Worship Of Deities Research Articles

Decolonizing Forest: The Myth of Panjurli and Guliga in Kantara (2022)

Colonial ideologies reduce nature to a repository of extractable resources and portray the Indigenous communities’ religious understanding of nature as primitive and unscientific. Decolonization foregrounds the silenced Indigenous epistemes that critique exceptional human paradigms of colonial modernity. This paper examines how traditional religious rituals function as a method of decolonization and discusses their exclusion from Western academia. It focuses on Kantara’s cinematic representation of the Indigenous ritual of Bhoota Kola and the worship of forest deities, Panjurli and Guliga, in the coastal areas of southern Karnataka and Kerala. These rituals emphasize the agency of the environment, where the forest, humans, and deities are porous and permeable. This non-anthropocentric understanding of humans questions the dominance of the secular narratives of posthuman theories in Western academia. Rituals foster ecological behaviours and highlight multispecies relationality, providing alternatives for sustainable futures. In emphasizing Indigenous religious practices, the paper undisciplines the Eurocentric study of religion and questions the disciplinary boundaries between scientific thought and Indigenous knowledge. Thus, this paper argues for the inclusion of regional cinemas from the Global South in Western academia to foreground Indigenous epistemes that undiscipline the study of religion and science.

The Belief in Pullayar among Agrarian People in Ampara District, Sri Lanka

Worship of deities takes a specific position among the religious beliefs related to agriculture. The Pullayar deity belief with agriculture specially can be seen in Northern Province and Nuwarakalaviya in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka. The study investigates the significance of the Pullayar deity belief among the agricultural community in Ampara District. It also focusses on the ways in which the agricultural practices of farmers, socio-cultural identities, and customs are influenced by the deity belief system. The main objective of the research was to examine the contemporary condition of Pullayar deity belief associated with agriculture in the Ampara District. The two Grama Niladari (GN) divisions of Galahitiyagoda and Udayagiriya belonging to Uhana Divisional Secretariat in Ampara district were used as the study areas. Data required for the research was collected using forty (40) farmers selected from the study area under random sampling method. Participatory observation and unstructured interviews were used to gather data. Pullayar worship is closely linked with the agricultural practices of Ampara district. Here farmers perform specific rituals for a successful harvest. Among the farming folk beliefs of Ampara, the Pullayar deity worship is uniquely adapted to protect the land from fertility and natural calamities. According to the farmers in this area, it is customary to worship the Buddha as well as Gambara Devi before doing any task in the paddy fields. As a special offering for pullayar deity, farmers offer coconut and let the pots overflow with milk as a ritual. It is performed by them for the protection of their fields and cattle. Pullayar rituals foster collective social cohesion. Strengthens community bonds through shared spiritual practices. Worship as well reveals a gendered division of religious duties, with men leading agricultural rituals and women maintaining household shrines. Therefore, this society reflects a balanced role of spiritual practices across genders. Though, Pullayar deity worship can be regarded as a particular cultural aspect that is unique to the agrarian economic system in this area and still exists now.

Eastern Udmurt Sacred Places, Yesterday and Today

Abstract Most Udmurt living in the Bashkortostan Republic and in the Perm’ region of the Russian Federation are followers of a traditional ethnic religion. In their spiritual life, a huge place is occupied by sanctuaries and other places in which their ritual practices take place, such as the worship of deities, spirits and ancestors. We can identify different types of such places in this Udmurt regional group: the sanctuary dedicated to the cult of the clan protector deities, groves dedicated to the god Lud, places dedicated to personal and family cults, sacred places of agrarian sacrifices, territories where funerary and commemorative rituals take place, places dedicated to the propitiation of evil spirits. Depending on their social status, the sanctuaries are regional or general and can be related to a family, clan, village, or multiple villages. In this article, which relies on the authors’ ethnographic fieldwork and published sources, we analyse the present state of the sacred places. We show that the transformation of cultural patterns has led some types of sanctuary to cease functioning, while others have remained as relics and the places of agrarian sacrifices have undergone an active revitalisation.

