Tantric Healing in the Kathmandu Valley

Tantric Healing in the Kathmandu Valley PDF Author: Angela Dietrich
Publisher: Books Faith
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
A comparative study of Hindu and Buddhist spiritual healing traditions in urvan Nepalese society. Tantric healing modes and materials.

Tantric Healing in the Kathmandu Valley

Tantric Healing in the Kathmandu Valley PDF Author: Angela Dietrich
Publisher: Books Faith
ISBN:
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
A comparative study of Hindu and Buddhist spiritual healing traditions in urvan Nepalese society. Tantric healing modes and materials.

The Origins of Yoga and Tantra

The Origins of Yoga and Tantra PDF Author: Geoffrey Samuel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139470213
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
Yoga, tantra and other forms of Asian meditation are practised in modernized forms throughout the world today, but most introductions to Hinduism or Buddhism tell only part of the story of how they developed. This book is an interpretation of the history of Indic religions up to around 1200 CE, with particular focus on the development of yogic and tantric traditions. It assesses how much we really know about this period, and asks what sense we can make of the evolution of yogic and tantric practices, which were to become such central and important features of the Indic religious scene. Its originality lies in seeking to understand these traditions in terms of the total social and religious context of South Asian society during this period, including the religious practices of the general population with their close engagement with family, gender, economic life and other pragmatic concerns.

The Self Possessed

The Self Possessed PDF Author: Frederick M. Smith
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231510659
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 732

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Book Description
The Self Possessed is a multifaceted, diachronic study reconsidering the very nature of religion in South Asia, the culmination of years of intensive research. Frederick M. Smith proposes that positive oracular or ecstatic possession is the most common form of spiritual expression in India, and that it has been linguistically distinguished from negative, disease-producing possession for thousands of years. In South Asia possession has always been broader and more diverse than in the West, where it has been almost entirely characterized as "demonic." At best, spirit possession has been regarded as a medically treatable psychological ailment and at worst, as a condition that requires exorcism or punishment. In South (and East) Asia, ecstatic or oracular possession has been widely practiced throughout history, occupying a position of respect in early and recent Hinduism and in certain forms of Buddhism. Smith analyzes Indic literature from all ages-the earliest Vedic texts; the Mahabharata; Buddhist, Jain, Yogic, Ayurvedic, and Tantric texts; Hindu devotional literature; Sanskrit drama and narrative literature; and more than a hundred ethnographies. He identifies several forms of possession, including festival, initiatory, oracular, and devotional, and demonstrates their multivocality within a wide range of sects and religious identities. Possession is common among both men and women and is practiced by members of all social and caste strata. Smith theorizes on notions of embodiment, disembodiment, selfhood, personal identity, and other key issues through the prism of possession, redefining the relationship between Sanskritic and vernacular culture and between elite and popular religion. Smith's study is also comparative, introducing considerable material from Tibet, classical China, modern America, and elsewhere. Brilliant and persuasive, The Self Possessed provides careful new translations of rare material and is the most comprehensive study in any language on this subject.

Nepal

Nepal PDF Author: Axel Michaels
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197650937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
This comprehensive history of Nepal spans pre-historic times and the Licchavi Period to more recent developments, such as the Maoist insurgency and the rise of the republic. In addition to religious history and histories of selected regions (Mustang, Sherpa, Tarai, and others), it covers the nation's relations with its powerful neighbors and its cultural aspects, especially its rich history of arts, architecture, and crafts.

Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power

Goddess Durga and Sacred Female Power PDF Author: Laura Amazzone
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761853138
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
"Amazzone's voice is strong and clear. Goddess Durga promises the transformation, empowerment, and dignity that is our birthright."--Marisa Tomei, Academy Award-winning actor.

