Ritual Space Research Articles

A invenção do regional e a roda como ritual: uma abordagem crítica da tradição do choro

A evocação dos regionais como referência exclusiva de instrumentação vinculada à tradição do choro é recorrente nas narrativas de músicos contemporâneos. Na literatura, porém, nota-se a presença de uma maior diversidade de instrumentos e formatações engajadas na performance do gênero, durante o período de sua concepção. No intuito de compreender o hiato entre ambas as perspectivas, aproximo o choro do conceito de tradição cunhado por Anthony Giddens. Atravessada pela ideia de permanência, a tradição também se sujeita a diversas disputas práticas e discursivas entre seus agentes por domínio de seus sistemas abstratos, podendo, assim, transformar-se. Partindo desta constatação, destaco a subordinação de tais mudanças, no caso do choro, a negociações ocorridas em seu espaço ritual: a roda. Argumento, por fim, que os regionais se firmaram – a partir de negociações rituais diversas – como parte de uma tradição inventada do choro, que contribui para padronizar e particularizar, no presente, a heterogeneidade de formações instrumentais dedicadas à performance do gênero na passagem do século XIX ao XX. Os dados a fundamentar tais percursos e conclusões foram extraídos da literatura, de processo de observação participante em uma roda de choro na cidade de Belo Horizonte e de entrevistas com músicos dedicados à performance do gênero.

Daoists, the Imperial Cult of Sage-Kings, and Mongol Rule

Abstract This article demonstrates the central position that Daoists occupied in the representations of state power in north China under Mongol rule. In the mid-thirteenth century, Daoist Master Jiang Shanxin and his disciples, under Khubilai Khan’s patronage, actively rebuilt several temples of Confucian sage-kings in southern Shanxi province. Jiang Shanxin’s lineage was a product of dynamic interactions between the Mongol conquerors and local Chinese Daoists in which the two found common ground in sage-kings worship that had served to strengthen imperial legitimacy in previous dynasties. The strong Mongol-Daoist alliance in reordering the empire’s ritual space resulted in not just the revival of but also the creation of new ritual precedents for the Chinese imperial cult of sage-kings.

The Importance of Ritual Discourse in Framing Ayahuasca Experiences in the Context of Shamanic Tourism

AbstractIn this article, I discuss how ritual is framed in the context of ayahuasca tourism, using ethnographic data collected in and around Iquitos, Peru. Alluding to a lack of socially sanctioned spaces for altered states of consciousness (ASCs) in western cultures, contemporary seekers flock to the Amazon to participate in ayahuasca ceremonies for an array of reasons, including healing and personal transformation. Taking Gregory Bateson's concept of “framing” as a point of departure, and applying Erving Goffman's frame analysis, I will show that contemporary ayahuasca ceremonies attended by westerners are designed to be liminal, transformative, and meaningful experiences that aim to heal the body through emotional modulation. I will demonstrate how this is achieved through specific discourse that takes place before or during rituals in the form of long speeches delivered by the shamans. This framing not only separates the ritual space as liminal but also frames the way that the experience is conceptualized by the participants, ultimately increasing its meaningfulness.

Co-Creating Ritual Spaces and Communities: An Analysis of Municipal Cemetery Tongerseweg, Maastricht, 1812–2020

Cemeteries have been viewed in opposed ways as ritual spaces that either mirror society or present an idealized model of society. In this article, we propose an analysis of cemeteries as ritual spaces, focused on the case study of municipal cemetery Tongerseweg in Maastricht, among the most important monumental cemeteries still in active use in The Netherlands today. Drawing on historical as well as interview material, spatial and ritual studies, the authors argue for a new “Arena Model” to understand cemeteries as dynamic ritual spaces. Cemeteries do not only form an ensemble of ritual spaces that are reliant on pre-existing communities, they also evoke, produce and maintain communities. Codeterminants are the physical layout and a wide range of ritual markers that variously underscore, mitigate or even contradict the communities created by the spatial layout. Important actors pertain to municipal politics and administration as well as the users, their respective allies and service providers. The article further analyses the wide range of competing values that help to shape a cycle of cocreating plural ritual spaces as well as communities.

