Religious World View of a Moldavian Csángó Man

“Figures and Forms of Ultimacy: Manifestation and Proclamation as Paradigms of the Sacred” , 2011

2021

Some facets of anthropological understanding of religion as cultural symbols can be comprehended with the example provided by Clifford Geertz on the Balinese theatrical performance.He takes this example to elucidate how cultural performances, a term introduced by Singer, integrate the dispositional and conceptual aspects of religion. For the participants of these performances, Geertz observes these religious cultural recitals are a realization of their religion and their own life itself. This is especially apparent in how the performers and participants interact during the performance of the combat between "Rangda and Borang" symbolically a clash between malignant and comic. Here Geertz observes that participantsjoin the performance as supporting actors, this happens when the participant enters another realm apart from their commonplace existence,here they are possessed by one or the other demons. The untranced here controls excessive activities of the possessed by throwin...

GORGIA PRESS, 2019

This volume presents the work of contemporary Orthodox thinkers who attempt to integrate the theological and the mystical. Exciting and provocative chapters treat a wide variety of mysticism, including early Church accounts, patristics (including the seemingly ever-popular subject of deification), liturgy, iconography, spiritual practice, and contemporary efforts to find mystical sense in cyber-technologies and post-humanism. Table of Contents (v) Preface and Acknowledgements (vii) Abbreviations (ix) Introduction: Mysticism and its Historical Manifestations (1) Sergey Trostyanskiy and Jess Gilbert I. MYSTICAL THEOLOGY AND CHURCH MOTHERS AND FATHERS (9) I.1. The Relation Between the Incomprehensibility of God and the Naming of God in the Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius (11) Theodore Damian I.2. Toward an Understanding of Maximus the Confessor’s Mystical Theology of Deification: The Spiritual Sabbath / Eighth Day Sequence in Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (27) Jess Gilbert I.3. Mystical Theology in the Writings of Gregory of Nyssa and Dionysius Areopagite (51) Eirini Artemi and Christos Terezis I.4. Analogy in the Mystical Theology of Gregory of Nyssa: Transcending Negation and Affirmation (69) Robert F. Fortuin I.5. Recapitulative Reversal and the Restoration of Humanity in St. Irenaeus (85) Don Springer I.6. Kindling Divine Fire: The Mystical Sayings of St. Syncletica (99) V.K. McCarty II. LITURGY, SACRAMENTS, AND ICONS (115) II.1. The Kingdom of the Holy Trinity and the Movement of a Community in the Sacrificial Spirit of Christ: The importance of Father Dumitru Stăniloae’s Mystical and Ascetic Vision of the Holy Liturgy (117) Ciprian Streza II.2. The Sacraments of the Church: Basis of Spirituality, Building Blocks of the Kingdom (145) Philip Zymaris II.3. The Mystery of Representation: Theodore the Studite on Seeing the Invisible (169) Sergey Trostyanskiy III. CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE AND APPLICATIONS (191) III.1 Understanding My Avatar: Cyberbeing, Bio-Digital Personhood, and Fictional Transcendences from an Orthodox Perspective (193) Inti Yanes-Fernandez III.2. A Theory of Practice: A Meditation on Practice Itself (217) Mark W. Flory III.3. The Prayer of the Heart as Method of cognitive-behavioural Psychotherapy (237) Cameron McCabe III.4. Orthopraxis and Theosis: The Role of Ritual in the Training of the Mind (249) Anthony Perkins

2007

The idea for this project becomes possible in Bulgaria because of the two basic tendencies of behavior in public and personal space. The first one is a repetition of past social experience with natural rationalizing of the conceptions about society and individual. The second tendency is a creativity of cultural values as a result of ultracommunication in the post-modern world, without the domination of political governing.

