World Renewal Research Articles

Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of "Yonaoshi" Gods in Japan by Takashi Miura (review)

Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of "Yonaoshi" Gods in Japan by Takashi Miura (review)

Musibah dalam Perspektif Al-Qur’an (Pendekatan Tafsir Maudu’i)

This article discusses the theme about calamity because it has many terminologies that indicate the meaning of disaster; such as the words Balā', slander, Ażāb, Ba's, Rijz and Ḍarrā'. The word calamity generally returns to the natural causes that make it possible. The division is divided into two parts, the first what can be considered as sunnatullah Almighty in the universe, the second, second, is what is considered human error. The form of calamity can be classified into two main groups, namely good (positive) and bad (negative) calamities. In general, there are two types of disaster objects, first for world renewal and the second for improving human performance. As for the benefits of this disaster, it is to elevate humanity, eliminate degeneration, and instill sincerity in the hearts of the seasoned people and teach them to be serious in Islamic preaching so that they reach the highest level of heaven, and when the disaster is good (positive) descending humans must show praise and gratitude to Allah SWT, and when the disaster is bad (Negative), humans should know that it is actually a test (relaxation) from Allah SWT and accept it with patience and submission, Allah ‘Azzā Wajallā will honor those who are patient with brilliant glory in love, compassion and Hidayah.

The Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World Renewal from the Pre-Columbian Period to the Present

Much has been written about Mayan beliefs but little with the historical depth and ethnographic detail that Allen J. Christenson brings to The Burden of the Ancients. He ambitiously traces Maya world renewal ceremonies from the Pre-Columbian past to the present-day town of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala.Using clear, utilitarian prose, Christenson has essentially written a two-part book. The first part reviews the Pre-Columbian evidence, including materials culled from archeological studies and Spanish and Maya documents produced before and during the colonial period. Here, Christenson synthesizes the materials about Mayas’ world renewal, providing a comprehensive explanation of their meanings in the Yucatán and the Guatemalan highlands. He illustrates the resiliency of Maya beliefs and the ways in which the Maya interpreted Christianity to fit into their existing cosmology.The second part focuses on ethnographic descriptions of Holy Monday through Good Friday. Monday is for ritual cleaning. Tuesday revolves around the preparation of adornments and offerings that will be made. On Wednesday, offerings and Rilaj Mam (the original ancestor) are carried to the mayor’s house and then to the church in a lively procession, while on Thursday the people adorn the town along the processional route. Good Friday marks the climax of the week’s events with elaborate alfombras covering the streets and processions with Jesus Christ and Rilaj Mam.Christenson fills the book with personal ethnographic anecdotes that add richness to both the historical chapters and the contemporary descriptions of the Tz’utujil Mayas of Santiago Atitlán. He provides a powerful explanation of how religious syncretism functions and how Spanish colonial practices that aimed to destroy Maya belief systems actually helped them survive. He explains, “The Maya do not generally reject innovations and foreign influences outright but structure them in such a way that they resonate with older indigenous patterns” (166).There are not unadulterated continuities from the Maya past but lasting influences. It is about accumulation rather than replacement of beliefs. The Maya World Tree melds with the Christian cross. Like the B’akab’, who hold up the sky, Rilaj Mam oversees the death of the old world and the birth of the new. The Monumento adornment and fruit offering in the church replaces the Tzompantli, or skull rack. The Catholic Church symbolizes a sacred mountain with its inside a cave to the underworld. Jesus Christ, as Hun Hunahpu, the founding ancestral god from the Popol Wuj, is the regenerator of life from death. He must die for the world to be reborn and the cycle of life to continue.Thus the Wayeb’ is incorporated into Easter. The five-day period of the Wayeb’ marks the end of one world and the rebirth of the next world, where the B’akab’ reign, compellingly arguing that this annual period of chaos, indeterminacy, and destruction gives rise to order, rebirth, and renewal that can be seen as Tz’utujil people perform Holy Week.This is an impressive work of scholarship with a few omissions, one of which Christenson points out himself: “After the initial evangelization efforts in the colonial period, Santiago Atitlán had no resident priests between 1821 and 1964” (142). This illustrates a hole in his narrative about what happened during the tumultuous period following independence from Spain. Christenson makes no mention of the tourists, foreign or domestic, who flood the town during its festivals and provide significant income to fund the events he describes. Although his tone is romantic in many places (“I could swear that I smelled the faint scent of copal on its pages” [226], he writes when visiting the Popol Wuj in Chicago), the book reflects his deep passion for the subject and, especially, the Tz’utujil people.

Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan by Takashi Miura

Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan by Takashi Miura

Review of: Takashi Miura, Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan

Review of: Takashi Miura, Agents of World Renewal: The Rise of Yonaoshi Gods in Japan

ACTUAL PROBLEMS OF GENDER EQUALITY IN THE SECURITY AND DEFENSE SECTOR

Affirmation of gender equality is one of the aspects of the mankind development process which can be compared by value and closely connected to the global democratization tendency. At the post-industrial stage, the development of men and women equality becomes one of the main aspects of social modernization. The essence of democracy is providing people with rights, the organization of the governmental state on the principle of social contract between equal individuals, who must have the same opportunities for making independent and responsible decisions. Therefore, gender equality is a rather sensitive indicator of the development level of a country. In the system of world renewal and reform, Ukraine tends to integrate into the Euro-Atlantic security model and create a civil society on a modern basis. Such an approach implies the obligation to define clear state gender strategies and the development of an appropriate state gender policy. One of the important aspects of ensuring equal and stable social development with the application of the most effective methods of state intervention is the introduction of the gender approach in the security and defense sector of Ukraine, which becomes a purposeful, systemic and multidirectional governmental activity. It should be noticed that gender policy in this area should be understood as the progress of militaryservice regardless of gender: equality in the perspectives of such service, rights and responsibilities. A new stage of active public assistance in the development of gender policy in the field of security and defense began in 2018 and is still ongoing. Many significant steps have been taken in gender equality in the army and in the fight against gender discrimination. But at the same time, it should be mentioned that today there are some problems in providing gender policy in the military spher; and solving and overcoming of such problems will contribute to increasing the efficiency of the functioning and development of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as the positive implementation of the state gender policy in the context of European choice of Ukraine in the context of its world and European integration.

The Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World Renewal from the Pre-Columbian Period to the Present

The Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World Renewal from the Pre-Columbian Period to the Present

Religious Change - The Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World Renewal from the Pre-Columbian Period to the Present. By Allen J. Christenson . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Pp. 363. $29.95 paper.

Religious Change - The Burden of the Ancients: Maya Ceremonies of World Renewal from the Pre-Columbian Period to the Present. By Allen J. Christenson . Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Pp. 363. $29.95 paper.

Disaster and Utopia: Looking Back at 3/11

ABSTRACTThis article takes the notion of the ‘disaster utopia’ as a starting point for reconsidering the impact of the Japanese triple disaster of 11 March 2011 (3/11). It has often been observed that disasters may lead to utopian longings for a better world, and that these may, in some cases, lead to long-term social and political change. Drawing particularly on the ideas of Charles Fritz and Rebecca Solnit, the article briefly surveys the history of ‘disaster utopianism’ in Japan before exploring the specific versions of the search for ‘world renewal’ that emerged from 3/11. I argue that the ideas put forward by Fritz and Solnit can help us to reassess some of the widely accepted images of the response to 3/11. The 2011 disaster generated visions of a new world which, although profoundly divergent in their social implications, shared a common vocabulary centred upon terms such as saisei (regeneration) and kizuna (bonds of community). Exploring trends in postwar Japan through the prism of the ‘disaster utopia’ can, I suggest, shed new light on the processes of political change that have affected Japan in the years since 3/11.

Ancestral Mounds: Vitality and Volatility in Native North America. Jay Miller. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015, 218 pp. $55.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8032-7866-0.

<i>Ancestral Mounds: Vitality and Volatility in Native North America</i>. Jay Miller. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015, 218 pp. $55.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8032-7866-0.

