Premodern Sources Research Articles

Conjuring Planetary Spirits in the Twenty-First Century: Textual-Ritual Entanglements in Contemporary ‘Magic(k)’

This article illustrates textual-ritual entanglements in Western learned magic across almost two millennia through an analysis of Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience. Frater Acher is a contemporary practitioner of ‘magic(k)’ who, between 2010 and 2013, performed a series of conjurations of six planetary spirits inspired by an early modern manual of learned magic named *Arbatel*. Frater Acher combined the Arbatel with ritual techniques from numerous further contexts, among them the late ancient *Greek Magical Papyri*, the Clavicula Salomonis tradition, Paracelsianism, Hermeticism, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, theurgy, modern imagination techniques, as well as chaos ‘magic(k)’. As a consequence, Frater Acher’s Arbatel experience – as he frames his ritual diaries published online – reveals a strikingly entangled ritual that illustrates the breadth, depth, and complexity of Western learned magic, as well as its manifold entanglements across time and space. His diaries also demonstrate that, even while following largely formalistic premodern scripts of learned magic, contemporary practitioners may nonetheless display a high degree of flexibility, creativity, and innovation. The article closes by reflecting on whether it is likely that such strategies were also present in premodern practitioner scenarios. In doing so, it calls for taking the – extensive but hitherto almost completely neglected – data of experience reports by contemporary practitioners of ‘magic(k)’ into account when interpreting premodern sources of learned magic. As a consequence, this is the first systematic attempt to compare and juxtapose premodern and modern interpretations and mindsets of practitioners of learned magic. It is thus also the first scholarly article that aims at elucidating a premodern manual of learned magic through reading and analysing the experience report of a contemporary practitioner.

Jürgen Habermas’ Analysis of Legitimisation Crisis in the States of Late Capitalism as a Prelude to the Re-validation of Normative System of Law

Goal – an analysis of the essential elements – from the perspective of legitimisation of normative systems – of Jürgen Habermas’ philosophical thought and his views on the problems that modern capitalist societies face with relationship to the expiration of the pre-modern sources of legitimisation. Research methodology – analysis of literature, critical method of comparison of secondary views in the literature on Habermas’ original theses. Descriptive method. Score/results – views presented by the author of the Legitimation Crisis are based on the works of the representatives of The Frankfurt School. Critical Theory presented in their many works has its development and explication in the works of Habermas, with his innovative solutions to the unsolved problems of the fatalistic diagnosis of the early generation of the Frankfurt School. Habermas attributed a significant importance to the changes in the relationship of work, capital and intersubjective assignment of meaning in various society organisational forms, from traditional to late-capitalist one. His diagnosis of the legitimisation crisis in late-capitalism further points towards his roots in the Frankfurt School. His solution to this problem, related to the communicative actions and a possibility for a rational discourse ending in a consensus and the detailed elements of his analysis of the crisis of legitimisation, shall become a point of analysis in further papers. Originality/value – Jürgen Habermas works maintain their importance in the XXI century, especially in the face of further turbulences that await the democratic systems in the European civilization sphere. This work compiles some of the basic elements of the origin of Habermas’ thought, including the references to the Polish works on Habermas that have not been translated into English; and it is a development of the master’s thesis on Habermas’ concept of legitimisation. The paper’s thesis can be further developed as a related analysis in the future papers.

The Winery in Context: The Workshop Complex at Ambarçay, Diyarbakır (SE Turkey)

Abstract The paper examines the physical and contextual situation of a series of nine rock hewn pressing installations forming a complex of a winery workshop (ca. 5 decares) which was unearthed during excavations executed at the Roman site of Ambar village. Matching the Upper Mesopotamia and fed by a fair distance permanent water source – the Ambarçay Stream in close proximity, the site lies over limestone bedrock convenient for processing in a hard ground, right nearby a moderate size quarry besides two spring spouts. The site’s scale and function is cross-questioned through the instrumentality of original data and interrelatedness of a couple of archaeo-environmental features as well as through a selection of comparative evidence and proxy figures addressed in the ancient and historical accounts. Appearingly; topography, surrounding agricultural land and hydrology were three driving agents of the positioning and planning of the complex which looks spacious for household usage but rather demonstrates itself as an atelier of inhabitants (belike run at the institutional level) that expanded into post 3rd century. When also confined to the economic convergence of the value of wine recorded in the ancient and pre-modern sources, total relative capacity of one-time pressing operation generates an idea over figures that could suffice to more than a latifundium or a resident population.

