Ancient Spirituality Research Articles

Reviving Pagan Spirituality: A Manifesto

Numerous contemporary neopagan movements are attempts to revive or reconstruct ancient religious belief and practice. For instance, the worship of the ancient Norse gods has been restored to Iceland by the Asatru Fellowship. In this essay, I defend neopagan movements against the charge that ancient spirituality cannot be recovered in identifiable form. I note that today’s dominant religions, such as Christianity, also face questions of the continuity of identity and argue that if such problems are tractable for current religions, then, in principle, they are resolvable for neopagans. I further argue that there are three broad themes of spirituality that are identifiable in ancient pagan religion, and that these are permanent possibilities recoverable by modern people. I also defend the relevance and importance of these themes.

Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity

In Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity, David Frankfurter endeavors to redefine the term “syncretism” and to apply it to a new methodological framework for analyzing Christianization. The focus of his study is how people in late antique Egyptian culture combined traditional pagan elements with Christian symbols through art, ritual, and written text. While some may disagree with his characterization of “syncretism” and “conversion,” Frankfurter successfully synthetizes an impressive wealth of textual and material culture evidence in his book. He examines evidence ranging from votive objects and visual art to hagiography and other textual accounts of religious rituals, and his thematic organization of these sources lends well to his argument. Frankfurter’s book lays out a useful framework for examining and describing syncretism within the culture while also giving the reader an engaging glimpse into late antique Egypt.Christianizing Egypt is organized thematically around core aspects of late antique Egyptian culture. The first chapter is the most beneficial for researchers outside of Frankfurter’s field, because this chapter cogently outlines his methodology for analyzing syncretism and conversion. Chapter 2 covers the rituals of the domestic sphere, and in particular the importance of female votive objects in prayers for fertility and childrearing. Chapter 3 discusses holy men and their influence as controllers of spiritual power. Frankfurter illustrates how shrines and dwellings of holy men became places of healing, and that the presence of demons or exorcisms proved the power of Christian spiritual leaders. This theme is elaborated in chapter 4, which discusses the importance of shrines as loci of religious activity of many forms. Frankfurter especially focuses on the importance of festivals, as well as divination through incubation, both of which proved the holiness of a location. Chapter 5 delves into the creation of votive objects, textiles, and art, while chapter 6 discusses the creation of manuscripts and other religious works. Interestingly, Frankfurter focuses more on the artisans than their products in these chapters, discussing how the act of creation imbued an object with special power and conveyed the meaning the object had in the mind of the recipient. The final chapter discusses the importance of landscape for late ancient spirituality, wherein Frankfurter both summarizes and elaborates on earlier points to build a comprehensive picture of the culture.There are many commendable elements of this book, most notably the wealth of sources Frankfurter uses. His chapters on home votive objects and artisans were especially evocative in this regard, because he utilized numerous visual elements of religious practice to depict the lives of ordinary men and women in late Antique Egypt. He gave the items context, both to written descriptions of rituals such as dances and to how these items were valued by individuals and artisans. As well, his employment of both written and archeological evidence masterfully enhanced his discussions in every chapter.One of the major strengths of this book is also one of its weaknesses. Frankfurter endeavors throughout the book to use the term “syncretism” in a unique way. He describes syncretism as a “creative process,” combining elements of paganism with “true Christianity” (11, 15). He therefore sets up a contrast between “conversion” and “syncretism,” showing where the “pagan holdouts” remained within the culture (3–4). Frankfurter is not alone in the use of this contrast, but since his argument rests largely on this concept, it is necessary to critique how Frankfurter specifically uses it in his analysis. This contrast between “syncretism” and “conversion” reflects the written evidence of the period by Christian authors and hagiographers. The problem lies in the fact that these assumptions are not adequately contextualized in a robust way, which sets up a false dichotomy between the “syncretism” practiced by the local population and the concept of “conversion” articulated by educated Christians within the institutional church. Frankfurter has all the sources necessary to make an excellent critique of both the local rituals and the commentators of these rituals, but in the present work he does not go quite far enough in addressing the assumptions of his sources.In sum, Christianizing Egypt does a marvelous job of vivifying the lives of ordinary Christians in late antique Egypt. His unique utilization of the term “syncretism” brings together a wealth of resources on conversion during the late antique period, which illustrates that the culture blended Christian and non-Christian elements into distinctive forms of worship and practice. This book represents a significant contribution to the literature, and it will surely stimulate discussion among scholars for years to come.

The Flourishing of New Religions in Korea

This issue of Nova Religio explores the success, in several cases spectacular, of different new religions in South Korea, and the controversies they generated. In this introduction I suggest that, notwithstanding their different Christian and non-Christian backgrounds, most Korean new religions share some common features, including messianism, millenarianism, and proposals for social reform. I introduce a typology of four major groupings: Christian new religions, “traditionalist” groups that call for a restoration of Korea’s ancient spirituality, Won Buddhism, and Jeungsanism. Finally, I suggest that both political and religious factors contributed to the flourishing of new religions in twentieth and twenty-first century Korea.