Paradigms Lost: Reconfiguring Cahokia's Mound 72 Beaded Burial

The Beaded Burial central to F101 within Cahokia’s mound 72Sub1 has been fundamental to some cosmological explanations of the founding of this North American precolumbian polity. The central burial, identified as two males surrounded by retainers, has been interpreted as paradigmatic of a paramount chiefdom, or conversely, as a mythic cosmogram. Recent bioarchaeological reanalysis and two independent osteological studies of F101 and associated burials have identified the presence of male/female pairs, numerous females, and at least one child, suggesting that previous explanations privileging the male Red Horn association should be reexamined. We suggest that 72Sub1 is most likely correlated with ritual practices promoting world creation, renewal, and fertility symbolism.

From Cahokia to Larson to Moundville: Death, World Renewal, and the Sacred in the Mississippian Social World of the Late Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands by A. Martin Byers

From Cahokia to Larson to Moundville: Death, World Renewal, and the Sacred in the Mississippian Social World of the Late Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands by A. Martin Byers

Ohio Hopewell Depictions of Composite Creatures

Abstract Archaeological contextual analyses of four artifacts that depicted composite creatures and that were recovered from the Turner earthwork in southwestern Ohio are integrated here with a biological identification of the creatures’ component animals and a survey of historic Woodland–Plains Indian knowledge about their roles in Woodland–Plains life (previously reported in this journal). Together, the three studies reveal that the creatures were likely employed in a ritual drama concerned with the welfare of recently deceased persons on their journey to an afterlife through underwater–underground realm(s), where they encountered the creatures. The location of the journey to an afterlife through Below realm(s) differs from that of nearly all historic Woodland–Plains Indians, who knew the journey to take place on the earth-disk or to occur by ascension. Implications of the ritual drama at Turner for some recent interpretive trends in Woodland archaeology are explored, including an overemphasis on “world renewal” as the primary motivation behind Ohio Hopewell ceremonialism, the scarce attention given to eschatological matters, and the misleading notion that all agentive behaviors, including mortuary rites, are political.

World renewal rituals among the Postclassic Yucatec Maya and contemporary Ch’orti’ Maya

Archaeological, epigraphic, and ethnohistoric studies indicate that world renewal rituals were an important feature of prehispanic Maya society and continue to play a seminal role in indigenous communities throughout the Maya area today. Our discussion examines two examples of the multitude of such rituals that were performed to recreate the world by replicating the actions undertaken by the primordial deities at the beginning of the present creation. The first involves ceremonies performed by the Yucatec Maya during the Postclassic period (13th through 15th centuries) to ritually terminate the old year and begin anew by establishing a “tree” to mark the trees set up in the four quadrants at the creation of the present world, as documented in the prehispanic Maya codices and the colonial period Books of Chilam Balam, written by indigenous scribes in the alphabetic script introduced by the Spanish friars in the 16th century. The second involves Ch’orti’ speakers living in southern Guatemala today, who perform similar rituals that involve a series of ceremonies undertaken over the course of the rainy season to ensure agricultural fertility. Both ritual complexes involve foundation events, acts of sacrifice, petitions to the rain and earth deities, and an emphasis on sacred watery places.

Ohio Hopewell Depictions of Composite Creatures: Part II–Archaeological Context and a Journey to an Afterlife

Archaeological contextual analyses of four artifacts that depicted composite creatures and that were recovered from the Turner earthwork in southwestern Ohio are integrated here with a biological identification of the creatures' component animals and a survey of historic Woodland–Plains Indian knowledge about their roles in Woodland–Plains life (previously reported in this journal). Together, the three studies reveal that the creatures were likely employed in a ritual drama concerned with the welfare of recently deceased persons on their journey to an afterlife through underwater–underground realm(s), where they encountered the creatures. The location of the journey to an afterlife through Below realm(s) differs from that of nearly all historic Woodland–Plains Indians, who knew the journey to take place on the earth-disk or to occur by ascension. Implications of the ritual drama at Turner for some recent interpretive trends in Woodland archaeology are explored, including an overemphasis on “world renewal”...

Caught in the spotlight: the 1858 comet and late Tokugawa Japan

In the fall of 1858 a large comet crossed the skies of Japan. Casting its light over a society in turmoil, torn apart by political factionalism and threatened by a virulent cholera epidemic, economic collapse, and foreign encroachment, the 1858 comet quickly became the centerpiece of diverging interpretations on the state of society, the country, or the world in general. To some, the ‘strange star’ was an ominous symbol of impending catastrophe, while others saw it as the broom that would sweep away the misery of old and usher in a much-needed world renewal. Through an examination of personal diaries, official records, astronomers’ reports, and popular literature, this article argues that the 1858 comet served as versatile metaphor for all that was frightening, puzzling, or inspiring about life at the twilight of the Tokugawa era.