Jezebel: A Hebrew Disaster

The Phoenician princess Jezebel who married Ahab the king of the northern kingdom of Israel had a significant effect on the religious life of the nation in her day and beyond. In the world of the ancient Near East she was one of a number of women who attained such positions of power. Her promotion of the worship of the Canaanite deities Baal and Asherah was aided by the fact that Israel has shown a propensity toward these gods even before entry into Canaan. Jezebel’s goal and determination led to a confrontation with Elijah who was equally committed to the worship of Yahweh. The extent to which the worship of Baal and Asherah affected Israel’s understanding of Yahweh is seen in the inscriptions found at Kuntillet Ajrud. Jezebel was not fully responsible for the ongoing worship of Canaanite deities in Israel and Judah but her reign gave legitimacy to the long held tendency.

Bendis, Deloptes and Asklepios: Reconsidering Reciprocal Formations of Iconography and Placement of Newcomer Cults in the Piraeus

Abstract In the fifth century BCE, Athenians intensified the worship of non-Athenian and non-Greek deities, a fact which has resulted in massive scholarly attention (Garland 1992; Parker 1996; Neumann 2022). While the legal facet of this procedure has been extensively analysed (Parker 1996; 2011), the spatial aspect of the establishment of new cults – the ‘placemaking’ – has been mainly neglected. This article re-examines the placement of the cults of Asklepios, Bendis and Deloptes, commonly assumed to have been a healing hero and a paredros of Bendis. Based on the iconographical analysis of Piraean votive reliefs for these divinities in combination with the spatial and temporal setting of these attestations, I argue that the Athenians provided space for this first wave of officially accepted religious newcomers close to the Zea harbour. At the temenos, which is usually identified as the Asklepieion and its immediate surroundings, several originally non-Athenian cults were installed during the Peloponnesian War, making it an anchoring point for the divine new arrivals.

Shared Religious Soundscapes: Indian Rāga Music in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Devotion in South Asia

Music has played a central role in Indian religious experience for millennia. The origins of Indian music include the recitation of the sacred syllable OM and Sanskrit Mantras in ancient Vedic fire sacrifices. The notion of Sound Absolute, first in the Upanishads as Śabda-Brahman and later as Nāda-Brahman, formed the theological background for music, Sangīta, designed as a vehicle of liberation founded upon the worship of Hindu deities expressed in rāgas, or specific melodic formulas. Nearly all genres of music in India, classical or devotional, share this theoretical and practical understanding, extending to other Indic religions like Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. What is less documented is how rāga music has been adopted by non-Indic communities in South Asia: Judaism (Bene Israel), Christianity (Catholic), and Islam (Chishti Sufi). After briefly outlining the relation between religion and the arts, the Indian aesthetics of Rasa, and the basic notions of sacred sound and music in Hinduism, this essay reveals the presence of rāga music, specifically the structure or melodic pattern of the morning rāga known as Bhairava, in compositions praising the divinity of each non-Indic tradition: Adonai, Jesus, and Allah. As similar tone patterns appear in the religious experiences of these communities, they reveal the phenomenon of “shared religious soundscapes” relevant to the comparative study of religion and music, or Musicology of Religion.

An Exploration of the Evolution of the Loong Mother Belief System in Lingnan: Formation and Transformation

The rise of a patriarchal society has led to a prevalent perception of male superiority over women, which is reflected in the gender-based disparities within the deity system of China. However, in contrast to the situation in the Central Plains, the Lingnan region assigns a significant social status to women, as evidenced by the active worship of female deities. Among them, the Loong Mother stands out as a highly revered goddess in Lingnan’s mythology. This paper investigates the evolution of the Loong Mother’s deification from a mortal woman, and explores the varying religious principles of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, as well as their influence on the veneration of female deities in Lingnan. Additionally, this paper analyzes the Loong Mother’s portrayal within civil society. Despite undergoing continuous transformation to cater to diverse religious traditions and societal needs, the goddess’s actions and functions ultimately reflect her creation and shaping by the community.

