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Author: Elizabeth Fuller Collins
Publisher:
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 246
ISBN-13: 9780875805740
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An analysis of the Thaipusam festival of the Hindu Tamils of Malaysia and the vows they make to the god Murugan. It explores the meaning of vow fulfilment as reflected in social, economic and political divisions in the Tamil community, and the practice of ritual as a form of symbolic action.
Author: Marie Elizabeth Collins
Publisher:
Published: 1991
Total Pages: 766
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: L. Bryce Boyer
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-07
Total Pages: 528
ISBN-13: 1135827591
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Opening with a critical appreciation of Alan Dundes (M. Carroll) and Dundes's own cross-cultural study of the cockfight, Volume 18 includes chapters on psychoanalysis and Hindu sexual fantasies (W. Doniger); the modern folk tale "The Boyfriend's Death" (M. Carroll); a gruesome Eskimo bedtime story (R. Boyer); the homosexual implications of Argentinean soccer (M. Suarez-Orozco); and the symbolism of a Malaysian religious festival (E. Fuller).
Author: Kenaz Filan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-04-13
Total Pages: 244
ISBN-13: 1594779287
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →An insider’s view of the inner workings and prevalence of spirit possession in our modern world • Provides practical techniques for preparation, safety, aftercare, and aborting harmful possessions • Reveals the forms of ritual possession present throughout the world--including Uganda, Nepal, Korea, Bali, Greece, Turkey, Scandinavia, and France Drawing Down the Spirits presents an insider’s view of the inner workings, sacred traditions, and prevalence of spirit possession existing in our modern world. Spirit possession is an integral part of shamanism as well as many neo-pagan forms of worship that draw down deities or invite spirit possession. However, spirit possession is not for the unprepared. In Drawing Down the Spirits, Kenaz Filan and Raven Kaldera, both initiated and experienced in shamanic and Vodou traditions, present the practical guidance needed to participate in ritual possession. Addressing the benefits and the dangers that await the naive, Filan and Kaldera show that there is no such thing as a guaranteed “safe” possession because spirits have their own agenda--and they are much more powerful than we are. The authors provide a variety of techniques to prepare for possession and abort possession and to promote the safety of the possessed as well as the spirits and witnesses present. With a wide-ranging look at the historic forms of ritual possession found throughout the world--including Uganda, Nepal, Korea, Bali, Greece, Turkey, Scandinavia, and France--the authors also include numerous firsthand accounts collected from witnesses of modern spirit possession.
Author: Krishna G. Rampal
Publisher: Bluetoffee
Published: 2007-12-01
Total Pages: 220
ISBN-13: 9810595859
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Sacred Structures is a fascinating guide to the world of Hindu Temples in Malaysia and Singapore, presented through the unique artistic vision of some of it's leading artists. In four sections beautifully illustrated with original paintings by ten leading artists, the book takes the reader through the various phases of Hindu Temple building from the 5-6th Century to modern times.
Author: Jean Elizabeth DeBernardi
Publisher: NUS Press
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 340
ISBN-13: 9789971694166
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Mark Juergensmeyer
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 1529
ISBN-13: 0761927298
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Presents entries A to L of a two-volume encyclopedia discussing religion around the globe, including biographies, concepts and theories, places, social issues, movements, texts, and traditions.
Author: Tracy Pintchman
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2005-08-18
Total Pages: 258
ISBN-13: 9780791482568
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This fascinating look at the sacred Hindu month of Kartik (October–November) as it is celebrated in the city of Benares in North India highlights Kartik-related practices, stories, songs, and experiences particular to women. During Kartik, Hindu women living in and around Benares meet daily to enact a form of ritual worship, or puja, in which they raise the playful Hindu deity Krishna from childhood to adulthood throughout the month, ultimately marrying him to the plant-goddess Tulsi (Basil). Tracy Pintchman explores how women who perform Kartik puja understand and celebrate both Kartik and Krishna in ways that are linked to the desires, hopes, fears, and social realities characteristic of many Hindu women living in the rather conservative social milieu of this region.
Author: Ariel Glucklich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2003-10-30
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 0199839492
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Why would anyone seek out the very experience the rest of us most wish to avoid? Why would religious worshipers flog or crucify themselves, sleep on spikes, hang suspended by their flesh, or walk for miles through scorching deserts with bare and bloodied feet? In this insightful new book, Ariel Glucklich argues that the experience of ritual pain, far from being a form of a madness or superstition, contains a hidden rationality and can bring about a profound transformation of the consciousness and identity of the spiritual seeker. Steering a course between purely cultural and purely biological explanations, Glucklich approaches sacred pain from the perspective of the practitioner to fully examine the psychological and spiritual effects of self-hurting. He discusses the scientific understanding of pain, drawing on research in fields such as neuropsychology and neurology. He also ranges over a broad spectrum of historical and cultural contexts, showing the many ways mystics, saints, pilgrims, mourners, shamans, Taoists, Muslims, Hindus, Native Americans, and indeed members of virtually every religion have used pain to achieve a greater identification with God. He examines how pain has served as a punishment for sin, a cure for disease, a weapon against the body and its desires, or a means by which the ego may be transcended and spiritual sickness healed. "When pain transgresses the limits," the Muslim mystic Mizra Asadullah Ghalib is quoted as saying, "it becomes medicine." Based on extensive research and written with both empathy and critical insight, Sacred Pain explores the uncharted inner terrain of self-hurting and reveals how meaningful suffering has been used to heal the human spirit.
Author: Jane Derges
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-20
Total Pages: 234
ISBN-13: 1136214879
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Following over twenty years of war, Sri Lanka’s longest cease-fire (2002-2006) provided a final opportunity for an inclusive peace settlement between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, hostilities resumed with ever increasing desperation and ferocity on both sides, until the LTTE were overcome and largely eradicated in 2009. This book provides a contextualised analysis of the effects of war on a small Tamil community living in northern Sri Lanka during the cease-fire period. It examines how the society changed and adapted in order to accommodate the upheaval and destruction of war, and its inevitable resumption. In particular, it focuses on the nature of suffering through an exploration of a well-known ritual: Thuukkukkaavadi that transformed the experience of pain and suffering and contributed to a process whereby many village communities could come together in a demonstration of strength and resilience. It contributes to studies on violence, reparation processes of so-called ‘post-conflict’ societies and the medical anthropology of healing. It questions assumptions concerning the nature of suffering and critiques the application of western categories in settings like northern Sri Lanka, where entire communities have been silenced by political violence. The book therefore presents a claim for more culturally specific understandings of what constitutes suffering and is of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Studies, Conflict Resolution, and Social and Cultural Anthropology.