Architecture of the World’s Major Religions

Abstract In Architecture of the World’s Major Religions: An Essay on Themes, Differences, and Similarities, religious architecture is presented and explained in ways that challenge predominant presumptions regarding its aesthetic, formal, spatial, and scenographic elements. Two positions frame its narrative: religious architecture is an amalgam of aesthetic, social, political, cultural, economic, and doctrinal elements; and these elements are materialized in often very different ways in the world’s principal religions. Central to the essay’s theoretical approaches is the communicative and discursive agency of religious architecture, and the multisensory and ritual spaces it provides to create and deliver content. Subsequently, mythical and scriptural foundations, and symbols of ecclesiastical and political power are of equal interest to formal organizations of thresholds, paths, courts, and centers, and celestial and geometric alignments. Moreover, it is equally concerned with the aesthetic—visual and material cultures and the transcendent realms they were designed to evoke, as it is with the kinesthetic—the dynamic and multisensory experience of place and the tangible experiences of the body’s interactions with architecture.

Color e identidades discursivas en el templo de Santa Bárbara de Tunja

En este artículo de investigación científica y tecnológica se exponen resultados de dos investigaciones relacionadas con las identidades discursivas y las operaciones de construcción semiótica y discursiva de la pintura mural del Templo de Santa Bárbara de Tunja. A partir de la perspectiva teórica y metodológica de la semiótica de la Escuela de París, se analizó la relación entre los colores de las pinturas y las identidades discursivas enunciadas en los murales del templo citado.
 Cabe destacar que las identidades de los sujetos y colectivos culturales se proponen como signos discursivos multidimensionales, constituidos por su cognición, axiología, pasiones y sistemas semióticos, entre ellos, los cromáticos. El análisis semiótico del color en la pintura mural permitió concluir sobre la enunciación de identidades discursivas que hibridan formas de vida católicas, de origen europeo occidental, y nativas americanas. De igual manera, se coligió que las significaciones del color identificadas, que datan del siglo XVII, se mantienen hasta la actualidad en el universo cultural de ubicación del espacio de ritual religioso.

Rituals in Discourses of Digital Orthodox Christianity: Methodology and Research Trends

In the realities of the millennium the transcendent is banalized – at any moment the user of web 2.0 can find himself in the meditation space of the Buddhist ritual of building a sand mandala or order a moleben in one of the Orthodox churches of the world. The Internet and new media technologies provide an opportunity to host and store data that is potentially accessible to many people. Sacred texts of various religious traditions, rituals and practical instructions to them, liturgies, molebens, magic formulas and so on, are no longer the domain of a narrow circle of charismatic professionals. And that in itself raises the question of authenticity and authority to any user of such information and practices. Are genuine and credible online ritual practices, digitized sacred and teacher texts, symbolic images, icons, tanks, vlogs with detailed instructions on the rules of prayers by agreement or online collective pujas? And, if the adept of the religion is an offline authority to which this question may be forwarded, what should do a neophyte, an interested person or a researcher of religions? The focus of the article is the methodology of studying digital discourse of Orthodoxy concerning the epistemic authority and the legitimacy of online rituals. The author analyzes in detail the key concepts of digital studies interdisciplinary research field. The typology of online religious epistemic authorities by H. Kempbell, the concept of «strategic arbitration» by P.H. Chon and the concept of «religious digital third space» by S. Huve and N.Ash-Sheibiare examined in depth. The results of the author’s probing online study of the Orthodox online practices and digital discourse around them are of particular interest. As a final chord, the article offers specific promising directions of online research of digital Orthodox discourse of Orthodoxy. As such, the paper presents the narrative practices of theological bloggers and theo bloggers, the strategic arbitration of theological bloggers regarding the epistemic authority of the repertoire of variations of the practice of «prayer by agreement» on the digital platforms of the Orthodox social network «Elica» and the mobile application «Prayer by Agreement» and, finally, the hybrid digital proposal on rituals and practices of the network «Elica», «Notes».

