Author: Keith Thomas
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141932406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 853
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Book Description
Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas's classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief.
Author: Sulochana Ruth Asirvatham
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847699698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Between Magic and Religion represents a radical rethinking of traditional distinctions involving the term 'religion' in the ancient Greek world and beyond, through late antiquity to the seventeenth century. The title indicates the fluidity of such concepts as religion and magic, highlighting the wide variety of meanings evoked by these shifting terms from ancient to modern times. The contributors put these meanings to the test, applying a wide range of methods in exploring the many varieties of available historical, archaeological, iconographical, and literary evidence. No reader will ever think of magic and religion the same way after reading through the findings presented in this book. Both terms emerge in a new light, with broader applications and deeper meanings.
Author: Rebecca L Stein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317350219
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285
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Book Description
This book emphasizes the major concepts of both anthropology and the anthropology of religion and examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective while incorporating key theoretical concepts. It is aimed at students encountering anthropology for the first time.
Author: Randall Styers
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190287926
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating the relation of religion to science. Across these disciplines, magic has regularly been configured as a definitively non-modern phenomenon, juxtaposed to distinctly modern models of religion and science. Yet this notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous. In Making Magic, Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that this persistence can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity, norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, says Styers, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.
Author: Catherine Rider
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780230745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
During the Middle Ages, many occult rituals and beliefs existed and were practiced alongside those officially sanctioned by the church. While educated clergy condemned some of these as magic, many of these practices involved religious language, rituals, or objects. For instance, charms recited to cure illnesses invoked God and the saints, and love spells used consecrated substances such as the Eucharist. Magic and Religion in Medieval England explores the entanglement of magical practices and the clergy during the Middle Ages, uncovering how churchmen decided which of these practices to deem acceptable and examining the ways they persuaded others to adopt their views. Covering the period from 1215 to the Reformation, Catherine Rider traces the change in the church’s attitude to vernacular forms of magic. She shows how this period brought the clergy more closely into contact with unofficial religious practices than ever before, and how this proximity prompted them to draw up precise guidelines on distinguishing magic from legitimate religion. Revealing the necessity of improving clerical education and the pastoral care of the laity, Magic and Religion in Medieval England provides a fascinating picture of religious life during this period.
Author: Rebecca L. Stein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315532158
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
This concise and accessible textbook introduces students to the anthropological study of religion. Stein and Stein examine religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective and expose students to the varying complexity of world religions. The chapters incorporate key theoretical concepts and a rich range of ethnographic material. The fourth edition of The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft offers: • increased coverage of new religious movements, fundamentalism, and religion and conflict/violence; • fresh case study material with examples drawn from around the globe; • further resources via a comprehensive companion website. This is an essential guide for students encountering anthropology of religion for the first time.
Author: Rebecca L. Stein
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040039898
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 595
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Book Description
This concise and accessible textbook introduces students to the anthropological study of religion. It examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective and exposes students to the complexities of religion in small-scale and complex societies. The chapters incorporate key theoretical concepts and a wide range of ethnographic material. The fifth edition of The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft offers: • a revised introduction covering the foundations of the anthropology of religion, anthropological methods, and a push toward decolonizing the anthropology of religion, • expanded coverage of symbols, healing, wizardry, and the intersections of religion with other social institutions, • new case study material with examples drawn from around the globe, especially from Indigenous communities, • marginalia in each chapter introducing provocative small-case examples related to the chapter—many of these can be used as prompts for further research, small in-class case studies, or examples for hands-on learning, • a new chapter on religion and healing, especially useful for Anthropology programs without representation of four fields, as it provides a wider and more interdisciplinary application of the discipline, • a consistent review of foundations from chapter to chapter, linking material and enabling students to connect what they are learning throughout the course, and • further resources via a comprehensive companion website, including interactive activities, critical case studies, updated study questions, bibliographical suggestions (including video), and color images. This is an essential guide for students encountering the anthropology of religion for the first time and also for those with an ongoing interest in this fascinating field.
Author: Rebecca L Stein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317350200
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356
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Book Description
This book emphasizes the major concepts of both anthropology and the anthropology of religion and examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective while incorporating key theoretical concepts. It is aimed at students encountering anthropology for the first time.
Author: Keith Thomas
Publisher: Scribner Paper Fiction
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 756
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Book Description
Religion & the Decline of Magic is Keith Thomas's classic history of the magical beliefs held by people on every level of English society in the 16th and 17th centuries and how these beliefs were a part of the religious and scientific assumptions of the time. It is not only a major historical and religious work, but a thoroughly enjoyable book filled with fascinating facts and original insights into an area of human nature that remains controversial today- the belief in the supernatural that still continues in the modern world.
Author: Allison P. Coudert
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0275996743
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
This fascinating study looks at how the seemingly incompatible forces of science, magic, and religion came together in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries to form the foundations of modern culture. As Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America makes clear, the early modern period was one of stark contrasts: witch burnings and the brilliant mathematical physics of Isaac Newton; John Locke's plea for tolerance and the palpable lack of it; the richness of intellectual and artistic life, and the poverty of material existence for all but a tiny percentage of the population. Yet, for all the poverty, insecurity, and superstition, the period produced a stunning galaxy of writers, artists, philosophers, and scientists. This book looks at the conditions that fomented the emergence of such outstanding talent, innovation, and invention in the period 1450 to 1800. It examines the interaction between religion, magic, and science during that time, the impossibility of clearly differentiating between the three, and the impact of these forces on the geniuses who laid the foundation for modern science and culture.
