Author: James Washington WattsPublisher:
ISBN: 9781781798867
Category : Books and reading
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
"In this volume, an international team of scholars addresses the theme of books as sacred beings"--
Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings
Author: James Washington WattsPublisher:
ISBN: 9781781798867
Category : Books and reading
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
"In this volume, an international team of scholars addresses the theme of books as sacred beings"--
Books as Bodies and as Sacred Beings
Author: James W. WattsPublisher: Comparative Research on Iconic and Performative Texts
ISBN: 9781781798843
Category : Books and reading
Languages : en
Pages : 180
Book Description
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.
Sensing Sacred Texts
Author: James Washington WattsPublisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)
ISBN: 9781781795767
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
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.
Sacred Woman
Author: Queen AfuaPublisher: One World
ISBN: 0307559513
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 497
Book Description
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.
Sacred Books of the East
Author: How and why Books Matter
Author: James W. WattsPublisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)
ISBN: 9781781797693
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Religious and secular communities ritualize some books in one, two, or three dimensions. They ritualize the dimension of semantic interpretation through teaching, preaching, and scholarly commentary. This dimension receives almost all the attention of academic scholars. Communities also ritualize a text's expressive dimension through public reading, recitation, and song, and also by reproducing its contents in art, theatre and film. This dimension is receiving increasing scholarly attention, especially in religious studies and anthropology. A third textual dimension, the iconic dimension, gets ritualized by manipulating the physical text, decorating it, and displaying it. This dimension has received almost no academic attention, yet features prominently in the most common news stories about books, whether about e-books, academic libraries, rare manuscript discoveries, or scripture desecrations. By calling attention to the iconic dimension of books, James Watts argues that we can better understand how physical books mediate social value and power within and between religious communities, nations, academic disciplines, and societies both ancient and modern.How and Why Books Matter will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in books, reading, literacy, scriptures, e-books, publishing, and the future of the book. It also addresses scholarship in religion, cultural studies, literacy studies, biblical studies, book history, anthropology, literary studies, and intellectual history.
Creating the Soul Body
Author: Robert E. CoxPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 159477756X
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 245
Book Description
Outlines the principles and mechanics of the soul body, the spiritual vehicle that enables individual consciousness to survive the body’s death • Shows that the ancient Vedic, Egyptian, Hebraic, and Pythagorean traditions shared and understood this spiritual practice • Reveals modern science as only now awakening to this ancient sacred science Ancient peoples the world over understood that individual consciousness is rooted in a universal field of consciousness and is therefore eternal, surviving the passing of the physical body. They engaged in spiritual practices to make that transition maximally auspicious. These practices can be described as a kind of alchemy, in which base elements are discarded and higher levels of consciousness are realized. The result is the creation of a vehicle, a soul body, that carries consciousness beyond physical death. These spiritual preparations are symbolized in the Vedic, Egyptian, and Hebraic traditions as a divine stairway or ladder, a step-by-step path of ascent in which the practitioner raises consciousness by degrees until it comes to rest in the bosom of the infinite, thereby becoming “immortal.” This spiritual process explains the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, for example, whose reincarnation is confirmed in infancy through physical and spiritual signs, indicating that the consciousness has been carried from one lifetime to the next. In Creating the Soul Body, Robert Cox maps the spiritual journey of consciousness behind this sacred science of immortality and reveals the practice of creating a soul body in detail. He also shows that this ancient spiritual science resembles advanced theories of modern science, such as wave and particle theory and the unified field theory, and reveals that modern science is only now awakening to this ancient science of “immortality.”
Higher Being Bodies
Author: Ocke De BoerPublisher: Beech Hill Publishing
ISBN: 9780615982861
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
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.
The Sacred Books of the East: Gaina Sutras
Author: Friedrich Max MüllerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : English literature
Languages : en
Pages : 512
Book Description
Author: