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America's Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-First Century by Peter
W. Williams (University of Illinois Press) (Hardcover)
Religion and the American Circumstance: The previous generation of American
religious historians like Winthrop Hudson and Sydney Ahlstrom had it easy.
Sidestepping the morass of religious pluralism, they told of "the Great Puritan
Epoch" which served as the basis for a compelling narrative clearly told.
They had it easy because they did not have to deal with the demands of
multiculturalism. The dominant story sufficed. According to this general
perspective, America was made up primarily of the great churches of the
Reformation, and all religious "outsiders" were expected to conform to broad
Protestant norms. Williams writes that "religion" in this vein meant "white,
middle-class, English-speaking, evangelical Protestants, especially those of
Calvinist lineage--Congregationalists, Presbyterians, American Baptists,
Methodists, Disciples of Christ, and low-church Episcopelians" (p. 1).
Perhaps Williams overstates his point here, but the general claim remains
true--through the 1950s American religious history was primarily the story of
the Puritans and their successive cultural development throughout North America.
Such a monochromatic story is no longer adequate.
Since the 1950s, scholars of American religion have uncovered a host of rich
colors previously covered up by the mid-century Puritan-centric Protestant
synthesis. In the introduction to _America's Religions_, Williams aptly
summarizes a vast literature which has placed more closely to the center Roman
Catholics, immigrants, African Americans, women, and adherents to minority
religious traditions (Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism each get their own chapter).
In addition, newer studies which emphasize popular or "lived" religion,
anthropological methods, regional variances, and analyses based on race, class
and gender have challenged the older synthesis.
Given the vast variety of American religious communities,
Williams asks, "Is it still possible to present a narrative account of the
religious life of the people of the United States as a whole? Or shall we,
in postmodern fashion, regard each locus of individual or group religious
experience as an equally valid and useful entre into understanding something
about the American religious scene, while making no claims to seeing a whole
which most likely does not even exist" (p. 3)? Williams attempts to avoid
both extremes by recognizing both the unique character of each religious
community and the commonalities they share. Instead of focusing on one
group as the paradigmatic American story, he centers his discussion around
American "themes" or "circumstances": immigration, British culture,
slavery and race, democracy, capitalism, nationalism, pluralism and
Americanization. By discussing how various groups interact with these
basic themes, Williams hopes to provide a coherent survey of American religion.
This book is massive. Originally published by
Macmillan in 1989 and republished by the University of Illinois Press in 1998 as
_America's Religions: Traditions and Cultures_, it includes over five
hundred pages of text, big pages with over five hundred words per page.
Several sections have been added to address more actively groups outside of the
Christian tradition. The book ends with a detailed fifty-six-page
bibliography which is itself worth the purchase price of the book. The
book is well written, and Williams is fair and comprehensive in his treatment of
American religions. His account is impressive in its scope and erudition.
One hundred pages go by before there is any mention of English colonization of
North America. In that space the reader is introduced to Native American
religions, African-American religious thought, Judaism, Roman Catholicism,
Eastern Orthodoxy, and the traditions stemming from the Protestant Reformation.
While all the traditions in that list receive mention, by far the majority of
the book is dedicated to Protestantism in the United States; and while Williams
discusses Protestantism among ethnic minorities, most of the book discusses
developments within Anglo-Saxon Protestantism.
While some general readers may purchase _America's
Religions_, it is intended to be a textbook for beginning undergraduates
interested in religion in the United States. Its breadth provides an
excellent survey of the field, but its encyclopedic qualities lack a synthesis
or compelling narrative which would make such an introductory text more
beneficial. But, this is the trade-off Williams has to make. In place of
the older generation's histories which focus on Protestantism, he has written a
book which tries to not to privilege one religion over another. The result
is a well-written and expertly-researched book which lacks a coherent story
line. It is difficult to criticize Williams for this, for when one leaves
the Puritan synthesis, where is one supposed to turn for coherence?
Williams's predicament is the same one faced by the authors
of World History surveys. These books often become simply the older
Western Civilization texts with a few extra chapters tacked on: a couple
on Latin America, a few on Asia and perhaps one or two on Africa. World History
texts often try to tell the whole story, and in the process never provide
narrative and interpretive handles which allow students to make sense of an
exceedingly complex collection of stories. Most historians agree that
knowledge beyond Western Civilization is important, but when the time-honored
themes of western history are no longer at the center, they struggle to tell a
clear story. In the same way, Williams's book reads at times like a
"History of Protestant America" text with additional chapters added on. To
be fair, these chapters are numerous (about twenty of the book's fifty-five
chapters) and are thus not simply thrown in to appease advocates of
multiculturalism. What is missing, not just here but in the field of
American religious history more broadly, is an account of American religion
which integrates the various traditions into a coherent narrative.
Williams is not writing American history primarily, but religious history; as a
result, he discusses the various groups in tradition-specific chapters (in the
chapters covering the twentieth century, Jews, Roman Catholics, Hispanics,
African Americans, Islam and other Asian religions each get their own chapter)
which provide good introductions to the various religious communities but do not
integrate them clearly into a broader American narrative. But, it is easy
to criticize on this point and hard to construct a new kind of history that
integrates the lessons of cultural pluralism into a neat and tidy narrative. Put
differently, Williams's _America's Religions_ suffers from the same difficulties
our current culture does more generally: What is at the center of American
life and what is at the periphery? Who determines?
Teachers of American religious history should seriously
consider Williams's text for use in their classes. It is thorough and
comprehensive. With the help of a professor who assists students in
navigating the complex landscape of American religious life presented in its
pages, students will benefit from it greatly--and so will their professors.
Copyright (c) 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. Reviewed for
H-AmRel by Kurt Peterson <kpeterson@northpark.edu>, Department of History, North
Park University, Chicago, Illinois
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness by Karen Armstrong (Knopf)
Audio Cassette (Abridged)
Audio CD (Abridged) (HarperAudio) is easily the most important religious
autobiography since Thomas Merton's "Seven Storey Mountain," and it is probable
that Armstrong had Merton in the back of her mind when composing this work
actually a more interior consideration of material touched upon in
Through the Narrow Gate.
Armstrong comes to share her life story and work are taking
on some just-dawning importance in the story of the "modern" world, East and
West.
Perhaps "The Spiral Staircase" may redefine the human quest
for self-acceptance and freedom, to pursue freely and practice a religious
vision, whether enshrined in tradition or not, to discover kenosis,
self-emptying and compassion, And to avoid the idolatry of mind and pride as to
believe our ideas and beliefs though felt certainty may not yet be quite true.
Armstrong's story guides to discovering our mutual humanity, to which we all
may aspire by embracing suffering within our selves and within our communities
and in the world as a whole.
Karen Armstrong begins this spellbinding story of her spiritual journey with her
departure in 1969 from the Roman Catholic convent she had entered seven years
before—hoping, but ultimately failing, to find God. She knew almost nothing of
the changed world to which she was returning, and she was tormented by panic
attacks and inexplicable seizures.
Armstrong’s struggle against despair was further fueled by a string of
discouragements—failed spirituality, doctorate, and jobs; fruitless dealings
with psychiatrists. Finally, in 1976, she was diagnosed with epilepsy, given
proper treatment, and released from her “private hell.” She then began the
writing career that would become her true calling, and as she focused on the
sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, her own inner story began to
emerge. Without realizing it, she had embarked on a spiritual quest, and through
it she would eventually experience moments of transcendence—the profound
fulfillment that she had not found in long hours of prayer as a young nun.
Powerfully engaging, often heartbreaking, but lit with bursts of humor, The
Spiral Staircase is an extraordinary history of self.
From Publishers Weekly:
In 1969, British writer
Armstrong (The Battle for God, etc.) entered a Roman Catholic convent, smitten
by the desire to "find God." She was 17 years old at the time—too young, she
recognizes now, to have made such a momentous decision. Armstrong’s 1981 memoir
Through the Narrow Gate described her frustrating, lonely experience of
cloistered life and her decision, at 24, to renounce her vows. In its sequel,
Beginning the World (1983), she tried to explain her readjustment to the secular
world—and failed. "It is the worst book I have ever written," she declares in
the preface to this new volume: "it was far too soon to write about those
years"; "it was not a truthful account"; "I was told to present myself in as
positive and lively a light as possible." The true story, which she relates in
this second sequel, was far more conflicted and intellectually vibrant. Her
departure from the convent, she writes, actually made her quite sad; she was
"constantly wracked by a very great regret" and suffering on top of it with the
symptoms of undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy. How she emerged from such
darkness to make a career as a writer whose books honor spiritual concerns while
maintaining intellectual freedom and rigor—this is Armstrong’s real concern, and
the one that will be of most interest to the fans of her many acclaimed works.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All
rights reserved.
Mark Twain's Religion by William E. Phipps (Mercer University Press) an
extensive treatment of Mark Twain's views on religion. Although there are many
studies of America's most famous literary figure, this thorough investigation
provides not only new information on Twain's religion, but also a different
approach from anything published before. Interpretations of Twain over the past
century have been largely the province of literary critics. By skillful textual
analysis they have produced an abundance of nuanced studies, but they tend to
have little interest in, and knowledge of, the broad religious context of
Victorian society, which both angered and intrigued Twain. Phipps provides
perceptions often overlooked into the way Clemens's religion was related to such
significant issues as racism, imperialism, and materialism. This study takes a
close look at his growing up in the slave culture of Missouri Protestants and
his subsequent involvement in the radically different abolition culture in which
his wife was raised.
Like Twain, who aimed at communicating with the common
person, Phipps has written in a style that will attract the educated public
while providing fresh insights for Twain scholars. His research has taken him to
Hannibal, Elmira, Hartford, and to the Twain archives in Berkeley. Mostly
chronological, the book makes extensive use of Twain's works and, often
neglected in such studies on Twain, the Bible, his most important literary
source.
After exiting with Halley's comet, Mark Twain became the
brightest star in the constellation of American historic literary figures. "He
is the biggest man you have on your side of the water," Rudyard Kipling wrote to
an American; "Cervantes was a relation of his."' Nearly a century has passed
since he died, but he has social immortality around the globe. His
accomplishments belie his epigram, "Fame is a vapor-popularity an accidentthe
only earthly certainty oblivion." Considering that some of his works are now
translated into dozens of languages and published in hundreds of foreign
editions, his influence may be even greater now than in "the days of his flesh"
and is likely to continue to grow. Because of his continually rising fame,
witticisms he never uttered are often attributed to him to help launch a laugh.
For example, his alleged quip, "A Pharisee is a good person in the worst sense
of the word," expresses his sentiments, but it may well be apocryphal. There is
no need to invent comments of Mark Twain on religion because his actual
insights, as have been shown, are vast and often profound as well as funny. His
pen name, which refers to a depth of two fathoms, is not adequate to describe
his fathomless penetration into truth about Homo religiosus. Mark Twain's
residual liberal Calvinism has helped to give both a transforming leavening and
levity to religious people over the generations that have followed him.
Theoretical and Empirical Investigations into New Age Spiritualities by
Dominic Corrywright (Peter Lang Publishing) This book provides a detailed
examination of theoretical and empirical approaches to New Age spiritualities.
The author explains how the diverse and dynamic nature of New Age spiritualities
requires methods of research that highlight plurality. His analysis of current
descriptions of the field shows that many typologies of the thought and
practices of those within the New Age have not reflected the actual experiences
and beliefs of those they seek to describe. This text proposes a new theoretical
model, and a detailed methodological framework for research using the idea of a
weblike network. The empirical investigations into organizations and individuals
provide ideographic evidence for the web model. Corrywright offers some
empirical survey research as an corrective to the too bookish studies of New Age
religions where the literary output of leaders is given often scarily critical
scrutiny.
Excerpt: I began researching and writing this book at the
end of the twentieth century and have finished it at the beginning of the
twenty-first. The process has taken me far beyond the boundaries of my initial
plans for this project. My investigations have crossed the millennium with the
subjects of my study, and I have found new horizons in the study of religions.
Certain of my own assumptions, such as the notion that millennial beliefs
constituted a keystone of New Age ideas, have been empirically overwritten by
the responses of the research sample and the progress of time. Other
presumptions, such as the genuine and deep quest for 'direction and meaning, for
wholeness and transcendence' (King 1997: 662) of those within the New Age
spiritualities, have been borne out in my research. My own quest for meaning
has, of course, grown and been transformed as part of the process of my
research. Indeed, it was an intrinsic personal interest in spirituality which
led me to study others spiritualities. In that sense I am an 'insider', as
perhaps are many scholars of religion. The web in which I am woven includes the
academic study of religion, which itself is 'a modern quest' (Smart 1999: ix).
During the writing of this book I have moved from teaching History and Religious
Studies at secondary school to lecturing on Approaches to Religious Studies at
the University of Bristol and, most recently, setting up and leading a Religious
Studies undergraduate programme at Oxford Brookes University. My own
undergraduate studies in the History of Ideas have led me into the Study of
Religions. Thus my approach is predominantly formed by a historical perspective
and an understanding which has tended to locate ideas and the mind as
pre-eminent in the study of culture and human history. But religions are
informed by practice, the religious is underpinned by spiritual praxis; I, with
others, 'consider the spiritual and spirituality as the heart of religion or its
highest ideal, encountered particularly in religious and mystical experience'
(King 1997: 661). So this book has become an investigation into experience and
practical knowledge as much as theoretical knowledge. My intellectual history,
assumptions and predispositions are part of the web that constructs and defines
the way in which this book has been written.
The book is divided into four distinct parts: 'Theoretical
Perspectives', 'Methodological Foundations', 'Empirical Investigations' and
'Conceptual Evaluations'. Part I includes two chapters, the first of which forms
a preliminary literature review of some key typologies used in the definition of
the New Age. The second chapter describes core theoretical foundations for the
following analyses of the phenomena of New Age spiritualities. Essentially these
theoretical foundations are comprised by: Foucault's critique of power and the
structure of discourse, which is applied to the academic discourse that
categorises and defines New Age in the study of religions; Kuhn's historical
conception of 'paradigm shifts' as it is applied to society and culture;
feminist criticisms of patriarchal forms in the history of religions and
spiritual feminism, both as a contiguous critique of traditional epistemology
and corollary expression of religiosity within New Age spiritualities.
Part II on Methodological Foundations (chapters 3 and 4)
examines in detail the model of a web and how it can be applied to New Age
spiritualities. The vital correlation and sympathy between a model for study and
the object studied is examined and explained. Chapter 4 investigates the way
social research and ethnomethodology provide useful methods for this study.
Part III elucidates the empirical findings of the research.
A comparative analysis of data gathered from a questionnaire, 'Survey of
Spirituality', is provided in chapter 5. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with specific
data on the two main organisations, The Spark and Psychology of Vision, on which
empirical research was carried out between 1997 and 2000. The particular
histories and backgrounds of each organisation are briefly presented before a
detailed analysis of their role within the wider web of New Age spiritualities
is given. Each chapter includes descriptions of the webs created by the
individuals involved with each organisation.
Part IV revisits the methodological and epistemological
foundations established in Parts I and II through the empirical investigations
of Part III to re-evaluate New Age spiritualities as webs of praxis. Some
consideration is paid to negative appraisals of those elements relevant to the
specific New Age spiritualities discussed in this text. The conclusions to this
study and directions for further research are briefly presented at the end of
the book.
As far as possible I have avoided making extensive
footnotes. Where the information is relevant to my argument I have included
information in the body of the text. Occasionally footnotes have become
necessary when a correlate point needs to be made, but insertion into the main
text would be deleterious to the overall line of argument. The practice of
writing long footnotes is akin to making comments in the margin by the careful
interactive reader, that is, it is the right of the reader to marginalise, but
the author should refrain from such a practice. This point pertains to citing
the considerable debt owed to other authors. I have adopted the most widely used
reference style, the Harvard author-date system. Hence all sources used in the
book are listed in the bibliography. I have not, however, limited the
bibliography only to these references. While it is clear I could not reference
all the published and unpublished journals, books, web sites, leaflets and other
printed material I have read during my research, I have included some sources
that undoubtedly influenced the style and concepts I use and which may be
evident, at least implicitly, in this book.
Citation to the material of the questionnaires and
inter-views has been coded. The letters SS stand for 'Survey of Spirituality'.
The first number following the letters refers to the research group: '1' relates
to respondents from The Spark sample; '2' relates to respondents from the
Psychology of Vision sample. The second number simply refers to respondents in
numerical sequence. Individuals who completed questionnaires and were
interviewed are filed using the same number, which refers to both questionnaire
response and interview transcription.
Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of
the Twentieth Century by Mark J. Sedgwick (Oxford University Press) Against
the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an influential yet
surprisingly little-known twentieth century anti-modernist movement. Involving a
number of important, yet often secret, religious groups in the West and Islamic
world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and religious
studies in the United States. Emerging from the 'discovery' in the West of
non-Western religious writings, at a time in the nineteeth century when
progressive intellectuals had lost faith in the ability of Christianity to
deliver religious and spiritual truth, it was fuelled by the widespread
religious scepticism that followed World War I. It found its voice in Rene
Guenon, a French writer who rejected modernity as a dark age, and sought to
reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy - the fundamental truth uniting all the
world's religions. Mark Sedgwick reveals how this pervasive intellectual
movement helped shape major events in twentieth century religious life, politics
and scholarship - all the while remaining invisible to outsiders.
