Women, Pilgrimage, and Rituals of Healing in Modern and Ancient Greece

Women, Pilgrimage, and Rituals of Healing in Modern and Ancient Greece PDF Author: Evy Johanne Håland
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527593185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 658

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Book Description
This book investigates religious rituals and gender in modern and ancient Greece, with a specific focus on women’s role in connection with healing. How can we come to understand such mainstays of ancient culture as its healing rituals, when the male recorders did not, and could not, know or say much about what occurred, since the rituals were carried out by women? The book proposes that one way of tackling this dilemma is to attend similar healing rituals in modern Greece, carried out by women, and compare the information with ancient sources, thus providing new ways of interpreting the ancient material we possess. Carrying out fieldwork—being present during, often, enduring rituals within cultures, despite other changes—teaches one whole new ways of looking at written and pictorial records of such events. By bringing ancient and modern worlds into mutual illumination, this text also has relevance beyond the Greek context both in time and space.

Women, Pilgrimage, and Rituals of Healing in Modern and Ancient Greece

Women, Pilgrimage, and Rituals of Healing in Modern and Ancient Greece PDF Author: Evy Johanne Håland
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527593185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 658

Get Book

Book Description
This book investigates religious rituals and gender in modern and ancient Greece, with a specific focus on women’s role in connection with healing. How can we come to understand such mainstays of ancient culture as its healing rituals, when the male recorders did not, and could not, know or say much about what occurred, since the rituals were carried out by women? The book proposes that one way of tackling this dilemma is to attend similar healing rituals in modern Greece, carried out by women, and compare the information with ancient sources, thus providing new ways of interpreting the ancient material we possess. Carrying out fieldwork—being present during, often, enduring rituals within cultures, despite other changes—teaches one whole new ways of looking at written and pictorial records of such events. By bringing ancient and modern worlds into mutual illumination, this text also has relevance beyond the Greek context both in time and space.

Greek Festivals, Modern and Ancient

Greek Festivals, Modern and Ancient PDF Author: Evy Johanne Håland
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 144389611X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 551

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Book Description
This volume represents a multi-faceted, cross-period product of fieldwork conducted in contemporary Greece in combination with ancient sources. Based on a comparative analysis of important religious festivals and life-cycle rituals, the book investigates the importance of cults connected with the Greek female sphere and its relation to the official male-dominated ideology. Within these festivals are encountered supplementary, complementary or competing ideologies connected with men and women, and it is shown that there is not a one-way power structure or male dominance within Greek culture, but rather competing powers linked to the two sexes and their respective spheres. In addition to gender, the book also explores the relationship between the “great” and “little” societies, in the form of official and popular religion. As such, it will serve to broaden the reader’s knowledge of ancient, but also modern, society, because it concerns the relationship between various spheres of life which each possess their own competing and overlapping, but also co-existing, value-systems.

Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece

Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Matthew Dillon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135099871
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This volume explores the religious motivations for pilgrimage and reveals the main preoccupations of worshippers in Ancient Greece. Dillon examines the main sanctuaries of Delphi, Epidauros and Olympia, as well as the less well-known oracle of Didyma in Asia Minor and the festivals at the Isthmus of Corinth. He discusses the modes of travel to the sites, means of communication between pilgrims and the religious and ritual practices at the sanctuaries themselves. A unique insight into pilgrimage in Ancient Greece is presented, focusing on the diverse aspects of pilgrimage; the role of women and children, the religious festivals of particular ethnic groups and the colourful celebrations involving music, athletics and equestrian events. Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in Ancient Greece is an accessible and fascinating volume, which reveals how the concept of pilgrimage contributes to Greek religion as a whole.

Pilgrimage and Healing

Pilgrimage and Healing PDF Author: Jill Dubisch
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816531676
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
This book creatively brings together the two literatures on pilgrimage and on ritual healing in a way neither set of books does on its own. It also adds a contemporary flair, with articles on Burning Man and on the Run to the Vietnam Memorial....A solid piece of scholarship with an exquisite introduction and collection of well-documented and engagingly written articles

The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece

The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece PDF Author: Sue Blundell
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415126632
Category : Greece
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The papers collected in this volume present a systematic and comprehensive survey of women's role in the religion of the Ancient Greek polis.

Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion

Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion PDF Author: Matthew Dillon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134365098
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
It has often been thought that participation in fertility rituals was women's most important religious activity in classical Greece. Matthew Dillon's wide-ranging study makes it clear that women engaged in numerous other rites and cults, and that their role in Greek religion was actually more important than that of men. Women invoked the gods' help in becoming pregnant, venerated the god of wine, worshipped new and exotic deities, used magic for both erotic and pain-relieving purposes, and far more besides. Clear and comprehensive, this volume challenges many stereotypes of Greek women and offers unexpected insights into their experience of religion. With more than fifty illustrations, and translated extracts from contemporary texts, this is an essential resource for the study of women and religion in classical Greece.

