Cult in Context

Cult in Context PDF Author: Caroline Malone
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782974962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Gods, deities, symbolism, deposition, cosmology and intentionality are all features of the study of early ritual and cult. Archaeology has great difficulties in providing satisfactory interpretation or recognition of these elusive but important parts of ancient society, and methodologies are often poorly equipped to explore the evidence. This collection of papers explores a wide range of prehistoric and early historic archaeological contexts from Britain, Europe and beyond, where monuments, architectural structures, megaliths, art, caves, ritual activity and symbolic remains offer exciting glimpses into ancient belief systems and cult behaviour. Different theoretical and practical approaches are demonstrated, offering both new directions and considered conclusions to the many problems of studying the archaeology of cult and ritual. Central to the volume is an exploration of early Malta and its intriguing Temple Culture, set in a broad perspective by the discussion and theoretical approaches presented in different geographical and chronological contexts.

Cult in Context

Cult in Context PDF Author: Caroline Malone
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782974962
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
Gods, deities, symbolism, deposition, cosmology and intentionality are all features of the study of early ritual and cult. Archaeology has great difficulties in providing satisfactory interpretation or recognition of these elusive but important parts of ancient society, and methodologies are often poorly equipped to explore the evidence. This collection of papers explores a wide range of prehistoric and early historic archaeological contexts from Britain, Europe and beyond, where monuments, architectural structures, megaliths, art, caves, ritual activity and symbolic remains offer exciting glimpses into ancient belief systems and cult behaviour. Different theoretical and practical approaches are demonstrated, offering both new directions and considered conclusions to the many problems of studying the archaeology of cult and ritual. Central to the volume is an exploration of early Malta and its intriguing Temple Culture, set in a broad perspective by the discussion and theoretical approaches presented in different geographical and chronological contexts.

Cults in Context

Cults in Context PDF Author: Lorne Dawson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135152464X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
In the face of the increasingly variegated ideological landscape of contemporary America, cults have become the focus of public controversy. The growth of new religions has been matched by the development of an organized and vocal opposition, the anti-cult movement. This in turn has prompted an extensive investigation of new religious movements (NRMs) by sociologists and psychologists of religion, as well as historians and religious studies scholars. The readings collected here contribute to the debate about cults by sampling some of the best and most accessible publications from the academic study of NRMs.The contributors address the questions most commonly asked about cults, such as: What brought about the emergence of new religious movements? What is a cult or new religious movement? Who joins new religious movements and why? Are converts to new religious movements brainwashed? Why did the Jonestown and Waco tragedies happen? Are cults inclined to be violent? What does the emergence of so many new religious movements say about our society? What does it say about the future of religion?Cults in Context surveys the descriptive typologies, theories, and data accumulated by sociologists and psychologists studying new religious movements over the last twenty years. It serves to defuse many popular fears and misconceptions about cults, allowing the reader to develop a more reasonable and tolerant understanding of the people who join new religious movements and the functions of these movements in contemporary society.

Religion in Context

Religion in Context PDF Author: I. M. Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521566346
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Religious power assumes many strikingly different forms, which are often regarded as unique, unrelated, and even mutually exclusive. Religion in Context, however, adopts a holistic approach and argues that these apparently contradictory mystical experiences are in fact part of a web of mutually defining and sustaining elements. Stressing the importance of rigorous social contextualisation, I. M. Lewis analyses phenomena such as spirit-possession, witchcraft, cannibalism, and shamanism, revealing connections between them and with the world religions. This expanded and updated edition illuminates critical aspects of religious power, and demonstrates the value of a comparative approach to formulating anthropological theory. It will be of value to students of anthropology, religion, and to anyone concerned with the nature of religion in the modern world.

Aspects of Ancient Greek Cult

Aspects of Ancient Greek Cult PDF Author: Jesper Tae Jensen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788779342538
Category : Cults
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The papers in this volume illustrate the interplay between the studies of classical archaeology, religion, history, and musicology. The eight papers by the young scholars and their Nestor, Richard Hamilton, offer a fresh look at various aspects of ancient cult, including the use of the word cult in the academic disciplines of Archaeology and the History of Religion; the introduction of Asklepios to Athens, and a detailed study of the same god's sanctuary on the south slope of Akropolis, where it will be demonstrated that the layout of the early sanctuary on the east terrace was carefully designed after one central monument. The book also contains an innovative study of the Philippeion at Olympia, where it is argued that the tholos with its sculpture was a proto-type for the use of divine images and royal ideology by Hellenistic rulers. Other papers include a statistical approach to the illustration of baskets on Classical votive reliefs, a theoretical study of the role of music in ancient Greek cult, and analysis of the use of the chorus as one of the most important expressions of ancient cult in Sparta.