The first history of Traditionalism, an important yet
surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a
number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the
West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in
Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United
States. In the nineteenth century, at a time when progressive intellectuals had
lost faith in Christianity's ability to deliver religious and spiritual truth,
the West discovered non-Western religious writings. From these beginnings grew
Traditionalism, emerging from the occultist milieu of late nineteenth-century
France, and fed by the widespread loss of faith in progress that followed the
First World War. Working first in Paris and then in Cairo, the French writer
Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age, and sought to reconstruct the
Perennial Philosophy-- the central religious truths behind all the major world
religions --largely on the basis of his reading of Hindu religious texts. A
number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to Guenon's call with attempts to
put theory into practice. Some attempted without success to guide Fascism and
Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror
in Italy. Traditionalism finally provided the ideological cement for the
alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and at the end of the
twentieth century began to enter the debate in the Islamic world about the
desirable relationship between Islam and modernity is one of the few books
available which fully traces out the history and development of the Tradionalist
movement of such figures as Rene Guenon, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon,
and Julius Evola among others, which remains firmly opposed to modernity. As a
philosophy/theology, Traditionalism has its origins in several diverse sources
all existing at the end of the Nineteenth century, which were contextualized and
synthesized by Rene Guenon and later others. One central tenet of Traditionalism
is that all of the world's traditions issue from the same source (a divine
source) and can be found to be universally present across all ancient cultures,
a philosophical view termed perennialism. The origins of perennialism can be
traced to ancient times; however, perennialism witnessed a revival and
codification during the Rennaissance period in which the wisdom of the ancient
Greeks and the classical world was revived and combined with traditional
religions (Christianity or Islam) under such figures as the Roman Catholic
priest Marsilio Ficino. The origins of Traditionalism proper can be traced to
various occult circles (around such figures as Papus, for example) and systems
of Eastern wisdom and tradition. Indeed, for Traditionalists (and in particular
for the early Guenon) the East represented an important and viable
traditionalist alternative to the decadent modernist West which had been
overcome by materialism and scientism. Rene Guenon (perhaps the founder and
central figure of this movement) remains an enigmatic individual, crossing the
spectrum from occult studies and freemasonic lodges, to traditionalist Roman
Catholicism, and eventually making his home within the Islamic religion (in
particular its Sufi tradition). However, Guenon also wrote about Hinduism (his
earliest works being studies of Hindu doctrines and the Vedanta philosophy) and
Taoism (under the influence of his friend Albert de Pouvourville). Guenon came
to regard religious practice as an essential component of his worldview, causing
him to emphasize initiation into a given tradition (either masonic or Sufi
Islam, preferably), and eventually his conversion to Islam (although his
apparent orthodoxy remains somewhat questionable). Certain followers of Guenon
would also try to set up a system of initiation within Christianity (possibly to
avoid conversion to Islam) under the Roman Catholic antiquarian Louis
Charbonneau-Lassay who headed an order referred to as the Knights of the Divine
Paraclete. Guenon, who was born a Frenchman, would eventually come to make his
home in Cairo, where he lived as a devout Muslim until his death. Towards the
end of his life, Guenon came to fear what he believed to be "counter-initiatic
forces" which he had argued against in his writings. Other figures who took off
from Guenon but remained steadfast to the Traditionalist movement include Ananda
Coomaraswamy and Frithjof Schuon. Coomaraswamy served as a museum curator who
incorporated the perennial philosophy into his studies dealing with
traditionalist Hinduism and Buddhism and their artforms. Frithjof Schuon became
a second convert to Islam, inaugurating his own Sufi sect the Maryamiyya, under
the inspiration of the Virgin Mary. Schuon came to advocate a universalist view
of religion (calling for a Transcendent Unity of religious traditions, at an
esoteric level), eventually moving to America and adopting practices of the
Native Americans in his ritual. Schuon's Maryamiyya Sufi order drew the
attention of many notables including such figures as the Roman Catholic monk
Thomas Merton, the religious scholar Huston Smith, and the Islamicist and
Traditionalist Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Nasr, who was a student at MIT when he
became acquainted with Traditionalism, came to reject the scientistic worldview
prevalent there and embrace Islam. Nasr later moved back to his native country
of Iran where he founded an Imperial Academy under the Shah, which was to
survive until after the Khomeinian revolution, for the study of traditional
Islam. Other figures involved with the Marayamiyyas of Schuon include Titus
Burckhardt and Martin Lings, both of whom wrote extensively on Islam and
Traditionalism. Traditionalism came to take on a political bent in the Italian
counter-revolutionary rightist Baron Julius Evola. Evola's most famous work
_Revolt Against the Modern World_ argued for complete reaction against
modernity. Evola would later come to tentatively support Mussolini as well as
writing on racialism and Hitler's SS. During the postwar period, Evola would
come to advocate an abandonment of political activism proper in what he termed
apolitea. Many of his followers in postwar Italy on the extreme right and left
came to embrace terrorism against the subsequent bourgeois state. An interesting
figure who played some role in the formation of the early Nazi party is that of
Rudolf von Sebottendorf. Sebottendorf was influenced by occultism and the
Kabbalah as well as Sufi Islam and came to play a principal role in the
Germanen-Orden which became the NSDAP (subsequently seized by Hitler and his
cronies). Evola's writings also influenced the young Romanian religious scholar
Mircea Eliade, who would come to play such an important role in the modern
academic compartmentalization of religious studies despite his apparent youthful
dabblings in Romanian fascism. Another political Traditionalist influenced by
Evola is the Russian pan-Eurasian National Bolshevik Alexander Dugin. Other
aspects of this book focus on the role of Traditionalism within Russia and the
Islamic world in particular. The author seems to focus particularly on Islam
(excluding Christianity, either Roman Catholic or Eastern), perhaps because this
is the area of his specialty. The author also examines other figures who he
terms "soft" Traditionalists (such as E. F. Schumacher for example) who though
influenced by Traditionalism would not come to fully embrace this philosophy. In
sum, this book serves as a very good introduction to the subject of
Traditionalism, is expertly footnoted, and is sure to serve as a stepping stone
to further research.
In the PROLOGUE Sedgwick tells the story of his how he
learned of "Traditionalism" and how he began to piece together a fuller picture
of it.
In PART I he takes us back to pre-WWI France for a look at
the young Guenon (1886-1951) and the characters and milieu that surrounded the
his early work. Sedgwick looks at Guenon's contact with Theosophy,
Neo-Gnosticism, various Catholic and occult groups of the time. He tells of his
relations with such figures as the art historian Ananda Coomaraswaamy,
philosopher Jacques Maritain and occultist Gerard Encausse.
PART II Tells of Guenon's move to Cairo, introduces us to
Frithjof Schuon, another very important "Traditionalist", and tells us about
Julius Evola and his activities during WWII. The last chapter of this section,
entitled "Fragmentation", concentrates mainly on Sedgwick's understanding of the
Shuon's relationship with Guenon as well as the beginnings of Shuon's Sufi order
and the various groups that sprang from it.
In PART III Sedgwick continues the story of Shuon's order,
the Maryamiyya, and tells of Shuon's move to America along with some other
"Traditionalist" activity there. He continue the story of Evola and his
influence on Terrorist activity in post-WWII Italy, and then looks at
"Traditionalist" influences in education, including the work of Mircea Eliade at
the University of Chicago.
PART IV deals with "Traditionalism" after 1968 including
such figures as of E.F. Schumacher, Fr. Seraphim Rose, and Prince Charles. It
also includes chapters on Alexander Dugin's Neo-Eurasianism in Russia and the
place of "Traditionalism" in the contemporary Islamic world. Sedgwick concludes
his book with a chapter entitled "Against the Stream" in which he gives what he
calls a "theoretically based analysis" of "Traditionalism."
This is not a complete summary of Sedgwick's book which
includes many more details on the characters and subgroups that make up the
"Traditionalists." While I learned a lot from his book it is the very abundance
of detail that points to its greatest weakness.
Although Sedgwick approaches the object of his study with a
certain amount of sympathy, he still keeps his modern "scholarly"
presuppositions intact and this prevents him from really coming to terms with
Guenon's thought. An important instance of this is his attempt to "trace"
Guenon's thought to written "sources" that are known to "scholars." Here we are
at the very heart of the difference between modern and traditional methods.
Guenon insisted that esoteric initiation into traditional wisdom was handed down
orally and by other non-literary means. Thus it is likely that there will not be
written record to document the content of intiatic wisdom. There is nothing
inherently unreasonable in this; "scholars" have learned that Homer's poems were
transmitted orally for hundreds of years, and Sedgwick himself gives three pages
of references to interviews.
A better familiarity with Guenon's thought would perhaps
have proven to Sedgwick not its "originality", (a modern preoccupation which
Guenon always rejected) but its authenticity and transcendent integrity. In
other words it is at the level of ideas that Sedgwick's book is most lacking.
Since "Traditionalism" is a super-eminently a "movement" concerned with ideas,
an adequate history of it should deal with it much more on that level than
Sedgwick's does. A sign of this lack is that he hardly mentions Guenon's
masterwork "The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times." He does not
include it among the four works which he cites as containing the "essentials" of
"Traditonalist philosophy." (Had Sedgwick better understood "Reign" he may not
have confused "pseudo-initiation" with "counter-initiation" as he does.)
A better, although much shorter treatment at this level can
be found in Jean Borella's article "Rene Guenon and the Traditionalist School"
collected in the book "Modern Esoteric Spirituality." Borella's outline of the
essentials of Guenon's "Traditionalism" is much better than Sedgwick's.
The Crisis of the Modern World by Rene Guenon (Sophia Perennis et
Universalis) is perhaps the best introduction to the thought of a difficult,
little known, but immensely important thinker. I say "thinker", but that word
does not adequately describe Rene Guenon (1886-1951), a man difficult to
characterize because he does not fit into any of the categories of thought
current in our culture.
Perhaps the best word to describe him is "sage" with all
the overtones of antiquity, Orientalism, and wholeness that that word evokes. He
is certainly not a "philosopher" in the usual understanding of that word, nor is
he a "theologian", although all his thought is centered on the Source of all
reality.
A student of Guenon, Jean Borella, has written an extremely
helpful essay called "Rene Guenon and the Traditionalist School" which can be
found in the book "Modern Esoteric Spirituality". Borella finds five fundamental
themes in Guenon's writings, among which is the theme of "intellectual reform
and criticism of the modern world". This is the theme that informs "The Crisis
of the Modern World".
Guenon begins with a PREFACE in which he meditates on the
word "crisis". This word can be understood to mean a "critical phase" i.e. a
turning point for either better or worse, but it can also be understood, in
keeping with its original meaning, to suggest a time in which the thing in
crisis is ripe for judgment and discernment. Accordingly, the remainder of
Guenon's book is his judgment of modernity and its fate in the light of
traditional doctrine.
In the next chapter, THE DARK AGE, Guenon sketches the
traditional doctrine of the human cycle or "Manvantara". (A more complete
explanation of this can be found in "The Myth of the Eternal Return" cf. my
review) According to this teaching we are now far into the fourth age of the
world, called the "Kali Yuga" ("time of troubles"), which is characterized by a
remoteness from the principle and source of human flourishing and therefore
darkness, materialism, and chaos. This doctrine is the very opposite of the
modern notion of progress.
In THE OPPOSITION BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Guenon traces the
cause of this opposition to the West's abandonment of the traditional and normal
mentality which has been retained for the most part by the East. (Guenon was
writing in 1927.) By "East" he means the Chinese, Indian, and Islamic
Civilizations, and by "West" he means Europe and America. He sees the solution
to this opposition in a return to tradition by a western intellectual elite. It
should be noted that Guenon gives the words "tradition" and "intellectual" a
very exact and easily misunderstood meaning.
In KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION Guenon examines the subordination
of contemplation to action as the key difference separating the modern from the
traditional world, and therefore West from East. From this inversion results the
mental scattering and agitated monotony characteristic of modern times. Here we
see Guenon's understanding of "intellectual" and its coordination with
"tradition". The intellect is the supra-rational faculty which beholds tradition
i.e. that which is given or "handed over." (from the Latin "tradere" to give
over.)
Continuing the discussion of knowledge, Guenon
distinguishes SACRED SCIENCE AND PROFANE SCIENCE in the next chapter. The sacred
or traditional sciences proceed from and lead back to principles which are
grasped in intellectual intuition. Profane or modern sciences view the same
objects as the sacred sciences, but from the "profane point of view" which is to
say in ignorance or blindness of the principles from which these objects flow.
Guenon discusses ancient and modern physics, astrology and astronomy, and
alchemy and chemistry.
The "root error and cause" of modern science is
INDIVIDUALISM according to Guenon. Here again we must be careful to understand
the word as Guenon uses it. The individual in question is distinguishing himself
not from the rest of human society, but from the supernatural world or the
authority of the realm of principles. Individualism then, which is at the heart
of modernity, is nothing more than a negation. Guenon explains how modern errors
follow from individualism in philosophy and religion and looks at such
manifestations of individualism as "originality".
In chapter 7, THE SOCIAL CHAOS, Guenon examines democracy
and its modern psuedo-priniciple, social equality. He finds democracy's appeal
to the law of the greatest number to be nothing more than an appeal to the law
of the brute force of matter, because matter is by nature a multiplicity as
distinguished from spirit which is by nature a unity.
In A MATERIAL CIVILIZATION, Guenon summarizes his judgment
on the modern civilization of the West. It is characterized by materialism which
Guenon defines as living life as if nothing existed but the material world. It
is therefore a disease that infects the West almost completely, even including
those who acknowledge the world of the spirit but live as do those who do not.
In chapter 8, WESTERN ENCROACHMENT, Guenon discusses the
spread of the modern mentality into the East and takes issue with the opinions
of Henri Massis expressed in his book "Defense of the West". (Massis was a
disciple of Charles Marras founder of "Action Francaise", a French Monarchist
organization.) Guenon finds Massis to completely misunderstand Eastern
doctrines, and sees him as a fine example of "low-grade" traditionalism.
In SOME CONCLUSIONS, Guenon discusses the prospects for the
reestablishment of a Western traditional elite whose purpose would be to
somewhat curtail the disastrous effects of materialism, and transmit the
traditional doctrine into the new world that will follow the present
dissolution.
This is only the briefest summary of a book rich in depth
and insight in spite of its small size. Anyone who carefully reads and meditates
on its contents cannot help but feel the singular power and purity of the
author's intelligence, even though one may question some of the doctrines it
contains. Many would find its contents incomprehensible or even scandalous but
"he who has ears to hear, let him hear."
The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times, 4th Revised Edition by Rene
Guenon, translated by Lord Northbourne (Sophia Perennis et Universalis) Like
"The Crisis of the Modern World", a smaller work written years earlier, "The
Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times" falls into that group of Rene
Guenon's works which have been called "intellectual reform and criticism of the
modern world." These works evaluate the principles (or as Guenon would insist
the "pseudo-principles") behind the modern mentality in the light of traditional
principles. However, "Reign" differs from "Crisis" in being a much more
metaphysically challenging exploration of the nature and trajectory of the
modern thing. For that reason, "Crisis" is a better book than "Reign" to begin
your exploration of the country that is Guenon.
Guenon is a metaphysician with a wide but highly integrated
vision of reality. You do not get the fullness of his thought in any one of his
books, although some are more central than others. But because of the integrity
of the whole corpus one book fills out or illuminates the ideas found in the
others. This fact should be kept in mind when approaching him. Frustrations and
perplexities will dissipate with further reading. For all that, there is no
getting around the demanding nature of Guenon's thought.
Guenon sees modernity, in its materialist stage, as the
"reign of quantity" i.e. a state of affairs in which an attempt is made to
reduce all of reality to that which can be measured by the senses. This state of
affairs is a "sign of the times" in that it tells us that we are at the end of
the "Kali-Yuga" or "time of troubles." According to tradition, time is cyclical.
One of the most significant of these cycles is the "Manvantara" which is made up
of four "Yugas." The time covered by each of these "Yugas" is qualitatively
different. The first, the "Krita-Yuga", is a time of light and closeness to the
principle while the last, the "Kali-Yuga", is a time of darkness and distance
from the light of the principle.
Guenon's book in made up of forty chapters which can be
divided into three general sections. The first six or seven chapters lay out and
explain the metaphysical principles needed to understand his critique of the
modern world. In the next sixteen chapters he applies these principles to
various aspects of modernity. In the remaining chapters he delineates the stages
of the continuing movement away from the light of principles.
The first section is the most challenging but is essential
for a full appreciation of the rest of the book. To begin, Guenon distinguishes
two correlative metaphysical principles "Purusha" and "Prakriti." These are
Hindu terms for the what, in the West since Aristotle, has been known as "act"
and "potency." However, although he acknowledges their equivalence to the
Aristotelian "act" and "potency, Guenon translates these terms as "essence" and
"substance." While there are reasons for this, such a translation opens up much
room for confusion. This is because these terms have been used in a different
way for hundreds of years by Christian Philosophy. This is an involved subject,
but not merely one of terminology. Rather it opens a window on to two very
different, although not diametrically opposed, metaphysics, one Christian the
other (Guenon's) Vedantist. In any case, the reader should study these first
chapters with care in order to properly grasp Guenon's meaning.
All of what Guenon calls "manifestation" (i.e. the created
universe) is composed of "Purusha" and "Prakriti." On the terrestrial plane
these principles can be spoken of analogically in terms of "quality" and
"quantity." Thus the conditions that limit the earthly world also participate in
the principles of quality and quantity. Among these conditions are space and
time. One of the most significant of Guenon's points is that while the modern
mentality sees only quantitative aspects of space and time they cannot be so
reduced. What Guenon has to say on this matter is very interesting, but the key
point to see, in order to understand the shape of the book as a whole, is that
symbolically the qualitative aspect of space is "above" and the quantitative
aspect "below" just as in time the qualitative aspect is "before" and the
quantitative aspect "after." As a result, just as terrestrial manifestation in
space is an issuing forth of multiplicity from unity, so manifestation in time
is a cyclic falling away from paradisal unity into dissolution.
Having set the stage with these principles, Guenon proceeds
in the second section to examine the ways in which the modern life is a dwelling
in these lower regions of time and space. He examines in depth and, as always,
in the light of traditional principles, a series of modern movements and
characteristics: industrialization, the cult of originality, dependence on
statistics, the tendency to oversimplify, the hatred of secrecy, rationalism,
materialism, mechanism, the love of "ordinary life", the degradation of coinage,
popularization, etc.
In the last section Guenon distinguishes two sub-phases of
the final phase of the "Kali-Yuga": "solidification" and "dissolution."
"Solidification" characterizes the hardcore materialist sub-phase of the
"Kali-Yuga", which is identical to the "reign of quantity" of the title. There
is a kind of stagnate and hopeless "security" that sets in during this sub-phase
because man has cut himself off from all influences outside the corporeal world.
However this "security" is an unstable illusion and soon "malefic" influences
begins to penetrate his materialist shell. This penetration marks the beginning
of the second sub-phase.
This sub-phase is "dissolution." It is does not exist in
air-tight distinction from "solidification" rather the two overlap, just as
"postmodernism" overlaps "modernism." In "dissolution" the materialist
pseudo-edifice of "solidification" crumbles to dust. "Pseudo-initiatic",
anti-traditional movements such as Theosophy and Spiritualism embody the
"spirit" of the "dissolution" sub-phase. These clear the ground a much greater
danger which comes at the very end of the "Kali-Yuga", a full-blown
"counter-tradition" with a "counter-initiation." If anti-traditional movements
are a "deviation" i.e. a straying from the traditional way,
"counter-traditional" movements lead their followers down the way opposite
tradition i.e. into the abyss .
The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade (Harvest
Books) In the "Sacred and the Profane", Mircea Eliade describes two
fundamentally different modes of experience: the traditional and the modern.
Traditional man or "homo religious" is open to experiencing the world as sacred.
Modern man however, is closed to these kinds of experiences. For him the world
is experienced only as profane. It is the burden of the book to show in what
these fundamentally opposed experiences consist. Traditional man often expresses
this opposition as real vs. unreal or pseudoreal and he seeks as much as
possible to live his life within the sacred, to saturate himself in reality.
According to Eliade the sacred becomes known to man because it manifests itself
as different from the profane world. This manifestation of the sacred Eliade
calls "hierophany". For Eliade this is a fundamental concept in the study of the
sacred and his book returns to it again and again.
The "Sacred and the Profane" is divided into four chapters dealing with space,
time, nature, and man. To these is appended a "Chronological Survey Of the
History of Religions as a Branch of Knowledge."
In CHAPTER ONE Eliade explores the "variety of religious
experiences of space". Modern man tends to experience all space as the same. He
has mathematize space, homogenizing it by reducing every space to the equivalent
of so many units of measurement. What differences there are between places are
usually due only to experiences an individual associates with a place not the
place itself, e.g. my birthplace, the place I fell in love, etc.
But religious man does not experience space in this way.
