Author: Mark Sedgwick
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030617882
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
Similarities between esoteric and mystical currents in different religious traditions have long interested scholars. This book takes a new look at the relationship between such currents. It advances a discussion that started with the search for religious essences, archetypes, and universals, from William James to Eranos. The universal categories that resulted from that search were later criticized as essentialist constructions, and questioned by deconstructionists. An alternative explanation was advanced by diffusionists: that there were transfers between different traditions. This book presents empirical case studies of such constructions, and of transfers between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the premodern period, and Judaism, Christianity, and Western esotericism in the modern period. It shows that there were indeed transfers that can be clearly documented, and that there were also indeed constructions, often very imaginative. It also shows that there were many cases that were neither transfers nor constructions, but a mixture of the two.
Author: Daniel Dubuisson
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801873201
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
The Western Construction of Religion not only provides a critical assessment of the whole history of "religionas it is understood in the West but offers better ways of constructing the study of this central part of human experience.
Author: Dan Chyutin
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814350690
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Contemporary Israeli cinema's engagement with Judaism as cultural identity and mystical tradition. Over the past several decades, the prevailing attitude toward Judaism in Israeli society has undergone a meaningful shift; where the national ethos had once deemed Judaic traditions a vestige of an arcane past incompatible with the culture of a modern state, there is now greater acceptance of these traditions by a sizeable part of Israeli society. Author Dan Chyutin reveals this trend through a parallel shift toward acceptance and celebration of Judaic identity and lifestyle in modern Israeli cinema. Hidden Light explores the Judaic turn in contemporary Israeli filmmaking for what it can tell us about Israel's cultural landscape, as well as about the cinematic medium in general. Chyutin points to the ambivalence of films which incorporate Judaism into Israel's secular ethos; concurrently, he foregrounds the films' attempt to overcome this ambivalence through reference to and activation of experiences of transcendence and unity, made popular by New Age–inflected understandings of Jewish mystical thought. By virtue of this exploration, Judaic-themed Israeli cinema emerges as a crucial example of how film's particular form of "magic" may be exploited for the purpose of affecting mystical states in the audience.
Author: Martin P. Starr
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197744516
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 457
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Book Description
The Unknown God gives a view into the twentieth-century North American occult underground influenced by the English occultist and prophet Aleister Crowley, as told through the biography of his disciple in the USA, Wilfred Talbot Smith (1885--1957). It draws on accounts from Smith's social network, which encompassed Caltech rocket scientist Jack Parsons, the Rosicrucian leader H. Spencer Lewis, the Hollywood actor John Carradine, and gay liberationist Harry Hay. Students of esoteric Freemasonry, the Golden Dawn, the Theosophical Society, and the Crowley-based occult orders will find The Unknown God a fascinating resource--this is the book that connects them all.
Author: Richard Kaczynski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197694004
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 497
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Book Description
Rebelling against Victorian religious and social strictures, occultist Aleister Crowley, soldier J. F. C. Fuller, and poet Victor Neuburg were active contributors and participants in the British secularist movement at the dawn of the twentieth century. Friendship in Doubt examines how the Agnostic movement inspired and introduced them to each other as foundational figures in the new religious movement of Thelema.
Author: Yohanan Friedmann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110446391
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
Current tendencies in religious studies and theology show a growing interest for the interchange between religions and the cultures of rationalization surrounding them. The studies published in this volume, based on the international conferences of both the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, aim to contribute to this field of interest by dealing with concepts and influences of rationalization in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and religion in general. In addition to taking a closer look at the immediate links in the history of tradition between those rationalizing movements and evolutions in religion, emphasis is put on intellectual-historical convergences: Therefore, the articles are led by central comparative questions, such as what factors foster/hinder rationalization?; where are criteria for rationalization drawn from?; in which institutions is rationalization taking place?; who propagates, supports and utilizes rationalization?
Author: Kennet Granholm
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004274871
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
In Dark Enlightenment Kennet Granholm explores the historical, sociological, and discursive contexts of contemporary esoteric magic. The book is focused on the Sweden-originated Left-Hand Path magic order Dragon Rouge in particular, but through a detailed contextualizing examination of this case study it offers a broader visage of contemporary esotericism in general. The author takes cue from both the historiography of Western esotericism and the sociological study of new religions and religious change, aiming to provide a transdisciplinary framework for a comprehensive study of esotericism in late modernity.
Author: Marcia K. Hermansen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004392629
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 423
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Book Description
Sufism in Western Contexts explores both historical trajectories and multiple contemporary manifestations of Islamic mystical movements, ideas, and practices in diverse European, North and South American countries, as well as in Australia – all traditionally non-Muslim regions of the “global West”. From early French and British colonial administrators who admired Persian poetry to nineteenth-century American transcendentalists, followed by South Asian and Middle Eastern immigrant Sufi guides and their movements, expansive and many-faceted expressions of Sufism such as its role in Western esotericism, female whirling dervishes and Rumi cafes, and new articulations in cyberspace, are traced and analyzed by international experts in the field.
Author: Alexandra K. Grieser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110460459
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.
Author: Rebecca Nottingham
Publisher: Theosis Books
ISBN: 0966496043
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
Detailed, practical application of the Fourth Way system of psychological self-awareness and the process of living from higher levels of consciousness. The Teaching is a specific methodology for the perennial wisdom from Christianity and other religions on the "purification of the heart". Based in part on actual teaching transcripts, this book offers a rare opportunity for readers to apply.