TREASURED TRASH: THE SACRED SIGNIFICANCE OF CERAMIC FRAGMENTS IN ELITE RITUAL CONTEXTS AT POSTCLASSIC XALTOCAN, MEXICO

AbstractIn this article, I examine the use of ceramic fragments to mark sacred spaces at the Postclassic central Mexican site of Xaltocan. Recent excavations in Xaltocan's central precinct revealed a series of ritual features dating to Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic period (a.d.1240–1350) that were carefully constructed with ceramic fragments. I argue that this practice might represent an effort on the part of Xaltocan's Postclassic leaders to mark these features as sacred. Although Xaltocan was ruled by Otomi peoples during this time, the careful incorporation of ceramic fragments into ritual spaces might be related to the Nahua concept oftlazolliand possibly reflects the increasing influence of Nahua ideologies across the Basin of Mexico. Despite its generally negative connotations,tlazolliwas a powerful substance that central Mexicans could manipulate to energize ritual spaces. By carefully reordering ceramic fragments in and around ritual features, Xaltocan's leaders might have imbued these spaces with sacred energy. While the concept oftlazollimight have been quite widespread during this time, the specific practices discussed in this article appear to have been isolated to Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic leaders. Perhaps the specific practices observed were an invention of Xaltocan's Middle Postclassic leaders that never spread.

Light, Vision(s), Transformation. Experiencing Baptism in Canopied Fonts (ca. 230-ca. 500 CE)

This article considers the ways in which the presence of canopies over baptismal fonts influenced the perception of the ritual experience and space. Attested in an important number of late antique baptisteries, canopies shaped the way in which fonts were perceived by conditioning their illumination. Additionally, they created meaningful associations with other canopied spaces and objects, thus adding to the symbolism of the ritual.

Dilemmas of Sharing Religious Space

Christianity has a long presence in the Maghreb, dating back to Roman imperial times. Eventually it became a mostly Muslim region, but in the late nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church embarked on a vast mission of church building, in part to assist the French colonial endeavor. In Tunisia, political independence in 1956 was accompanied by a further reinvigoration of Christianity, and, over the last twenty years, conversion to Christianity (mainly in the form of evangelical and neo-evangelical Protestantism) has been on the rise. Beginning in 2003, workers and students from sub-Saharan Africa have contributed to the growth of both Catholic and Protestant churches in Tunis. This article analyzes the ways in which various Christian groups organize and articulate their religious practice and proselytization in ritual spaces that are sparse and must be shared in contemporary Tunisia.

Hunting, husbandry, exchange and ritual: animal use and meaning at Moxviquil, Chiapas Mexico

This study investigates the animal use of the ancient inhabitants of Moxviquil, a small urban center in the Jovel Valley of highland Chiapas, Mexico, that was occupied during the Late Classic (AD 600-900) and Early Postclassic periods (AD 900-1250). Zooarchaeological remains were recovered from the monumental zone, from a neighboring hilltop residential group, and from the funerary cave located immediately below the residential group. Rather than a hard boundary between house and wilderness, sacred and profane, the distribution of different species and elements reflect the ways in which animals and animal products were interwoven through the fabric of cultural practice. Domestic spaces reflect the selective husbandry and hunting of animals for everyday living, compared to the high-status crafts and dedicatory contexts of royal residences, and the carefully constructed microcosm of ritual activities represented in the funerary cave. Following Rapoport (1982) and Barthes (2012), we use a framework of low-level, mid-level and high-level meanings to understand everyday hunting and domestication practice, status and exchange relationships, and medicinal and ceremonial uses. Considering the meanings of particular animal species can provide a holistic perspective on the cultural practices that shaped royal, residential and ritual spaces at Moxviquil, and provide a perspective on broader issues of agro-urbanism and resiliency in highland Maya polities.

Enshrined Fortification: A Trialogue on the Rise and Fall of Safed

The study of castles has formed a major part of crusade historiography since its inception in the early nineteenth century. Fortification has been taken to represent the magnificence of the efforts to rule the Holy Land and the battle between Christianity and Islam. Recently, however, scholars have recognised that, inasmuch as castles were celebrated as the epitomes of resilience and hostility, military architecture was far more dialogical than previously noticed. The design of castles involved a highly nuanced familiarity with the culture from which they were intended to defend. This article seeks to show that not only the physical characteristics of castles but also ideas about what made them religiously successful, in their capacity to enact and protect ritual spaces, were shaped through a dynamic inter-religious dialogue. Taking Safed as a case study, this article brings together three narratives—in Latin, Arabic and Hebrew—that share the attempt to laud the castle by drawing a dialectic between its strategic might and the sanctity of the soil upon which it is built. While the three accounts differ radically in their political stakes, the rhetorical strategies they employ in order to contemplate the spiritual efficacy of the castle is profoundly entangled.