Rituals of Death and Dying in Modern and Ancient Greece

Rituals of Death and Dying in Modern and Ancient Greece PDF Author: Evy Johanne Håland
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443868590
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 690

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Book Description
*Winner of the AFS Elli Köngäs-Maranda Prize 2016* Multidisciplinary or post-disciplinary research is what is needed when dealing with such complex subjects as ritual behaviour. This research, therefore, combines ethnography with historical sources to examine the relationship between modern Greek death rituals and ancient written and visual sources on the subject of death and gender. The central theme of this work is women’s role in connection with the cult of the dead in ancient and modern Greece. The research is based on studies in ancient history combined with the author’s fieldwork and anthropological analysis of today’s Mediterranean societies. Since death rituals have a focal and lasting importance, and reflect the gender relations within a society, the institutions surrounding death may function as a critical vantage point from which to view society. The comparison is based on certain religious festivals that are dedicated to deceased persons and on other death rituals. Using laments, burials and the ensuing memorial rituals, the relationship between the cult dedicated to deceased mediators in both ancient and modern society is analysed. The research shows how the official ideological rituals are influenced by the domestic rituals people perform for their own dead, and vice versa, that the modern domestic rituals simultaneously reflect the public performances. As this cult has many parallels with the ancient official cult, the following questions are central: Can an analysis of modern public and domestic rituals in combination with ancient sources tell the reader more about the ancient death cult as a whole? What does such an analysis suggest about the relationship between the domestic death cult and the official? Since the practical performance of the domestic rituals was – and still remains – in the hands of women, it is crucial to discover the extent of their influence to elucidate the real power relations between women and men. This research represents a new contribution to earlier presentations of the Greek “reality”, but mainly from the female perspective, which is highly significant since men produced most of the ancient sources. This means that the principal objective for this endeavour is to question the ways in which history has been written through the ages, to supplement the male with a female perspective, perhaps complementing an Olympian Zeus with a Chthonic Mother Earth. The research brings both ancient and modern worlds into mutual illumination; its relevance therefore transcends the Greek context both in time and space.

Pilgrimage and Healing

Pilgrimage and Healing PDF Author: Jill Dubisch
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816549494
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Bikers converge at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Thousands flock to a Nevada desert to burn a towering effigy. And the hopeless but hopeful ill journey to Lourdes as they have for centuries. Although pilgrimage may seem an antiquated religious ritual, it remains a vibrant activity in the modern world as pilgrims combine traditional motives—such as seeking a cure for physical or spiritual problems—with contemporary searches for identity or interpersonal connection. That pilgrimage continues to exercise such a strong attraction is testimony to the power it continues to hold for those who undertake these sacred journeys. This volume brings together anthropological and interdisciplinary perspectives on these persistent forms of popular religion to expand our understanding of the role of the traditional practice of pilgrimage in what many believe to be an increasingly secular world. Focusing on the healing dimensions of pilgrimage, the authors present case studies grounded in specific cultures and pilgrimage traditions to help readers understand the many therapeutic resources pilgrimage provides for people around the world. The chapters examine a variety of pilgrimage forms, both religious and non-religious, from Nepalese and Huichol shamanism pilgrimage to Catholic journeys to shrines and feast days to Nevada’s Burning Man festival. These diverse cases suggest a range of meanings embodied in the concept of healing itself, from curing physical ailments and redefining the self to redressing social suffering and healing the wounds of the past. Collectively and individually, the chapters raise important questions about the nature of ritual in general, and healing through pilgrimage in particular, and seek to illuminate why so many participants find pilgrimage a compelling way to address the problem of suffering. They also illustrate how pilgrimage exerts its social and political influence at the personal, local, and national levels, as well as providing symbols and processes that link people across social and spiritual boundaries. By examining the persistence of pilgrimage as a significant source of personal engagement with spirituality, Pilgrimage and Healing shows that the power of pilgrimage lies in its broad transformative powers. As our world increasingly adopts a secular and atheistic perspective in many domains of experience, it reminds us that, for many, spiritual quest remains a potent force.

Ritual Theatre

Ritual Theatre PDF Author: Claire Schrader
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 1849051380
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
This book considers the relevance of ritual theatre in contemporary life and describes how it is being used as a highly cathartic therapeutic process. With contributions from leading experts in the field of dramatherapy, the book brings together a broad spectrum of approaches to ritual theatre as a healing system.

The Seductions of Pilgrimage

The Seductions of Pilgrimage PDF Author: Michael A. Di Giovine
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317016440
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The Seductions of Pilgrimage explores the simultaneously attractive and repellent, beguiling and alluring forms of seduction in pilgrimage. It focuses on the varied discursive, imaginative, and practical mechanisms of seduction that draw individual pilgrims to a pilgrimage site; the objects, places, and paradigms that pilgrims leave behind as they embark on their hyper-meaningful travel experience; and the often unforeseen elements that lead pilgrims off their desired course. Presenting the first comprehensive study of the role of seduction on individual pilgrims in the study of pilgrimage and tourism, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, cultural geography, tourism, heritage, and religious studies.