātmya has attracted a vast number of commentaries and has become the best known Goddess-text in modern India, deeply embedded in the ritual of Goddess worship (especially in Tantra). Coburn answers the following questions among others: Is this document "scripture?" How is it that this text mediates the presence of the Goddess? What can we make of contemporary emphasis on oral recitation of the text rather than study of its written form? One comes away from Coburn's work with a sense of the historical integrity or wholeness of an extremely important religious development centered on a "text." The interaction between the text and later philosophical and religious developments such as those found in Advaita Vedanta and Tantra is quite illuminating. Relevant here are the issues of the writtenness and orality/aurality of 'scripture,' and the various ways by which a deposit of holy words such as the Devī-Māhātmya becomes effective, powerful, and inspirational in the lives of those who hold it sacred.
Author: Jeffrey J. Kripal
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226453774
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 421
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Book Description
Scholar Jeffrey J. Kripal explores the life and teachings of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, a 19th-century Bengali saint who played a major role in the creation of modern Hinduism. The work is now marked by both critical acclaim and cross-cultural controversy. In a substantial new Preface to this second edition, Kripal answers his critics and addresses the controversy.
Author: Rachel Fell McDermott
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231129181
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 392
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Book Description
Annually during the months of autumn, Bengal hosts three interlinked festivals to honor its most important goddesses: Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatri. While each of these deities possesses a distinct iconography, myth, and character, they are all martial. Durga, Kali, and Jagaddhatri often demand blood sacrifice as part of their worship and offer material and spiritual benefits to their votaries. Richly represented in straw, clay, paint, and decoration, they are similarly displayed in elaborately festooned temples, thronged by thousands of admirers. The first book to recount the history of these festivals and their revelry, rivalry, and nostalgic power, this volume marks an unprecedented achievement in the mapping of a major public event. Rachel Fell McDermott describes the festivals' origins and growth under British rule. She identifies their iconographic conventions and carnivalesque qualities and their relationship to the fierce, Tantric sides of ritual practice. McDermott confronts controversies over the tradition of blood sacrifice and the status-seekers who compete for symbolic capital. Expanding her narrative, she takes readers beyond Bengal's borders to trace the transformation of the goddesses and their festivals across the world. McDermott's work underscores the role of holidays in cultural memory, specifically the Bengali evocation of an ideal, culturally rich past. Under the thrall of the goddess, the social, political, economic, and religious identity of Bengalis takes shape.
Author: Ursula Wirtz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000208192
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
In this seminal work on the clinical, archetypal and spiritual dimension of trauma, the author offers a compelling vision of the transformative potential of suffering and the dialectic of Dying and Becoming. Wirtz outlines a healing path from fragmentation to integration and illuminates the resilience of the human spirit in the face of severe trauma. Trauma and Beyond will be essential reading and a valuable resource for counsellors, therapists and Jungian analysts who are challenged in their practice with individual and collective traumata.
