Transcendent Belief Research Articles

Self-described religious and spiritual identities of patients receiving gender-affirming surgeries: Implications for chaplaincy practice

Studies of the U.S. population in general and transgender and gender diverse (TGD) communities specifically suggest that religion and spirituality (R/S) can function in both positive and negative ways, including on health outcomes. Patients recovering from gender-affirming surgeries were asked by chaplains, during the course of spiritual care visits, to describe their R/S identities in their own words. Seventy-five responses were included in the study and were coded. Six themes and 10 sub-themes were identified. The themes were (1) centeredness in self; (2) transcendent belief system; (3) non-religious belief systems; (4) importance of prayer; (5) R/S identity and practice as fixed and consistent; and (6) R/S identity and practice as flexible, contextual, and transforming. The findings broadly reflected national data about R/S belonging, including trends related to the growing share of the population that identifies as atheist, agnostic, or spiritual but not religious; ambivalent relationships with R/S communities due to transphobia; and R/S beliefs and practices as supportive. Implications for chaplaincy practice are discussed, including the need for chaplains to understand both demographic trends and the intersections of R/S and transphobia.

Development and Validation of the Transcendent Beliefs Scale (TBS): A 12-Item Assessment of Self-Transcendent States

Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Transcendent Beliefs Scale (TBS). We defined transcendent experiences as an experience of unity with others and the whole of existence, which is associated with behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and transcendental factors. Our aim was to develop a very brief instrument that accurately reflected the phenomenology of transcendent states. Keywords: trauma, chronic pain, dissociation, EFT, EMDR, mindful breathing, bilateral stimulation, BLS, WHEE, HeartMath, blended, combined, interventions Method: The factor structure, validity, and reliability of the TBS were assessed across a sample of university students and energy therapy practitioners (N = 305). Results: With respect to convergent validity, we found that transcendent experiences were positively correlated with daily spiritual experiences, trait hope, and meaning in life. Discriminant validity was demonstrated through a negative weak relationship to narcissistic personality traits. Exploratory factor analysis reduced the scale to 12 items and a two-factor model was found to fit the data. Conclusion: The results indicate that the TBS is a valid and reliable scale to measure transcendent beliefs in the general population. It is suitable for research projects in which a brief measure of transcendence is required. Keywords: transcendent beliefs, transcendent experiences, universal oneness, scale validation, unity consciousness, existence, transcendental phenomenology.

Existential aspects of parenthood transition seen from the health professionals’ perspective - an interview and theatre workshop study

ObjectivesA sense of existential vulnerability is embedded in parenthood transition. It is linked to meaning in life, relationship changes, awareness of death, and sometimes a transcendent belief. Nevertheless, in most maternity service guidelines, the existential aspects of life are not an explicit focus. Therefore, this study aimed to explore how health professionals in maternity services experience and understand existential aspects of parenthood transition among new parents.Study Design: Data were generated through a user-involving two-phase process inspired by action research consisting of three focus group interviews with health professionals (n = 10) and, subsequently, a theatre workshop for parents, health professionals, and researchers (n = 40). Between the two phases, case narratives were constructed using information from the interviews and, in collaboration with a dramatist, dramatized and then played out at a workshop by professional actors. We used thematic analysis for all data. ResultsWe identified five themes in the data material: 1. Death and fragility in maternity care, 2. Existential aspects in camouflage, 3. Existential and spiritual aspects of being professional in maternity care, 4. Talking about existential aspects of care, 5. Equipped for providing existential care? ConclusionsExistential aspects were often recognized during birth, specially in traumatic situations or discerned in the physical and non-verbal relational energy between the birthing woman and midwife or partner. Less often, existential aspects were recognized during pregnancy and the post-partum period.

Shades of Gratitude: Exploring Varieties of Transcendent Beliefs and Experience

The study of gratitude has expanded beyond interpersonal gratitude and considers how people respond to gifts that are not caused by human agency. Given the discord between the prominent understanding of gratitude requiring the appropriate recognition of a gift to a giver and the increasing divergence of transcendent belief systems that do not acknowledge a transcendent or cosmic giver, we explored how people with different worldviews viewed and experienced gratitude. Transcendence does not hinge on metaphysical beliefs, but it can be experienced phenomenologically and subjectively. We conducted a case-study narrative analysis (N = 6) that represents participants from three different categories of belief systems: theistic, non-theistic but spiritual, and other. Our findings demonstrate how people link their transcendent narrative identity to their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors pertaining to gratitude. Although the theistic participants thanked God for gifts, others who experienced transcendence without a clear referent or source described responding to gratitude by sharing goodness forward. These narratives suggest that the recognition and appreciation of a gift stemming from beyond human cause may be enough to generate transcendent emotions and values that prompt beyond-the-self behaviors.

