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Rituals between religion and politics: the case of VHP’s 2001-2002 Ayodhya-campaign
No full textThe present paper deals with rituals in a political discourse, namely the rituals employed by the right wing, Hindu nationalist movement, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), in its campaign for a Rama temple in the north Indian town of Ayodhya. As is probably well-known, VHP is part of a group of organizations known as the Sangh Parivar, or sangh family, which also includes the presently ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the ultranationalistic organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. The rituals of VHP are instruments of the construction of an ideal Hindu society and part of an encounter between Hindu-nationalist tenets and the secular, political establishment. However, the rituals employed by VHP can not be said to represent a separate ritual genre, since they are not different from similar, traditional Hindu rituals. What makes them different is their context and their motives, the fact that they do not serve ordinary material, eschatological, or soteriological aims, but rather political aims, as well as the fact that the ritual agents in this case do not seem to have a satisfactory juridical legitimacy to perform the rituals
S. Birgitta and mysticism
No full textS. Birgitta (Bridget) of Sweden (about 1303-1373) lived in a period of flourishing Christian mysticism. Hardly any epoch has produced as many well-known mystics in Western Europe as the 13th and 14th centuries. In Eastern Christendom mysticism also reached one of its highest points in the 14th century. The threads connecting Birgitta with other mystics and devout circles lead not only backwards, but also forwards. The Canonization Acts bear testimony to the fact that Birgitta's personality made a deep impression on many of those who met her. By her life and example, by conversation and counsels she gave others the impulses she had herself received.
Divine and demonic necessity in the Oresteia
No full textAeschylus remains wholly within the context of the ancient religion. He forms his dramatical works with stern gravity and deep religiosity, so that a pervading piety is natural and there are no godless people. The archaic attitude of the poet appears not the least in his view of the departed. They are bloodless shadows without emotions or perceptions. But at the same time the murdered ones cry for vengeance, Nemesis rules over all and everything, and Dike looks after the right of the angered dead. The departed, therefore, have a dangerous power. When the earth has drunk the blood of a murdered person there is no turning back, even Zeus himself is then powerless. The entire Oresteia is concerned with the necessity and the problem of blood-revenge, with retributive justice, but also—one must add—with atonement. Even if one may never disregard Aeschylus' historical background and his own particularity, the problems raised by the Oresteia are universally human and timeless. They may be expressed in different words in different times. But they are basic conditions of human existence
The problem of capitalism in the scholarship on contemporary spirituality
No full textCapitalism has been a rare theme in the scholarship on spirituality. However, some very interesting attempts to think spirituality in relation to capitalism have been made. The focus in this article is on four examples: Kimberly Lau, Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, Slavoj Žižek and Gordon Lynch. This list of scholars is not exhaustive, but these have been chosen on the basis that their works have contributed to recent discussion and that the author have found them stimulating. All the chosen scholars are critical of contemporary capitalism. Lynch understands spirituality to be progressive and an anti-capitalist ideology, while all the others deem contemporary spirituality to be somehow capitalist in contributing to its ideology, practice and consumerist ethos. By describing and analysing these positions, the author argues that although the scholarly works have been strong in either describing the spiritual practices or theorising capitalism, these two dimensions have been fairly distinct. Therefore, there is still space for scholarship which could connect detailed empirical descriptions with theories of capitalism
Shamanism as a research subject: some methodological viewpoints
No full textThere is hardly any other ethnological or historico-religious subject that has had such a great power of attraction on scholars or on other more or less popular writers as shamanism, particularly in its North-Eurasian version, the one dealt with in this essay. To be convinced of this one need only look at the bibliographical works on the subject. The bibliography on the Russian literature dealing with this subject, published by the Russian scholar A. Popov in 1932, on its own includes more than 65o articles and long essays. Thirty years have passed since then, and interest in shamanism has far from died out among Russian scholars. In addition there are essays on the subject written in other languages. North-Eurasian shamanism, as is known, does not comprise a completely unified phenomenon, but exists in different gradated forms that not seldom take on a strong local colouring. Not only does the personality make-up of the shamans vary, but so do their authority, their pattern of behaviour, and professional equipment, and all this provides a fertile soil for different theoretical reconstructions and generalizations
Ethnohermeneutics in a postmodern world
No full textDuring the last three decades a growing amount of literature has accumulated that, to quote from the title of a recent collection of essays, can aptly be summed up with the words: The Empire Writes Back. This literature addresses Western literature and science and definitively rejects much of that literature and its stereotypes. It shows how power is at the center of Western literature, and it therefore addresses issues of hegemony, language, place and displacement, racism and sexism, and it attempts to address a common post-colonial theory. This critical literature, sometimes extreme but usually insightful, coincided with the postmodern crisis in ethnography and other cultural sciences that have also assimilated literary theory. Some of the greatest philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, historians, and cultural scientists are either ignorant of world history or adamantly ethnocentric. Ethnohermeneutics is an appeal to professionalism in dealing with these cultures, especially in requiring the basics of the study of any other religion, namely, historical insight, linguistic knowledge
Them that believe: a postmodern exploration of the contemporary Christian serpent-handlers of Appalachia
No full textThe call for a new paradigm is loud and clear and consistent with postmodern methods. They are no gold standard to be applied to all investigations; no master narrative to be defended. Interdisciplinary, as the author tries to demonstrate, can mean not only cooperation among disciplines, but also the use of a variety of often discipline favoured methods by a single investigator or a team of investigators whose location within a particular ‘discipline’ is both historically contingent and likely dated in terms of its usefulness. Likewise, the use of multilevel considerations means that the diversity of methods and approaches at various levels of abstraction are necessary to begin any study of religious phenomena in their immense complexity. This study of serpent handlers focuses upon archival research; hermeneutical explorations of textual criticism of the Bible; ethnography linked to videotapes; phenomenological interviews analyzed in terms of a hermeneutical method that reveals the meaningfulness of handling serpents, being anointed, and the experience of near death from serpent bites. The author is committed to exploring the meaning of serpent handling from personal and cultural perspectives, and also takes into account psychological theories to link the symbolic and sign value of serpents that further does justice to the power of the serpent to elicit genuine religious experiences and to serve as an apologetic for a tradition that has been maligned and misunderstood by lay persons and scholars alike.
The aesthetic and the mystic experience in Indian theory
No full textIn the Sānkhyakārikās, the chief text of the dualistic Sānkhya philosophy, the world and salvation therefrom are described in compressed images as various stages of aesthetic situations. Purusa, the spiritual principle, whose only characteristic apart from being is consciousness, regards the spectacle which prakrti, primary substance, natura, gives. Existence is a theatrical show where that which takes place on the scene only acquires meaning through being regarded and enjoyed by a spectator. The spectator is totally absorbed by the show to the point of identifying himself with it, and he enjoys it. Salvation takes place when the false identification ceases, when insight into the true dualism arises, when the spectator leaves the theatre and the dancing-girl leaves the scene
