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Ritual works and practices: a case study from a Muslim community in Cambodia
No full textThe function of the ritual is to assert a transcendental power over everyday experience and rituals therefore tend to be formalized, repetitive and conservative events. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance for ritual studies of ritualised strategies for the negotiation of power and influence. Here, research on a spirit possession cult among the Muslim Cham in Cambodia will serve as an empirical basis for a discussion of the open-ended and unbounded features of ritual in contemporary society, since the performances of this cult may be seen both as a kind of "state ritual" and as exorcism. Through the cult, the Cham tend to take refuge in their memories of the distant past rather than in their more immediate memories of terror and political violence, during the civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime. Rephrased as songs of the spirits, the present and the past intermingle in narrating the difficulties, the conflicts and the struggle in the world of the spirits who live next to, and mingle in, the world of ordinary human beings
They bewitched the generator: state power and religious authority at the New Year’s festival in Makunduchi, Zanzibar
No full textThe New Year’s festival in Makunduchi, Zanzibar, has been one of the central sites for the interaction between state power and religious authority. It has changed considerably since colonial times, as political rituals were grafted onto religious ones, and a commercial fair developed. In this article, it is argued that these changes can be explained in part by the renegotiation, both in conflict and co-operation, of the relationship between local religious experts and state officials. First the New Year’s rituals as central practices for the production of local religious authority is analysed. Then the colonial history of the festival is discussed, before finally turning to the interactions between state power and local authority at the festival in post-colonial times
Der Runen-Stein von Rök und Snorri Sturluson - oder 'Wie aussagekräftig sind unsere Quellen zur Religionsgeschichte der Wikingerzeit?'
No full textThe article contributes to the discussion on source criticism within the research field of Old Norse religion. It examines the common assumption that archaeological sources are always to prefer above written sources from the Middle Ages where the Viking Era is described as such accounts are invariably tendentious and biased. Influenced by theories from the field of social anthropology, however, the article argues for the worth of written sources as a complement to the material ones. As an example, the effort to interpret the inscriptions on the runic stone from Rök are introduced. The article suggests that different kinds of source material offer a spectrum of possibilities out of which none alone, but rather all taken together, can deepen the researcher’s knowledge about the object under study
Formes de mystique dans le Nord préchrétien
No full textIn this paper, the author explores mysticism found in a Nordic context, exemplified by different forms of mystic experiences in old Norse religion described in old Scandinavian poetry and literature
Symbolism and magical acts
No full textWhy do people believe in the efficacy of magical acts? And how can we explain this belief? Various answers have been given to these questions, but in this paper the focus is on the presentation and criticism of one particular analytic framework closely associated with the discipline of social anthropology; a "symbolist" approach because its adherents consider magical and religious actions and beliefs to be systems of messages cast in symbolic codes, about the social (and in some cases also the natural) order. The study of magical acts and ideas provides us with a touch-stone for probing the validity of the symbolist approach in general
On divination: an exercise in comparative method
No full textSome comparative methods aim at establishing universals, others seek human causes that will account for cross-cultural or transhistorical resemblance. The sole aim of the comparative method presented here is to improve our questionnaire. All theories, including those claiming universals, contribute to our professional questionnaire; and that is how, in spite of the theoretical monsters we have to kill every year, our discipline has been making some progress throughout its history. Time may have come, then, to concentrate our comparative endeavours on questions to ask. Divination is the production, observation and interpretation of signs in order to obtain a religious basis for decision and action. This working definition excludes ecstatic prophecy and straightforward clairvoyance and concentrates on what is sometimes called inductive divination. We shall consider a few divination systems from different parts of the world', but before doing so we should make clear what we are after. If we want to arrive at an idea of divination as a religious pattern, we should study the structure and content of each divination procedure, giving priority to the question of how it makes sense to its users as a true basis for making decisions
Gnosticism and esotericism: an example from Russian new religiosity
No full textTime and again, the terms gnosticism and esotericism appear in connection with one another. Most esoteric teachings, for example, draw on the higher knowledge of the secrets of nature or deity. The terms esoteric and esotericism even surface in connection with antique gnosticism—and this is not a rare occurrence. Just think of the famous definition of gnosis suggested by leading scholars in the field in Messina in 1966. According to this definition, gnosis is the ‘knowledge of divine mysteries, which is reserved for the elite’. And just as Christian apologists saw gnosis as the source of all heresy, so today it is viewed as the source of all esotericism—at least from a theological point of view. In spite of the fact that this thesis is not historically tenable, given that western esotericism did not start until the time of the Renaissance, one cannot ignore the fact that gnosis and esotericism are multiply interwoven with each other. The author sketches the dogmatics and the history of a new religious movement which created quite a furore in the Ukraine and Russia during the first half of the 1990s. On the basis of this sketch of the ‘Great White Brotherhood Usmalos’, he then tries to apply the terms gnosticism and esotericism to this example. Proceeding this way, the author sheds light on both the level of its mode of thought as well as its form of life.