Czesław Miłosz’s Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity by Stanley Bill

Reviewed by: Czesław Miłosz’s Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity by Stanley Bill Magdalena Kay Bill, Stanley. Czesław Miłosz’s Faith in the Flesh: Body, Belief, and Human Identity. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2021. ix + 204 pp. Notes. Works cited. Index. $80.00: £60.00. The first chapter of Stanley Bill’s book makes the brilliant choice to begin not with the body but with the longing to reach beyond it: namely, Czesław Miłosz’s concern with transcendence. Belief in transcendence is rooted in the belief that separation from the body is possible, yet in the twentieth century, this belief is put in crisis. This crisis is, to Miłosz, at the heart of European intellectual modernity (p. 8). Readers of Charles Taylor may quarrel with the equation of this crisis with secularization but to Miłosz, secularization is very much real and compels response. Stanley Bill is absolutely right to begin his book with this urgency, as Miłosz is an agonistic thinker. He does not shy away from Miłosz’s (seeming) contradictions: well aware of the ‘polyphonic’ nature of Miłosz’s poems and dialectical thought process, Bill does not seek to unify its disparate strands into handy synthesis. Indeed, it is an achievement to explicate the ideas of a complex thinker without simplifying them. Throughout this study, Bill writes with an eye to big ideas that will interest general audiences beyond Slavic Studies (and perhaps the title of the book could have signaled this orientation). Miłosz held many controversial opinions, and Bill does an excellent job of clearly summarizing them while avoiding the drama attendant upon purposely stoking controversy. The book elucidates how both Miłosz’s thought and poetic practice frequently reflect ‘a mixed or “transcendent” materialism’ in which ‘his writings [End Page 547] affirm the embodied nature of human experience, while still insisting that matter is capable of generating properties that partially transcend it: poetry, consciousness, and even a version of the “soul”’ (p. 4). This is well put. Here Bill carefully maps out a terrain of more-than-physical meaning that cannot simply be described as transcendent — the term is too simplistic to account for the many “properties” that seem to point beyond the body (for instance, through lyric poetry). The metaphor implicit in the term transcendence — a climbing up or out — is complicated in Miłosz’s work. Bill clarifies the two dimensions of Miłosz’s transcendence, the vertical (rising higher) and the horizontal (going deeper). Their crossing ‘unites’ the human self (p. 5). Bill perceptively connects these concepts to the political realm, in which ‘a disappointed desire for disembodiment’ (p. 72) underlies the attraction of totalitarianism, and to Miłosz’s writing about gender. This is tricky territory, and Bill gracefully maneuvers between clear-eyed recognition of Miłosz’s essentialized gender associations and the expressed possibility of reversing sexist hierarchies. It may be impossible to reconstruct Miłosz as a pro-feminist writer, but Bill’s discussion helpfully demonstrates Miłosz’s insistence on the metaphysical and poetic value of ‘feminine’ embodiment. As one reads, however, it also becomes obvious that some of these lines of thought do not start or end with Miłosz. Possible points of contact come to mind, and we may wonder whether Bill decided not to elaborate them in order to allow his primary subject full attention. For example, as ‘the poetic word stands alone against an impoverished reality’ marked by the ‘modern collapse of metaphysical certainties’ (p. 16), we may think of Wallace Stevens’s defence of a ‘supreme fiction’ to fill the gap formed by this collapse. Miłosz’s defence of poetry as an instrument for communicating and reaching transcendence appears rather late in the twentieth century, but begs to be situated within an aestheticist context that the poet himself may have repudiated but appears tenaciously relevant. A brief comparative glance at similar poets and thinkers would not be out of place, perhaps, but would blur the sharp focus of this analysis. Indeed, the chapter on poetry and rhythm does an excellent job of showcasing Mi...