Refugee rituals: continuity and change in the Anastenaria festival in Macedonian Greece

ABSTRACTThe Anastenaria festival is celebrated by descendants of refugees from the village of Kōsti in eastern Thrace, now in Bulgaria, who settled in Greek Macedonia by 1924, after the Balkan Wars. The festival is dedicated to saints Kōnstantinos and his mother, Elenē, depicted on holy icons brought from Kōsti. Participants’ primary focus is an ecstatic dance over red-hot coals while possessed by the saint. Proscribed by official Orthodox religion, it was formerly conducted in secret. Though the Church still considers the festival a combination of paganism and Christianity, tension between official religion and the Anastenarides has eased. Based on fieldwork in two villages inhabited by both Anastenarides and other ‘indigenous’ Greeks, this article explores how ritual spaces of the Anastenarides replicate the original space in Kōsti. Belonging to ‘former days,’ cultic practices constitute an ancestor cult linked to their original home, the ‘Thracians’ celebrating their ‘Kōstilidian’ identity through religious rituals.

Digital Humanities and Ritual Space: A Reappraisal

Abstract In this editorial article for the Special Issue on Unlocking Sacred Landscapes: Digital Humanities and Ritual Space, we introduce the applicability of digital humanities to the study of ritual space. The Issue focuses on digital approaches both to ritual space and to artefacts relating to ritual practice and cult. The terms ritual and cult are used broadly to include sanctuaries, temples and churches, as well as the domestic and funerary spheres of life. We include contributions with a strong methodological focus on computational developments, digitisation processes and spatial analyses. Although the main focus of the Unlocking Sacred Landscapes (UnSaLa) Research Network is the Mediterranean region, we have also encouraged colleagues working in other areas of the world to contribute to this volume, with a view to stimulating wider methodological dialogues and comparative approaches. The chronological span ranges from prehistory to the recent past, and includes cultural heritage management.

Everything in Its Right Place: A Study on the Field of Ritual in a Gauḍīẏa Vaiṣṇava Temple

The focus of this article is on the spatial aspect of the daily temple rites of Gauḍīẏa Vaiṣṇavism. The study is a contribution to theoretical reflection on rituals and their role within religious systems. Studies on rituals as multi-media entities have tended to concentrate on “visible”aspects of ritual such as objects, actors or symbols, while ritual space has often been neglected. However, in this essay, I would like to show that ritual space may operate as an interactive “field of ritual,”which structures the conduct of practitioners and is subsequently structured by them. The text is modelled as an interpretative case-study grounded in field research performed in a Gauḍīẏa Vaiṣṇava temple in Kolkata. The goal of the article is to develop a theoretical approach appropriate for this particular set of data which, nevertheless, could serve as an inspiration for theorizing in analogical cases.

Children of the Mother Goddesses: Religion and Lives of Female Master spirit Mediums in Viet Nam

Considering the cases and life histories of three female spirit mediums who are adherents of the Mother Goddess religion in Viet Nam, this ethnographic study of Vietnamese spirit possession contributes to and clarifies longstanding debates regarding the distinction between mediums and shamans. Analyzing their life stories and drawing on theories of agency, this paper focuses on the ways in which female spirit mediums use their skills and capacities to practice the Mother Goddess religion, interpret their faith, and experience life and work as children of the Mother Goddesses. These three women have overcome the barriers of traditional society and have successfully found ways to assert themselves. Their agency, I argue, is not limited to the ritual space but is also evident in their active roles in their communities and society.

