The Spiritual Power of Masks

The Spiritual Power of Masks PDF Author: Nigel Pennick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1644114054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 483

Book Description
• Reveals how mask rituals are akin to shamanic journeying and allow the mask wearer to personify an ancestral presence, spirit, deity, or power • Examines animal guising and shows how mask customs are tied to creation myths and the ancestral founders of a people, tribe, city, or nation • Looks at morris dancers and mummers in the UK, Krampuslauf and Perchtenlauf in Germanic areas, the Gorgon myths of Greece, Norse Berserker rituals, and the annual Black Forest rite to awaken ensouled masks every spring There is a spiritual power in masks that transports one into realms unseen and gives voice to things unspoken. Within the context of ritual, putting on a mask places the wearer at the intersection between the present and the past, the living and the dead, this world and the Otherworld. Masks make it possible to activate ancient archetypes, with the mask wearer reanimating or personifying an ancestral presence or spirit, a deity or power, an animal or a being of the eldritch world. In this illustrated study, Nigel Pennick explores the magical and spiritual aspects of mask wearing from ancient times to the present. He examines the many mask traditions around Europe and shows how mask rituals are similar to shamanic journeying and near-death experiences and can induce ecstatic states that allow the power signified by the mask to take possession of the individual wearing it. He also looks at the practice of dressing up as sacred animals and mask wearing as it relates to ostenta, events that occur suddenly and without warning that are considered a token or sign from the Otherworld. Unveiling the sacred power of masks, the author shows how masks allow us to transport into realms unseen, embody ancestors and otherworldly entities, and connect with traditions that stretch back to time immemorial.

Masks of the Spirit

Masks of the Spirit PDF Author: Peter T. Markman
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520064188
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Drawing on secondary works in archaeology, art history, folklore, ethnohistory, ethnography, and literature, the authors maintain that the mask is the central metaphor for the Mesoamerican concept of spiritual reality. Covers the long history of the use of the ritual mask by the peoples who created and developed the mythological tradition of Mesoamerica. Chapters: (1) the metaphor of the mask in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica: the mask as the God, in ritual, and as metaphor; (II) metaphoric reflections of the cosmic order; and (III) the metaphor of the mask after the conquest: syncretism; the Pre-Columbian survivals; the syncretic compromise; and today's masks. Over 100 color and black-&-white photos.

Breaking the Power of the Mask: Discover Healing, Freedom, and Joy on Your Journey with God

Breaking the Power of the Mask: Discover Healing, Freedom, and Joy on Your Journey with God PDF Author: Jocelyn J. Jones
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781734046700
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 134

Book Description
Since childhood, each of us has been trained in the art of wearing a mask. Often passed off as a self-preservation technique to prevent people from seeing what's really going on inside, we've learned how to shield others from discovering our insecurities, our fears, and our past pain.However, what is hidden in the dark will eventually come to light. Emotions like shame, anger, fear, and abandonment that often lie beneath the mask have the power to keep us in emotional and spiritual bondage. We must seek God to heal the broken pieces of our hearts. If you find yourself constantly living in the past, or you feel like you can never let people close enough to you to learn who you really are, this book is for you.This book will: -challenge you to uncover the pain you have hidden behind a mask so you can begin the healing process. -shift your belief that the past can determine your future. -draw you closer to God by removing barriers that prevent intimacy. -help you to identify ways in which God can use your past experiences to help others. God desperately wants you to experience His love and the freedom that belongs to you as a believer. This book will be a valuable tool in helping you get there.

People of the Masks

People of the Masks PDF Author: Kathleen O'Neal Gear
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312858574
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 580

Book Description
The archaeologists/authors continue to entertain an avid international audience with their rousing historical epic of adventure, triumph, and heartbreak of the pre-Columbian peoples who struggled to make this great continent their home.

The Guru Papers

The Guru Papers PDF Author: Joel Kramer
Publisher: Frog Books
ISBN: 1883319005
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
One of “the most comprehensive, erudite, and timely” explorations of power dynamics and authoritarianism in religions, institutions, relationships and even personal struggles (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review) Authoritarian control, which once held societies together, is now at the core of personal, social, and planetary problems, and thus a key factor in social disintegration. Authoritarianism is embedded in the way people think—hiding in culture, values, daily life, and in the very morality people try to live by. In The Guru Papers, authors Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad unmask authoritarianism in areas such as relationships, cults, 12-step groups, religion, and contemporary morality. Chapters on addiction and love show the insidious nature of authoritarian values and ideologies in the most intimate corners of life, offering new frameworks for understanding why people get addicted and why intimacy is laden with conflict. By exposing the inner authoritarian that people use to control themselves and others, the authors show why people give up their power, and how others get and maintain it.