Rethinking the traditional concert format through the lens of Russian mystic composer Nikolai Obukhov

Born in 1892, composer Nikolai Obukhov belongs to the Russian avant-garde generation and was one of the pioneers in experimenting with twelve-tone systems, notation, and electronic instruments. He stands out from his contemporaries having inherited not only some aspects of Alexander Scriabin’s musical style, but, most prominently, the Russian symbolist belief in transcendence and collective spiritual uplifting through the performative act as well. The metaphysical substance and religious symbolism of Obukhov’s body of work reveals itself as a very rich and exciting source of inspiration for performers today. In this exposition I analyze the most relevant features of Nikolai Obukhov’s aesthetic, from his conception of the total work of art, to his harmonic language and annotations on the score, contextualizing them in the broader cultural and philosophical panorama of Russian Symbolism. I focus on understanding the social function of musical performance, and by conceptualizing certain basic principles, I shape my own performative approach to Nikolai Obukhov’s solo piano works. In the creative process of building a more holistic performance practice inspired by Russian Symbolism, the role of the modern performer expands from one of mere executor to the curator of an experience both for themself and for their audience. With this research I intend to encourage the musical community to reflect on our current relation with performance, to experiment with different concert formats, and to realize that we too, like the artistic community of Russians mystics, can project our own hopes about the future of civilization in our performance practices.

Existential aspects in the transition to parenthood based on interviews and a theatre workshop

ObjectivesThere are multitudes of existential feelings and considerations around childbirth, with both positive and negative sources of existential meaning; often they are mixed up, but they impact parents’ ideas of meaning and purpose in life. The aim of this study was to explore existential aspects of parenthood transition among new fathers and mothers in view of a potential training programme for professionals in maternity services. Study designData were generated through a user-involving two-phase process inspired by action research consisting of first, four focus group-interviews (n = 10); and second, a theatre workshop for parents, health professionals, and researchers (n = 40). Between the two phases, case-narratives were constructed based on the interviews and, in collaboration with a dramatist, dramatized and then played at the workshop by professional actors. Data from interviews and the workshop were thematised for further analysis. ResultsWe identified five themes: 1. A turning point of what to hold sacred; 2. Changed relationships – guilt and overwhelming love; 3. Awareness of death; 4. Religiousness embodied; 5. What we talk about. ConclusionsExistential aspects of parenthood transition were closely related to meaning in life, changes in relationships, awareness of death and relation to a transcendent belief. Existential aspects were explicated and discussed in nuanced ways expressing existential vulnerability. It is therefore important to both acknowledge and address existential aspects in maternity care, for the simple reason (among others) that they matter to parents. Moreover, this might enhance a coherent and authentic parenthood transition embedding the paradoxicalities.

Core values of genomic citizen science: results from a qualitative interview study

Genomic citizen science initiatives that promote public involvement in the study or manipulation of genetic information are flourishing. These initiatives are diverse and range from data donation studies, to biological experimentation conducted in home and community laboratories, to self-experimentation. Understanding the values that citizen scientists associate with their activities and communities can be useful to policy development for citizen science. Here, we report values-relevant data from qualitative interviews with 38 stakeholders in genomic citizen science. Applying a theoretical framework that describes values as transcendent beliefs about desirable end states or behaviors that can be categorized according to the motivational goals they express and the interests they serve, we identified nine core values of genomic citizen science: altruism, autonomy, fun, inclusivity, openness, reciprocity, respect, safety, and solidarity.

Not all transcendence is created equal: Distinguishing ontological, phenomenological, and subjective beliefs about transcendence

ABSTRACTPsychologists have generated numerous measures designed to capture the “spiritual,” “religious,” and “transcendent” structures of human cognition, emotion, and behavior. Researchers often identify transcendence as the unifying element that brings together these constructs, but the concept itself lacks precision. Namely, they confound the distinctions between the different kinds of content that populate what is actually a diverse and dynamic set of belief systems regarding transcendence, reducing transcendence to its functional outputs. This paper outlines a more robust theoretical framework by drawing upon the resources of theology and philosophy. The aim is to describe a model that clarifies both the content and function of a variety of transcendent belief systems, which includes at least three clearly distinct but interrelated domains: ontological transcendence, which conceives of reality in terms of supernatural categories of being; phenomenological transcendence, which focuses on traversing the divide between the self and others or the self and the world; and subjective transcendence, which has in view the ever-shifting boundary that constitutes the mundane self, the crossing of which is always yet to come.