Cult, Culture, and Authority

Cult, Culture, and Authority PDF Author: Olga Dror
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824829727
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Princess Lieu Hanh, often called the Mother of the Vietnamese people by her followers, is one of the most prominent goddesses in Vietnamese popular religion. First emerging some four centuries ago as a local sect appealing to women, the princess' cult has since transcended its geographical and gender boundaries and remains vibrant today. Who was this revered deity? Was she a virtuous woman or a prostitute? Why did people begin worshiping her and why have they continued? Cult, Culture, and Authority traces Lieu Hanh's cult from its ostensible appearance in the sixteenth century to its present-day prominence in North Vietnam and considers it from a broad range of perspectives, as religion and literature and in the context of politics and society. Over time, Lieu Hanh's personality and cult became the subject of numerous literary accounts, and these historical texts are a major source for this book. Author Olga Dror explores the authorship and historical context of each text considered, treating her subject in an interdisciplinary way. Her interest lies in how these accounts reflect the various political agendas of successive generations of intellectuals and officials. The same cult was called into service for a variety of ideological ends: feminism, nationalism, Buddhism, or Daoism.

Cult Places and Cultural Change in Republican Italy

Cult Places and Cultural Change in Republican Italy PDF Author: Tesse Dieder Stek
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9089641777
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Summary: This study throws new light on the Roman impact on Italic religious structures in the last four centuries BC and, more generally, on the complex processes of change and accommodation set in motion by the Roman expansion in Italy. Cult places had a pivotal function among the various 'Italic' tribes known to us from the ancient sources, which had been gradually conquered and subsequently controlled by Rome. Through an analysis of archaeological, literary and epigraphic evidence from rural cult places in Central and Southern Italy including a case study on the Samnite temple of San Giovanni in Galdo, the authors investigate the fluctuating function of cult places in among the non-Roman Italic communities, before and after the establishment of Roman rule.

St. Magnús of Orkney

St. Magnús of Orkney PDF Author: Haki Antonsson
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047419553
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book looks at the emergence of the cult of St Magnús, earl of Orkney (d. 1117), and the literary corpus composed in his honour. Both aspects are examined from a wider Scandinavian and European perspective.

The Daēva Cult in the Gāthās

The Daēva Cult in the Gāthās PDF Author: Amir Ahmadi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317537459
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
Addressing the question of the origins of the Zoroastrian religion, this book argues that the intransigent opposition to the cult of the daēvas, the ancient Indo-Iranian gods, is the root of the development of the two central doctrines of Zoroastrianism: cosmic dualism and eschatology (fate of the soul after death and its passage to the other world). The daēva cult as it appears in the Gāthās, the oldest part of the Zoroastrian sacred text, the Avesta, had eschatological pretentions. The poet of the Gāthās condemns these as deception. The book critically examines various theories put forward since the 19th century to account for the condemnation of the daēvas. It then turns to the relevant Gāthic passages and analyzes them in detail in order to give a picture of the cult and the reasons for its repudiation. Finally, it examines materials from other sources, especially the Greek accounts of Iranian ritual lore (mainly) in the context of the mystery cults. Classical Greek writers consistently associate the nocturnal ceremony of the magi with the mysteries as belonging to the same religious-cultural category. This shows that Iranian religious lore included a nocturnal rite that aimed at ensuring the soul’s journey to the beyond and a desirable afterlife. Challenging the prevalent scholarship of the Greek interpretation of Iranian religious lore and proposing a new analysis of the formation of the Hellenistic concept of ‘magic,’ this book is an important resource for students and scholars of History, Religion and Iranian Studies.

Rituals and Power

Rituals and Power PDF Author: S. R. F. Price
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521312684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Simon Price attempts to discover why the Roman Emperor was treated like a god.

The Archaeology of Cult and Religion

The Archaeology of Cult and Religion PDF Author: Peter F. Biehl
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This is a collection of twenty-one papers deriving from talks given at conferences of the European Association of Archaeologists in 1997 and 1998. The papers discuss specific issues and case studies involving questions of "cult" and religion in the pre- and protohistory of southeast Europe and the Mediterranean, looking at sites in Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Moravia, Italy and Greece, southern Russia and Iberia, amongst others. The papers have been divided into three thematic sections: Symbols of the Other World: Representation and Imagery; Sacred or Profane: Conceptions of Cult Places; and Life and Death: Interpreting Mortuary Practice. As the editors note, studying prehistoric religion is an ambiguous procedure, necessarily mixing the practices of archaeology, anthropology, religious studies and psychology. Yet they anticipate the creation of a generally accepted theoretical framework for the archaeology of cult and religion, a method for reconstructing past belief systems from the contextual evidence of material culture, thus dragging the archaeology of religion back into the academic mainstream. The diverse range of methodological practices represented by these papers clearly highlight the difficulties involved in realising this objective.