The Mask of Power

The Mask of Power PDF Author: Lynn V. Andrews
Publisher: Harper San Francisco
ISBN: 9780062500120
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description
Helps readers construct and decorate their own shamanic "mask of power"--symbol of their truest selves--to use in finding their real identity, relating their social and spiritual lives more closely, and participating in rituals to save Mother Earth. Original.

Phyllis Galembo

Phyllis Galembo PDF Author: Phyllis Galembo
Publisher: Radius Books/D.A.P.
ISBN: 9781942185574
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
A showcase of Phyllis Galembo's extraordinary photographs of the costume, ritual and traditions of masquerade Mexico Phyllis Galembo has travelled all over the globe to sites of ritual masquerade. In Africa, the Caribbean, and now Mexico, she captures cultural performances with a subterranean political edge. Using a direct, unaffected portrait style, Galembo captures her subjects informally posed but often strikingly attired in traditional or ritualistic dress. Attuned to a moment's collision of past, present and future, Galembo finds the timeless elegance and dignity of her subjects. Masking is a complex, mysterious, and profound tradition in which the participants transcend the physical world and enter the spiritual realm. In her vibrant images, Galembo exposes an ornate code of political, artistic, theatrical, social and religious symbolism and commentary. Galembo highlights the creativity of the individuals morphing into a fantastical representation of themselves, having cobbled together materials gathered from the immediate environment to idealize their vision of mythical figures. While still pronounced in their personal identity, the subject's intentions are rooted in the larger dynamics of religious, political and cultural affiliation. Establishing these connections is a hallmark of Galembo's work.

Mask

Mask PDF Author:
Publisher: Earth Aware Editions
ISBN: 9781683836452
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
2020 IBPA Awards Winner! Mask presents a striking collection of rare masks steeped in ancient tradition, captured through the lens of one of the world’s most celebrated documentary photographers. Celebrated photographer Chris Rainier has documented indigenous and endangered cultures worldwide. What began as a focus on the masks of New Guinea—where modernity threatened to erase ancient rituals and cultures—became an expansive journey to find and photograph traditional masks that has taken Rainier across six continents over the past thirty years. The result is this mesmerizing photographic collection of masks—some of them ancient, some newer, many hidden at the edges of the known world and rarely revealed to outsiders. Traditional masks are so often seen behind the glass of museum cabinets, divorced from their spiritual significance. But the masks in this collection are still being danced today, in countless cultures all over the world. Rainier conveys them pulsing with the rhythms of life, full of power and spiritual relevance. Through his stunning photography—at once mysterious and unguarded—Rainier takes us on a pilgrimage to experience masks and mask rituals: from those found at initiation rituals in Burkina Faso to Bön Buddhist masks long hidden in a Nepalese monastery in the high Himalayas, the raven and bear regalia of North American First Nation potlatches, and the terrifying, child-chasing Krampus masks of the Austrian Alps. Accompanying these striking images are a foreword by renowned essayist Pico Iyer, ethnographic notes from anthropologist Robert L. Welsch, and fascinating stories recounting Rainier’s journeys to distant lands to preserve and celebrate these objects of beauty and power and the cultures that produce them.

Revealing Masks

Revealing Masks PDF Author: W. Anthony Sheppard
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520924741
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
W. Anthony Sheppard considers a wide-ranging constellation of important musical works in this fascinating exploration of ritualized performance in twentieth-century music. Revealing Masks uncovers the range of political, didactic, and aesthetic intents that inspired the creators of modernist music theater. Sheppard is especially interested in the use of the "exotic" in techniques of masking and stylization, identifying Japanese Noh, medieval Christian drama, and ancient Greek theater as the most prominent exotic models for the creation of "total theater." Drawing on an extraordinarily diverse—and in some instances, little-known—range of music theater pieces, Sheppard cites the work of Igor Stravinsky, Benjamin Britten, Arthur Honegger, Peter Maxwell Davies, Harry Partch, and Leonard Bernstein, as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Madonna. Artists in literature, theater, and dance—such as William Butler Yeats, Paul Claudel, Bertolt Brecht, Isadora Duncan, Ida Rubenstein, and Edward Gordon Craig--also play a significant role in this study. Sheppard poses challenging questions that will interest readers beyond those in the field of music scholarship. For example, what is the effect on the audience and the performers of depersonalizing ritual elements? Does borrowing from foreign cultures inevitably amount to a kind of predatory appropriation? Revealing Masks shows that compositional concerns and cultural themes manifested in music theater are central to the history of twentieth-century Euro-American music, drama, and dance.

The Masks We Wear

The Masks We Wear PDF Author: Eugene C. Rollins
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1438997132
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
As a social role the concept of the persona is useful in allowing an individual to move in and out of relationships without being too vulnerable. A persona can be the oil to ease potential social friction. A persona provides for some predictability of relationship, but wearing a mask may become a sub-personality preventing us from embracing our true spiritual identity.