The sound picture of the Saami shamanic drum
No full textResearch on the Saami shamanic drum has mainly concerned the pictorial world of the drumhead. Therefore, studying the sound picture may give new insights into the Saami Shamanic drum. In my study of the Saami drum I have tried to find the answer to two questions: 1) Is it possible to detect the sound pictogram from some of the drums preserved? 2) Are there marks of usage which might indicate what kind of sounds the users preferred? A comparison of the different drums shows that the signs of usage are surprisingly consistent. The drum sounds reach the receptive organs in the human ear in a range of low but strong tones, with low frequencies but high amplitude. This means that more energy is transferred into the nervous system than with various other types of instrumental sounds
Esoteric Theravada Buddhism in Burma/Myanmar
No full textThe achievement of independence in 1948 was in many ways a watershed in Burma’s history. At this time, a variety of Buddhist movements emerged that were part not only of a ‘Burmese Buddhist revival’, in which even the government was involved, but also a general re-enchantment of Asia. In the period following World War II, projects of nation-building and further modernization were implemented in many newly independent Asian nation states. The theories of modernization adopted by the rulers had presupposed that a new, rationalized and secularized order that had set them on the path of ‘progress’ would entail a decline of religion. However, instead there was a widespread resurgence of religion, and a variety of new, eclectic religious movements emerged in Southeast Asia. In the thriving religious field of postcolonial Burma, two lay Buddhist movements associated with two different meditation techniques emerged, viz.; the insight meditation movement and the concentration meditation movement. The latter consisted of a variety of esoteric congregations combining concentration meditation with esoteric lore, and some of these were characterized by fundamentalist trends. At the same time, the supermundane form of Buddhism became increasingly influential in the entire field of religion. The aim of the present article is to discuss how this supermundane dimension has reshaped the complex religious field in Burma, with particular emphasis on the esoteric congregations; to present the Burmese form of esoteric Theravāda Buddhism, and to situate the fundamentalist trends which are present in these contexts
Kabbalah in Sweden
No full textThis article examines the history of Kabbalah in Sweden. The reader is presented with an overall view to Kabbalah in Sweden: first, the Johannes Bureus and the Nordic Kabbalah, Kabbalah after Bureus, Kabbalistic literature, and last, Kabbalah in Sweden today. When the Kabbalah reached Sweden it was mainly the non-Jewish Kabbalah that gained influence, even if its Jewish roots were acknowledged. Johannes Bureus unites, in a similar fashion as do the Christian Kabbalists in continental Europe, Christian motifs with the symbolic world of the Kabbalah. Bureus, however, adds runes, ancient Norse gods and Gothic ideas in his own unique manner. The Kabbalah invites speculation and the search for correspondences which has caused the Kabbalah in Sweden to be united with a number of other traditions. Bureus combined the Kabbalah with runes and Gothicism; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we can find the Kabbalah in Freemasonry and Esoteric societies, while the Kabbalah in the twentieth century and onwards has been associated with New Age, Parapsychology and Indian Mysticism. Apart from Bureus, most Kabbalists in Sweden have followed the trends that flourished in the rest of the world. Bureus was the first to create a specifically Swedish interpretation of the Kabbalah