Books As Bodies And As Sacred Beings

Download or read book Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings written by James Washington Watts and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this volume, an international team of scholars addresses the theme of books as sacred beings"--

Download or read book Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings written by James W. Watts and published by Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts. This book was released on 2020 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume an international team of scholars address the theme of books as sacred beings from an impressively diverse range of primary material and perspectives. Yet, as a group, they meld to engage and advance previous research to solidify the conclusion that human cultures, especially religious groups, often ritualize bodies as sacred books and books as divine beings. The studies collected here not only increase the range of examples of this phenomenon. They also show the wide variety of ways in which the identity of books, bodies and beings gets both ritualized and theorized. The articles are bracketed by an introduction to the collection, and then by a concluding essay that extrapolates the theme of books as sacred beings on a more general level.

Download or read book Sensing Sacred Texts written by James Washington Watts and published by Equinox Publishing (UK). This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All the human senses become engaged in ritualizing sacred texts. These essays focus especially on ritualizing the iconic dimension of texts through the senses of sight, touch, kiss, and taste, both directly and in the imagination. Ritualized display of books engages the sense of sight very differently than does reading. Touching gets associated with reading scriptures, but touching also enables using the scripture as an amulet. Eating and consuming texts is a ubiquitous analogy for internalizing the contents of texts by reading and memorization. The idea of textual consumption reflects a widespread tendency to equate humans and written texts by their interiority and exteriority: books and people both have material bodies, yet both seem to contain immaterial ideas. Books thus physically incarnate cultural and religious values, doctrines, beliefs, and ideas. These essays bring theories of comparative scriptures and affect theory to bear on the topic as well as rich ethnographic descriptions of scriptural practices with Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and modern art and historical accounts of changing practices with sacred texts in ancient and medieval China and Korea, and in ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures.

Download or read book Sacred Pain written by Ariel Glucklich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-30 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would anyone seek out the very experience the rest of us most wish to avoid? Why would religious worshipers flog or crucify themselves, sleep on spikes, hang suspended by their flesh, or walk for miles through scorching deserts with bare and bloodied feet? In this insightful new book, Ariel Glucklich argues that the experience of ritual pain, far from being a form of a madness or superstition, contains a hidden rationality and can bring about a profound transformation of the consciousness and identity of the spiritual seeker. Steering a course between purely cultural and purely biological explanations, Glucklich approaches sacred pain from the perspective of the practitioner to fully examine the psychological and spiritual effects of self-hurting. He discusses the scientific understanding of pain, drawing on research in fields such as neuropsychology and neurology. He also ranges over a broad spectrum of historical and cultural contexts, showing the many ways mystics, saints, pilgrims, mourners, shamans, Taoists, Muslims, Hindus, Native Americans, and indeed members of virtually every religion have used pain to achieve a greater identification with God. He examines how pain has served as a punishment for sin, a cure for disease, a weapon against the body and its desires, or a means by which the ego may be transcended and spiritual sickness healed. "When pain transgresses the limits," the Muslim mystic Mizra Asadullah Ghalib is quoted as saying, "it becomes medicine." Based on extensive research and written with both empathy and critical insight, Sacred Pain explores the uncharted inner terrain of self-hurting and reveals how meaningful suffering has been used to heal the human spirit.

Download or read book Sacred Woman written by Queen Afua and published by One World. This book was released on 2012-06-20 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twentieth anniversary edition of a transformative blueprint for ancestral healing—featuring new material and gateways, from the renowned herbalist, natural health expert, and healer of women’s bodies and souls “This book was one of the first that helped me start practices as a young woman that focused on my body and spirit as one.”—Jada Pinkett Smith Through extraordinary meditations, affirmations, holistic healing plant-based medicine, KMT temple teachings, and The Rites of Passage guidance, Queen Afua teaches us how to love and rejoice in our bodies by spiritualizing the words we speak, the foods we eat, the relationships we attract, the spaces we live and work in, and the transcendent woman spirit we manifest. With love, wisdom, and passion, Queen Afua guides us to accept our mission and our mantle as Sacred Women—to heal ourselves, the generations of women in our families, our communities, and our world.

Download or read book Sacred Books of the East written by and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Higher Being Bodies written by Ocke De Boer and published by Beech Hill Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Higher Being Bodies constitutes a veritable guide or manual for the development of spiritual consciousness. Ocke de Boer presents his very personal understanding in a manner that encourages his reader to follow the same path. He brings a broad understanding of sources and to Gurdjieff's teaching including Gurdjieff's Eastern sources in Hinduism, Buddhism and Christian thought. The order of presentation leads the reader from clear definitions to practical directions for self-work, all of which culminate in the practice of Unity Thinking. Ocke's description of man's seven states of being is an optimistic view of his reader's possibility to lift the self to a higher level. He encourages his reader by assuring him that he already has extraordinary possibilities in his nature. He explains the nature of negative emotions and the dangers of dualistic thinking. In doing all this he avoids scientific jargon that tends to obscure Gurdjieff's teachings in other works. In a many ways, he clarifies much that others have written.