For him some space is qualitatively different. It is sacred, therefore strong
and meaningful. Other space is profane, chaotic, and meaningless. Traditional
man is unable to live in a profane world, because he cannot orientate himself.
In order to gain orientation he must first have a center. The center is not
arrived at by speculation or arbitrary decision but is given. A revelation of
the sacred, a hierophany establishes a center and the center establishes a world
because all other space derives its' meaning from the center.
CHAPTER TWO deals with sacred time. Here Eliade treats
briefly material he covers at greater length in "The Myth of the Eternal
Return". As with his experience of space, religious man experiences time as both
sacred and profane. Sacred time, the time of the festival, is a return to the
mythic time at the beginning of things, what Eliade calls "in illo tempore"
(Latin: "at that time"). Religious man wishes to always live in this strong
time. This is a wish to "return to the presence of the gods, to recover the
strong, fresh, pure world that existed "in illo tempore". According to Eliade
sacred or festive time is not accessible to modern man, because he sees profane
time as constituting the whole of his life and when he dies his life is
annihilated.
CHAPTER THREE is entitled "The Sacredness of Nature and
Cosmic Religion." Here Eliade explains that for religious man nature was never
merely "natural" but always expresses something beyond itself. For him the world
is symbolic or transparent; the world of the gods shines through his world. The
universe is seen as an ordered whole which manifests different modalities of
being and the sacred.
Eliade goes on to explores certain key symbols of the
sacred: sky, waters, earth, vegetation, and the moon. Within these categories
Eliade gives special attention to Christian baptism and the Tree of Life.
Needless to say, modernity is characterized by a desacralization of nature.
The FOURTH and final CHAPTER covers the sanctification of
human life. Sanctification allows religious man to live an "open existence."
This means traditional man lives his life on two planes. He lives his everyday
life, but he also shares in a life beyond the everyday, the life of the cosmos
or the gods. This "twofold plane" of human and cosmic life is aptly expressed in
traditional man's experience of himself and his dwelling as a microcosm or
little universe.
Much of this chapter deals with the triplet
"body-house-cosmos" and with the meaning of initiations. Initiation is the way
traditional man sanctifies his life. It contains a uniquely religious view of
the world, because he considers himself unfinished or imperfect. Thus his
natural birth must be completed by a series of second or spiritual births. This
is accomplished by "rites of passage" which are initiations An initiation is a
kind of birth, but it is always accompanied by death to the state left behind.
The excellence of "The Sacred and the Profane" lies in its'
combination of brevity and startling depth of insight. Eliade writes with
simplicity and clarity about matters of profound import to human life. This is
scholarship at its' best: one pauses often, not caught in a tangle of verbiage
but lost in wonder.
The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History by Mircea Eliade,
Willard R. Trask (Princeton University Press) Stated most simply, this is a
study of two understandings of what it means to exist in time: the archaic or
traditional and the modern. According to Eliade man has traditionally sought to
conform his actions in time to primordial or mythic actions performed by gods or
heroes in the beginning of time. By conforming his actions to those performed in
the beginning or as Eliade puts it "in illo tempore", traditional man gives
significance to those actions. He saves his life in time from the terrors of
meaninglessness. Modern man on the other hand, has lost or rejected the
archetypical world, the world of eternity. He sees nothing beyond the world of
time. Modern man, according to Eliade is "historical man." Rather than seeking
to transcend history, he "consciously and voluntarily creates history." He is
"the man who is in so far as he makes himself, within history."
This neat division is complicated however, by the Judaic
prophets and Christianity. The God of the Jewish people is a personal God who
intervenes in history and reveals his will through events. "Historical facts
thus become 'situations' of man in respect to God, and as such they acquire a
religious value that nothing had previously been able confer on them." The
relationship with Yahweh brings into play a new element according to
Eliade--faith. Christianity takes up the Jewish understanding and amplifies it.
For Christianity the meaning of history "is unique because the Incarnation is a
unique fact." Yet the archaic understanding of returning to the archetype is not
altogether rejected by Christianity, but woven into its' new understanding of
the uniqueness of historical events.
This essay spans 162 pages that are divided into four large
chapters with subheadings. The first chapter introduces the notions of the
archetype, the return to the archetype, and their relation to sacred and profane
time and place. The second chapter deals in depth with sacred time as a return
to eternity. The third chapter examines suffering and the return to the
archetype. The forth chapter looks at the modern understanding of history as it
relates to the archaic. The book includes and extensive bibliography and an
index.
No summary can do justice to the depth, range, and
brilliance of Eliade's essay. His knowledge of religions is damn near
encyclopedic. He opens up so many interesting avenues for further thought that
reading him is like having your brain fertilized. This book is must reading for
anyone interested in religion, myth, philosophy of history, personalism,
liturgy, or the idea of progress. If you are interested in traditionalist
thinkers such as Rene Guenon or Ananda Coomaraswamy you will also want to check
out Eliade.
Dionysus: Myth and Cult by Walter F. Otto, Robert B. Palmer (Indiana
University Press) Water F. Otto's Dionysus: Myth and Cult is a difficult but
extremely rewarding study not only of the god Dionysus but of myth and cult as
well. The book is divided into two parts. The first looks at the meaning of myth
and cult and their relationship, the second attempts to arrive at the essential
characteristic of Dionysus. By no means should you skip the first part. In it
Otto lays the groundwork for his penetrating analysis of the god. It is a
scintillatingly brilliant and illuminatingly original exposition of the meaning
and origins of myth and cult. Anyone interested in Greek religion or for that
matter liturgy alone, should read it. Although written over forty years ago it
will still challenge and startle. Otto is gifted with a poetic depth of
perception and gnomic expressiveness worthy almost of Heraclitus. For example at
one point he states: "The more alive this life becomes, the nearer death draws,
until the supreme moment-the enchanted moment when something new is created-when
death and life meet in an embrace of mad ecstasy."
Otto holds that "The true visage of every true god is the
visage of a world." In the second part he sets about discovering the form or
visage of Dionysus. This he brilliantly lays out in chapters dealing with every
aspect of the god. Chapters include: The Vine, The Somber Madness, Dionysus and
the Element of Moisture, Dionysus and the Women, and Dionysus and Apollo. I will
not attempt to recount his conclusions. Get the book and read them in Otto's
lapidary language. Don't be put off from reading this book if you don't know
Greek. While there are a fair number of untransliterated words, you can
understand the meaning of the sentences from the context. However, be aware that
this is not "lite" reading but a serious study that requires and will repay
thought. The book itself is a handsome, sturdy paperback with glued signatures
History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism by Elizabeth De
Michelis (Continuum International) In recent years yoga and meditation have
become mass market pursuits in the West. A History of Modern Yoga traces this
phenomenon back to its ideological roots in the esoteric circles of late
eighteenth-century Bengal, and follows some of its main developments to date.
Fully-fledged Modern Yoga, the author argues, started with the publication of
Swami Vivekananda's seminal Raja Yoga (1896), in which Patañjali's Yoga
Sutras were reconfigured along the lines of a then emerging New Age style of
secularized and individualistically oriented religiosity.
What exactly are yoga and
meditation as taught and practised today? Many committed practitioners and
sympathisers take them to be straight continuations, or even rediscoveries, of
ancient South Asian religious practices, but use peculiarly modem ideas when
they define them as 'powerful tools for cultivating one's human potential' and
as ultimately aimed at achieving 'self-realization'. Thus, despite the fact that
Modern Yoga encapsulates many religio-philosophical presuppositions (some of
which are discussed In this book), it is often characterized as a 'philosophy'
or as 'a way of life' rather than as 'religion' per se.
In order to map this unknown
territory, this book offers a four-fold typology of Modern Yoga comprising
Modern Psychosomatic, Modern Meditational, Modern Postural and Modern
Denominational forms. Special attention is then given to Modern Postural Yoga as
practised today In the USA, Britain and other English-speaking countries and
milieus. The theory and practice of lyengar Yoga - one of the most influential
schools of Modern Postural Yoga - are analysed in this context, while the
conclusion shows how a typical Modern Postural Yoga session may be interpreted
to reveal the forms and contents of a healing ritual of secular religion.
Modern Yoga draws conceptual
models, themes, terminology and imagery from the classical Hindu tradition, but
is essentially rooted in the encounter between tradition and modernity of which
the British domination of India was the first example in history. As Halbfass
notes, since Rammohan Roy's time (1774–1833) it has become increasingly obvious
that the European, i.e., primarily British, presence in India was not just
another case of foreign invasion and domination, or of cross-cultural,
interreligious "encounter". Instead, it was an encounter between tradition and
modernity, i.e., an exposure to new forms of organization and administration, to
unprecedented claims of universality and globalization, to rationalization,
technology, and a comprehensive objectification of the world. It also meant the
advent of a new type of objectification of the Indian tradition itself, an
unprecedented exposure to theoretical curiosity and historical "understanding,"
and to interests of research and intellectual mastery.
As the same author further
remarks, the Indian response to Europe "has many levels and facets.” Numerous
aspects of this East–West encounter have been explored in greater or lesser
depth. One crucial interlocutor in this multifarious dialogue, however, has been
consistently overlooked, namely Western esotericism. This worldview or form of
thought has played an especially important role in religious matters, and its
influence has been pervasive in certain modern re-elaborations of Hinduism,
including Modern Yoga. This oversight has left a gap in the arguments and
analyses of many otherwise valuable and accurate scholarly discussions relating
to this subject.
An interesting example of this
is provided by Raymond Schwab who comments that 1875 marks the close of a
"heroic age", covering the previous hundred years, during which the Orient was
`rediscovered' by the West. He then mentions that the end of this era was marked
by two opposite events. The first was the foundation of the Parisian Ecole des
Hautes Etudes in 1868, which included Indic studies as part of its curriculum:
Schwab comments that the new "integral humanism" born of the Oriental
Renaissance had gained official recognition. The second event, "on which it
is not necessary to dwell" was the appearance, in 1875, of the Theosophical
Society. It is obvious that Schwab has little time for esoteric movements and
for their modem manifestations. As he is more interested in the cultured aspects
of Western literature and philosophy than in forms of belief and religiosity,
however, the fact that he disregards these phenomena does not detract from his
overall arguments.
More problematic, at least in
principle, is the position of Mircea Eliade, who in his classic work on yoga
does discuss, centrally, how key religio-philosophical topics have been shaped
by centuries of yoga history. As he introduces his subject and comments on the
modern situation, however, he mentions the "detestable `spiritual' hybridism
inaugurated by the Theosophical Society and continued, in aggravated forms, by
the countless pseudomorphs of our time". Because he refuses to take into account
such esoterico-occultistic groups, however, he fails to explain or even comment
upon how and why these phenomena affected the yogic tradition, when it could be
argued that many of his readers would have wanted (or maybe needed) to find out
more about this very matter.
It is not Schwab's and
Eliade's value judgements that are at stake here, but the reasons that led them
to these omissions. The fact that they obviously disliked these phenomena and
refused to talk about them or to acknowledge their formative influence is not
going to make them go away. And neither are the alarmist cries and partisan
campaigns conducted by "anti-cult" movements engaged in fighting certain
(admittedly at times extreme and controversial) manifestations of modern
esotericism. As aspects of esotericism and occultism become pervasive in
contemporary developed societies, however, maybe the time has come to look them
straight in the face instead of attacking them indiscriminately or, at the
opposite end of the spectrum of reaction, pretending that they are not there at
all.
Such `intellectual myopia'
towards esotericism has been especially pervasive in the study of modern and
contemporary Hinduism. A relatively recent example shows the type of
misunderstanding (largely caused by unawareness of esoteric trends) that the
present work is trying at least in part to redress. In an interesting
contribution discussing the making of modern Hinduism Ninian Smart describes,
very poignantly, the "new ideology" (1982: 140) that was at the forefront of
this process. His usually penetrating analysis, however, becomes imprecise when
he describes Ramakrishna and Vivekananda as "pioneers of the new Hinduism"
(ibid.: 144). While Vivekananda was indeed such a "pioneer", Ramakrishna was not
– even though the official version of facts propagated by the Ramakrishna
movement does represent him as such. As the present work argues, the teachings
made so popular by Vivekananda (including Modern Yoga) draw only superficially
from Ramakrishna's own. If we look at historical and textual evidence, rather
than at conventional narratives and hagiographies, we will see that,
notwithstanding his reliance on Ramakrishna as ultimate spiritual exemplar,
Vivekananda was inheritor to the intellectual tradition of the Brahmo Samaj.
The type of construct proposed
by Smart, in which Ramakrishna is said to be a "pioneer" along with Vivekananda,
highlights a confusion that is very widespread at both etic and emic levels of
discourse East and West, i.e. the confusion between `traditional' (or
`classical') and `modern' forms of Hinduism. Modern under-standings of Hinduism,
and more specifically Neo-Vedanta, have been made to represent the whole of the
Hindu tradition vis-à-vis audiences (both East and West) that had little chance
to know otherwise. Modern Western esotericism, and especially the occultistic
branch of it referred to as `New Age religion' has been especially receptive to
Neo-Vedantic teachings, which it has eagerly absorbed and nurtured in its quest
to find alternatives to Western mainstream culture.
It is in the interweaving and
intersecting of these cultural trajectories that we find an interesting
proliferation of Modern Yoga forms. Mapping them out and retracing their history
can help us to under-stand the role played by esoteric currents in the shaping
of modern Hinduism, and how Neo-Vedanta and New Age religion have influenced and
supported each other in providing forms of religiosity suited to today's
cultural temper. By exposing this so far Sarasvati-like invisible intellectual
stream, certain differences between modern and more traditional forms of
Hinduism, so far only sporadically acknowledged, should become more apparent. It
is hoped that the contents of this book may contribute to a more mature
understanding not only of Modern Yoga, but also of certain forms of Neo-Hinduism
(including Neo-Vedanta), and of those forms of modern and con-temporary
religiosity in which `Oriental' and more specifically Indian influences play a
part.
Chapter 1 defines the
historical and sociological frameworks used as analytical grids in the present
work. Drawing mainly from Hanegraaff (1996) and, to a lesser extent, from
sociological material, a relatively in-depth definition of Western esotericism
and of the historical developments that this form of thought has undergone from
the Renaissance onward is looked into. The emergence of New Age religion at the
turn of the nineteenth century (as opposed to the New Age movement, which only
emerged in the 1970s), important because of its close connections with
Neo-Vedanta, is briefly discussed in this context.
Moving next to an examination
of modern Bengali intellectual circles (mid-eighteenth century onwards), a case
is made for a strong (if so far largely unacknowledged) presence of Western
esoteric cur-rents in these milieus. The institutional and ideological growth of
the Brahmo Samaj throughout the nineteenth century is examined from this
specific angle, arguing that this modern religious movement should be seen as
the structural correlative of the Western ones that contributed to the
elaboration of New Age religion. Indeed, New Age religion and the Neo-Vedanta of
the Brahmo Samaj, it is argued, have been in dialogue and in close creative
contact from the last quarter of the nineteenth century onwards. One of the main
and best-known actors in this context was Swami Vivekananda, presented in
Chapter 2 as the chief ideological inheritor of a specific line of Brahmo
leaders (Rammohan Roy, Debendranath Tagore, Keshubchandra Sen). Here special
attention is paid to the emergence of proto Modern Yoga ideas and practices: it
is in fact on the basis of his predecessors' elaborations that Vivekananda would
start to experiment with yogic ideas, eventually producing the earliest
formulation of Modern Yoga in his Raja Yoga (1896).
How Vivekananda came to
compose this seminal text, powerfully bringing together Eastern and Western
esoteric teachings, is narrated m Chapter 3. This chapter reconstructs the
untold esoteric story of the famous Bengali `patriot-prophet', highlighting
various phases of his often tormented religious quest, his partaking of Brahmo
life and ideals and, eventually, his `turn West'. It is at this point that the
Swami proceeded to assimilate cutting-edge Western esotericism and occultism, to
then introduce them into Neo-Vedantic discourses. Modern Yoga was formulated in
this context and, arguably, became Vivekananda's most influential and productive
contribution to modern forms of religiosity.
Chapter 4 analyses in some
depth the two key Neo-Vedantic concepts of "God-realization" and
"Self-realization". Originally inspired by the central Upanisadic terms
brahmajñana and atmajñana, these English words progressively took on a semantic
life of their own, and were eventually adopted (along with other Neo-Vedantic
ideas and models) by New Age religion. As they were elaborated in the same
Brahmo milieus described in the preceding chapters, this chapter looks at the
same historical period and place (nineteenth-century Bengal), but from the more
abstract point of view of the development of religio-philosophical ideas. Side
connections with related speculative currents, such as those cultivated by the
Theosophical Society and by sections of the medical profession interested in
hypnosis and mesmerism, are also referred to.
With Chapter 5 we move to an
in-depth analysis of Modern Yoga proper. Because of the foundational role played
by Vivekananda's Raja Yoga, this text is examined in detail. Vivekananda's work
is based on the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, the central text of the Yoga darsana
(religio-philosophical or speculative "viewpoint"), and more specifically on
Patañjali's astangayoga ("eight limbs of yoga", YS II. 28 to III. 8). Mirroring
the utilitarian and positivistic spirit of the time, Vivekananda attempts to
modernize these teachings and to make them relevant, meaningful and useful to
himself and to his contemporaries. Because he starts from largely `disenchanted'
premises, he first of all attempts to rationalize yoga's cosmology in order to
make it more `scientific'. This results in a quasi-materialistic
Naturphilosophie, which will influence the rest of his elaborations. Raja Yoga
also introduces what we may call the two pillars of Modern Yoga theory and
practice: the Prana Model and the Samadhi Model. Based to some extent on
Patañjali's teachings, these two models consist mainly of Neo-Vedantic ideas
mixed with Western mesmeric, Harmonial and psychological speculations. Often
adopted by New Age groups or individuals sympathetic to Oriental teachings, they
will become a point of ongoing contact and interchange, and at times of complete
overlap, between Neo-Vedanta and New Age religion.
Chapter 6 provides an overview
of the ways in which Modern Yoga developed throughout the twentieth century,
with special reference to the West and more specifically to Britain. Soon after
the publication of Raja Yoga, `specialist' styles of yoga started to emerge,
emphasizing a variety of physical and mental practices, or specific combinations
of the two. A typology of forms of Modern Yoga is provided in this context. The
second part of the century witnessed the relatively fast expansion and,
eventually, globalization of Modern Yoga through the three phases of
Popularization (1950s to mid-1970s), Consolidation (mid-1970s to late 1980s) and
Acculturation (late 1980s to date). As Modern Yoga became progressively more
attuned to the secular, pragmatic and rationalistic temper of the West, it was
accommodated in a twofold manner: at the margins of `health and fitness'
concerns on the one hand, and within the conceptual and institutional sphere of
alternative medicine on the other.
At this point in the chapter
we turn our attention to a case study of the Iyengar School of Yoga, arguably
the most influential school of Modern Postural Yoga to date. The last part of
the chapter sets forth the history of the school and of its founder, B. K. S.
Iyengar, through the three periods of Popularization, Consolidation and
Acculturation.