ATONEMENT PATTERNS IN BIBLICAL NARRATIVE REBELLIOUS SONS, SCAPEGOATS AND BOY SUBSTITUTES

The paper gives an overview of Atonement ritual patterns and symbolism before examining how Atonement elements are played out in certain biblical narratives. I survey a number of narratives from Genesis, Joshua, Judges and 1 Samuel before exploring the atonement patterns in the 2 Samuel story of the rebellion and death of Absalom. The Day of Atonement was not unique to the ‘Israelite’ Temple/s. While I believe ‘Israel’ had its own unique understanding of Atonement, ‘Israelite’ Temple symbolism, rituals and motifs are derived from and are part of a broader family of Middle Eastern Temple theologies and practice. Atonement is related to the New Year and world renewal, celebrating the divine overcoming of Chaos e.g Marduk vs Tiamat, El/Athirat vs Yam/Leviathan, Baal vs Yam & Mot, YHWH vs Yam/Leviathan(/Azazel?). Over 30 years ago, Rictor Norton identified a homo-erotic element in such mythologies and associated sacrificial rituals. My reading of Atonement patterns in the Absalom narrative highlights such homo-erotic possibilities.

Cahokia: a world renewal cult heterarchy

Cahokia is located in the northern expanse of American Bottom, the largest of the Mississippian flood plains, and opposite St. Louis, Missouri. Byers overturns the current political characterization of this largest known North American prehistoric site north of Mexico. Rather than treating Cahokia as the seat of a dominant Native American polity, a paramount chiefdom, Byers argues that it must be given a religious characterization as a world renewal cult center. Furthermore, the social and economic powers that it manifests must not be seen to reside in Cahokia itself but in multiple world renewal cults distributed across the American Bottom and in the nearby upland regions. Byers argues that Cahokia can be thought of as an affiliation of mutually autonomous cults that pooled their labor and other resources and established their collective mission as the performance of world renewal rituals by which to maintain and enhance the sacred powers of the cosmos. The cults, he argues, adopted two forms of sacrifice: One was the incrementally staged manipulation of the deceased (burial, disinterment, bone cleaning, and reburial), with each unfolding step constituting a mortuary act having different and greater world renewal sacrificial force. The other was lethal human sacrifice - probably correlated with long distance warfare by which to procure victims.

Scotland and the Rise of Civic Culture, 1550-1650

Scottish people during this period did not seek to discover their “identity,” which we, as post-Romantics in a period of reaction, instinctively would expect today. Instead, many of them developed highly articulated notions of civic society and sought to realize them in a new and radical Britain. This projected Britain would provide a model for world renewal. Further, civic society was imagined as intensely anti-imperial. It constituted the direct opposite of the Hapsburg-papal universal monarchy. At the same time it was not an order to be imposed on some putatively inferior “other,” but a universal (and soteriological) transformation involving everyone.

The Ohio Hopewell episode: paradigm lost and paradigm gained

There is a general consensus among the North American archaeologists specialising in the Middle Woodland period (ca 100B.C. to ca A.D. 400) that the Ohio Hopewell was a rather straight forward complex of small-scaled peer polity communities based on simple gardening and extensive foraging practices and occupying dispersed habitation locales loosely clustered around major earthworks. This book challenges this general consensus by presenting a radically alternative view. It argues that the Ohio Hopewell episode can be better and more coherently characterised by treating it as a complex social system based on dual and mutually autonomous social networks of clan alliances and world renewal cults, and that this dual clan-cult social system was, in fact, the culmination of such social systems that were widely dispersed across the Eastern Woodlands. The cults were devoted to treating their deceased members and/or dependants as sacrificial offerings to enhance the sacred powers of nature and the clans were devoted to transforming their deceased into ancestors and the stresses these opposing mortuary practices generated underwrote the dynamics of the Ohio Hopewell and brought about the monumental earthworks as sacred locales of world renewal cults.