Engaging Evil

Engaging Evil PDF Author: William C. Olsen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789202140
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Anthropologists have expressed wariness about the concept of evil even in discussions of morality and ethics, in part because the concept carries its own cultural baggage and theological implications in Euro-American societies. Addressing the problem of evil as a distinctly human phenomenon and a category of ethnographic analysis, this volume shows the usefulness of engaging evil as a descriptor of empirical reality where concepts such as violence, criminality, and hatred fall short of capturing the darkest side of human existence.

Tantric Revisionings

Tantric Revisionings PDF Author: Geoffrey Samuel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351896172
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Tantric Revisionings presents stimulating new perspectives on Hindu and Buddhist religion, particularly their Tantric versions, in India, Tibet or in modern Western societies. Geoffrey Samuel adopts an historically and textually informed anthropological approach, seeking to locate and understand religion in its social and cultural context. The question of the relation between 'popular' (folk, domestic, village, 'shamanic') religion and elite (literary, textual, monastic) religion forms a recurring theme through these studies. Six chapters have not been previously published; the previously published studies included are in publications which are difficult to locate outside major specialist libraries.

South Asian Gothic

South Asian Gothic PDF Author: Katarzyna Ancuta
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 178683801X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This book is the first attempt to theorise South Asian Gothic production as a common cultural landscape, taking into account both the historical perspective and the variety of media texts. The volume consists of fifteen chapters by experts in film, literature and cultural studies of South Asia, representing the diversity of the region and a number of ways in which Gothic manifests in contemporary South Asian cultures. Gothic in South Asia can be read as a distinctive aesthetic, narrative practice, or a process of signification, where conventional Gothic tropes and imagery are assessed anew and global forms are consumed, appropriated, translated, transformed or resisted. The volume investigates South Asian Gothic as a local variety of international Gothic and part of the transnational category of globalgothic, contributing to the ongoing discussion on the need to de-westernise Gothic methodologies and ensure that Gothic scholarship remains relevant in the culturally-diverse modern world.

Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia

Tantra, Magic, and Vernacular Religions in Monsoon Asia PDF Author: Andrea Acri
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000686442
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book explores the cross- and trans-cultural dialectic between Tantra and intersecting ‘magical’ and ‘shamanic’ practices associated with vernacular religions across Monsoon Asia. With a chronological frame going from the mediaeval Indic period up to the present, a wide geographical framework, and through the dialogue between various disciplines, it presents a coherent enquiry shedding light on practices and practitioners that have been frequently alienated in the elitist discourse of mainstream Indic religions and equally overlooked by modern scholarship. The book addresses three desiderata in the field of Tantric Studies: it fills a gap in the historical modelling of Tantra; it extends the geographical parameters of Tantra to the vast, yet culturally interlinked, socio-geographical construct of Monsoon Asia; it explores Tantra as an interface between the Sanskritic elite and the folk, the vernacular, the magical, and the shamanic, thereby revisiting the intellectual and historically fallacious divide between cosmopolitan Sanskritic and vernacular local. The book offers a highly innovative contribution to the field of Tantric Studies and, more generally, South and Southeast Asian religions, by breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries. Its variety of disciplinary approaches makes it attractive to both the textual/diachronic and ethnographic/synchronic dimensions. It will be of interest to specialist and non-specialist academic readers, including scholars and students of South Asian religions, mainly Hinduism and Buddhism, Tantric traditions, and Southeast Asian religions, as well as Asian and global folk religion, shamanism, and magic.

Spirit Possession and Trance

Spirit Possession and Trance PDF Author: Bettina E. Schmidt
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441191356
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Spirit possession is a phenomenon that often elicits a response of fear, particular in those who are ignorant of its meaning and role within its particular religious and cultural traditions. Possession by divine beings (such as spirits or gods) is, however, a key practice in religions worldwide. It is therefore important to gain an understanding of this practice in its cultural context before trying to develop a wider theory about it. This fascinating book contains several case studies that present new interpretations of spirit possession worldwide. The authors show the diversity of possible interpretations and methodological approaches that provide a new insight into the understanding of possession and trance.