Following that, Chapter 7
examines the history of Iyengar Yoga from the more specifically
religio-philosophical point of view. This is done by analysing the most
significant textual output of the school, and by combining this information with
extensive data gathered over more than two decades of fieldwork in Modern Yoga
circles. The modes and content of oral and written transmission of Iyengar Yoga
theory and practice are discussed on this basis, and contextualized within the
wider frame-work of Neo-Vedanta, New Age religion and, more generally, modern
and contemporary forms of religiosity.
The concluding Chapter 8
refers more directly to fieldwork data and to grassroots perceptions, uses and
conceptualization of Modern Postural Yoga. These data are tentatively discussed
within the framework of anthropological theories of ritual. The Modern Postural
Yoga session, in fact, whether engaged in under the guidance of a teacher or by
oneself, emerges as an excellent contemporary example of secularized healing
ritual. The standard threefold sub-division of ritual events (separation,
transition, and incorporation phases) is obvious in its structure. The
polyvalence of its theories and practices, however, allows each practitioner to
adopt more or less secularized interpretations of the discipline, thus making it
especially suited to largely secularized and developed multicultural, multifaith
societies.
The Yoga of Sound: The Healing Power of Chant and Mantra with Audio CD by
Russill Paul (New World Library) The eye dominates the world, calculating and
evaluating through the visual. Yet sound and music are the essential carrier
waves of consciousness. For thousands of years, Hindu spirituality has
understood the profound effect that sound has on human well-being. Largely
unknown in the West, yet developing alongside the popular form of hatha yoga
that has swept the world, the yoga of sound is a 3,500-year-old spiritual system
for reducing stress and maintaining health. In this inspiring book and
accompanying CD, renowned musician and teacher Russill Paul explores the four
powerful streams of this system: mantras (sound), mudras (sacred gestures),
pranayama (breath control), and dhyana (meditation). Like his award-winning
music, Paul's presentation of this ancient tradition is accessible for modern
Western tastes and lifestyles. In lucid exercises presented both in the book and
the CD, Paul shows how everyone can learn the art of mantra simply by training
the voice, and how these practices can help reduce stress, enhance emotional
well-being, and optimize the flow of energy within the body.
Excerpt: Over the past twenty years, yoga and music – two
powerful approaches to optimal health – have garnered enormous credibility in
the western world. Health, we are fast realizing, is not simply the absence of
disease: it is a condition of our soul that invigorates our being and enables us
to derive the most from life. The yoga of sound is a highly specialized yogic
system and methodology that brings together universal.. healing principles found
in yoga and music into a single, unified approach. Requiring neither the extreme
flexibility of yoga postures, nor the complexities of music, the yoga of sound
combines the best of both these worlds.
Largely unknown in the West, yet developing alongside the
popular form of hatha yoga that has swept the world, the yoga of sound is a
broad term for a 3500-year old spiritual system that we can effectively use
today to reduce stress, develop our health, and realize spiritual awakenings
leading to enlightenment. It is no longer possible to ignore or downplay the
role of spiritual practice upon our health and well-being. The goals of this
well-tested spiritual system address healing, as well as enlightenment, since
one is not possible without the other: they are the two faces of the genuine
happiness coin.
As unified system, the yoga of sound addresses the
challenges of modern living, particularly in the west, drawing meaningful
practices and insights from four powerful streams of sacred sound that developed
within the Hindu tradition– shabda yoga, shakti yoga, bhava yoga, and nada yoga.
The first three streams deal with mantras, which are sonic formulae that contain
healing and transformative power. The fourth stream, nada yoga, which means
"sound yoga", is actually the most common technical term for sonic yoga in
Hinduism. But nada yoga does not deal with multifarious applications of mantras,
which is why it is treated as a stream all by itself in the yoga of sound
system.
For thousands of years, Hindu spirituality, which has given
the world Yoga, as well Ayurveda – the world's oldest medical system, has
understood the profound effect that sound has on our well-being. Western
medicine is rapidly rediscovering this today in the successful treatment of
Alzheimer's, cancer, pre and post-surgical trauma, insomnia and even the
dissolving of kidney stones. Overwhelming clinical studies verify that the
application of sound therapies helps lower heart rate, reduce blood pressure,
produce endorphins (the body's natural painkillers), nourish DNA, and generate
important proteins in body such as interleukin-1. Vocal chanting is particularly
effective because the palate and the human ear (much like the hand and foot in
reflexology) function as blueprints for the body's energy system. This is why,
the use of our voice through increased dynamics in speech and chanting can
stimulate a wide spectrum of energy releases in our body, contributing
effectively to increased health and vitality.
Long ago, the western world was also acutely aware of the
curative powers of sound. In ancient Greece, for instance, medicine was used to
keep the body in tune — in harmonic alignment with nature and the universe. All
forms of sickness, both physical and mental, were considered musical
inconsistencies. Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, often took his
patients to the healing temple of Asclepius. There, music was used to
reestablish the natural harmony of the body. Present day molecular biologist
Candice Pert corroborates this ancient woridview in her groundbreaking thesis
Molecules
of Emotions. She explains that hormones and
neurotransmitters throughout the human organism communicate with each other
through distinctive vibrational sympathies. In other words, when there is
harmony in the body, our cells are humming along with an empathic music that
minimizes dissonance. To fall out of tune is to break down communication among
our cells and to literally loose the music.
The yoga of sound offers us potent sources of energy in the
form of its sonic formulae called mantras. Mantras are spiritual pharmaceuticals
that can be used to dissolve obstructions in the flow of our energy, boost the
charge of our nervous system and connect our being to vast reservoirs of energy
within ourselves. A tremendous amount of research and development has gone into
the construction of mantras. Sanskrit, the language in which mantras are
composed, literally means: "well put together". Recent discoveries in quantum
physics reveal that the manifest universe is composed of vibrating frequencies
of energy — sound, in other words. Mantras are constructed upon exactly the same
notion — the individual letters of the Sanskrit alphabet being derived from the
basic strands of energy vibrating at the core of our existence. This astounding
parallel lends immense credibility to the crucial role that sonic technology –
and particularly mantras – can play in determining a comprehensive approach to
our health and well-being.
As stated earlier, discovering the benefits of sound yoga
doesn't necessarily require learning difficult postures or developing extreme
levels of flexibility; neither does it require you to be musically talented or
have a great voice. The simple joy in using one's voice to pronounce certain
sounds in rhythmic combinations and vary a few tones is enough to generate
powerful chemicals in the body. Along with mantras, the yoga of sound's holistic
approach to health and enlightenment makes use of a few simple postures, some
special types of breathing and certain body motions. Sound is closely associated
with the soul — the part of us that reflects something deep and eternal. This is
why most illnesses indicate soul issues, and why therefore both sound and music
— the language of our soul — can help restore our health.
Shabda yoga is literally "word yoga" that derives from
India's Vedic tradition. Shabda refers to the spoken," sounded," or uttered
word, and the principles of shabda yoga can be applied to the written word as
well, since a word is "sounded" in our minds as we read or write it. The
extraordinary discovery of Japanese quantum physicist Masuro Emoto's in the last
decade provides us with irrefutable evidence that human energy – in the form of
thoughts, words, ideas, and music – has a vibrational quality that affects the
molecular structure of water. Positive sounds have a transformative effect,
beautifying and clarifying water crystals; negative sounds actually distort the
shape and color of the molecular structure. When we reflect on the fact that our
physical bodies consist of about 70 percent water, and that an equal percentage
of the earth's surface is water, we begin to gain a sense of the tremendous
ability we each have at our disposal to consciously use our words and sounds to
affect our health and well-being in positive ways.
Shakti yoga, the second stream of Sound Yoga, which derives
from the Tantric tradition, uses raw, potent sounds known as bija mantras that
have immediate physiological effects. These sounds, comparable to spiritual
pharmaceuticals, can be used to awaken, unblock, transform and distribute energy
in and through the body. Yoga has come as a great gift from the East to the West
because it heals the fragmentation created by a mechanistic worldview at the
fundamental physical-sexual level. After hundreds of years of denigrating the
body in Christian theology and prayer, Yoga has enabled the Western world to
rediscover the body with fresh eyes — as an instrument to be "tuned," rather
than subjugated. Although yoga postures, stretches and breathing techniques
enhance our physical prowess and vitality, the knowledgeable application of
mantras helps to refine our consciousness and accelerate our spiritual
realizations to amazing levels of depth. Ideally, it is best to combine hatha
yoga with mantras to ensure that both body and soul are well nourished. The two
complement each other perfectly. In fact, the use of sound, in the form of
mantras, has accompanied the practice of hatha yoga postures since Hinduism's
earliest beginnings.
The third stream, bhava yoga, is the devotional
call-and-response chanting of Divine names and attributes that has gained
widespread popularity in yoga studios across America. However, kirtan is only
one avenue to the depths of sound yoga, albeit an important one, since it
reaches into the heart. But excessively focusing on the heart leaves us poorly
equipped to deal with the challenging dynamics of our present-day world. Hence,
three streams of mantra – shabda, shakti and bhava, are combined in the Yoga of
Sound as an integrated system. In other words, the knowledge of shakti (sound
that is healing and evolutionary in its energy), shabda (sounds as words that
can manifest our desires), and bhava (sounds that create the state of bhakti, or
devotion), together form a powerful triangle representing power, wisdom and
beauty. These are three essential qualities that the sound yogi seeks to develop
in his or own voice, because the human voice never fails to accurately reflect
the underlying conditions of the human spirit. Conversely, to develop the voice
is to develop the spirit – a profound insight offered us by the legendary Sufi
teacher Hazarat Inayat Khan. Kirtan is no doubt an important step toward
recovering the soul of Yoga in the West, but much more is possible when all the
streams of sonic mysticism are taken into account. You might wonder if you need
to be musical to embark on this journey. You don't, but you will find yourself
becoming more musical as your sonic yoga practice develops.
Nada yoga brings together the psychophysical techniques of
hatha yoga, the cosmology of Tantra and deep forms of meditation based on
attunement to sound frequencies. Together, these four streams of sacred sound
can and should be unified into a single, integrated approach: Shabda yoga
providing strength and the capability to manifest our desires through the
articulate power of the uttered word; shakti yoga connecting us intimately to
the flow of energy in our body and in the natural world; bhava Yoga awakening
joy, love and beauty in the our heart through devotion; and nada yoga bringing
together the most sacred in music, yoga and meditation practice.
As mentioned, the objectives of the yoga of sound are
healing and enlightenment, two sides of the same coin that represents true
happiness in life. The sacred practice of mantra is not absolutely essential
toward the realization of spiritual consciousness any more than a physically fit
body is capable of facilitating spiritual enlightenment — they are both a means
of refining our awareness and streamlining our energy toward the ultimate goal
of samadhi. Samadhi, the true goal of yoga, and of all spiritual practice, is
authentic spiritual awakening that is accompanied by the joy of being healed on
all levels: one is not possible without the other. The yoga of sound system,
which offers us a knowledgeable vocabulary of mantras and their applications,
helps us effectively deal with stress and depression in innumerable ways,
provides us with powerful sources of spiritual energy, and keeps us attuned to
the high vibration of Samadhi. The secrets of sound yoga lie in knowing when,
how and why we can use certain mantras, the various dynamics one can employ in
their wide range applications, and direct intimacy with the extraordinary fields
of spiritual energy that these powerful sounds embody. Mantras are ultimately
mystical vehicles programmed with energy and intelligence that can guide and
assist us in our journey toward greater healing and enlightenment.
The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism edited by Gavin D. Flood (Blackwell
Companions to Religion: Blackwell) The purpose of this volume is to make
available to a wide audience some of the most recent scholarship on the
religions of South Asia within the broad category of Hinduism. While many
scholars here would wish to place that category under scrutiny, there are
nevertheless continuities of tradition and common features that have persisted
over very long periods in South Asia. The intention of the book is to cover the
major historical trajectories of the traditions that have led to Hinduism and to
present accounts of recent developments of Hinduism along with some of the
contemporary traditions that comprise it. There are, of course, problems in
applying the term "religion" to the history of South Asia, implying as it does
in the West a distinction between religion and governance or between religion
and science, which have not been universal distinctions. For this reason the
book includes an account of historical developments in Indian science along with
discussions of philosophy, religion, and politics.
The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism contains essays both about the past –
stretching back to the time of the composition of the Veda – and about the
contemporary situation. Text-historical, anthropological, philosophical,
theological, and cultural-critical approaches are therefore represented. This is
in line with the broad belief that textual study can contribute to anthropology
in South Asia and anthropology can illumine texts. And tools derived from more
recent cultural criticism – especially feminism and postcolonial discourse –
reveal dimensions to history and the study of texts that would not otherwise be
seen. In these pages we also find theological and philosophical engagement with
Hindu traditions. There are many ways of studying past cultures and
civilizations, but arguably the best means of gaining access to the thoughts and
feelings of people in the past and the institutions they inhabited is through
the texts they produced. There has been discussion in recent years about the
rematerialization of culture and the need to examine material culture in
history. While archaeology, epigraphy, and the history of art are undoubtedly
important, the emphasis of most scholars in this volume is on text and different
readings of text, although some relate text to material history where this is
possible and to contemporary practice. Conversely, the essays focusing on
anthropological fieldwork often draw on the texts of tradition.
Inevitably, although unfortunately, there are gaps in what
could be covered in the present volume. This is due partly to restrictions of
space but also due to other contingencies beyond the editor's control. We do not
have, for example, specific essays on the Indus Valley civilization, yoga,
ritual, the Hindu diaspora, the Goddess and the temple, nor on some major
regional traditions. But even so, these essays present systematic accounts of
the history of traditions and their texts, examples of important regional
traditions, and accounts of the rise of modern Hinduism and its contemporary
connections with nationalism and the politics of identity.
The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism uses the standard, scholarly
transliteration of Indian alphabets, although this is not consistently applied
to all place names and some proper names. There is considerable variation in
practice, as many names have common anglicized forms.
The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism is divided into four main parts,
theoretical issues, text and tradition, systematic thought, and society,
politics, and nation. Each of these either surveys a general area within the
wider field, provides a discussion of specific tradition or region, or
approaches material from a fresh perspective.
The first part, "Theoretical Issues," contains two very
different essays. Gauri Viswanathan opens the inquiry by examining the relation
of British colonialism to Hinduism and how the inability to perceive Hinduism in
its own terms led to a distortion within comparative religion. She also unravels
the limitations within the theory of the construction of Hinduism itself. David
Smith, by contrast, in a somewhat controversial essay argues against recent
postcolonial critique and defends the study of Indian languages and systems of
thought by Western scholars in the last two centuries, critically examining the
arguments of Inden and Said. Through these two essays we form a picture of some
of the major issues that have dominated discussions about the nature of Hinduism
and its study and very different understandings of them.
The largest part of the book, "Text and Tradition,"
systematically provides an overview of the major textual traditions in Sanskrit
and provides three examples of traditions in Indian vernacular languages. On the
assumption that a textual source cannot be separated from the tradition of which
it is a part, this section gives an account of both major texts themselves and
the histories of the traditions that revere and preserve them.
Beginning with the foundations of the textual traditions in
the Vedas and Upanishads, Michael Witzel presents a comprehensive account of the
texts and their categorization, the ritual traditions of which they are a part,
and the historical developments to the period of the formation of the sutra
literature. We know much more now about this period, about vedic dialects for
example, and Witzel brings this recent scholarship to bear. Ludo Rocher takes up
some of these developments in his essay on Dharmasástras, the treatises on law,
giving an account of the texts themselves, problems of dating this material, and
the importance and impact of the Dharmasástras on the later system of law,
especially during the colonial period. The great Indian epics are next
accounted for in John Brockington's essay. We see how major themes in the
traditions are developed at a narrative level in the texts and their impact on
the later traditions. Many themes, deities, and stories from the epics are
elaborated and developed in the vast body of "ancient" texts, the Puránas. Here
Freda Matchett guides us through a complex world of multiple narratives,
quasi-history, and sectarian divides and gives us an account of the history of
their. study. Some of the themes and narratives of the Epics and Purnas are also
found in the literatures of vernacular languages. The examples provided here
are by Norman Cutler, who problematizes the phrase "Tamil Hindu Literature" and
goes on to develop a fascinating account of devotion, poetry, ritual, and
narrative in court, temple, and village. Rich Freeman charts the development of
Kerala's Hindu literature, showing how the Kerala cultural context transforms
Tamil themes, and how the texts reflect socioreligious practice. Moving into a
very different world, Nancy Martin provides an account of devotional literature
in Hindi and the particular form of devotionalism that developed in the north,
focused on a transcendent being without qualities or form. The famous poet Kabir
is here placed in the context of this devotional movement.
From particular genres, we turn to Gavin Flood's chapter,
which presents a historical trajectory of Saivism. Flood shows how Saivas
considered their religious practices and beliefs to be authorized by the
Tantras, a revelation distinct from the Veda, and discusses the relation between
the Salva and Vaidika traditions. In a similar vein, Gérard Colas gives a
detailed account of the history of Vaisnava traditions based on Sanskrit and
Tamil sources. He shows how devotion to Vishnu articulates with the aristocracy,
the yogic and ascetic traditions, and discusses the forms of Vaisnavism in the
Pañcrátra and Vaikhánasa traditions, going on to discuss important later
developments as well. Vaisnavism (as did Saivism) expanded beyond the borders of
India into southeast Asia where it has left an important legacy. Cutting across
historical trajectories, being institutions common to the Saiva, Vaisnava, and
Vaidika traditions, we have the lifestyle options of the householder and the
renouncer. T. N. Madan has done very important work on this often neglected
aspect of Hinduism. In his essay he looks at what it is to be a householder and
examines the idea in the textual sources as both institution and ideal,
indicating values set against the value of renunciation and turning one's back
on family and society. Closely allied to Madan's essay in that both are
examining central institutions and realms of value within Hinduism, Patrick
Olivette discusses the renouncer tradition. Here Olivelle gives an account of
the origins and institution of renunciation, showing how the sources reveal a
tension between the ascetic values of renunciation and the values of the male
householder, discussed by Madan, to marry, father children, and perform ritual
enjoined on him by scripture.
Lastly in this part we look at the particularity of contemporary, regional
traditions, with two examples taken from different regions and contexts. Rich
Freeman describes the fascinating phenomenon of the teyyam, the ritualized
dance-possession rituals of Kerala performed annually by low-caste specialists.
Tracy Pintchman gives an account based on previously unpublished fieldwork, of
women's ritual devotions to Krishna in a Benares community, during the month of
Kártik.