Homo renovatur de die in diem: Transforming Selves and Communities

"This special issue of Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia (from now on Acta) interrogates religious practices of reading, writing, praying and engaging with texts, images, architecture, music, and ritual spaces in late antique Rome and medieval Europe. More specifically, it aims to analyze and deepen our understanding of how liturgy and religious practice modeled and modified selves and communities, how they shaped and transformed identities and built communities - both individual and collective, religious and lay".
 
 On cover:Monks singing the Office and decorated initial A[sperges me.]. Gradual Olivetan Master (Use of the Olivetan Benedictines), illuminated manuscript on parchment ca. 1430-1439. Italy, Monastero di Santa Maria di Baggio near Milan, Ca 1400-1775.Beinecke Ms1184: The olivetan Gradual. Gradual. General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Sustainable Approaches of the Newars in Vernacular Housing and Settlement Planning in the Historic Core of Kathmandu

Vernacular settlements provide us an opportunity to learn how sustainable building was inherently practiced in various regions of the world. This paper looks at how rituals that are a part of the Indra Jatra, a community festival, reinforces the ideals of sustainable spatial planning in the vernacular settlements of the Newars who are the indigenous community belonging to the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The settlement-pattern and vernacular dwellings are appraised, and the current scenario is analyzed so as to derive how the ritual spaces get activated during the festival ( that have been spatially planned) and whether they guide decision-making and policy planning. This is essential to determine whether these spaces face any urban pressures and to further investigate how they can be mitigated.

Религиозный ландшафт: «сиэл», «салама» и «дэлбиргэ» в ритуальном пространстве в свете изучения эволюции бескровных жертвоприношений народа саха

Horse worship has a great significance in the mythological and ritual space of Sakha people. All of the «real world» and ritualistic symbolism of Sakha people is related to the «horse imagery». Horsehair siel was and is widely used as material for ritualistic attributes. Although salama and delbirge made of siel horsehair are ones of the most widely used ritualistic attributes of Sakha people and are mentioned in the works of numerous pre-revolutionary and modern authors, their comprehensive description and explanation of their functional properties are lacking. For this reason, this paper analyzes rituals involving salama and delbirge in historical and cognitive, linguistic and cultural, and symbolic aspects. The analysis reveals their role of the most important cultural symbols of ancient human, who used them to communicate with supernatural powers and explore a specific mythological world. The paper studies extensive materials on the tradition of bloodless sacrifices for the first time and reveals its genetic connection with the rites of related peoples. The study results in a conclusion that salama and delbirge have similar archaic roots related to the worship of Mother Earth, but differ in their functional and symbolic value.

Review: Building Anglo-Saxon England, by John Blair

John Blair Building Anglo-Saxon England Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2018, 471 pp., 109 color and 43 b/w illus. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN 9780691162980 “One of the most intractable problems in the whole range of early medieval studies concerns the dwellings of the Anglo-Saxons. It is generally agreed that they were of wood and that no example survives above ground. Beyond this the student must rely on incidental references in the literature and on the scanty data provided by excavation.” C. A. R. Radford's opening remarks on the Anglo-Saxon house in the inaugural issue of Medieval Archaeology (1957) belong to another age.1 In the sixty years since Radford wrote, archaeology has revolutionized our understanding of Anglo-Saxon architecture. This much is clear from John Blair's majestic new book, Building Anglo-Saxon England . The amount of archaeological evidence and scholarship amassed since 1957 is remarkable, and Blair uses it and his subject to advance a new history of Anglo-Saxon England. The result promises myriad new directions for Anglo-Saxon studies. A tacit objective of Blair's book is to revisit W. G. Hoskins's The Making of the English Landscape (1955)—a canonical interpretation of England's topographical history.2 In Blair's view, Anglo-Saxons “behaved within constructed space : the rural space of farms, the ritual space of holy landscapes, the administrative and defensive space of forts and installations, the hierarchical space of great halls and proto-manorial sites, the commercial space of towns” (3). As with Anglo-Saxon England's other art forms, Blair argues, the approach to architecture was distinctive and elegant. This assertion diverges boldly both from Hoskins and from prevailing postmodern and postprocessual approaches that echo art historians such as Erwin Panofsky and Walter Horn, who before and just after World War II outlined programmatic and guiding ideas for understanding and studying the Continental Carolingian Renaissance. The most innovative …