Product Description: Shared ritual practices, multi-faith celebrations, and interreligious prayers are becoming increasingly common in the USA and Europe as more people experience religious diversity first hand. While ritual participation can be seen as a powerful expression of interreligious solidarity, it also carries with it challenges of a particularly sensitive nature...read more

Product Description: "Sacred bathing brings the ancient tradition of meditation and prayer into the modern day ritual practice of a home bath, so that you can connect to Spirit daily and purify your energy."―Dr. Larry Dossey, author of One Mind and The Science of Premonitions Immerse Yourself in Healing Waters for Relaxation, Clarity, and Wholeness Gain inspiration and rejuvenation through the sacred act of bathing...read more

Product Description: Coming of Age the RITE Way: Youth & Community Development through Rites of Passage addresses the absence of community-oriented rites of passage. This book is distinguished from others in that it combines almost fifty years of scholarship and practice to examine the concepts of rites of passage and sense of community, as it exists in literature and life...read more

The discipline of religious studies has historically tended to focus on discrete ritual mistakes occurring in the context of individual performances as outlined in ethnographic or sociological studies; scholars have largely overlooked the extensive discussions of ritual mistakes that exist in the religious literature of indigenous traditions. And yet ritual mistakes (ranging from the simple to the complex) happen all the time, and they continue to carry ritual "weight," even when no one seriously doubts their impact on the efficacy of a ritual. In Ritual Gone Wrong, Kathryn McClymond approaches ritual mistakes as an integral part of ritual life and argues that religious traditions can accommodate mistakes and are often prepared for them. McClymond shows that many traditions even incorporate the regular occurrence of errors into their ritual systems, developing a substantial literature on how rituals can be disrupted, how these disruptions can be addressed, and when disruptions have gone too far. Offering a series of case studies ranging from ancient India to modern day Iraq, and from medieval allegations of child sacrifice to contemporary Olympic ceremonies, McClymond explores the numerous ways in which ritual can go wrong, and demonstrates that the ritual is by nature fluid, supple, and dynamic-simultaneously adapting to socio-cultural conditions and, in some cases, shaping them.

Product Description: For centuries, Catholics in the Western world and the Orthodox in Russia have venerated certain saints as martyrs. In many cases, both churches recognize as martyrs the same individuals who gave their lives for Jesus Christ. On the surface, it appears that while the external liturgical practices of Catholics and Russian Orthodox may vary, the fundamental theological understanding of what it means to be a martyr, and what it means to canonize a saint, are essentially the same...read more

Product Description: Many ancient signs and symbols surround us, but do we know what they mean and how can we use them? In "Discovering Signs and Symbols" Kirsten Riddle helps you discover the origins behind ancient signs and symbols from around the world...read more

Product Description: Liminality has the potential to be a leading paradigm for understanding transformation in a globalizing world. As a fundamental human experience, liminality transmits cultural practices, codes, rituals, and meanings in situations that fall between defined structures and have uncertain outcomes...read more

Product Description: A practical guide to connecting with plants through ceremony • Explains how to commune with plants and their spirits through the traditional shamanic method of “plant dieting” to receive their teachings and guidance • Details 8 ceremonial plant initiations centered on common, easily recognized plants and trees such as primrose, dandelion, oak, and dog rose • Provides instructions to develop your own sacred plant initiations and make ceremonial plant elixirs • Includes four audio journeys to facilitate plant initiations In this guide to sacred plant initiations, medical herbalist and shamanic practitioner Carole Guyett explains how to commune with plants and their spirits through the traditional shamanic method of “plant dieting...read more

Offers suggestions for enriching one's daily life, includes advice on organization, decorating, and dining, and discusses the importance of solitude, style, and elegance

Product Description: Ritual has long been a central concept in anthropological theories of religious transmission. Ritual, Performance and the Senses offers a new understanding of how ritual enables religious representations – ideas, beliefs, values – to be shared among participants...read more

Product Description: Ritual Practices in Congregational Identity Formation investigates the educational roles of ritual practices in the process of congregational identity formation. Son identifies and analyzes various kinds of Christian rituals with respect to how rituals influence the formational processes of a congregation’s identity...read more

Product Description: "Love!—A word by superstition thought a God; by use turned to an humour; by self-will made a flattering madness." Alexander and Campaspe. "COME hither, child," said the old Earl of Courtland to his daughter, as, in obedience to his summons, she entered his study; "come hither, I say; I wish to have some serious conversation with you: so dismiss your dogs, shut the door, and sit down here...read more

Product Description: Ritual happens in distinct places – in temples, in caves, along pilgrimage routes – and religious activities there incorporate a diverse set of objects such as holy water, cult statues, and sacred texts. Understanding religious ritual requires viewing it not as a disembodied event, but as emplaced, grounded in both built and natural surroundings, and integrated with its associated material objects...read more

Product Description: Violence and the Sacred is René Girard's landmark study of human evil. Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred...read more

Product Description: Contemporary life in most nation-states is not truly cultural, but rather "culture-like," especially in large-scale societies. Beginning with a distinction between special events and everyday life, Lewis examines fundamental events including play, ritual, work, and carnival and connects personal embodied habits and large-scale cultural practices...read more