Moving away from religious traditions and texts as such, part III is concerned
with systematic aspects of Indian thought. The part itself is divided into "The
Indian Sciences" and "Philosophy and Theology." The section on the Indian
sciences is a unique feature of this collection of essays, as these areas are
so often neglected in introductory texts and surveys such as this. Rationality
is not, of course, the sole possession of the West, and India (as did China)
developed very early an empirical investigation of the world, especially an
inquiry into language, along with more speculative, philosophical inquiry. The
purpose of this section is an examination of some of these developments by
scholars who have worked closely together on this project, and to emphasize the
importance of systematic, rational thinking that, at some levels, feeds directly
into the philosophical discourse of the traditions. Frits Staal, whose work has
done so much to highlight the scientific and systematic nature of early Indian
thought, begins with a brief account of science in India followed by an essay on
the science of language, a precursor to modern linguistics. Takao Hayashi then
discusses Indian mathematics and shows how mathematical knowledge developed from
practical concerns of calculation, not only in relation to state income, but in
relation to the need to make measurements for vedic ritual, particularly the
fire altar. More abstract considerations developed and Hayashi discusses, for
example, an Indian proof of Pythagorean theorem. While astrology is often
acknowledged as an important feature of Indian traditions, the way in which the
zodiacal signs relate to mathematics and temporal measurement is not often
explicated outside of specialist discussions. In his essay, Michio Yano explains
the way in which the science of heavenly bodies (jyotihsástra) developed, how
the Indians adopted the Greek zodiac, and how this science relates to the
measurement of time. Shifting from language, mathematics, and the cosmos to the
body, Dominik Wujastyk takes up the inquiry, showing how an early science of
medicine developed in India, a science that is still practiced today.
Related to the discussion of the Indian sciences we have
the development of logic and rational thought which is often directed to a
soteriological end in the Indian context. Jonardon Ganeri's essay takes us
through an account of the practice of reason and its application to the goals of
life. The various systems of Indian philosophy and theology developed assuming
these formal structures of argument. In his essay on "Hindu theology" Francis
Clooney critically examines this category and discusses some of the fundamental
theological problems as they are dealt with in the Indian sources. These include
important questions as to whether there is a transcendent source of being and
questions about the problem of evil and suffering, concerns shared by Western
theology as well. Clooney discusses responses to these questions through the
practice of learning from scripture, meditation, and reasoned reflection. This
very rich essay also discusses theological language, the community in which
theology takes place, and the style of theological commentary. Related to both
Indian linguistics and theology, the essay by André Padoux gives an excellent
account of the centrality of mantra in the history of Hindu traditions. He
discusses the origin and meaning of the word, of notable importance being
Abhinavagupta's definition of mantra as forms of thought leading to liberation.
Mantras occur early in the Veda but take on great importance in the Tantras,
where mantra is related to the structure of the hierarchical cosmos and to
consciousness.
The final part of the volume on "Society, Politics, and
Nation" examines sociopolitical themes of particular relevance to the
contemporary world. Having provided great historical sweeps of the traditions we
can now examine the development of Hinduism as an entity in the last two
centuries in more detail, the central organizing principle of society, namely
caste, the issue of nationhood, and the issue of gender. Declan Quigley's essay
on the caste system raises import-ant questions about the nature of social
organization in India and asks the central question whether Hinduism can be
separated from caste. Quigley thinks it can, but for interesting reasons that
take us into problems of ritual and the gift. The forces of modernity linked to
European ideas of progress and rationality have set themselves against caste.
In his essay on modernity and the rise of the Hindu reform movement, Dermot
Killingley traces the nineteenth-century history of Hindu reform with Rammohun
Roy, the rise of the Brahmo Samáj and Arya Samaj, and the relation of social
reform to the British rule of law interfacing with Hindu law. Developing the
history into the twentieth century, C. Ram Prasad shows the importance of the
idea of Hinduism in contemporary India and the wider Hindu world, discussing the
ideology of hindutva, the rise of Hindu nationalism, and political developments
in the last years of the twentieth century. In parallel to this theme, Sumathi
Ramaswamy shows how nationalism functions in relation to the Tamil language and
its personification in the Goddess Tamilttáy, a deity who performs a similar
function to Mother India (Bhárat Mátá). Vasudha Narayanan's essay on gender
takes the idea of the social construction of gender and examines this with
particular reference to the Sri Vaisnava tradition (previously contextualized in
Colas's essay). The issues raised by Narayanan of the relation of gender to sex,
of role play to devotional sensibilities, are centrally important in
understanding contemporary gender roles in Hindu society.
All of the essays in
The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism are by recognized experts in their
field. The reader will appreciate in the range of material covered not only the
richness and complexity of Hinduism, but also that Hinduism is a highly
contested area of discourse. Yet along with a sense of diversity and the
fragmentation of different traditions, historical periods, and problems, it is
also hoped that the reader will appreciate some of the links, common threads,
and issues that persistently reoccur in the history of this vast and complex
entity that "Hinduism" refers to.
Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions edited by Gudrun Buhnemann
(Brill's Indological Library, V 18: Brill Academic) Buhnemann’s interest in
mandalas goes back to a period in the 1980s when she conducted research in Pune,
Maharastra. The plan to publish a book on mandalas and yantras in the Hindu
traditions took shape over time as she observed the growing popular interest in
Tibetan Buddhist mandalas. Unlike the many Tibetan mandalas which include
pictorial representations of multiple deities, most published mandalas in the
Hindu traditions appear to be simpler and more abstract in design. However,
Hindu mandalas, especially from Nepal and Rajasthan, often include painted
images of deities. Complex mandalas are also described in texts, and the
practitioner is instructed to visualize multiple deities in the mandalas,
although these deities may not be represented.
Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions reproduces in line drawing and
rich color plates several mandala designs, some of which are reconstructtions
from texts. Since texts often do not specify all details of the mandalas, some
of these reconstructions are tentative.
With the exception of the sricakra, which has attracted
considerable interest, adequate attention has not been devoted to mandalas and
yantras in the Hindu traditions and their multiple uses. Unlike the approaches
of earlier books, which indiscriminately deal with Buddhist and Hindu mandalas
and which often arrive at generalized conclusions,
Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions attempts to clarify important
aspects of mandalas and yantras in specific Hindu traditions by presenting the
investigations of specialists in Hindu Tantrism. Given the fragmentary nature of
research in Hindu Tantrism it seems best to Buhnemann to avoid generalizations
and broad comparisons across traditions that have rarely taken into account
existing differences in ritual and ideology, and often turn out on closer
examination to be inaccurate. The complex Buddhist mandalas for their part merit
a separate study.
Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions contributes to a better
understanding of the mandala in South Asian traditions, other than than
Buddhist, and helps lay the foundation for future inquiries.
The essays in this book explore some aspects of mandalas
and yantras in the Smarta, Pancaratra, Saiva and Sakta traditions. An essay on
the vastupurusamandala and its relationship to architecture is also included. It
would have been useful to have essays on the use yantras in Indian medical
systems, astrology or folk traditions, or on geographical space as a mandala. It
was, however, according to Buhnemann not possible to find qualified
authors who could write these essays within the given time frame. Thus
Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions is a contribution to the study
of an area of South Asian culture which has hardly been researched, but it is
not an exhaustive treatment. This would have been an unrealistic goal, given the
extant mass of material on the topic.
In secondary sources, mandalas (and yantras) have been
described too uniformly as aids to meditation or visualization. While they
certainly function as meditational devices in some traditions (as, for instance,
the sricakra frequently does), this use of mandalas is but one aspect of a
larger picture. In this regard Helene. Brunner's paper in this volume is
significant, since she sets out to examine some popular notions about mandalas
critically and to emphasize other uses of mandalas in ritual. In architecture,
the notion of an 'allgoverning mandala' of symbolically significant dimensions
which underlies all buildings is frequently met with in the literature, and has
recently been challenged as not representive of complex ritual and architectual
practive within the broader Hindu tradition.
The first essay in this book is designed as an introduction
to the topic. Referring to H. Brunner and others, Buhnemann discusses the
meanings of mandala, yantra and cakra, and suggest distinctions among these
terms. This is followed by a treatment of different categories of mandalas,
yantras and cakras and their constituent parts.
In the next essay, Buhnemann focuses on mandala-like
structures and actual mandalas and yantras currently employed in the ritual
practice in Maharastra. In its first part, she discusses mandala-like
arrangements, such as the baliharanacakra and pancayatana shrines, along with
the navagrahamandala as an example of a mandala with a lotus design. A
description of two yantra structures follows. Together with the previous essay,
this section is intended to introduce the reader to basic concepts and mandala
designs in the Hindu traditions. The second part of the essay focuses on a
specific category of mandala called bhadramandalas. These are square-shaped
mandalas employed mainly in concluding ceremonies of religious observances
(vrata).
Marion Rastelli's essay focuses on the use of mandalas and
yantras in the Vaisnava Pancaratra tradition as based on original passages
from the Samhitas. It describes the selection, purification and ritual
acquisition of the mandala site, guidelines and materials used for drawing
mandalas, and the types of mandalas found in the texts. She then discusses the
multiple functions of mandalas in Pancaratra rituals. The choice of a mandala
for a rite is guided by the desire to achieve specific results. It depends on
the suitability of a mandala for a certain rite and the main deity worshipped in
it. The use of mandalas in initiations (diksa) is treated elaborately. Some
details of the ritual, such as the casting of a flower onto a mandala by the
blindfolded initiand, have parallels in Buddhist Tantric initiation rituals.
The deity is made to be present in a mandala by imposing the deity's mantras on
the mandala structure. Two important mandalas in the Pancaratra tradition are
the cakrabjamandala and the navapadmamandala. The Pancaratra Samhitas consider
the mandala a representation of the deity's body, and of the universe as well.
According to some Samhitas, emancipation is only possible through mandala
worship. Rastelli further discusses the significance of yantras in the
Pancaratra tradition. She focuses especially on the saudarsanayantra which is
considered so powerful that the person who wears it requires another yantra, the
'yantra of the wearer' (dharakayantra), to keep its power in check. As in the
case of mandalas, the material from which yantras are made is considered
essential for the efficacy of the rite. Different materials are believed to
produce different results. (The texts of the Saiva Siddhanta that Brunner
examines emphasize the varying efficacy of the materials from which mandalas
are constructed, from precious stones on downwards.)
The three following essays deal with aspects of the Saiva
traditions. Helene Brunner has been researching Saivagamas for more than thirty
years. Most of her work is written in French and therefore accessible to a more
limited readership. For this volume, her French paper, originally published in
Padoux's edited volume, Mantras et diagrammes rituels dans 1'hindouisme,' (1986:
11-35), was translated into English by R. Prevereau, M.A., and completely
revised and enlarged. Brunner's essay is divided into two parts. The first part
attempts to clarify the meaning and use of the terms mandala, yantra and cakra.
Her classification of different types of mandalas based on their ritual
application is of special interest. The second part describes the use of
mandalas in the ritual worship of Siva. Brunner reconstructs the
sarvatobhadramandala described in chapter 3 of the Saradatilaka, which is used
in an initiation (diksa) ritual, and analyzes its structure in detail. Finally,
she discusses the significance of mandalas in the Siddhanta School.
Judit Torzsok examines pre-11th-century Saiva mandalas as
icons which express a relationship between certain branches of Saivism and
between Saiva and non-Saiva groups. In the first part of her paper she deals
with the uses of the terms mandala and cakra, a topic also taken up by Brunner.
This leads into a discussion on how the circles (cakra) of deities are present
in a mandala. Torzsok then focuses on two kinds of mandalas: mandalas used in
initiations (diksa) and mandalas (and yantras) for the acquisition of
supernatural powers (siddhi). Giving examples from the Svacchandatantra, she
shows how mandalas can visually represent doctrines of other Saiva groups and
teachings of non-Saivas. Torzsok specifies three major strategies
(specialization, expansion and substitution) which are employed to adapt
mandalas to a specific purpose, such as the acquisition of supernatural powers.
In the Appendices, Torzsok attempts to reconstruct four mandalas from textual
descriptions. The reconstruction of two mandalas is tentative and does not show
the outer boundaries that are characteristic of mandala designs. These
boundaries are not specifically mentioned in the texts, but are likely to have
been assumed.
Andre Padoux's first essay in this volume examines
descriptions of mandalas and their use in Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka (early 11th
century). Basing himself mainly on material from various sections of the text,
Padoux portrays the uses of such mandalas as the trisulabjamandala and
tritrisulabjamandala in rites, including the different forms of the initiation
(diksa) and the practitioner's daily ritual worship, in which the mandala is
visualized as being present in his body.
Andre Padoux's second essay deals with the Sricakra as
described in the first chapter of the (most likely) 11th-century Yoginihrdaya.
This chapter offers a description of the `descent' (avatara) of the Sricakra as
a cosmic process and manifestation of divine power, which the practitioner
visualizes and experiences in his body. The cakra is portrayed here as a cosmic
rather than a ritual diagram, whose contemplation has a visual/spatial as well
as a phonic/mantric dimension and leads to an identification of the Yogin with
the supreme level of the word (vac).
Michael W. Meister measured a large number of ancient
temples in the course of extensive research in India. His drawings of
groundplans of temples show how the vastupurusamandala was used in practice.
Meister's contribution to this volume is concerned with the vastumandala as
described in Varahamihira's Brhat-Samhita and its application in temple
architecture.
Mandalas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions contains only one bibliography,
in order to avoid repetition of references and to allow the interested reader to
find relevant literature on mandalas, yantras and cakras in one place. All told
these essays offer some particular light the use and meaning of mandalas and
yantras in Hinduism. It also acts as a corrective to the too blithe
univeralization and cross-cultural generalization that characterizes the
liturature in English.
Shamans, Sorcerers, and Saints: A Prehistory of Religion by Brian Hayden
(Smithsonian Books) 115 b/w photographs, 132 b/w illustrations. A bold, broad
book that challenges conventional wisdom on prehistoric and traditional
religion.
Historians of art or religion and mythologists such as Joseph Campbell and
Mircea Eliade have written extensively on prehistoric religion, but no one
before has offered a comprehensive and uniquely archaeological perspective on
the subject. Hayden opens his book with an examination of the difference between
traditional religions, which are passed on through generations orally or
experientially, and more modern "book" religions, which are based on some form
of scripture that describes supernatural beings and a moral code, such as
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
He attempts to answer the question of why religion
developed at all, arguing that basic religious behaviors of the past and present
have been shaped by our innate emotional makeup, specifically our ability to
enter into ecstatic states through a variety of techniques and to create binding
relationships with other people or institutions or ideals associated with those
states. The work concludes with a brief overview of contemporary industrial
society from a cultural-ecological perspective and broadly examines contemporary
religious developments and possible future trends.
A basic distinction in the panoply of religions throughout
the world is between "book" religions and "traditional" religions. In their
extreme expressions, these polar opposites differ in terms of worldviews;
attitudes toward life, ecstatic experiences, food, sex, music, and dance; ideas
about sacred realms and basic mysteries; exclusivity; religious goals; and
participatory roles. Trying to convey a tangible sense of what traditional
religions are like is the biggest challenge of this book. Traditional religious
experiences are so alien to most Industrial denizens that we must cross a fairly
forbidding experiential and intellectual abyss to achieve even a modicum of
understanding. But understanding traditional religions is the most important
thing that I would like people to carry away with them when they have finished
reading this book.
Another challenge is to provide readers with a firm sense
of the role that ecological factors played in the major developments of
prehistoric religions. In my experience, people in traditional societies rarely
uncritically accept ideas or values that they are taught. People constantly
evaluate ideas and practices that require major expenditures of time, effort,
and resources. 'When religious changes occur on a broad scale, cultural ecology
leads us to ask what practical benefits might be associated with the newer
forms. Can religions really be viewed as adaptive? Is there really a
relationship between environment (in its widest sense) and resources, on the one
hand, and major religious phenomena on the other?
Shamanism in North America by Norman Bancroft Hunt (Firefly) Shamanism has
ancient roots. It stems from the beliefs of ancient hunting cultures but was
adapted to fit the needs of agricultural communities where the role of the
shaman integrated with that of the priest.
Native Americans believed that it was their responsibility
to maintain harmony in the natural world on which they depended by performing a
variety of rituals. Hunters blessed the animals they sought in the hope of their
acquiescence, farmers blessed their fields and seedlings to ensure a bountiful
harvest. Shamans were credited with exceptional powers to act on behalf of the
community. They claimed to be capable of separating their spirits from their
bodies and interceding with those spirits that controlled the many forces of
nature.
This book records the author's research into the traditions
and practices of shamans across North America. Illustrations include remarkable
photographs of masks, effigies, and implements used by shamans that are in the
National Museum of the American Indian, Field Museum of Natural History,
Canadian Museum of Civilization, and Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and
Ethnology.
The Dynamics of Changing Rituals: The Transformation of Religious Rituals Within
Their Social and Cultural Context edited by Annette Deschner, Constance
Hartung, Jens Kreinath (Peter Lang) Recent research in ritual studies has shown
that rituals are not at all static, but, on the contrary, more often subject to
dynamic changes, even if their participants continue to claim that they have
been the same since time immemorial. When do rituals change? When do they change
accidentally and when are they changed on purpose? Are there particular kinds of
rituals, which are more stable or unstable than others? Which elements of
rituals are liable to change and which are relatively stable? Who has the power
to change rituals on purpose? Who decides to accept a change or not? These
questions have opened up a new field of ritual studies—the "Dynamics of Changing
Rituals."
During the last few decades, rituals have received much
attention from a large number of disciplines not restricted to the humanities
and social sciences. Recent research in ritual studies has shown that rituals
are not at all static, but, on the contrary, more often subject to dynamic
changes, even if their participants continue to claim that they have been the
same since time immemorial. When do rituals change? When do they change
accidentally and when are they changed intentionally? Are there particular kinds
of rituals that are more stable or unstable than others? Which elements of
rituals are liable to change and which are relatively stable? Who has the power
or agency to change rituals intentionally? Who decides whether or not to accept
a change? With the contributions to this volume, these questions have opened up
a new dimension in the field of ritual studies: the dynamics of changing
rituals.
The present studies, which explore this new subject of
ritual studies as it has been developed thus far, can be ordered according to
four thematic constellations: (1) General Theoretical Approaches, (2) Transfer
and Transformation of Ritual Contexts, (3) Recursivity and Innovation, and (4)
Performance, Media, Script, and Representation. Scholars were invited to
address various aspects of these categories in their lectures at the symposium,
and it is these lectures that formed the basis for this volume.
An introduction and initial look at the emerging focus on
the dynamics of changing rituals is given in the contributions by Don Handelman
and Jan G. Platvoet, who present general theoretical approaches to the analysis
of changing rituals.
A further group of papers, which address the theme of
transfer and trans-formation of ritual contexts, deals with whether, and how, a
change of con-text entails or results in a change of rituals. This issue is
taken up in the papers by Susanne Schröter, Anette Rein, Alexander Henn, Peter
Weber, William D. Furley, and Michael Stausberg. Their articles cover a broad
geographic range and give a complex analysis of transfer and transformation
processes that can arise not only through cultural interaction but also through
different group interests within their various social and political contexts.
The dimension of recursivity and innovation is addressed in
the contributions by James W. Fernandez, Achsah Guibbory, Patricia B. Ebrey,
Martin Gaenszle, Tzvi Abusch, Andreas Odenthal, and Matthias Jung. They analyze
changes in rituals arising through the modification of ritual practices. With
the innovation of rituals, the group performing the ritual relates itself to its
tradition by explicitly responding to the emergence of current demands.
Existing traditions—not necessarily part of a ritual—can be taken up when a
ritual is innovated. Recursivity, by contrast, is intended not to introduce a
new ritual practice but to be a strategic attempt to return to the tradition of
a practice no longer used but remembered as an older, more original. The
re-cursive change of ritual is achieved through a modernization of an existing
ritual practice which aims to recontextualize older, revived ritual traditions.