The Secret of Shangri-La: Agricultural Travels and the Rise of Organic Farming Discourse

The Secret of Shangri-La: Agricultural Travels and the Rise of Organic Farming Discourse

La reflexión sobre las religiones mistéricas en la filosofía de Nietzsche

Los misterios griegos son para Nietzsche una de las expresiones más originales y significativas de la espiritualidad antigua. En el curso de su vida y de sus estudios se dirigirá a menudo a los misterios con la curiosidad del filólogo y del etnólogo, pero también con el ojo especulativo del filósofo. Al análisis histórico en extensión hace de contrapeso un intento continuo de trasformar la semántica del fenómeno de los misterios, a lo largo de un recorrido a menudo difícil y errático que atraviesa toda la obra del autor.

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya - by Hart, Thomas

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya - by Hart, Thomas

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya. By Thomas Hart. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. Pp. xvi, 270. Photographs. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $39.95 cloth.

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya. By Thomas Hart. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. Pp. xvi, 270. Photographs. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $39.95 cloth. - Volume 66 Issue 3

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya – By Thomas Hart

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya – By Thomas Hart

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya by Thomas Hart

The Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya by Thomas Hart

The ancient spirituality of the modern Maya

Since the arrival of the Europeans, the indigenous people of what is now Guatemala have endured massacres, persecution, and discrimination. Their religious beliefs and practices have been condemned as superstition and witchcraft. Yet the spiritual worldview of the Maya has survived and even flourishes, five centuries after the invaders' first attempts to destroy it.In Ancient Spirituality of the Modern Maya, Thomas Hart weaves together the stories and experiences of those who practice Maya spirituality today, based on the relationship between God, the World, and the Ancestors, and provides a sense of the Mayan worldview as it is revealed through myth, ceremony, and teaching. The information provided by Hart adds a modern perspective to this largely oral traditional culture and provides a unique insight into its practice today, with its many variations and with the adaptability that has sustained it for over five hundred years.

The Benedictines, the Cistercians and the acquisition of a hermitage in twelfth-century Durham

Twelfth-century England witnessed a rapid rearrangement of its religious landscape as new monastic orders jostled with established ones in their struggle for spiritual influence and material possessions. Amid the shifting priorities of ecclesiastical and monastic politics, the hermitage as a paradigm represented a purity of tradition which hailed from the very infancy of the Church, embodying continuity, stability and an ancient spirituality which even an order as committed to communal living as the Cistercians seems to have been drawn to. In this climate of change the new and old orders alike sought to rediscover and bind themselves to the spiritual roots of monasticism. Their general desire to do so was demonstrated by the attention they paid to hermits, not only through the production of numerous hagiographies, but also by the establishment of religious houses upon existing hermitages. During the twelfth century more hermitages seem to have been transformed into monastic houses than at any other period of English history, yet the circumstances in which these transformations took place have been much understudied. One of the best documented examples is the hermitage at Finchale in Durham and for this reason it will form the subject of this article.

Philosophy as a way of life: spiritual exercises from Socrates to Foucault

Translatora s Note. Introduction. Part I: Method: . 1. Forms of Life and Forms of Discourse in Ancient Philosophy. 2. Philosophy, Exegesis and Creative Mistakes. Part II: Spiritual Exercise: . 3. Spiritual Exercise. 4. Ancient Spirituality and a Christian Philosophy.a . Part III: Figures: . 5. Figure of Socrates. 6. Marcus Aurelius. 7. Reflections of the Idea of the a Cultivation of the Selfa . Part IV: Themes:. 8. Only the Present is our Happiness. 9. The View From Above. 10. The Sage and the World. 11. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Postscript. Bibliography. Index.

Novel Epics: Gogol, Dostoevsky, and National Narrative

Novel Epics reassesses the origins of the nineteenth-century Russian novel, challenging the Lukacs-Bakhtin theory of epic. Frederick T. Griffiths and Stanley J. Rabinowitz take the Russian novel out of a specifically European context and show that it developed as a means of reconnecting that narrative form with its origins in classical and Christian in a way that expressed the Russian desire to renew and restore ancient spirituality. Through readings of Gogol's Dead Souls and Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov, this book redefines epic and points to a new understanding of the sweep of Russian literature as a whole.

Medieval Values

The period in the life of the Church during which one and the same tradition flourished throughout the Christian world, in East and West alike, is generally supposed to be the first five centuries, or, in other words, the period before and up to the medieval. The Middle Ages, and especially what may be called the Latin Middle Ages, are either discounted altogether or else mentioned only in order to eliminate them from the field of investigation; three charges in particular being levelled against them.To begin with, the Middle Ages in the West are held to have been juridical and institutional, fenced about by an intricate system of legislation; they were the Golden Age of Canon Law and thus opposed to the spontaneous developments characterising the Eastern Church over the same period of time. The medieval West was also marked by moral and psychological trends of thought in contrast with the mysticism of Eastern Christianity, and religious life tended to be more practical than contemplative in spirit. The immediate present and its concerns bulked larger than the disinterested pursuit of eternal life, and the temporal preponderated over the eschatological in importance. There is, moreover, a noticeably psychological bent in the writings of the men most representative of the centuries in question; to quote examples from either extremity of the period, we find St Gregory the Great pre-eminently the moralist of Scriptural exegesis, and St Bernard’s conscious fervour far removed from the ancient spirituality of the Charisma.