You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Organizing data from cultures the world over, Mircea Eliade, one ofthe preeminent interpreters of world religion in the twentieth century, lays out the basic patterns of initiation: group puberty rites, entranceinto secret cults, shamanic instruction, individual visions, and heroicrites of passage. The vast information assembled here transcendsusual scholarship. Eliade always affirms the greater experience in allinitiation - the indissoluble tie between humans and the cosmos ofgods, spirits, animals, ancestors, and nature.As Michael Meade writes in his foreword, Eliade "fervently workedat keeping the doors of perception open to the world of sacred symbolsand creative ritual. Through his insistence that we are each thenecessary inheritors of a vast sacred heritage, he has acted as a spiritualelder and distant mentor to me and many students of myth andritual. Like an archeologist of symbols, he has unearthed, preserved, and found new meanings in the rites of our ancestors."
A remarkable number of Greek myths concern the plight of virgins – slaughtered, sacrificed, hanged, transformed into birds, cows, dear, bears, trees, and punished in Hades. Death and the Maiden, first published in 1989, contextualises this mythology in terms of geography, history and culture, and offers a comprehensive theory firmly grounded in an ubiquitous ritual: pubescent girls’ rites of passage. By means of comparative anthropology, it is argued that many local ceremonies are echoed throughout the whole range of myths, both famous and obscure. Further, Professor Dowden examines boys’ rites, as well as the renewal of entire communities at regular intervals. The first full-length work in English devoted to passage-rites in Greek myth, Death and the Maiden is an important contribution to the exciting developments in the study of the interrelation between myth and ritual: from it an innovative view on the origination of many Greek myths emerges.
First published 1958; preparation of sacred ground, separation from women; Kurnai initiation mystery; tooth avulsion Yuin, Murring & Waradjuri, initiatory ordeals, symbolic death, tossing of novices (Arunta), throwing fire; bullroarers & circumcision, symbolism of subincision; female initiation Arnhem Land; Kunapipi cult & ritual exchange of wives; medicine men, initiatory death, Arunta, Unmatjera and Western Desert tribes; use of magical substances, quartz crystals, pearl shell, spirit snakes; Asiatic influence apparent; Melanesian mummification; comparisons with Indian & Tibetan yogis; many authors quoted; bibliography.
Originally published in 1999, The Rites of Christian Initiation was haled for its clarity and comprehensiveness. Kalian McDonnell, OSB, called it the best overall treatment of Christian initiation available, and Paul Bradshaw predicted it would be the standard textbook on the subject for very many years to come." The current edition draws on new translations of early texts on baptism as well as recent scholarship on the early traditions in the East and West. It is sure to replace itself as the new standard reference on the rites of Christian initiation. Maxwell E. Johnson's expanded and revised text provides a more complete view of the history and interpretation of the rites in the Eastern C...
This book aims to contribute to current debates over initiation rites in the context of the Catholic church. The amalgamation of traditional initiation rites and Catholic dogma has not been studied before by anthropologists. Initiation rites are presently performed by women's church groups, which are lay groups centered around a church. The specific ideas and practices related to these rites are the main subject of this book. An initiation rite performed by members of a women's church group located in an urban Roman Catholic community in Zambia, is described here in detail.
Scholars of classical history and literature have for more than a century accepted `initiation' as a tool for understanding a variety of obscure rituals and myths, ranging from the ancient Greek wedding and adolescent haircutting rituals to initiatory motifs or structures in Greek myth, comedy and tragedy. In this books an international group of experts including Gloria Ferrari, Fritz Graf and Bruce Lincoln, critique many of these past studies, and challenge strongly the tradition of privileging the concept of initiation as a tool for studying social performances and literary texts, in which changes in status or group membership occur in unusual ways. These new modes of research mark an important turning point in the modern study of the religion and myths of ancient Greece and Rome, making this a valuable collection across a number of classical subjects.
Celebrating the Rites of Initiation continues the standard of scholarship set by Patrick Malloy’s Celebrating the Eucharist, and offers similar aids around issues of baptism and confirmation. It is an ideal book for students and practicing clergy who seek to strengthen their knowledge—and parochial practice—of baptismal theology.
In premodern Japan, legitimization of power and knowledge in various contexts was sanctioned by consecration rituals (kanjō) of Buddhist origin. This is the first book to address in a comprehensive way the multiple forms and aspects of these rituals also in relation to other Asian contexts. The multidisciplinary chapters in the book address the origins of these rituals in ancient Persia and India and their developments in China and Tibet, before discussing in depth their transformations in medieval Japan. In particular, kanjō rituals are examined from various perspectives: imperial ceremonies, Buddhist monastic rituals, vernacular religious forms (Shugendō mountain cults, Shinto lineages)...
Audrey Richards (1899-1984) was a leading British anthropologist of the twentieth century and the first woman president of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Based on fieldwork conducted at a time when the discipline was dominated by male anthropologists, Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Zambia is widely hailed as a classic of anthropology and African and gender studies. Underpinned by painstaking research carried out by Richards among the Bemba people in northern Zambia in the 1930s, Chisungu focuses on the initiation ceremonies for young Bemba girls. Pioneering the study of women’s rituals and challenging the prevailing theory that rites of passage served mer...