Another aspect of the academic study of changing rituals is
the analysis of the thematic constellation of performance, media, script, and
representation. The script is made up of the rules followed by a ritual. The
performance is the carrying out of a ritual on a given occasion, which largely
but never fully follows or embodies the rules of the script. For this reason no
performance is like any other. If the modification of a ritual is attributed to
the fact that a performance changes through its repetition, one is justified in
speaking of a variation in ritual (James W. Fernandez, Alexander Henn, and
Martin Gaenszle). But the ritual performance can also impact on and transform
the script of a ritual (Patricia B. Ebrey and Peter Weber). Conditions for such
changes in the script are often cultural contacts or migration processes (Anette
Rein, Alexander Heim, and Michael Stausberg). In the interaction between script
and performance, however, the change of ritual performance may be attributed to
a change in the script (Martin Gaenszle, Matthias Jung, and Andreas Odenthal).
The media in which rituals are communicated and perceived can play an important
role in the connection between ritual performance and representation. The media
by which rituals are framed not only change the forms of perception and
communication in rituals (Günter Thomas); they also transform the
meta-communicative frame of the interaction between actors and spectators
(Klaus-Peter Klipping). Thus, by means of the analysis of the interplay between
actors and spectators, it becomes possible to question, for example, the
distinction between ritual and theatrical performances (Dietrich Harth and
Anette Rein).
Through the introduction of the dynamics of changing
rituals, the selection of the present articles attempts to place new accents on
the research in ritual studies. Former research—at least in the history of
religions and social and cultural anthropology has mainly emphasized the
description and analysis of religious worldviews and historical motifs or
symbols and socialrelations within the context of the respective ritual
traditions. The approach to the dynamics of changing rituals, however, seeks to
encourage an inquiry into the social and cultural facets and consequences of
ritual performances. The basis of a ritual should not be sought only in its
roots in religious traditions or social relations; one should also inquire into
its actual shifts and negotiations as they appear in the practice and
performance of rituals. Consequently, this new approach to the dynamics of
changing rituals can challenge the established pattern of research in ritual
studies, which arose from academic reflection on the static and enduring aspects
of rituals. This new focus in the research on rituals is intended to raise
questions about the multifarious modalities for the emergence of change in
rituals. In this context, there are indications of dynamic features in ritual
changes, as well as in their respective social and cultural contexts, that may
be responsible for the modifications and transformations of ritual practice.
A change affecting the whole area of ritual practice can
therefore—as shown by the categories introduced above—lie in the ritual itself
and also in its social and cultural contexts. On the other hand, change can also
induce persistence by guaranteeing the survival of a ritual tradition through a
change in practice. Despite the great variety of the case studies, the view
generally shared by the authors in this volume is that while the `framing' of a
ritual—which is formed through its performance, media, script, and
representation—constitutes the ritual's identity, it is not static at all but
constantly undergoes change.
A general theoretical starting-point is provided by Don
Handelman's article "Re-Framing Ritual." Handelman transfers the scientific
concept of the `double helix' of the moebius ring, in which the inner and outer
sides inter-twine dynamically, to the description of rituals. This allows one to
recognize that they can change in every performance. The idea that rituals are
determined or influenced by an outside world that is clearly set apart from the
ritual's dynamic is replaced by the concept of a `dynamic framing' or
inter-weaving in which the content and elements of ritual constantly interact
with the various socio-cultural environments involved.
On the one hand, rituals can change in their performance
and thereby re-act to changes in the respective social and cultural contexts. On
the other hand, new rituals can arise as a consequence of rapid social changes.
The fact that both the frame and the content of rituals can be constantly
renewed during the performance is clarified by James W. Fernandez in his
contribution on "Contemporary Carnival (carnaval) in Asturias: Visual
Figuration as a `Ritual' of Parodic Release and Democratic Revitalization."
Fernandez considers one of the preconditions for renegotiating the meaning of
carnival in its playfulness by which the actors may allude to the globalization
process and the corresponding opportunities for cultural pluralism. It is this
playfulness that, according to Fernandez, may lead to the revitalization of
local traditions in Asturias.
In "Rituals of Rebellion – Rebellion as a Ritual: A Theory
Reconsidered," Susanne Schröter takes up the classical approach of Gluckman's
theory of ritual rebellion and considers the interpretation of conflict
management in African societies from a new theoretical perspective. Whereas
`rituals of rebellion' are commonly seen as oriented to the content of social
order in that they sometimes reverse the social order in ritual practice,
Schröter, by contrast, takes new case studies into account that inquire about
an articulation of resistance and rebellion that was originally not intended as
a ritual but was ultimately performed as such.
Rituals are not just changed by their performance; they
also change by being written down and given a literary form. In the article
"Communion, National Community, and the Challenge of Radical Religion in
Seventeenth-Century England," Achsah Guibbory makes a case for how an imaginary
national community was evoked through the literary handling of the Eucharist in
post-Reformation England.
In "Artaud's Holy Theater: A Case for Questioning the
Relations between Ritual and Stage Performance," Dietrich Harth starts from the
impact Artaud had on the practical and theoretical notions of `theater
aesthetics' and traces the line from Artaud's attraction to fragmentary and
double-thinking to his notion of `ritual theater.' After summarizing Artaud's
notion of theater, Harth arrives at the conclusion that ritual and theatrical
performance do not differ in form. The differentiation is determined more by
viewers' expectations and their estimation of the performative event.
On the example of a Balinese temple dance, Anette Rein
demonstrates in her "Balinese Temple Dances and Ritual Transformations in the
Process of Modernization" the extent to which a ritual can be adjusted to the
expectations of spectators—in this case, tourists—without thereby losing its
ritual functions for the performers. Rein illustrates how transfer processes can
affect the interpretation of a ritual and ultimately lead to such variations
that one is compelled to raise questions about whether the performance of
Balinese dance is to be regarded as a ritual or as having been transformed into
a theatrical performance.
The question of ritual transformation is also essential to
Klaus-Peter Köpping's essay "Failure of Performance or Passage to the Acting
Self? Mishima's Suicide between Ritual and Theater." Yet this transformation
does not occur as a result of cultural interaction but as a result of a clash of
different group interests and expectations. The dramatic staging of the
Seppuku-rituals by the Japanese writer Mishima fails, since the spectators do
not consider this to be a ritual. Mishima instrumentalizes the ceremonial
killing in order to point up the moral decadence of Japanese society, but in so
doing, the frame of the ritual performance dissolves: it is felt by those
present to be a farce because in their eyes the main actor no longer is able to
personify authentically the traditional values connected with the ritual act of
suicide.
While in the case of Mishima' s suicide a ritual community
does not feel itself to be such, Günter Thomas enlarges in his essay, "Changing
Media – Changing Rituals: Media Rituals and the Transformation of Physical
Presence," on how a disembodied ritual community constitutes itself through
ritualized television behavior, following its own liturgical order determined by
the media programming. Thomas therefore focuses his analysis on the
transformation of the relationship between presence and representation, as well
as between perception and communication.
"Changing Media – Changing Rituals": under different
conditions this title could also have been used for Patricia B. Ebrey's paper,
"The Incorporation of Portraits into Chinese Ancestral Rites." She shows how the
reception of Buddhist art has affected Chinese ancestor-cult and the presence of
ancestors has concentrated more and more on embodying them as portraits due to a
shift in the modes of visual perception. Yet it is not just a matter of
changing the media in rituals: this leads generally to a new version of the
script for performing the ancestral rites by transforming the ritual through the
introduction of new media for representation.
Besides changes in aesthetic customs, rituals can also be
varied through linguistic modifications. As Martin Gaenszle demonstrates in his
"Transgenerational Changes: The Social Process of Transmitting Oral Ritual Texts
among the Rai in East Nepal" on the example of the oral transmission of ritual
competence, however, there are limits to these variations. While a certain
degree of modification is considered a guarantee of ritual competence and
authority, far-reaching changes in ritual among the Rai have to be negotiated
with the ancestors and to be legitimized by them.
Fundamental shifts in meaning within a ritual are discussed
by Alexander Henn in "Politics of Acculturation: The Dynamics of Hindu-Christian
Ritual in Goa, India" in view of the Hindu New Year festival zagor. He argues
that rituals can have a different meaning for the actors than the spectators are
led to believe. On the example of the censorship of the Catholic Church and its
influence on the Hindu rituals during colonialism, Henn illustrates how the
Catholic ritual practice was adopted, yet coded in a complex way with other
meanings and combined with other performative genres so as to undermine the
strategy of ritual acculturation by the Catholic Church in a lasting way.
In the ritual of the New Year festival the change of
meaning and its coding takes place progressively by a shift in the
communicative situation of the ritual performances and not through the direct
intervention in the script by transforming the ritual's function. The latter, by
contrast, is the cause of the dynamic processes in the rituals described by
Peter Weber in "Shifts in Place and Meaning: The History of Two Cult Centers in
Pre-Colonial Tanzania." Weber emphasizes the identity-giving function of cultic
centers and their importance for the origin of ritual networks and the
establishment of political power.
Along similar lines, William D. Furley describes in his
article on "Athens and Delos in the Fifth Century B.C.E.: Ritual in a World of
Shifting Allegiances" how the instrumentalization of a ritual for political
interests and strategies transforms its meaning and function and how the
participation in a ritual may have become a political statement.
On the example of ancient sorcery, Tzvi Abusch discusses
the process of implementing ritual practices in "Considerations when Killing a
Witch: Developments in Exorcistic Attitudes to Witchcraft in Mesopotamia."
Sorcery, which originally belonged to popular Mesopotamian culture and had no
negative connotation, was transformed on a symbolic level through its
adaptation in the temple cult, which was accompanied by a process of demonizing
witches.
The change in sociocultural conditions may entail
modifications of ritual practice on an institutional level and be supported by
strategies of ritual integration. As Andreas Odenthal shows in "Ritual between
Tradition and Change: The Paradigm Shift of the Second Vatican Council's
Liturgical Reform," the latter can be considered as a paradigm shift in the
history of the Catholic Church insofar as it takes into account the social and
theological changes. The reinterpretation of religious rituals initiated by the
church precedes a change in attitude towards rituals on the part of actors and
participants. The liturgical reform can therefore be seen as the attempt to
integrate the antinomian tendencies of society into the ritual practice of the
church.
From a different perspective, Matthias Jung also takes up
the issue of liturgical reform after Vatican II. In "Expressive Appropriateness
and Plural-ism: The Example of Catholic Liturgy after Vatican II" he sees such
reform as resulting from an interaction of the Catholic Church with the
conditions of religious pluralism in democratic societies. Jung regards the life
world in modem societies as a `form of expressive appropriateness' where in
ritual the modem identity of congregational members is to be merged with
traditional views. The newfound ritual identity is reflected in the
reorganization of church rituals.
Besides examples of institutional changes of a ritual
tradition, there is a number of organizational and contextual changes that can
be discerned in ritual practice. In "Patterns of Ritual Change among
Parsi-Zoroastrians in Recent Times" Michael Stausberg describes the forms of
changes that can be found in the performance of older Zoroastrians rituals. Due
to the socio-economic contexts of the Zoroastrian community, rituals have to be
restructured also on the organizational level. He argues that if in a religious
community the need for a religious profile emerges, new rituals may be
introduced.
In view of the variety of ritual forms and their academic
interpretations, one may ask whether the traditional view of ritual as
repetitive religious behavior is not primarily due to the cultural self-identity
of the researchers. In his theoretical article "Ritual as War: On the Need to
De-Westernize the Concept," Jan G. Platvoet illustrates the extent to which
research categories in the history of religions are contextual. Moreover, he
argues for an ethological approach in ritual theory in order to describe more
appropriately the dynamic inherent in rituals. In more recent ritual theory he
discerns three shifts: first, from an exclusively religious to an inclusively
ethological definition; second, from the thesis of an integrative function of
rituals for society towards a theory of `redemptive hegemony'; and, third, from
the proposition of covert violence in rituals to the assumption that even in
Western societies rituals can also appear to have a violent, aggressive, and
destructive social impact.
The comparison of different dynamics of changing rituals in
different cultures—which pervades all the essays in this collection—makes clear
how important it will be for ritual studies in the future to form a more complex
descriptive matrix for the theoretical issues involved. As Jens Kreinath argues
in his "Theoretical Afterthoughts," timelessness, immutability, and stasis
cannot do justice to the analysis of the dynamics of changing rituals. Rather,
he claims that research must broaden its scope to include such issues as change
and variation, modification and transformation with regard to the aspects of
change in function, form, meaning, and performance. As he sums up, the authors
of this collection, who—with their differing approaches and disciplines—succeed
in offering a broad range of perspectives showing the diverse ways in which the
dynamics of changing rituals can inspire further scholarly inquiry.
Animal Sacrifice and Religious Freedom: Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City
of Hialeah by David M. O'Brien (University Press of Kansas) (Hardcover)
The Santeria religion of Cuba--the Way of the Saints--mixes West African Yoruba
culture with Catholicism. Similar to Haitian voodoo, Santeria has long practiced
animal sacrifice in certain rites. But when Cuban immigrants brought those
rituals to Florida, local authorities were suddenly confronted with a
controversial situation that pitted the regulation of public health and morality
against religious freedom.
After Ernesto
Pichardo established a Santeria church in
Hialeah in the 1980s, the city of
Hialeah responded by passing
ordinances banning ritual animal sacrifice. Although on the surface those
ordinances seemed general in intent, they were clearly aimed at Pichardo's
church. When Pichardo subsequently sued the city, a federal court ruled in the
latter's favor, in effect privileging the regulation of public health and
morality over the church's free exercise of its religion.
The U.S.
Supreme Court heard Pichardo's appeal in 1993 and unanimously decided that the
city had overstepped its bounds in targeting this particular religious group;
however, the court was sharply divided regarding the basis of its decision.
Three concurring opinions registered distinctly different views of the First
Amendment, the limits of government regulation, and the religious freedom of
minorities. In the end, the nine justices collectively concluded that freedom of
religious belief was absolute while the freedom to practice the tenets of any
faith were subject to non-discriminatory local regulations.
David O'Brien,
one of America's foremost scholars of the Court, now illuminates this
controversy and its significance for law, government, and religion in
America.
His lively account takes us behind the scenes at every stage of the litigation
to reveal a riveting case with more twists and turns than a classic whodunit.
Ranging with equal ease from primitive magic to municipal politics and to the
most arcane points of constitutional law, O'Brien weaves a compelling and
instructive tale with a fascinating array of politicians, lawyers, jurists,
civil libertarians, and animal rights advocates. Offering sharp insights into
the key issues and personalities, he highlights cultural clashes large and
small, while maintaining a balance for both the needs of government and the
religious rights of individuals. This book is part of the Landmark Law Cases
and American Society series
Animal Sacrifice and Religious Freedom: Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City
of Hialeah by David M. O'Brien, is a recent addition to the Landmark Law
Cases Series published by the University Press of Kansas. Like many other books
in this series, it is designed to illuminate an important legal issue through
in-depth analysis of one case and is aimed at the introductory student and
general reader. The specific case under examination here is, however, somewhat
different from those normally chosen for this purpose, because standing alone,
CITY OF HIALEAH was not one of the Court's more significant decisions. CITY OF
HIALEAH did not represent a major change in the law, but rather confirmed the
Supreme Court's long held view that absent an exceedingly high justification,
the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment prohibits government action
which is targeted at a particular religion.
In 1990 the Supreme Court in the controversial decision
EMPLOYMENT DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES OF OREGON v. SMITH (SMITH II)
reversed its longstanding position that individuals were entitled to exemptions
from generally applicable laws that prevented them from fulfilling their
religious obligations unless the government could demonstrate a compelling state
interest in refusing such exemptions. However, no Justice in the SMITH majority
suggested that government could, consistent with the Free Exercise Clause,
disfavor the practice of a particular religion, which is what appeared to have
happened in CITY OF HIALEAH. The city had passed a series of local ordinances
outlawing animal sacrifice, a central practice of the Santeria religion. These
ordinances were enacted in response to a request by a church leader, Ernesto
Pichardo, to lease land for the purpose of building a church where such
sacrifices would be carried on in public. Thus the city seems to have
specifically targeted Santeria. If one accepted Justice Kennedy's recitation of
the facts, and all the of the justices did, the City of Hialeah had done
precisely what Justice Scalia had indicated in his SMITH opinion was
impermissible-it passed legislation aimed at suppressing the religious
practices of a specific religion. The city stated an interest in preserving the
health of its citizens and preventing cruelty to animals, but these arguments
hardly seemed persuasive in light of the fact that the ordinances specifically
exempted kosher butchers, as well as hunting and killing of animals for sport.
What makes CITY OF HIALEAH worthy of attention is that it
sustained the debate renewed in SMITH over the [*502] proper meaning of the Free
Exercise Clause, an issue that continues to command the attention of the Supreme
Court and the political branches. Though the justices were unanimous on the
result in CITY OF HIALEAH, they disagreed sharply on the reasoning. Chief
Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia objected to Justice Kennedy's distinction
between general applicability and neutrality, and to his attention to the city's
motives, but they agreed that Hialeah's actions had failed the general
applicability test. Justices Blackmun, O'Connor and Souter took issue with
Justice Kennedy's citations to SMITH, fearing it would embed SMITH as precedent.
Justice Souter's concurrence is best described as an invitation to relitigate
SMITH, and as an effort to justify this invitation, because it seems at odds
with two principles of jurisprudence he respects-first, to avoid reaching out
beyond what is necessary to decide a case, and second, to preserve the principle
of stare decisis. Justice O'Connor similarly saw the decision as an opportunity
to revisit SMITH.
O'Brien's examination of this litigation in its political,
cultural and legal context adds a perspective to the debate that is worth
considering and which cannot be obtained solely by reading the Court's opinions.
As one reads the narrative a number of questions - some specific to the case,
some of more general import - come to mind. Why did the city act as it did, even
after it was warned by its attorneys that its proposed actions might be
unconstitutional? Why would political actors knowingly ignore the Constitution
when they had a good chance of losing in the end? Why did interest groups get
involved in litigation which started as an individual's effort to deal with an
immediate threat to his religious practices, and what does this indicate about
the factors that lead interest groups to litigate? And, what does this case tell
us about the nature of constitutional interpretation? Further, the specifics of
this case provide a particularly compelling example of the difficulty courts
face in resolving disputes generated by strong cultural differences as well as
conflicting rights. It illustrates as well how hard it is for a court to
capture, let alone resolve, the complexities of such disputes. One is reminded
again that a "just the facts" approach is rarely sufficient.