The remaking of a Tibetan mountain cult festival: the worship of landscape deities in the Rebgong Valley, Amdo

ABSTRACT Festivals in honor of mountain deities were revived across the Tibetan plateau in the 1980s, some years after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) in the People's Republic of China. This article, primarily analyzes the development of one mountain festival in Amdo, Qinghai, focusing on the decades from its revival until today. During mountain deity festivals, primarily men from multiple villages, a range of religious specialists, and representatives of local authorities gather at a stone cairn on a mountain top, where a variety of rites, ceremonies, and games takes place. In the ‘old society’ the chieftain of a congregation of villages had an important role as patron, mediating between the deity, the deity's medium, religious specialists and villagers, while his function has diminished in the revived festival. Faced with major social-economic-political changes, while retaining and recreating many elements of tradition, striking transformations in the festival's structures of patronage, piety, and play have transformed its human network, its format, and its significance.

In the land of the apu: Cerro Llamocca as a sacred mountain and central place in the pre-Columbian Andes of southern Peru

Cerro Llamocca is a mountain with a summit elevation of 4,487 m asl in the southern Peruvian Andes. This paper presents a first overview of recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in its vicinity, and introduces new results from archaeological surveys and strontium isotope analyses. Our survey data show how the wider Cerro Llamocca area comprises an extensive complex of archaeological sites, composed of different sectors with public, domestic, and funerary architecture and rock shelters, occupied throughout the pre-Columbian period from the Early Archaic to the European invasion in 1532. Despite the extreme living conditions of this high-elevation environment, Cerro Llamocca includes the oldest archaeological site hitherto recorded in the larger region: a rock shelter (PAP-969) on its south-eastern slope with evidence of human occupation in the Early Archaic period ∼ 8000 BCE. Human activity in the Cerro Llamocca area reached its zenith in the Middle Horizon (CE 600–1000), at a time of a dry climate and when an expansive Wari state incorporated the worship of mountain deities into an imperial strategy to dominate local people. Our strontium isotope analyses of archaeological human dental enamel from a funerary rock shelter (PAP-942), alongside modern plants as reference data, indicate that the people buried here originated in the adjacent highlands. At a broader level, we study the roles of Cerro Llamocca as a sacred mountain or apu and central place over a long-term perspective, and how these functions integrated and focused religious, ritual, social, political, and economic activities over this high-altitude complex. Its central place function was linked to its sacredness, but also to its topography, provision of shelter, and geographical proximity to a range of critical resources such as water, creating resource dependencies that shaped socio-economic cooperation and exploitation. Although Cerro Llamocca has progressively lost many of these roles since the beginning of the colonial period, local communities continue to revere it as a sacred mountain today.

JOKUMARASWAMI: FOLK DEITY OF RAIN, PROSPERITY, AND FERTILITY

India is an ancient nation with diverse cultures, which are articulated and depicted through different tribes, communities, castes, and ethnic groups. Kabbaliga (Koli) and its associated communities are one of the ancient tribal groups found across the subcontinent of India under different names. Culturally and religiously, they are Hindus with diverse traditional beliefs systems and practices. They worship different deities, saints, philosophers, and personalities from different generations together. Jokumaraswami (commonly called Jokumara) is a popular folk deity of these associated communities in both the central and northernregions of Karnataka state. He is believed to be a deity of rain, agricultural prosperity, and well-being. There are numerous folk tales and songs on the origin of Jokumaraswami and his antecedents on earth. The study aims to know about the socio-cultural aspects of the Kabbaliga and its associated communities and the worship of folk deities in Karnataka. Anthropological techniques such as observation, participant observation, and informal interviews were used to gain a better understanding of these associated groups social and cultural lives.