Editor's Column: A Passion for Being

Editor's ColumnA Passion for Being Zahi Zalloua To say that ontology has replaced or dethroned epistemology in the humanities and social sciences would not be an overstatement. The turn to ontology both reflects and shapes a certain passion for being—a hunger for the "real thing," for something that is more than socially constructed. Against the purported hegemony of the linguistic turn, the ontological turn announces a return, in Quentin Meillassoux's words, to "the great outdoors [le grand dehors],"1 that is, a renewed cognitive attachment to the external world. Meillassoux is often credited for reviving a hunger for realism, triggering this philosophical rebellion against the idealism of the linguistic turn and the theorists of the '68 generation. In his 2006 After Finitude, Meillassoux takes aim at post-Kantian philosophies, lamenting the unmitigated "Kantian catastrophe" that brought into existence a dreadful "Ptolemaic counterrevolution."2 From Marxism and phenomenology to psychoanalysis and deconstruction, continental thought has suffered the limitations of what Meillassoux calls "correlationism." "The thesis of the correlationist … is that I can't know what reality would be without me."3 Since we do not have a rational access to the noumena, to things-in-themselves, all we have after Kant, all we are really allowed to consider philosophically, are the transcendental conditions for human knowledge. Consequently, all knowledge claims must be immediately qualified by "for us," that is, for us finite beings. Deconstruction and psychoanalysis are, in this respect, the latest avatars of correlationism. Plagued by Kantian preoccupations, they are blamed for their "attack on reality,"4 for removing us further and further away from the autonomous world of objects. Meillassoux evokes Jacques Derrida's infectious impact on philosophy and the materialist tradition: Ever since Derrida in particular, materialism seems to have taken the form of a "sickened correlationism": it refuses both the return to a naïve pre-critical stage of thought and any investigation of what prevents the "circle of the subject" from harmoniously closing in on itself. Whether it be the Freudian unconscious, Marxist ideology, Derridean dissemination, the undecidability of the event, the Lacanian Real considered as the impossible, etc., these are all supposed [End Page 1] to detect the trace of an impossible coincidence of the subject with itself, and thus of an extracorrelational residue in which one could localize a "materialist moment" of thought. But in fact, such misfires are only further correlations among others: it is always for a subject that there is an undecidable event or a failure of signification.5 For many, what informs, and follows from, an overcoming of correlationism is a subject-free posthumanist sensibility and attitude, an embrace of what Manuel De-Landa names a "flat ontology."6 Flat ontology is an ontology of immanence. It clearly favors Spinozist monism over Cartesian dualism: there is only one kind of being, which in turn rules out the elevation and privileging of one being—the Human—over all others. Accordingly, flat ontology annuls humanism's solipsistic and narcissistic belief in transcendence, declining to engage in philosophy as usual, to indulge, for instance, in the "timeless" question of what is proper to the Human. Flat ontology is suspicious of the ontological singularity of the Human, what makes him (for the idea/l of the Human is always coded as male) distinct from the nonhuman: language, thinking, trickery, laughter, awareness of death, tool-use, mourning, the face, and so on. And yet immanence's relation to transcendence may not be so cut and dried. Rereading Derrida's "sickened correlationism" might point us in a different, and more nuanced, direction. For the partisans of the ontological turn, what sickens theory (psychoanalysis or deconstruction) is its attempt—though ultimately an inadequate one—to get outside the circle of correlationism, to break free from its "transparent cage"7: "it is always for a subject that there is an undecidable event or a failure of signification." The subject of humanism lives on—compromised, to be sure, but still viable. It is still about the subject. Enthusiasts of the ontological turn assure us that there is only one way to exit the orbit of humanism, that one can only truly break with humanism...

Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson

Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson

A Study of Spirituality in Relationship with Perceived Happiness Status, Perceived Health Status and Academic Achievement among Adolescents

Adolescence is a sensitive period of life which is accompanied by a series of biological, psychological, and cognitive changes in an individual. This age of confusion and immaturity predisposes individuals towards risky behaviour like alcohol/drug abuse, violence, sexual experimentation etc. The Mental Health Foundation (2009) enlisted various protective factors for adolescents that can help in keeping them safe from risky behaviour. These were: spirituality, social support, parental support, meaningful relationships, constructive hobbies etc. Spirituality is a relationship of an individual with the Divine, with oneself and with others. Houston and Cartwright (2007) defined spirituality using four components. The first was a belief in transcendence, something higher than oneself. The second was interconnectedness, which meant the sense of unification with all living beings. The third component was a feeling of love and compassion for others. Fourth component included a sense of purpose and meaning in life. Spirituality has been consistently linked with happiness, better health outcomes and general feelings of wellbeing among adolescents. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship of spirituality with perceived happiness status, perceived health status, and academic achievement among adolescents. A sample of 100 adolescents (50 males and 50 females) in the age range of 16 and 18 years was included in the study. Inter correlation Analysis was conducted to find the relationship between the variables. In order to find out differences between two groups viz. males and females, t tests were employed. Results showed a significant relationship between spirituality, perceived happiness status and academic achievement of adolescents. This study highlighted the importance of spirituality, and how it can be meaningful not only in the emotional and psychological domain, but the cognitive domain as well.

“What Should I Be When I Grow Up?” Vocational Discernment and Spiritual Well-Being

The purpose of this article is to describe a systematic method of evoking students’ vocational discernment through the practice of spiritual well-being. Engaging spiritual well-being as a means of vocational discernment requires that the student and the advisor explore the student’s sense of connectedness by tapping into the tacit dimension of spirituality and to make the tacit explicit. Vocational discernment is a conceptual activity in which students examine their individual design, community affirmation, and transcendent beliefs to help point to and highlight their sense of place.

Faith and belief in The Anti-Christ: A re-evaluation of Nietzsche’s relation to Jesus

This paper re-evaluates the significance of Jesus for Nietzsche by looking at The Anti-Christ. Specifically we will ask whether a re-evaluation of this relation can shed new light on Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity. And we will do this first by surveying the standard interpretations of this issue, as well as the existing literature on The Anti-Christ. Arguing that the latter picks out nothing new regarding a critique of Christianity, we nonetheless suggest that a new criticism can be developed via the discussion of Jesus there. Further, this can be done by looking at the account given of faith and belief in that text. That is, we will explore the status of Jesus for Nietzsche by looking at the origins and development of “faith” as a mode of belief. In particular, we trace the former’s development as a type from a basic mode of faith. As such, we begin by looking at the psychological origins of this kind of belief in “decadence”, and why Nietzsche is critical of this. However, we will then discuss the emergence of a more positive faith in the form of Buddhism, and see how this represents an analogue for Jesus’s faith. Continuing, we will see how Jesus signifies a similar problematic development, but also “overcoming”, of initial decadence faith. And we will argue, also, that this overcoming is rooted in his emphasis on the immediacy of lived experience. Finally though, we will look at how Christianity returns Jesus’s more productive relation to the world again to a primitive mode of faith. In other words, we will see how Christianity converts the fluid, lived, “faith” of Jesus into something again based on transcendent belief. And lastly, we will ask what new light this point sheds on Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity, and his affinity with Jesus the man.

Reduced Sense of Coherence Due to Neuroticism: Are Transcendent Beliefs Protective Among Catholic Pastoral Workers?

In this study, we examined a third variable effect on the relationship of personality traits, especially neuroticism and the salutogenetic concept sense of coherence. Specifically, we were interested in the moderating role of religious trust (RT) and transcendence perception operationalized as daily spiritual experiences (DSE) on the aforementioned relationship among religious individuals. We applied a cross-sectional study among a sample of 8594 pastoral workers using standardized questionnaires. Multiple regression and moderator analysis displayed the relationships between big five personality variables and sense of coherence. Neuroticism was identified as a negative predictor to sense of coherence, indicating impairment on this psychological resource. RT and DSE appear to function as moderators that buffer the negative effects of neuroticism on sense of coherence among religious persons. This is an interesting finding because people with expressions of neurotic personality tendencies often struggle to find helpful methods of coping and may find a helpful resource in the concepts studied here.