In the Spirit of Zarathustra: Intertextual Legitimation in Pahlavi Literature

The present study investigates the intertextual relationship between the Pahlavi “Story of Jōišt ī Friyān” and the biography of Zarathustra, as recorded in pre-modern Zoroastrian sources. The first part of the study contains the presentation and analysis of intertextual fragments within the Pahlavi tale, which can be discerned as referencing the Zoroastrian prophet’s life and deeds, forging an associative link between the central character of the story and the image of Zarathustra. The second part provides an attempt to explain why the author of the story might have considered such a link necessary and what could have inspired him to choose Zarathustra’s image and associate it with his protagonist.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Why Medieval Allegory?

Why Medieval Allegory?

“When Mountains Can No Longer Be Seen”: A Critical History of Interpretations of an Ambiguous Shōbōgenzō Sentence

Abstract This paper critically examines the various ways a particularly puzzling line in Dōgen’s 道元 “Genjōkōan” 現成公案 fascicle has been interpreted by premodern sources, especially the Goshō commentary by Senne 詮慧 and Kyōgō 經豪, as well as modern commentators, including sectarian figures such as Nishiari Bokusan 西有穆山 and Kurebayashi Kōdō 榑林皓堂 seen in relation to non-sectarian philosophers such as Watsurji Tetsurō 和辻哲郎. The key passage on “riding a boat out to sea, where mountains can no longer be seen (yamanaki kaichū 山なき海中),” raises crucial issues concerning Dōgen’s approach to multi-perspectivism that have been generally been construed in terms of absolutist and relativist standpoints. My analysis of the scholastic debates also sheds light on the full history of commentaries on Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō 正法眼蔵 encompassing the late medieval and early modern periods.

From The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter to Princess Kaguya: Metamorphoses of the Tale in Manga and Beyond

There are currently numerous manga adaptations of Japanese literary classics of the Heian period. Many of them have been created for educational purpose. It is debatable, however, whether they truly serve such a purpose. In this paper, I will discuss the case of Taketori monogatari (The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, beginning of 10th century). Like all present-day adaptations of ancient texts, manga versions of Taketori monogatari differ significantly from its premodern counterparts. In this paper, I will examine the adaption of the theme, representations of the characters Princess Kaguya (Kaguya-hime) and the bamboo cutter, and manners in which Taketori monogatari metamorphosed into Kaguya-hime over time and when this metamorphosis occurred. Comparing manga representations with premodern versions, I will argue that government-sanctioned textbooks that began to be published in the early twentieth century have played some role in the transformation because they share common characteristics with the modern version Kaguya-hime. In addition, I will compare manga versions to Nara-emaki and Nara-ehon (picture scrolls and picture books produced between the late Muromachi and Edo periods). Comparing these premodern sources with modern manga will help us see some of the differences in the ways the tale has been adapted over the centuries and to consider some of the factors that contributed to new interpretations.

Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, edited by C. Pierce Salguero.

Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, edited by C. Pierce Salguero. Columbia University Press, 2017. 728 pp.; Hb $150. ISBN-13: 9780231179942.

Three Premodern Concepts of Disease

The concepts of health and disease have an impact on the efficiency of the medical system. Currently, there are no unanimously accepted definitions of health and disease, despite the fact that many investigations have attempted to capture their essence. Most of the available research about the concept of disease relies on the evidence-based disease concept of the modern medicine. That concept differs from the lay concept of disease or illness. In this research we use the cognitive linguistic approach to concepts, taking into consideration the way in which human mind processes the surrounding reality. Those processes are based on the universal principles because of the embodiment of cognition. Consequently, concepts are to some extent independent of time and culture. We have selected three premodern sources with sufficient information about disease to ascertain whether they have similarities in the comprehension of the disease. The first source is “Huangdi Neijing” “Suwen” part, from Chinese ancient medicine, the second one is “Hippocratic Corpus” from ancient Greece, and the third is “Otok” by Josip Lovretić from 19th century eastern Croatia. They are products of very different cultures and historical periods. Conducting comparison of features related to disease in the three sources, we have recognized that body, change, process and control are related to the common shared attributes critical for the concept of disease.