The Flowing of the Sacred Space: How Reciprocal Exchanges with Deities Are Affected by Urbanization

Although there is a consensus on religious revival in China, it must be noted that popular religion and institutional religions such as Buddhism and Daoism adopt different strategies to survive the state’s regulations. Many temples that used to facilitate the worship of local deities have to establish some form of intangible cultural heritage or emphasize the deity’s history and folklore to de-religionize. During this process, a temple may earn its lawful place to survive, but risks its communality in the village. Based on studies of rural and urban temples in Henan and Shandong provinces, in this paper, I attempt to understand people’s religiosity and how they conduct the human–deity exchange under social transformation. Popular religion is characterized by the pursuit of efficacy and its embeddedness in rural life. The traditional binary exchange with deities could be used to maintain a relationship with deities as well as offer urgent solutions, while three-party chains of exchange not only constitute a religious gift economy but also offer a religious agent to seek answers. I argue that temples are marginalized and excluded from village life, so people need to find new means by which to continue their religious practices beyond what the state sponsors, and this has led to the flowing of sacred places.

நாட்டுப்புற வழிபாடுகளில் காவல் தெய்வ வழிபாடு / Worship of Guardian Deities in Folk Worship

நாட்டுப்புற வழிபாடுகளில் காவல் தெய்வ வழிபாடு / Worship of Guardian Deities in Folk Worship

Brad E. Kelle and Brent A. Strawn, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible

Brad E. Kelle and Brent A. Strawn, eds. <i>The Oxford Handbook of the Historical Books of the Hebrew Bible</i>

Kollimalai Masi Periyannasamy – Prayers and Offerings

Masi Periyannasamy is known as the village guardian deity located in Kollimalai Masi hills in Namakkal district. The structure of temple is built under a roof covered with grass. It has a lion as its vehicle. This temple at Masi hills is considered to be the original temple. It is said that Masi Periyannan Swamy temples have been constructed at Namakkal and Trichy by taking soil from this temple. The little deity is associated with folklore and dialects. This idolatry began to worship human beings in order to continuously exchange the memory of the ancestors who lived with them among the progeny and to worship them in the hope that they might help them in some way or the other. While prayer and offering obeisance are fundamental to these two forms of worship, it is different in terms of Saivism and Non-vegetarianism. In the form of minor deity worship, worship is mostly non-vegetarian. There is no sacrifice in the worship of the great deity. But it assumes significance in the worship of the minor deities. However, there is also a tendency for people who are overly believers in the worship of the deity to associate the minor deity with the deities like Shiva and Thirumal. But it does not have long-standing legends. Associated with folk tales, they see Shiva as the form and the incarnation of Thirumal. In this system, nowadays there is a tendency for people to see Kollimalai Masi Periyannasamy, a small deity, as an incarnation of Thirumal. In this article, the methods of worship performed to Masi Periyannasamy are dealt with.

The Genius Universal: a Comparison among Dongba, Ancient Greek, and Archaic Roman Religions

Abstract This study compares Shu (god of nature) and See (god of life) in Dongba culture. The two gods could be hypostases of the same ancestral deity. Shu and See are comparable to the Genius in ancient Roman tradition and the god Pan in ancient Greece. These apparently unrelated spirits accompany humans and are possibly connected with representations of deities of life. According to Joseph Rock’s studies, Shu in Dongba culture corresponds to Nāga in Hinduism, which infers the cultural interchange between Shu and See and archaic Indo-European beliefs. The snake-shaped Shu is widely recognizable as an archetypal icon in different cultures, which could be linked to primitive worship of chthonic deities.

The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity, Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name and Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God

The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity, Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name and Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God

Kígyókultusz Cheju szigetén a ponp’uri-k tükrében

Korean religion and folklore are abundant in legends and beliefs about the serpent. Cheju island is a particularly precious source of information about snake-worship, not only because its relative isolation from the mainland enabled it to preserve certain beliefs longer than the peninsula, but also because its distinctive, indigenous culture gave rise to a peculiar belief-system by adopting elements from the outside world. We also have more information on the snake-lore in Cheju due to the accounts of Confucian officers delegated to the island and, more importantly, the body of specific shamanic narratives, the ponp’uris. Ponp’uris – origin stories of the worship of certain deities or shrines, recited during shamanic rites (kut) – are invaluable sources for research. Not only do they reflect historical and religious events, but also the endeavour of Cheju people to interpret and come to terms with these tendencies. Through ponp’uris and rituals associated with them people could respond to these situations, and even if only symbolically, restore order: they could release suppressed resentment and pain, and overcome Confucianist oppression by expressing their cultural identity, or adopt elements of other beliefs in order to survive.

