GURU PURNIMA – Associated Traditions and Gurus
Today, on the occasion of Guru Purnima, I thought about shedding some light on the traditions which are associated with “Gurus”. To begin, Guru Purnima is traditionally…
Tag: Religion
The Collapse of the Canadian University and the Rise of the Church of Covid
February of 2022 was a particularly dark month, both in Quebec and in Canada generally. In Quebec, we had the expansion of the use of “vaccine passports” to…
Ranavalona I: la última reina de Madagascar
Read Time:5 Minute, 42 Second “Está muerto y desaparecido. A su cabeza un césped verde hierba, a sus talones una piedra” William…
The vital afterlife of Chernobyl cemeteries
Every year, after Easter, hundreds of families from all over Ukraine gather in the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation. People converge toward the now-deserted area to perform rites called…
Difficult Truths: Confronting Irish Industrial Schools
[no-caption] Matt Anderson Photography/Getty Images This article was originally published at Otherwise magazine and has been republished with permission as a lightly edited excerpt. CONST…
Difficult Truths: Confronting Irish Industrial Schools
This article was originally published at Otherwise magazine and has been republished with permission as a lightly edited excerpt. CONSTELLATIONS The 1918 Spanish flu altered the course of…
When Nothing Fits
Disclaimer: All people mentioned were able to choose how they want to appear in this text. They chose to appear by their clear name and/or activist alias. They…
Mythos, cosmología y oikonomia: apuntes para el análisis del (des)orden capitalista
Read Time:12 Minute, 12 Second Todo sistema económico se sostiene en un sistema cosmológico: se articula sobre una cosmovisión que …
Nurturing Autism Acceptance in Indonesia
Idris (right), a teenager on the autism spectrum, visits a local mosque in Indonesia to pray with his father. Elemental Productions On a typical day, Wawan, a teenager…
Review: The Hungry Eye
Leonard Barkan. The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking and European Culture from Rome to the Renaissance. Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey. 2021. pp. 326 ISBN: 9780691211466. …
A Trinket, a Trifle, and a Novel New Disciple: Fandoms and Consecrated Commodities
Religious commodification is an arena that has gained increasing interest among social scientists, especially where religious symbols and artefacts are being appropriated by both adherents and non-adh…
Why the world needs anthropology of religion
by Thijl Sunier According to Dutch media, the Netherlands has reached a milestone these days. For the first time in history, the country has a majority of inhabitants…
Defensa de la ficción
Read Time:6 Minute, 30 Second La ficción es, según la RAE, la acción y efecto de fingir, una invención, una obra narrativa que trat…
Der Antisemitismus hinter Putins Forderung nach „Entnazifizierung“ der Ukraine
Putins Ansage, die Ukraine ‘entnazifizieren’ zu wollen, ist offenkundig ein Vorwand für seinen Angriffskrieg. Dennoch sollte man sich diese Rhetorik genauer anzuschauen. Denn in ihr zeigen sich antise…
Heritage out of Control: Buddhist Material Excess in Depopulating Japan
Inherited Buddhist objects and their associated ritual care connect the dead with the living. Buddhist things are not only material. They contain spiritual and emotional power, even when…
Heritage out of control: Is Libation a Prayer?
Religion as Heritage in Ghana In 2009, Ghana celebrated its 52nd birthday as an independent country with the usual pomp and circumstance. The parade was held at the…
Heritage out of Control: Present Gods, Absent Nation
The sun had already set when the night-long live broadcast of a kohoḿbā kankāriya ritual in a Sri Lankan town begins. A larger-than-life image of the leading national…
Heritage out of Control: When Heritage Turns to Rubble
In December 2017, Toungouma was stolen, the famed stone said to render justice in the Département of Dogondoutchi, Niger. When it was found a few days later, the…
Heritage out of Control: Inheriting Love – Sensing in The Museum of Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi (1207-1273)
“Muslims go to Mecca once, if they are not unnecessarily wealthy (laughing), but people of all kinds come to visit Mevlana [‘s musealized tomb] every year. Why? Because…
Heritage out of Control: RecycDisturbing Heritage
Disturbing Heritage The past is present through its lasting material forms, in open and hidden ways, marked and unmarked. Whether cherished, taken for granted or dismissed and left…
Stellungnahme von Werner Schiffauer zur DEVI-Studie: Bestandsaufnahme Konfrontative Religionsbekundungen in Neukölln.
von Prof. Dr. Werner Schiffauer, 25.01.2022 Die vollständige Stellungnahme als PDF Die Studie besteht im Wesentlichen aus der Wiedergabe von Zitaten bzw. der inhaltlichen Wiedergabe von Gesprächen mit…
Five New Year’s Rituals of Renewal
In Auckland, New Zealand, Māori people celebrate the rising of Mataraki, also known as the Pleiades star cluster, as the start of the new year in July. Hannah…
When Biblically Inspired Pseudoscience and Clickbait Cause Looting
Archaeologist and co-author Morag M. Kersel stands in one of thousands of looters’ pits at the Early Bronze Age cemetery of Bâb adh-Dhrâʿ in Jordan. Yorke M. Rowan…
The Age of Digital Divination
Divination rituals around the world often include animals, as seen in this early 20th-century painting of fortunetelling using a chicken by Russian artist Konstantin Makovsky. Brandmeister/Wi…