Disclosing a Transfer: Art and Religion in the Notebooks of Dominique de Menil

Abstract The art collector and educator, Dominique de Menil (1908–1997) has mostly been remembered as a pragmatic orchestrator of high-profile commissions in the art world. However, little attention has been paid to her role as a thinker. This article seeks to address that lacuna in the literature by attending to an overlooked source in the Menil archives, de Menil’s notebooks, which were written between 1974 and 1994. By analysing de Menil’s use of metaphor in the notebooks, we place them within the trajectory of de Menil’s intellectual development stemming back to her 1936 article: ‘Pour l’unité du monde chrétien’. The first part situates the metaphors which de Menil employed in the notebooks from the 1970s in the intellectual context of her inception of these figures of speech in Montmartre, Paris in 1936. The second part unpacks a central metaphor which grounds de Menil’s conception of tradition. The third part compares de Menil’s art historiography vis-à-vis other models which sought to reinvigorate the avant-garde art scene via pre-modern sources. The Coda critically assesses de Menil’s art historiography against other prevalent views on the relation between pre-modern and modern works of art.

Apocrypha and Fictionality

Perhaps the greatest benefit of Catherine Gallagher's claims about fictionality for scholars of premodern literature is that her work has sparked critical reassessments of fictionality long before the eighteenth century.1 Since scholars like Monika Fludernik, Julie Orlemanski, and Michelle Karnes have recently retheorized such concepts in relation to premodern literature, scholars now have new starting points for inquiry.2 The following reflections come out of two starting points raised by these pieces: first, Orlemanski's question, "What genres or text-types maintain an unstable relation to fictionality?" (WHF 162); and, second, Karnes's claim that "medieval readers were not jurists, tasked with the separation of truth from falsehood, but were capable of enjoying indeterminacy and maximizing the boundaries of possibility."3 Considering biblical apocrypha provides a way to bring these notions together and to explore issues concerning premodern fictionality, since premodern sources reveal a prevalent "explicit and ongoing discourse of fictionality" around this text-type.4 Biblical apocrypha possess a particularly tense relationship with fictionality, demonstrate the joy of indeterminacy for readers, and challenge modern epistemological assumptions of literary study.

Affect and Porosity: Ethics and Literature between Teresa Brennan and Hélène Cixous

In her posthumously published work The Transmission of Affect, Teresa Brennan challenges the modern ego’s understanding of itself as self-contained. This illusion, she argues, is supported by what she refers to as the “foundational fantasy”. In explaining what this means, Brennan rejects a bounded sense of the self, arguing that affect (both positive and negative) circulates energetically between subjects. In patriarchal cultures, mothers (and “feminine beings”) act as repositories of projected fear, typically carrying the greater burden of the negative affects—anger, aggression, and envy. Importantly, Brennan’s work brings the question of intersubjective boundaries to the fore, arguing that these are open, and that any account of ethical relations between self and other needs to acknowledge this. Drawing on pre-modern sources, she develops a new theory of intersubjective and energetic affectivity and, in a positive vein, offers love—in the form of attention and discernment—as the positive gift of affect that can potentially circulate between bodies, infusing intersubjective relations with life. Brennan’s work on the transmission of affect offers a bold and very political philosophical intervention into early twenty-first century ethical accounts. Her exploration of the intricacies of our relational entanglements with others and the material world challenges our understanding of what it means to be a self in relation to others. In effect, her account of the transmission of affect highlights the other’s vulnerability to my affect, to my hostile projections, even as it accounts for the flow of affect in both directions. In a slightly different way, Hélène Cixous offers us an account of our relations with others that focusses on the self’s openness to the force of the other, the self’s vulnerability to the dangerous other. Here, the other is the focus of a potential threat, a potential undoing of the self. For Cixous, writing is the place of witness to the unfolding of this vulnerability or porosity between two (entre deux). While this essay focuses on Brennan’s philosophical account, and the potentially paradoxical nature of her work to produce a theory of affect, it offers a brief discussion of the ways in which Cixous’s focus on literature and writing provide a different frame for appreciating the challenge that Brennan’s work makes. It explores the important ways in which Cixous extends Brennan’s philosophical concerns to the domains of literature and writing. Throughout her work, Brennan calls for us to invent or reinvent a vocabulary for the exploration of discernment, the protective attitude of thoughtfulness that opens us to the other. Cixous’s work, I argue, embodies this call in hopeful and optimistic ways. As such, it allows us to think of literature and writing as privileged sites for the exploration of our complex intersubjective relations.