The book begins with an introduction to the principal
player in the controversy, Ernesto Pichardo, and reports his initiation into
Santeria and his subsequent development as one of its leaders. Chapter One also
provides a brief but very clear history and explanation of the beliefs of
Santeria/Lukumi, tracing its origins in Africa to its importation to Cuba
through African slaves, and then to its arrival in the United States. Its
history involved a series of transformations and adaptations brought about by
the need to accommodate the political and cultural environment in which it
operated. O'Brien describes in particular how interactions with a sometimes
tolerant and sometimes repressive Roman Catholic Church shaped the Santeria
religion. In a pattern quite familiar to those who follow missionary
interactions with indigenous populations in the developing world, there was a
mixing of various religious practices and identifications. There were Catholics,
attracted to some aspects of Santeria, and Santerias, baptized and "devoted to
Catholic Saints." The Castro government [*503] was ambivalent toward Santeria,
and this ambivalence also shaped Santeria attitudes. The effect was that many
Cubans practiced a religion that joined aspects of spiritualism, Catholicism and
Santeria in a variety of combinations, usually in small groups and largely in
secrecy. The picture that emerges is of a religion sharing some common beliefs
and practices, including animal sacrifice, but varying considerably among
practitioners. There is also a relationship between social and economic status
and religious practice. Santeria adherents come generally from the Afro-Cuban
community and tend to be poor, described by O'Brien as second-wave immigrants
who arrived at the time of the Mariel boat lift. Pichardo, however, was
Caucasian and middle-class, arriving in the first wave of immigrants, those who
came immediately after Castro assumed power. Animal sacrifice was widely
accepted as an important part of all Santeria practices, and was practiced
regularly. It is a fascinating story, and readers will learn a great deal from
this chapter.
Chapter Two focuses on the politics underlying the case,
and provides a much richer perspective on the dispute than one gets from the
Court's opinion. O'Brien shows that, while religious politics were important,
class politics and animal rights issues were equally so. According to O'Brien,
animal rights advocates trying to bar ritual sacrifice joined forces with city
leaders from the primarily white and wealthy tier of the Cuban community, and
with some Santeria opponents of Pichardo. The animal rights advocates wanted to
end all animal slaughter, but, since this was not possible, the Santerias made a
convenient first target. The secrecy of Santeria's religious practices, the
larger society's distaste for animal sacrifice, and the embarrassment of
middle-class, largely Catholic Cuban Americans, explain an important part of the
political opposition to Pichardo's church. Opposition came as well from within
Santeria. Pichardo's proposal to build a church where the religion would be more
open, performing its animal sacrifice rituals in public, went against a
tradition of a non-hierarchal religious structure with religious ceremonies
conducted secretly in private homes. There were many within Santeria who saw
Pichardo's proposal as a "power grab" antithetical to their beliefs.
Though O'Brien believes that racial and class politics were
important, he finds race and class politics within the Cuban community, rather
than a clash between a dominant Anglo and a uniformly disadvantaged immigrant
population, to be the most significant source of conflict. In fact, there was no
dominant Anglo community in South Florida by this time. Pichardo saw this
controversy more as a political issue than a religious controversy. The ACLU got
involved at Pichardo's request. He had obtained local counsel, but did not have
the financial resources to contest the city.
Chapter Three provides the doctrinal context within which
the Court decided the case. This chapter describes the history of increasing
religious tolerance in America over the past century. O'Brien discusses a
series of earlier Supreme Court decisions, beginning with the Mormon cases of
the late 1800s which understood religious liberty narrowly, allowing a range of
regulations of religious practice. In the 1940s the Court became increasingly
[*504] sensitive to the position of religious minorities, a sensitivity that
ebbed with Republican appointments to the Court, beginning with the Nixon era,
and retreated further in the 1990 SMITH decision. Though much of this discussion
is quite good, it is weakened by occasional interjections of concepts from
Establishment Clause doctrine that are not identified as such. The full First
Amendment provision states that "Congress shall make no law neither respecting
an establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Both
religion clauses place limitations on what government can do-the former limits
the type of assistance, the latter the type of restrictions. There is heated
argument over the meaning of the Establishment Clause. Does it require
separation of church and state; or does it merely require that government prefer
no particular religion or religions? On what basis should the issue be resolved,
and how should a search for a test to implement that principle proceed?
O'Brien asserts that the very first Congress rejected the
nonpreferentialist position (p.53). In support, he refers to changes in the
specific wording of the Amendment as first proposed by Madison, compared to the
language ultimately adopted after changes in the House, Senate and conference
committee. While these linguistic changes do seem to provide support for the
separationist position and were referenced by Justice Souter in LEE v. WEISMAN
as part of a much more extensive argument, there is more to the debate over the
intent of the Framers. Given the contentiousness of the ongoing debate regarding
the meaning of the Establishment Clause, more exposition is needed.
Although O'Brien later (p.69) refers to nonpreferentialism and to the LEMON
test, he provides little explanation as to their meaning. Moreover, no mention
is made of the conflict within the Supreme Court's interpretation of the
Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. Both of the religion clauses
require government neutrality, but neutrality is not a self-defining concept,
and it has been understood to mean different things for purposes of
Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause analysis. While this chapter
provides a good discussion of specific Supreme Court Free Exercise decisions, it
is weakened by not explaining more fully the importation of Establishment Clause
terms. The intersection of the two clauses is complex and requires more
discussion, especially since the Court remains divided in this area.
The next three chapters describe the litigation from the
District Court to the Supreme Court. Chapter Four discusses the trial in the
District Court, where the city prevailed, despite the belief by Pichardo and his
supporters that they had pulled the best possible judge, a liberal jurist with a
known record of sympathy toward minorities and individual liberties. Though the
church's defeat is in O'Brien's view attributable to many factors, he places the
bulk of the blame with Pichardo himself, particularly his conflicting testimony
with regard to the centrality of the ritual slaughter of animals in a church,
and his unwillingness to allow any state regulation of such practices. The judge
rejected Pichardo's view that the city was motivated by religious animus,
instead accepting the city's argument that the ritual slaughter of animals is
[*505] cruel, unhealthy, and harmful to children. He also found that the
ordinances represented neutral regulation of ritual animal sacrifice and were
not directed specifically at Santeria.
Chapters Five and Six move to a discussion of the appeals,
first before the 11th Circuit and, ultimately, before the Supreme Court. The
litigation by this time had come to the attention of well-known interest groups
and advocates of religious liberty. The local Miami ACLU consulted with the
national office and the office of the American Jewish Congress, and enlisted the
services of Douglas Laycock, one of the best known and most able of the
attorneys defending religious liberty. Nevertheless, Pichardo lost again in the
11th Circuit. O'Brien presents a very informative discussion regarding the
considerations leading to the decisions to appeal, both to the Court of Appeals
and finally to the Supreme Court. The latter appeal was brought despite the
knowledge that the Supreme Court accepts only a small number of cases, and that
it had been decidedly unsympathetic to religious liberty claims in recent years.
Chapter Six presents the oral arguments before the Supreme Court. Here the
city's attorney could not compete with the excellent advocacy provided by
Laycock.
The decision by the Supreme Court is presented in Chapter
Seven. O'Brien presents a first-rate account of the competing views of the
justices, but he offers no analysis of his own on the merits. He portrays the
outcome as being in doubt; although the Court rarely grants certiorari just to
affirm a decision where all the lower courts are in agreement. Once the Court
accepted the case for argument, it was as Justice Blackmun indicated in his
concurrence-an "easy one to decide." I would have liked to see a discussion of
factors that might have prompted the Court to grant certiorari. For
example, did some of the justices see an opportunity to refute some of the
critical commentary that the earlier SMITH case had left no room for successful
Free Exercise claims?
The book concludes with a brief account of the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act, (RFRA) passed by Congress to reverse SMITH, but
ultimately struck down as applied to the states in CITY OF BOERNE v. FLORES.
While I thought the story that O'Brien reports is an
interesting one that would engage many students, a number of themes were
insufficiently developed. At the outset O'Brien asserts a focus upon
interest-group litigation, but he never ties this work into the very extensive
literature on that subject. I was also disappointed that he chose not to engage
the debate over the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause. As I suggested earlier,
what makes CITY OF HIALEAH worthy of attention is the fact that this case was
part of a larger debate about the proper meaning of the Free Exercise Clause
after the Court's 1990 SMITH decision, a controversy that continues to engage
elected officials and interest groups.
CASE REFERENCES:
CHURCH OF LUKUMI BABALU AYE v. CITY OF HIALEAH, 508 U.S.520 (1993).
CITY OF BOERNE v. FLORES, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). [*506]
EMPLOYMENT DIVISION, DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES OF OREGON v. SMITH, 494 U.S.
872 (1990).
LEE v. WEISMAN, 505 U.S. 577 (1992).
Reviewed by Caren G. Dubnoff, Department of Political Science, College of the
Holy Cross Email:
cdubnoff@holycross.edu. Copyright 2004 by the author, Caren G. Dubnoff LPBR
Reviewer Database All previously published reviews may be obtained at the Law &
Politics Book Review web site:
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr
The Meaning of Witchcraft by Gerald Gardner (Weiser Books) Thought to be the
father of modern witchcraft, Gerald Gardner published The Meaning of Witchcraft
in 1959, not long after laws punishing witches were repealed. It was the first
sympathetic book written from the point of view of a practicing witch.
"The meaning of witchcraft is to be found, not in strange
religious theories about God and Satan, but in the deepest levels of the human
mind, the collective unconscious, and the earliest developments of human
society. It is the deepness of the roots that has preserved the tree."
The Meaning of Witchcraft is an invaluable source book for
witches today. Chapters include:
• Witch’s Memories and Beliefs
• The Stone Age Origins of Witchcraft
• Druidism and the Aryan Celts
• Magic Thinking
• Curious Beliefs about Witches
• Signs and Symbols
• The Black Mass
• Some Allegations Examined
Gerald Brosseau Gardner found Witchcraft to be a beautiful,
deep, and meaningful religious path. After his initiation into the New Forest
coven in 1939, he dedicated his life and resources to preserving and promoting
Witchcraft, which he feared was a religion on the verge of extinction.
GBG, with the help of Doreen Valiente, gave structure and
form to what he learned. His followers have come to be called "Gardnerians", and
it's a name they are proud to claim. Many traditions abound in Wicca, and all of
them have gleaned something from GBG's writings. These influential books are a
must have for any serious student of the "Craft", but a bit deep for those who
only play at being "Witches".
It's only fair to warn you: Gardner's writing style can be
dry and his organization a bit erratic. Sometimes it can be downright tedious
reading his books. However, the information and opinions he gives are well worth
the occasional headache! If you only want to play around and "cast spells" as a
game, don't bother with his books. There are plenty of recipe-format spell books
out there that will serve you just fine. If you are into the Religion of Wicca,
then this book will find its way into your library ... one way or another.
Witches, Druids and King Arthur by Ronald Hutton (Hambledon Press, Palgrave)
Ronald Hutton brings his wealth of unusual knowledge on Paganism, myth, and
ritual to the reader. Hutton is known for having a deep and sympathetic
understanding of past and present beliefs that are often dismissed, and an
ability to write lucidly and wittily.
Witches, Druids and King Arthur has a unique and accessible flavor and
covers elegantly and entertainingly a wide range of beliefs, myths and practices
and their place in history. Best known for his breakthrough study
The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
by Ronald Hutton (Oxford University Press) the first full-scale scholarly study
of the only religion England has ever given the world; that of modern pagan
witchcraft, which has now spread from English shores across four continents.
Hutton examines the nature of that religion and its development, and offers a
microhistory of attitudes to paganism, witchcraft, and magic in British society
since 1800. Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual magicians,
classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements,
Freemasons, and members of rural secret societies. We also find some of the
leading of figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W.B. Yeats,
D.H. Lawrence, and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have
represented pagan witchcraft to the world since 1950.
Witches, Druids and King Arthur is divided into three sections,
corresponding to the tnree components of the subtitle. The order in which they
are considered is slightly different from that given on the cover, simply
because the latter sounded easier on the ear but the former makes a more logical
progression. The first third of the book is devoted to different aspects of
myth. Its first chapter provides a definition of what the latter is commonly
taken to be, and then makes a general survey of different ways in which it is
created and manifests itself to a historian. The remaining two parts of that
section consider major case studies of the ways in which history and archaeology
have coped with personalities and places that exist on the boundary between fact
and fiction. The personality chosen is that of King Arthur, the place is
Glastonbury.
The central section of the book is devoted to paganism, and
specifically to one particular problem in the history of it. In my previous
books on the subject I have drawn strong distinctions between the ancient
religions of Europe and the Near East and the varieties of modern Paganism that
are partly based on images and ideas drawn from them. I suggested that, although
there are particular streams of transmission between them, such as ritual magic,
seasonal customs, and artistic and literary traditions, there had been no
continuous survival of pagan religions through Europe's Christian centuries. In
this reading, the Paganism of today is a set of entirely valid religions
developed in response to modern needs and having a history stretching back a
couple of hundred years, even though (as stated) they draw heavily on ancient
material. What is attempted in this book is a pair of additional enterprises,
which operate together to plug the gap between the ancient and modern forms of
pagan religion. The first is to examine those strains of ancient pagan belief
that appeared towards the very end of the ancient world, which bore the
strongest resemblance to present-day Paganism, and which have exerted the
strongest influence upon it. The second is to look at ways in which a place was
retained for the ancient deities within a structure of Christian belief during
the medieval and early modern periods, and to seek an answer to the question of
whether these traditions could amount to a survival of ancient paganism in a
different form.
The last third of the book is placed under the general
heading of `magic', and is the most disparate in its nature. What unifies it is
that all its four chapters examine ways in which twentieth-century British
people have reworked the religious and magical inheritance of the European
ancient world for present-day needs: all are in their way case studies of
re-enchantment, although of very different kind. The first looks at the
practice of ritual nudity, across human space and time, and relates it to the
prominence of this practice in some forms of modern Paganism. The second argues
for the powerful influence of pagan images and themes in the work of two very
popular twentieth-century authors who have commonly been characterised as
exemplars of Christian writing. The third seeks to understand contemporary
English Druidry. The last looks at the personal pleasures and pitfalls of making
an academic study of modern Pagan witchcraft.
The strongest link within the whole collection of studies
is the interplay between fact and fiction in the making and the analysis of
history: as has been stated, this is a perennial concern for historians, but one
raised in particularly acute form in the chapters of this book. It is signalled
by the title, for there are actually two King Arthurs considered in the
contents, one of them the historical or mythical monarch of international
renown, and the other a modern English Druid chieftain who has achieved a great
deal of counter-cultural celebrity and whose assumed, or realised, identity is
directly inspired by the traditions of the first Arthur. Which, however, is the
more `real' of the two? The `historical' leader, who is the one whom everybody
recognises but who may never have existed? Or the modern man whose existence is
undoubted and whose actions may be securely documented and studied, but whose
role depends on the acting out of a set of myths?
My own answer to that question is that the question itself
is both valuable and ultimately insoluble: valuable because it does raise
important issues about our relationship with the past and our concepts of what
is real; insoluble because the answer must depend so much on individual
viewpoint. The fact that I can make such suggestions, and that many readers are
likely to disagree with them and in different ways, illustrates one of the
difficulties posed by the writing of this book. Another derives from the fact
that the latter draws on material more commonly associated with disciplines
other than my own, such as anthropology, classics, religious studies and English
literature, as well as with historians expert in fields in which I have never
carried out primary research. Some of the work is explicitly historiographical,
and much of its leans more heavily on the published conclusions of others than
has been my habit hitherto. The scholarly project behind it remains my own, and
so does the attitude to the writing of history - essentially a pluralist and
open-ended one - and the set of tools and methods, which are those of somebody
trained as an empiricist historian. There is always a danger, however, in
encroaching on the traditional subject matter of other academic disciplines
without also adopting the conceptual models and approaches associated with them:
I highlight it particularly at the close of the sixth chapter. At best it is
possible by working in this manner to make friends and collaborators in many
different fields; at worst, it runs the risk of having no friends in any.
The New Encyclopedia of the Occult by John Michael Greer (Llewellyn
Publications) From Aarab Zereq to Zos Kia Cultus, this is the most up-to-date,
comprehensive guide to the history, philosophies, and personalities of Western
occultism. Written by an occult scholar and practitioner with the assistance of
hundreds of experts in the field, this volume presents the latest in scholarly
research and points out errors in previous writings-revealing truths much more
interesting and dramatic than the fictional histories that obscured them.
The New Encyclopedia of the Occult is an invaluable
reference guide to magic, alchemy, astrology, divination, Tarot, palmistry, and
geomancy; magical orders such as the Golden Dawn and Rosicrucians; important
occultists; and religions and spiritual traditions associated with occultism
such as Wicca, Thelema, Theosophy, and the modern Pagan movement.
John Michael Greer (Seattle, WA) has been a student of
monster lore and the occult since 1975. He is also the author of several books,
including Natural Magic: Potions and Powers from the Magical Garden, Circles of
Power: Ritual Magic in the Western Tradition, and Inside a Magical Lodge He has
written articles for Renaissance Magazine, Golden Dawn Journal, Mezlim, New Moon
Rising, Gnosis, and Alexandria.
A student and practitioner of geomancy and sacred geometry
for more than twenty years, fluent in Latin and medieval French for the past
five years, and a Certified Tarot Grand Master, Greer has studied geomantic
texts from the Middle ages and Renaissance, learning and testing out the
techniques that were used when geomancy was at its height. Greer is an active
member of five fraternal and two magical lodges. He lives in Seattle, where he
studied the legends and monster lore of the Pacific Northwest and attends lodge
meetings in a building with its own resident ghosts.
Excerpted from Greer's New Encyclopedia of the Occult by
John Michael Greer. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights
reserved.
A
A... A... SEE ARGENTEUM ASTRUM.
Aarab Tzereq. (Hebrew AaRB ZRQ,ravens of dispersion) In
Cabalistic teaching, the Qlippoth or demonic powers corresponding to Netzach,
the seventh Sephirah of the Tree of Life. Their traditional form is that of
demon-headed ravens emerging from an erupting volcano, the latter itself a
demonic power named Getzphiel. Their cortex or realm in the Kingdom of Shells is
Theumiel, and their archdemon is Baal Chanan. SEE QLIPPOTH.
Aatik Yomin. (Hebrew AaThIK IVMIN) Ancient of Days, a title
of Kether. SEE KETHER.
Ab. (Hebrew AaB,darkness, obscurity) In the Cabala, the
secret name of the world of Atziluth. The numerical values of its letters add up
to seventy-two, which is also the sum of IVD HIH VIV HIH, the spelling of the
Tetragrammaton in Atziluth. SEE ATZILUTH; TETRAGRAMMATON.
Abaris. According to legends recounted in ancient Greek
sources, a Scythian magician who possessed a magical arrow that he could ride
through the air. He was said to have lived in the time of Pythagoras, the Greek
mathematician and mystic, and visited the latter at his school in Crotona,
Italy. Writers from the eighteenth century onward converted Abaris into a Druid,
as part of a claim that Pythagoras had studied with the Druids (or vice versa).
SEE DRUIDS; PYTHAGORAS.
Abba. (Hebrew,father) In Cabalistic symbolism, a title of
the Sephirah Chokmah, and also of the first letter of the Tetragrammaton. SEE
CHOKMAH; TETRAGRAMMATON.
Abbadon. (Hebrew ABDVN,destruction) The name of a demon,
whose attributes have been variously described, or of a part or level of hell,
defined with equal variability. In Cabalistic lore, Abbadon is the name of the
sixth hell, which corresponds to the Sephirah Chesed. SEE HELLS, SEVEN.
