Cultic and Further Orders: Semiotics of a Kabbalistic Culture

Cultic and Further Orders: Semiotics of a Kabbalistic Culture PDF Author: Maurizio Mottolese
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499008
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Through an unusual investigation of kabbalistic commentaries on prayer and ritual from the viewpoint of cultural semiotics, this book attempts to illuminate the features of a lasting Jewish tradition, showing in particular the relevance of ordering structures in Sephardi Kabbalah.

Cultic and Further Orders: Semiotics of a Kabbalistic Culture

Cultic and Further Orders: Semiotics of a Kabbalistic Culture PDF Author: Maurizio Mottolese
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004499008
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Through an unusual investigation of kabbalistic commentaries on prayer and ritual from the viewpoint of cultural semiotics, this book attempts to illuminate the features of a lasting Jewish tradition, showing in particular the relevance of ordering structures in Sephardi Kabbalah.

Laws of the Spirit

Laws of the Spirit PDF Author: Ariel Evan Mayse
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503638987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
The compelling vision of religious life and practice found in Hasidic sources has made it the most enduring and successful Jewish movement of spiritual renewal of all time. In this book, Ariel Evan Mayse grapples with one of Hasidism's most vexing questions: how did a religious movement known for its radical views about immanence, revelation, and the imperative to serve God with joy simultaneously produce strict adherence to the structures and obligations of Jewish law? Exploring the movement from its emergence in the mid-1700s until 1815, Mayse argues that the exceptionality of Hasidism lies not in whether its leaders broke or upheld rabbinic norms, but in the movement's vivid attempt to rethink the purpose of Jewish ritual and practice. Rather than focusing on the commandments as law, he turns to the methods and vocabulary of ritual studies as a more productive way to reckon with the contradictions and tensions of this religious movement as well as its remarkable intellectual vitality. Mayse examines the full range of Hasidic texts from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from homilies and theological treatise to hagiography, letters, and legal writings, reading them together with contemporary theories of ritual. Arguing against the notion that spiritual integrity requires unshackling oneself from tradition, Laws of the Spirit is a sweeping attempt to rethink the meaning and significance of religious practice in early Hasidism.

The Spell of the Sensuous

The Spell of the Sensuous PDF Author: David Abram
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307830551
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

Hermes Explains

Hermes Explains PDF Author: Peter Forshaw
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9048542855
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Few fields of academic research are surrounded by so many misunderstandings and misconceptions as the study of Western esotericism. For twenty years now, the Centre for History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents (University of Amsterdam) has been at the forefront of international scholarship in this domain. This anniversary volume seeks to make the modern study of Western esotericism more widely known beyond specialist circles, while addressing a range of misconceptions, biases, and prejudices that still tend to surround it. Thirty major scholars in the field respond to questions about a wide range of unfamiliar ideas, traditions, practices, problems, and personalities that are central to the field. By challenging many taken-for-granted assumptions about religion, science, philosophy, and the arts, this volume demonstrates why the modern study of esotericism leads us to reconsider much that we thought we knew about the story of Western culture.

Clothing Sacred Scriptures

Clothing Sacred Scriptures PDF Author: David Ganz
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110558602
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
According to a longstanding interpretation, book religions are agents of textuality and logocentrism. This volume inverts the traditional perspective: its focus is on the strong dependency between scripture and aesthetics, holy books and material artworks, sacred texts and ritual performances. The contributions, written by a group of international specialists in Western, Byzantine, Islamic and Jewish Art, are committed to a comparative and transcultural approach. The authors reflect upon the different strategies of »clothing« sacred texts with precious materials and elaborate forms. They show how the pretypographic cultures of the Middle Ages used book ornaments as media for building a close relation between the divine words and their human audience. By exploring how art shapes the religious practice of books, and how the religious use of books shapes the evolution of artistic practices this book contributes to a new understanding of the deep nexus between sacred scripture and art.

Absorbing Perfections

Absorbing Perfections PDF Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300135076
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 686

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Book Description
In this wide-ranging discussion of Kabbalah—from the mystical trends of medieval Judaism to modern Hasidism—one of the world’s foremost scholars considers different visions of the nature of the sacred text and of the methods to interpret it. Moshe Idel takes as a starting point the fact that the postbiblical Jewish world lost its geographical center with the destruction of the temple and so was left with a textual center, the Holy Book. Idel argues that a text-oriented religion produced language-centered forms of mysticism. Against this background, the author demonstrates how various Jewish mystics amplified the content of the Scriptures so as to include everything: the world, or God, for example. Thus the text becomes a major realm for contemplation, and the interpretation of the text frequently becomes an encounter with the deepest realms of reality. Idel delineates the particular hermeneutics belonging to Jewish mysticism, investigates the progressive filling of the text with secrets and hidden levels of meaning, and considers in detail the various interpretive strategies needed to decodify the arcane dimensions of the text.

Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510

Kabbalah in Italy, 1280-1510 PDF Author: Moshe Idel
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300155875
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
This survey of the history of Kabbalah in Italy represents a major contribution from one of the world's foremost Kabbalah scholars. Idel charts the ways that Kabbalistic thought and literature developed in Italy and how its unique geographical situation facilitated the arrival of both Spanish and Byzantine Kabbalah.

Metu Neter: The great oracle of Tehuti and the Egyptian system of spiritual cultivation

Metu Neter: The great oracle of Tehuti and the Egyptian system of spiritual cultivation PDF Author: Ra Un Nefer Amen
Publisher: Kamit Publications
ISBN: 9781877662034
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
It explains the Kabala as it was practiced in Ancient Egypt, Canaan, & Dravidian India thousands of years before the advent of Hebraism. For the first time the public will learn how to receive (KBL) the prophetic messages from the intelligences (emanations) represented by the spheres of the Tree of Life, through the 70 card oracle system of the book. In a clear & straightforward manner--without the use of spreads--the oracle reveals which divine intelligence is in charge of the event inquired about, & prescribes the words of power, & force carriers (gemstones, incense & herbs esoterically used) that are specific to the "intelligence" controlling the situation. The book also includes nine chapters on meditation & ritual, detailing step by step the means of inducing mediumistic, & waking trance (Samadhi) to enable the reader to transform the oracular insights into reality. To aid this process, the musical scores of the mantras, based on the ancient Raga scales, are given. Unprecedented insight into the Deities of Egypt is revealed by the unique correspondences made between them & the spheres & principles of the Tree of Life.

The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law

The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law PDF Author: Christine Hayes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107036151
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
The Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law provides a conceptual and historical account of the Jewish understanding of law.

Lenin's Jewish Question

Lenin's Jewish Question PDF Author: Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300168608
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
The grandson of a Jew, whose Jewish relatives converted to Christianity, whose allies played down his Jewish origins just as fervently as his enemies played them up, V.I. Lenin makes for a fascinating case study of the many complexities associated with 'Jewish question' in Russia.