Symbols of Identity: Vučedol Dove, Past and Present

During the Eneolithic period, the dominant and prevailing culture in the territory of Croatian Pannonia and beyond was the Vučedol culture, named after its eponym site, Vučedol, near Vukovar. It had a well-developed and complex religious system based on the worship of solar deities. Various motifs, used to symbolize such worship, are mostly documented on highly decorative vessels as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic statues. Among them, the most famous one, at least in current history, is the so-called Vučedol dove. The Vučedol culture was also in special focus during the Croatian War of Independence, which occurred after the violent breakup of Yugoslavia and eventually led to the formation of the current independent state. In such a turbulent period, Vukovar, which suffered horrifying devastation, played an important symbolic role, with an entire iconography developed around it, and the aforementioned Vučedol dove became the paramount symbol of resistance and suffering. In this article, we therefore present both the creation and evolution of symbols in the Vučedol culture and explore the ways in which such objects and ideas were contextually transformed, particularly during the Croatian War of Independence and the ensuing formation of the country.

The dynamic process of syncretism: Datuk Gong worship in Malaysia

The Datuk Gong worship in Malaysia is a fusion of Malay keramat and Chinese Tudi Shen, hence easy to be labelled ‘syncretism’. Nevertheless, the rich dynamism of syncretism as a process in Datuk Gong worship is still underexplored. Through the combination of historical documentary method and anthropological multi-sited field work, this article examines the three stages in the syncretic process of Datuk Gong worship: syncretic amity, syncretic encompassment and synthesis, as well as diverse strategies Chinese devotees adopted in each stage. Compared with other worship of non-Chinese deities in Southeast Asia, the peculiarity of Datuk Gong worship in West Malaysia is that it has reached a high level of synthesis, hence its own independence.Contribution: Through the examination of Datuk Gong worship in Malaysia, a syncretism of Chinese Religion, local animism and Islam, the study provides a rare and excellent example to mirror the rich dynamism of syncretism as a process in Southeast Asia, a meeting point of different civilisations.

Controlling the Boundaries of Morality: The History and Powers of Ayelala Deity

The worship of deities has always been a major religious preoccupation among the Yoruba. Among these deities is Ayelala, a water goddess, who is not only worshiped with pomp and pageantry but also highly revered and respected for its judicial powers. As a deity of retribution and justice, Ayelala is believed to possess great powers which she uses against varying forms of social vice, such as armed robbery, sexual offences, and witchcraft to mention a few. Ayelala is reputed for seeking vengeance when the offender has forgotten her or his crime, and strikes her victims by inflicting on them bodily swelling and in few cases, dryness. Such is Ayelala’s overwhelming power and potency that the deity seeks to control the boundaries of morality and at the same time forms amajor bulwark against societal impropriety.&#x0D; Our article examines the history of Ayelala, being one of the popular deities worshipped in coastal Yorubaland. It also interrogates how the deity’s power stems from the importance of boundaries and difference, insofar as these warrant the strict obedience of individuals, their families and the society as a whole to the prevailing set of moral demands. The article contends that beyond the narratives of power, potency and retribution, Ayelala’s role as an arbiter of justice underscores the importance of civic values held within communities where the deity is worshipped – which are also values that undergird intergroup relations. Though Ayelala worship is pervasive among the Ilaje, Ikale and Ijaw-Apoi communities of Ondo state, Nigeria, the deity is also linked with other neighboring and distant communities which highlight the unifying tendencies of a common religion and deity belief among different sub-ethnic groups.