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God on High
God on High examines cannabis-based religious groups in Canada and the United States. These religious groups are on the rise as cannabis use is further decriminalized or legalized. In examining these groups, Laurie Cozad explores the triangular relationships between cannabis, religion, and the law, and the ways in which the shifting discourse of medical science impacts this trio.
The Globalizers
"He finds in the international development community a close-knit coalition of policy makers who have inserted themselves into the local political process and pushed the Honduran nation-state to conform to international norms and integrate into a transnational structure of governance.
Authority
What is authority? How is it constituted? How ought one understand the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) relations between authority and coercion? Between authorized and subversive speech? In this fascinating and intricate analysis, Bruce Lincoln argues that authority is not an entity but an effect. More precisely, it is an effect that depends for its power on the combination of the right speaker, the right speech, the right staging and props, the right time and place, and an audience historically and culturally conditioned to judge what is right in all these instances and to respond with trust, respect, and even reverence. Employing a vast array of examples drawn from classical antiquity...
Ruthless Compassion
The historical development of Esoteric Buddhism in India is still known only in outline. A few verifiably early texts do give some insight into the origin of the ideas which would later develop and spread to East and Southeast Asia, and to Tibet. However, there is another kind of evidence which can be harnessed to the project of reconstructing the history of Esoteric Buddhist doctrines and practice. This evidence consists of art objects, mainly sculpture, which survive in significant numbers from the 6th to the 13th century.
Learning Love from a Tiger
Learning Love from a Tiger explores the vibrancy and variety of humans’ sacred encounters with the natural world, gathering a range of stories culled from Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Mayan, Himalayan, Buddhist, and Chinese shamanic traditions. Readers will delight in tales of house cats who teach monks how to meditate, shamans who shape-shift into jaguars, crickets who perform Catholic mass, rivers that grant salvation, and many others. In addition to being a collection of wonderful stories, this book introduces important concepts and approaches that underlie much recent work in environmental ethics, religion, and ecology. Daniel Capper’s light touch prompts readers to engage their own views of humanity’s place in the natural world and question longstanding assumptions of human superiority.
Early Tantric Medicine
Early Tantric Medicine explores the mantra-based systems for healing snakebite found in the ancient Hindu texts called the Garuda Tantras. It engages with broader questions of medical efficacy, and describes a worldview in which powerful gods and goddesses are available to anyone who learns the secret methods of propitiating them.
Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches
A comprehensive tour of North American spiritual groups that use psychoactive drugs in the search for higher consciousness • Explores prominent psychedelic churches and sects in depth, including the Native American Church and their peyote rituals, the cannabis-sex temple known as the Psychedelic Venus Church, and the Church of Naturalism, an LSD-therapy cult that came to a murderous end • Presents an encyclopedic survey of dozens of minor organizations—many of which have never before been documented in an authoritative source • Shares personal interviews and anecdotes about the strange, outrageous adventures of religious psychonauts, alongside rare photos and illustrations From LSD-p...
Rage and Ravage
Written by one of the leading scholars of Japanese religion, Rage and Ravage is the third installment of a milestone project in our understanding of the mythico-ritual system of esoteric Buddhism—specifically the nature and roles of deities in the religious world of medieval Japan and beyond. Bernard Faure introduces readers to medieval Japanese religiosity and shows the centrality of the gods in religious discourse and ritual; in doing so he moves away from the usual textual, historical, and sociological approaches that constitute the “method” of current religious studies. Throughout, he engages theoretical insights drawn from structuralism, post-structuralism, and Actor-Network Theor...
Sacred Matters
Sacred Matters explores the lives of material objects in South Asian religions. Spanning a range of traditions including Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Buddhism, and Christianity, the book demonstrates how sacred items influence and enliven the worlds of religious participants across South Asia and into the diaspora. Contributors examine a variety of objects to describe the ways sacred materials derive and confer meaning and efficacy, emerging from and giving shape to religious and nonreligious realms alike. Material forms of deity and divine power are considered along with commonplace ritual items, including images, clay pots, and camphor. The work also attends to materiality's complex role within the "materially suspicious" contexts of Islam, Theravada Buddhism, and Roman Catholicism. This engaging collection presents new frameworks for contemplating the ways in which historical, social, and sacred processes intertwine and collectively shape human and divine activity.
White Bones Red Rot Black Snakes
Enchanting, powerful, horrific, beautiful, wise, deadly, compassionate, seductive. Women in Buddhist story and image are all these things and more. She takes the signs of the ancient goddess - the lotus, the sacred grove, the serpent, the sacrifice - and uses them in astonishing new ways. Her story is one of suffering and great trials, and through it all an unquenchable longing to be free. This beautifully illustrated work is as layered and subversive as mythology itself. Based directly on authentic Buddhist texts, and informed with insights from psychology and comparative mythology, it takes a fresh look at how Buddhist women have been depicted by men and how they have depicted themselves.