BUDDHISM AND MEDICINE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF PREMODERN SOURCES. Edited by C.Pierce Salguero. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Pp. xxxvi + 689. Hardback, $150.00.

BUDDHISM AND MEDICINE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF PREMODERN SOURCES. Edited by C.Pierce Salguero. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Pp. xxxvi + 689. Hardback, $150.00.

Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources ed. by C. Pierce Salguero

Reviewed by: Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources ed. by C. Pierce Salguero Natasha Heller C. Pierce Salguero, ed. Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. xxxvi, 689 pp. US$150 (hb). ISBN 9780231179942 Unquestionably Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources is a work of major importance for the English-language study of Buddhism. With translations from Pāli, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Tibetan sources (with a smaller number from Mongolian, Thai, and Vietnamese texts) in a variety of genres, this anthology provides a panoramic view of the interaction between Buddhism, healing, and medicine. Scholars of Buddhism will want to read (and purchase for their libraries, both personal and institutional) this volume to better acquaint themselves with these traditions, and to use in teaching, although the price may preclude assigning the entire book to undergraduates. But what might scholars of Chinese religions gain from Buddhism and Medicine? Quite a lot, as it turns out: 27 out of 62 chapters are on Chinese sources, divided between translated sources and those termed “domestic.” This means that roughly forty percent of the book concerns China, and given that the total page count is over 600 pages, the China portion is hefty enough to be a book on its own. My review here will focus on the chapters dealing with Chinese language sources. Even offering a one-sentence summary of each chapter would be tedious reading—there are simply too many—so I have chosen to comment more thematically. My failure to mention any one chapter should not be taken as a judgment on that chapter; I found all of them to be highly readable and erudite, and all of them offered fresh insights into Chinese Buddhism. Reading Buddhism and Medicine for the Chinese sources means jumping across the thematic divisions of the anthology. These are: Doctrinal Considerations, Healing and Monastic Discipline, Buddhist Healers, Healing Rites, Meditation as Cure and Illness, Hybridity in Buddhist Healing, and Buddhism and the Medical Traditions. Readers can refer to the appendix, “Geographical Table of Contents,” for lists of texts by language, although this is usually apparent from the chapter titles and translators. Not surprisingly, most of the “China (Translation)” chapters are in the earlier part of the book, and most of the “China (Domestic)” chapters fall in the later sections. Translation itself is foregrounded in several chapters: Anālayo, in chapter 2, places together discourses translated from Pāli, Tibetan, and Chinese on the “healing potential of mental qualities that in the Buddhist traditions are known as the awakening factors” (p. 12). Marcus Bingenheimer, in chapter 17, offers translations of two sūtras on healing that were produced in China six hundred years apart; the first is part of collection translated around 400 c.e. and the second was translated by Dānapāla (Ch. Shihu 施護, fl. 980–1017). Looking at them together “shows how certain categories and details changed in the interim” (p. 164). The passages from these two sutras align the Four Noble Truths with the four skills of the physician, and make plain the comparison of the Buddha to a perfectly adept physician. In chapter 4, Salguero gives us side-by-side translations of a key passage on medicine from the Sūtra of Golden Light as translated by Dharmakṣema (385–433) and Yijing 義淨 (635–713).1 This allows us to see how Yijing’s training in medicine at Nālānda influences his translation, which is “much more detailed in its summary of Indian medical thought and contains a broader selection of medical ideas” (p. 31). We encounter Yijing again in chapter 16, in which [End Page 112] Christoph Kleine translates sections from his Record of the Inner Law Sent Home from the Southern Seas concerning health-related practices in Indian monasteries. The monastery is naturally an important site for Buddhist medical practice. Chapter 13 provides rules concerning medicine from the vinaya of the Mahīśāsaka School, preserved in Chinese and translated by Salguero; in chapter 14, J.E.E. Pettit translates sections from the Emended Commentary on Monastic Practices from the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya by Daoxuan 道宣 (596–667) concerning...