Abel. The second son of Adam, according to the Book of
Genesis, slain by his brother Cain. In Gnostic thought, Abel became the original
of the psychic class of humanity, those who had the potential to achieve gnosis
but did not have gnosis innately. SEE GNOSTICISM.
Abracadabra. A traditional word of power, used by Western
magicians from classical times to the present. Written in the following way, it
was used in talismans to cure fevers and asthma: ABRACADABRA ABRACADABR
ABRACADAB ABRACADA ABRACAD ABRACA ABRAC ABRA ABR AB A In recent times,
Abracadabra has mostly been used by stage magicians. English mage Aleister
Crowley (1875 1947) altered the spelling to make it fit his new magical religion
of Thelema, and in this new form the word has been much used in the Thelemite
community; SEE ABRAHADABRA. SEE ALSO BARBAROUS NAMES.
Abrahadabra. Aleister Crowleys reformulation of the older
magical name Abracadabra, rewritten to place the name Hadthe shorter form of
Hadith, the second person of the Thelemite trinityat its center. SEE CROWLEY,
ALEISTER; THELEMA.
Abramelin the Mage,The Sacred Magic of. A grimoire
preserved in a single eighteenth-century copy in the Bibliotheque de lArsenal in
Paris. Written in French, it claims to be a translation of a Hebrew original
dating from 1458, although scholars have cast doubt on this claim. According to
the long preface, it represents the teachings of a Jewish magician named
Abramelin, passed on by him to his student Abraham, and by the latter to his son
Lamech. These teachings, which Abraham describes as the only valid magical
system in the world, require the student to devote six months of prayer,
repentance, and ritual to obtain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy
Guardian Angel. After this accomplishment, the student gains the power to
command evil spirits through talismans composed of letter combinations. The
Sacred Magic was rediscovered in the late 1890s by Golden Dawn founder Samuel
Mathers (18541918), and Mathers English translation was published in 1898. It
has had a major impact on magical thinking ever since, especially through its
influence on Aleister Crowley (1875 1947), who used it as the template for much
of his own understanding of magic.To this day the idea that magic is or should
be directed toward the knowledge and contemplation of ones Holy Guardian Angela
concept not found outside this work in older sourcesis commonplace in magical
writings. The book itself, however, developed a sinister reputation among
occultists in the early part of this century. Dire accidents and mental
imbalance were held to have befallen many of those who owned a copy of the
original printing, or who tried to use the talismans contained in it. SEE ALSO
HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL. FURTHER READING: MATHERS 1974.
Abrasax. SEE ABRAXAS.
Abraxas. A popular magical deity in the ancient world,
Abraxas (also called Abrasax) was depicted on classical amulet gems as a
humanlike figure with a roosters head and serpents for feet, wielding a
charioteers whip. The letters of his name in Greek add up to 365, the number of
days in a year, which marked him as a solar deity and a lord of time. SEE
GEMATRIA. In modern times Abraxas has achieved a new popularity by way of the
writings of the psychologist Carl Jung, who gave him a central place in his
Gnostic work The Seven Sermons to the Dead and elsewhere in his writings. SEE
JUNG, CARL GUSTAV.
Abred. In Druidry, one of the Three Worlds; the realm of
plant and animal life through which souls journey in the course of their
spiritual evolution. Each soul begins its incarnations in the simplest form of
single-celled organism, and progress step by step, learning the lessons of every
kind of plant and animal life, until they reach the human level, on the border
between Abred and the higher life of Gwynfydd. SEE DRUIDRY; THREE WORLDS.
Abulafia, Abraham. Jewish Cabalist, 1240after 1292. Born in
Saragossa in Spain, he studied the Jewish scriptures and Talmud with his father
until the latters death in 1258. In 1260 he left Spain for the Holy Land,
arriving in the city of Acre, but the outbreak of war between Christian
Crusaders and Arabs forced him to leave.
Babylonian Witchcraft Literature: Case Studies by I. Tzvi Abusch (Brown
Judaic Studies) These essays resulted in the study of Mesopotamian magical and
medical texts centering on witchcraft and sorcery. They address difficulties
typology in the sorting of texts into coherent categories and to understand
individual prayers and incantations. These studies focus on individual texts and
suggest solutions to complications and intricacies in the material to aid in
understanding of magical texts generally. Part One follows a diachronic
approach, Part Two a synchronic one. In this sense, the studies are broad: while
unraveling knots in individual texts, they highlight textual problems while
exemplifing some solutions for common problems in traditional Mesopotamian
therapeutic literature.
In Part One, Abusch examines such well known Akkadian
incantations and prayers as KARL 226 IV 3ff. and related texts (Chapter 1),
Mag1û VII 119-146 and related texts (Chapter 2), and KAR 26 and BMS 12 (Chapter
3). This examination grew out of various attempts to determine the limits of the
witchcraft corpus and to categorize the many texts that display divergent and
sometimes contradictory textual features. These texts contain indicators that
suggest that they were used not only to combat witchcraft but also for other
purposes as well. Such changes resulted in the appearance of disjointed and/or
contradictory statements and of features pointing to multiple and often
unrelated uses of the text. Accordingly, Abusch argues that a determination of
the stages of development of such compositions is necessary for an understanding
of the text and is one way to decide whether a text should be included in, or
excluded from, the corpus.
Part Two focuses on an individual incantation, Maglû I
1-36, an address to the gods of the night sky. Although this opening incantation
in Magli is a famous and oft-cited example of magical literature, Abusch’s
initial study of the text raised new questions and revealed unexplained details.
He constructs a coherent and comprehensive statement of the meaning and function
of the incantation. Accordingly, Abusch subjects this incantation to a detailed
and sustained analysis. The painstaking examination of the individual elements
of an incantation and of their relationship to each other is laborious, but at
least in this case it resulted in a fuller understanding of the text and of its
place in Maglaî. Moreover, this type of analysis showed the incantation to be
the product of a literary creativity that draws together magical and legal
imagery for the purpose of creating an indictment in which social and moral
dimensions of the witchcraft accusation come into play.
The written remains of ancient Mesopotamia preserve a
partial record of the life and thought of that civilization, a record composed
of documents of diverse forms and varied concerns. A significant portion of
these documents constitutes a rich and complex magical and medical literature.
This literature, which is part of the mainstream of the Mesopotamian cultural
tradition, comprises descriptions of symptoms, diagnoses, ritual and medical
prescriptions, incantations, and prayers, and is recorded in a variety of
formally distinct textual types. In modern terms, the magical and medical texts
describe the beliefs and behavior associated with pathological disorders,
personal and social crises, and culturally determined anxieties of the
individual, and they prescribe the self-administered and
professionally-administered measures undertaken to restore the afflicted
individual to a normal life. These texts reflect suffering, fears, and anxieties
common to all men, and are among the most important sources for our knowledge of
the personal and religious life of the ancient Mesopotamian.
Although much progress has been made as a result of the
work of a small number of devoted scholars, the study of this branch of
cuneiform literature is still in its infancy, and much remains to be done in the
areas of publication, systematization, and interpretation of the texts. Because
of the size and complexity of the materials, significant advances can best be
made by the intensive study of topically related segments of the magical and
medical corpus. This procedure is far from new, and several segments of the
corpus have already been investigated. However, although there has been a
growing realization–since the pioneering works of Evans-Pritchard and
Kluckhohn–of the importance of the role of witchcraft in the cultural and social
life of many primitive and western societies, no comprehensive study of the
Mesopotamian texts which deal with witchcraft has been attempted. This lack is
surprising in view of the existence of a large number of relevant cuneiform
texts, some of which have been known since almost the beginning of cuneiform
studies, and of the mention of witchcraft in a number of general works on
Mesopotamian religion, magic, and literature.
The Maglû is divided into three major parts. These three
divisions, each of which displays an inner unity and is definable on the basis
of internal and formal criteria, were performed in sequence: the first two being
performed during the night and the third during the following morning.
The single most important result of the investigation,
however, has been registered not in the area of text publication, but in that of
interpretation. The ritual and incantation series Maglû, which still remains the
single most important source for the study of Mesopotamian witchcraft. In the
course of an intensive examination of Maglû, it was found that this series, far
from being a collection of incantations brought together because of a common
theme, represents a consecutive and unified ceremony whose incantations were
recited and whose rituals were performed in the order given in the series, and
that the ritual tablet of the series, far from being a simple catalog, is the
manual for the complete ceremony. As a long and
The pattern underlying the short version may, in summary
form, be reconstructed as follows:
(1) The first part, which is composed of three
incantations, centers on the judgment and execution of the witch. The plaintiff
addresses Samas, identifies the witches, who are represented by statues, as the
culprits who have harmed him, and asks Samaa to order their execution by fire.
He then turns to Nusku, who, as watchman, has guarded him against that
witchcraft which was sent during the night,
and asks him to cause that witchcraft to turn back and
attack those who originally sent it.
(2) The second part, which is somewhat more difficult to
reconstruct because of the damaged state of all three of its incantations and
rituals, seems to center on the release of witchcraft through the untying of
knots, on protection against future attack, and on purification. The ritual of
the third incantation prescribes the placing of a cornel branch in the heart of
the witch, which action represents a further stage in her execution.
(3) The third part centers on the transformation of the
witch into a ghost and on its expulsion. After having been burned and impaled,
the smoldering statue is drenched with water. The drenching serves to extinguish
any remaining spark of life and malicious impulse in the witch, who is, thereby,
finally and irrevocably killed, divested of all corporeal form, and turned into
a ghost. After the ghost has been pacified, the speaker expresses the wish that
the mountain, which, in some way, represents death, confine it. He then commands
the witch's ghost to be gone and never return, thus expelling it from the world
of the living. On this note the original ritual ended.
While it cannot be denied that the difficulties inherent in
this type of literature, the imposing mass and complexity of these materials,
the nature of their organization in antiquity, and their state of preservation
and publication in modern times have been contributing factors, it seems to us
that the main cause of this situation is to be sought elsewhere. The study of
this literature has suffered from the absence of sympathy for and the presence
of antipathy to the magical literature. These sentiments are due, in large
measure, to the belief that these texts are not internally coherent and do not
express a logical and meaningful pattern of thought. This belief, especially
when operating in the study of the very genres most alien to the modern scholar
and most prone to expansion, revision, and corruption, can have only one
outcome: as a self-fulfilling prophecy, it sounds the death knell of the
philological enterprise. The only way in which we fulfill our responsibility
as philologists is by assuming that the magical texts do make sense. However, we
shall find that sense neither by demanding that the texts speak for themselves
nor by according them a false respect cast in the mold of literalism, but rather
by approaching them with sympathetic imagination and educated common sense, on
the one hand, and strict logic and rigorous criticism, on the other.
These studies are predicated on the assumption that the
magical texts do make sense, and they have as their main purpose the
transformation of that assumption into a self-evident truth. The first study is
devoted to an examination of several incantations and prayers which presently
display an inordinate number of illogicalities. By the application of several
different modes of critical analysis, an attempt is made to demonstrate that
these compositions were originally coherent and that their illogicalities first
emerged as a result of changes introduced into these compositions in the course
of their development. The second study, by way of contrast, is primarily
concerned with one incantation and is essentially interpretive. By the probing
of the details of this incantation, an attempt is made to discern and to
understand the internal logic and the full range of meaning of the incantation.
Chinese Mathematical Astrology: Reaching out for the stars by Ho Peng Yoke
(RoultledgeCurzon) Ancient Greek philosophers made a distinction between
terrestrial and celestial motion. Isaac Newton (1642–1727) with his law of
gravitation showed that a general law could be applied to both. Today, while
generalization is considered highly desirable, the exponential growth of
scientific knowledge has resulted in the compartmentalization of knowledge that
has led to the segregation of scientists even within the same discipline. A
general theory that is applicable across disciplines will indeed be a great
breakthrough in science. The traditional East Asian view was far more universal
than Newton's, for it extended beyond the material world. Perhaps it was one of
the merits of traditional East Asian science, it may suffer by being in excess,
while the Western scientific tradition is being restricted by its own
self-imposed limitations. By venturing beyond such limitations, a new world of
science may yet be opened to us. Today some people advocate `fuzzy logic' and
the `chaos theory' as a departure from the rigid Greek rationalism. Perhaps this
is a step forward in the direction of the East Asian tradition."
The purpose o this book is to explain the three cosmic
boards. However, Yoke does not embroil us too heavily with past arguments
that are repetitive or that go round in circles, without throwing any new light
on the subject. At the same time, Yoke avoids treading too much on familiar
territory. Nonetheless, basic ideas that are essential to the understanding of
the systems, such as Yin and Yang, wuxing, the jiugong magic square and the
system of the Yijing, are briefly summarized for orientation. The main part of
the book then proceeds with a detailed description of the taiya system in the
three cosmic boards, the qimen dunjia and the liuren divination systems through
analytical close reading of traditional texts. Appendix I and Appendix II are
brief accounts of traditional Chinese astrology and the Ziping method of
fate-calculation. The romanization of Chinese characters follows the pinyin
system, except for proper names where respect is given to known personal or
local preferences for people and places outside mainland China. `The Ziping
method of fate-calculation' and a `Table of Chinese dynasties', as well as
notes, bibliographies of Chinese and Western works and an index, are provided to
complete the book.
While Yoke makes no effort to advocate the three cosmic
boards, he does tell a story to illustrate the systems sifnificance. Li Shimin,
who reigned as Emperor Taizong in Tang China between the years 626 and
649, had already asked the celebrated military commander and tactician Li Jing
(571?-649?) about the same subject. Li Shimin once asked his favorite general
whether the use of Yin and Yang and shushu could be discontinued in the art of
war? Li Jing replied, ‘No' and continued, saying, `The art of war is an art of
deception. Under the guise of Yin and Yang and shushu, the greedy and the
simple-minded can be (easily) deployed. Hence they should not be abolished.' Li
Jing went on to give examples of how astrological signs and divination could be
taken advantage of by clever interpretations. Psychological warfare, misleading
the enemy with false information, classification of secret material, and many
other military strategies in modern times, seem to differ little from those in
traditional China – there are only differences in terminology, hardware and
dimension.
Zodiac by Degrees: 360 New Symbols by Martin Goldsmith, Steven Forrest
(Weiser Books) What are the degree symbols? Are they archetypes in the
collective unconscious? Are they the divine ideas of Plato and the
neoplatonists?" --Martin Goldsmith, author of The Zodiac by Degrees - 360 New
Symbols
Astrology is the fascinating science and art that delves
into who we are, why we are here, and why we do what we do. A lesser known
component of Astrology is the degree symbols. When viewing an astrological
chart, there are 360 tiny lines that intersect with the circumference. Each line
is reprented by a degree, and there are 30 degrees within each Sign. Since there
are 12 signs in the Zodiac, this adds up to 360 symbols. The degree symbols are
not glyphs; rather, they are a symbolic picture of an individual's personal
mythology and orientation.
If you were to have a chart generated by software or
somewhere online, you'd be given the specific natal location of the Sun, Moon,
Ascendant, planets, and so on. You'd also be given the degree of the placement.
For example, according to my natal chart, the Sun is in 14 degrees Scorpio and
the Moon is 18 degrees Aquarius. Whether using an astrology book or a generated
report, the most information you're usually given would be the meaning of the
Moon in Aquarius in the 11th House.
This is obviously more detailed and helpful than just an
explanation for Moon in Aquarius! However, there is a discipline within
Astrology that gets even more specific, and that is the realm of the 360
symbols. These ancient symbols are most commonly known as the Sabian symbols,
but there are other symbolic systems that exist. Most Astrologers shy away from
the 360 degree symbols, feeling that it only further complicates Astrology, or,
that the Sabian symbols have been accurate at times, but largely hit-and-miss.
Author Martin Goldsmith, Ph.D (history) has studied the
symbols of the zodiac for more than 30 years and has done extensive research on
planets, signs and houses. After examining thousands of charts he realized that
the Sabian symbols were more positive and accurate than other symbol systems;
however, some of them had, at best, only a tangential relationship to the Sabian
symbols.
In his new, 369-paged book The Zodiac By Degrees, Goldsmith
offers an intriguing portrait of each of the 360 symbols. Mixing empirical
research with intuition, he fills in the gaps and discrepancies outlined in the
Sabian symbols--creating a whole new set of symbols. Astrologers will find this
new book a fascinating addition to their interpretative tools, and the layman
will discover a new way to see their astrological chart. You don't need to be an
astrologer to use these symbols. Online, you can visit a site such as Astro.com
to generate a free natal chart. (Scroll down to the section Chart Drawing,
Ascendant.) Each degree in your chart is provided (e.g. Mars 11 Degrees Libra),
so you can cross reference the degrees with the symbols in the book. If you're
not sure of your exact birth time, your Ascendant (also known as rising sign)
and House cusps may be off. However, the use of the descriptions of each symbol
can be used to rectify your Ascendant.
Each degree has a symbolic phrase, a paragraph of
descriptive phrases, and a listing of famous examples and their occupation,
milestones, reason for notoriety, roles played (on stage or in movies) and so
on. For example, my Moon is in 18 (degree) Aquarius. The symbolic phrase is:
An ominous silence falls as the last man at a masquerade
party prepares to unmask. Outside, a thunderstorm is brewing.
A few of the descriptive phrases: Exposing uncomfortable
truths; unwillingness to relate on a phony, masky level (troublemakers, enjoy
rattling people); bringing negative undertones to the surface and clearing the
air; breaking through fears and doubts that isolate people from each other...)
-
Just a few of the famous examples listed for this degree
symbol include:
-
Madame Blatavasky (Jupiter. Seeker, mystic, founder of
Theosophical Society, wrote Isis Unveiled)
-
Frida Kahlo (Chiron. Painter)
-
Joseph Campbell (Saturn. Jungian anthropologist-The Masks
Of God)
-
Roseanne Barr (North Node. Brought social realism to the
TV sitcom)
The examples the author picks are specifically related to
the symbol itself, which makes it much more interesting than "Roseanne Barr,
actress".
One might ask why bother with a interpretative system that
isn't cut and dried like the rest of astrology? I believe the author answers
this question quite well.
Darkside Zodiac by Stella Hyde (Weiser Books) Aren't Cancerians fed up with
being the mothers of the universe? Don't Leos become weary of being told they're
just fun-loving party animals? Does a girl--or boy--ever get to flash their mean
streak? Do they ever--in Darkside Zodiac, the book that exposes the hidden
underside of the stars, and how they affect the dark side of everyone.
The zodiac definitely has a dark side that influences the nasty in every one
under every sign:
-
When Scorpios shed their Ms. Manners persona out pops a
sex-mad control freak.
-
Capricorns are really bean-counting misanthropes.
-
Aries are head banging psychos.
-
Aquarians can't wait to be beamed back to the mothership.
Darkside Zodiac covers personalities, rising sign, ruling
planet, Moon, qualities, and elements. It also details lifestyle choices (jobs,
vacations, fashion, interior design, partners) all from a gripping, yet rarely
discussed perspective. The graphic design of the volume makes it visually
playful.
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