Garveyism in Haiti during the US Occupation

The circumstances of the US intervention created space for the Garvey movement to emerge in Haiti. Global criticism of the occupation regime brought Haiti into the global spotlight and encouraged participation in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) by members of an emerging middle class. Haitian Garveyites linked the plight of Haiti under US control to the worldwide prevalence of colonialism and racism during the epoch. UNIA philosophy fed a mainstream of nationalist thought already developed in Haiti but departed from it in harboring a transcendent belief in the potential of Africa and the diaspora. Like the conventional activism of the Union Patriotique, Haitian Garveyism was an urban phenomenon, with little penetration in rural society. As a consequence, it never became a major force in the country but proved a significant, if subtle, influence on the subsequent development of Haitian politics and culture.

The ‘Biophilic Organization’: An Integrative Metaphor for Corporate Sustainability

This paper proposes a new organizational metaphor, the ‘Biophilic Organization’, which aims to counter the bio-cultural disconnection of many organizations despite their espoused commitment to sustainability. This conceptual research draws on multiple disciplines such as evolutionary psychology and architecture to not only develop a diverse bio-cultural connection but to show how this connection tackles sustainability, in a holistic and systemic sense. Moreover, the paper takes an integrative view of sustainability, which effectively means that it embraces the different emergent tensions. Three specific tensions are explored: efficiency versus resilience, organizational versus personal agendas and isomorphism versus institutional change. In order to illustrate how the Biophilic Organization could potentially provide a synthesis strategy for such tensions, healthcare examples are drawn from the emerging fields of Biophilic Design in Singapore and Generative Design in the U.S.A. Finally, an example is provided which highlights how a Taoist cultural context has impacted on a business leader in China, to illustrative the significance of a transcendent belief system to such a bio-cultural narrative.

„Wissen‟ und „glauben‟ als Gegensatzpaar im politischen Diskurs Japans zwischen 1812 und 1911

Article „Wissen‟ und „glauben‟ als Gegensatzpaar im politischen Diskurs Japans zwischen 1812 und 1911 was published on February 28, 2014 in the journal Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques (volume 68, issue 1).

Early American Religion in a Postsecular Age

A survey of the journalearly american literaturefrom the mid-1980s to today reveals a curious phenomenon: religion disappears from the tables of contents during the 1990s. Beginning in 2000, religion returns with measured consistency, culminating with a special issue devoted to “methods for the study of religion” in 2010 (Stein and Murison). This resurgence of interest in religion, not only as a topic of inquiry but also as an analytic category, coincides with the “religious turn” that for the past decade has shaped literary studies and the disciplines intersecting with it. In the wake of 9/11 and the political revival of the religious right, Americanists were surprised at the intense and exceptionally religious nature of the United States. Given the religious and political inflections of the war on terror to follow, the academic study of religion could not remain the “invisible domain” that it had been in American and literary studies throughout the 1990s (Franchot). The context demanded a critical response, particularly because the largely liberal and secular academy could not understand the visible fervor of the religious right at the turn of the twenty-first century. Across disparate fields and disciplines, scholars and critics have revisited religion as a serious topic of intellectual inquiry. Over the past decade, work on religion has focused on how literary forms mediate between the human and the divine, the role of a transcendent belief system in relation to political or social formations, and the conjunction between spirit and matter, the supernatural and the natural. In reflecting on such connections between the secular and the sacred, scholars also elicited a concomitant revision of the narrative of secularization that had long impeded the study of religion by defining modernity through religion's absence, irrelevance, and inevitable replacement by competing paradigms.

Spirit(ualitie)s of Science in Words and Pictures: Syncretising Science and Religion in the Cosmologies of Two Comic Books

This article contributes to recent interest in visuality in contemporary spirituality through a focus on comic books. It builds on the analysis of the discourse of reflexive spirituality regarding the syncretising of science and religion to examine how discursive and visual representations are combined in a mutually reinforcing way to invest a transcendent cosmological belief with a sense of realism. As a ‘hybrid’ medium that combines words and pictures, comics provide an opportune focus for such study and in recent times some comics creators have used them to set out such transcendent visions. Two such visions are examined: those of Dave Sim, writer-artist of Cerebus, and Alan Moore, writer of Promethea. Although both draw upon traditional religious/spiritual beliefs in combination with science, they do so in different ways. However, they use similar rhetorical techniques, including metaphor and synecdoche—features which this article elicits.