PARABLES OF INSCRIPTION: SOME NOTES ON NARRATIVES OF THE ORIGIN OF WRITING

ABSTRACTThe story of the god Thoth and King Ammon in Plato's Phaedrus is perhaps the most familiar example of a script‐origin narrative, but such accounts also exist from ancient China (such as Xu Shen's postface to the Shuowen jiezi) and Mesopotamia (the poem “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta”). There are also rich and provocative ancient discussions of what it means to “borrow” or “adapt” writing from an adjacent (often more powerful) civilization, including a set of related narratives in eighth‐century Japanese chronicles about Korean scribes importing Sinitic writing. Such premodern sources can be profitably juxtaposed with modern discussions of colonial and ethnological encounters with literacy, such as frequently quoted and requoted stories of “natives” taken aback at the power of writing, or Claude Lévi‐Strauss's famous “Writing Lesson” (from his 1955 book Tristes Tropiques). This article considers the persistent anachronism that marks such accounts. Whether premodern or modern, it seems they inevitably become parables or allegories of the powers of writing at the time of their composition, rather than plausible reconstructions of its earliest stages. What lies behind this difficulty in writing the history of writing?

Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources. Edited by C. Pierce Salguero

Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources. Edited by C. Pierce Salguero

Back from Shingly: Revisiting the premodern history of Jews in Kerala

Jewish history in Kerala is based on sources mainly from the colonial period onward and mostly in European languages, failing to account for the premodern history of Jews in Kerala. These early modern sources are based on oral traditions of Paradeśi Jews in Cochin, who view the majority of Kerala Jews as inferior. Consequently, the premodern history of Kerala Jews remains untold, despite the existence of premodern sources that undermine unsupported notions about the premodern history of Kerala Jews—a Jewish ‘ur-settlement’ called Shingly in Kodungallur and a centuries-old isolation from world Jewry. This article reconstructs Jewish history in premodern Kerala solely based on premodern travelogues and literature on the one hand and on historical documents in Old Malayalam, Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic on the other hand. Sources of the early modern period are then examined for tracing the origins of the Shingly myth, arguing that the incorporation of the Shingly legend into the historiography of Kerala Jews was affected by contacts with European Jews in the Age of Discoveries rather than being a reflection of historical events.

Elamite Karintaš and Avestan Kvirinta: Notes on the Early History of Kerend

The toponym Kerend has a long history. This study explores the appearance of Kerend in pre-modern sources, beginning with the toponym Karintaš in the late second millennium BC. Kassite, Elamite and Assyrian rivalry for control over the central western Zagros mountains is discussed and the survival of the name in later antiquity is investigated. A derivative of the name appears in Claudius Ptolemy’s Geography and in the Parthian Stations of Isidore of Charax, as well as in the late Antique Cosmographia of the Anonymous Geographer of Ravenna. A homonymous name from the area east of the Caspian Sea is also discussed, as are several unrelated names occurring in other sources (Achaemenid Elamite, Armenian).

Supersessionism, the Epistle to the Romans, Thomas Aquinas, and the Jews of the Eschaton

Contemporary theologians, intent on divesting Christian theology of supersessionism, have sought to ground a more benign, more pluralistic ecclesiastical stance toward the Jews in Thomas Aquinas's Commentary on Romans. This essay returns to that Romans commentary in its medieval context, seeking to appreciate the ambiguities of the Jews' role in salvation history as Thomas construed it. Reviewing the modern literature and pre-modern sources, the essay thus takes issue with the reading of Thomas proffered by Bruce Marshall, Steven Boguslawski, Matthew Tapie, and others, and, recalling the counsel of Edward Synan, it proposes that the priorities of post-Holocaust, post-supersessionist theology not lure the historian into imposing upon Aquinas the values and priorities of an age not his own.