Religion has been the focus of anthropologists, ethnologists and religious scholars for decades. Theories of religion, ritual and magic have been conceived by eminent scholars such as Émile Durkheim, William James, Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski, Clifford Geertz, and Victor Witter Turner, among others. Religion, magic and ritual, along with kinship and family, gender relations, political systems, agriculture and modes of production, and the diverse manifestations of folk culture, belong to the classical research fields of ethnology and sociocultural anthropology. Although it has been decades since the publication of the classic works, religion remains a crucial area of research. Classic themes such as ritual, magic, and supernatural harm still appeal to contemporary scholars studying religion, even when viewed from new theoretical and methodological perspectives. However, recent decades have also brought new research topics in an empirical sense, such as religion in the online space or religion in a postmodern and globalised world. These changes are also reflected by the papers in the 2024 double issue of Svetovi / Worlds. While the first issue includes papers based on various types of empirical data, ethnographic or historical, etc., related to the Central European context (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) and Japan, the second is devoted to the theoretical, methodological and epistemological aspects of the academic study of religion.

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2019

The essays presented in this issue focus on the phenomenological investigation of religious phenomena. Scholars belonging to different phenomenological traditions address the following groups of questions in order to describe the structure that makes a phenomenon religious. First, is it actually possible to talk about religious experience? In this issue we decided not to give a final answer but, rather, to refer to religious experience as the religious structure of phenomena. In fact, the main question that informs our current contributions is: Could there be a phenomenology of religious experience? Second, we would like to ponder what different forms of phenomenological investigations can add to the description of the religious structure of phenomena. In this case we refer to the philosophical and psychological reflections of Dewey, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, James, and so forth, in order to shed light on religious phenomena. Third, we would like to address the question that gives the title to this issue: Do these phenomena present themselves as religious, or is it their structure as it interacts with our sense of self, our beliefs, our sense of the sacred, and our transcendental attitude that attributes phenomena a religious color? Can a religious sentiment be grounded in a perceptual and experiential quality? Or does our way of relating to neutral matter color it with a theological and axiological quality?

2015

relevance because of (c) the resources they provide for transhistorical and transcultural analyses of people's involvements in religion and (d) the more particular insights Lucian offers on the ways in which people experience (i.e., practice, maintain, promote, and defend) their notions of divinity. Lucian may write as a philosopher-poet, and at times he is openly depreciative of those who adopt religious standpoints. However, Lucian also is a remarkably astute student of the human condition and, in important respects, anticipates what presently may be defined as a pragmatist, interactionist, or constructionist approach to the study of religion. 2 2 Like Durkheim (1915 [1912]), I begin with the premise that religion not only is a group phenomenon, but that religion also has its origins in and is maintained through group interchange (individualized notions of religion are extensions or variants of group-based religious thought and practices). Like Durkheim, Further, because Lucian discusses religion as a field of activity, he draws attention to the reality of as well, I define religious beliefs in reference to people's conceptions of "the sacred." Whereas notions of the sacred imply a division or separation between exceptional and mundane (profane) things, people's conceptions of the sacred also imply intense emotional sensations (as in awe, joy, sadness, fear, and anger) in conjunction with some phenomenon (potentially anything to which people collectively might attend). Moreover, the excitation associated with the sacred (including things considered exceptionally good, as well as evil) is linked to human experiences and activities. Thus, the sacred also is accompanied by a sense of force or agency that not only seems considerably greater than oneself and other mortal beings but that also can dramatically shape the things people experience. Although not fully understood, and certainly not fully controllable, this "greater than life force" is something with which humans in their comparative (group-based) states of dependency-with respect to this force-must contend. Still, while acknowledging the centrality of notions of the sacred for people's religious beliefs, I (like Durkheim 1915 [1912]) adopt the viewpoint that religion has no existence apart from the particular groups or communities of people who, through ongoing collective interchange, are/have been actively involved in developing and maintaining this belief system. From this standpoint, religion achieves a collectively experienced, behaviorally engaged, and emotionally involved realism.

Estudos de Religião, 2007

This article treats the apparent contradiction between the spontaneity of religious experience in ancient Judaism and in early Christianity (negated in much of the scholarship) and the fact that it manifests itself according to guidelines predetermined by the tradition. The hypothesis that is defended here is that visionary experience or experience in trance (such as glossolalia) can only be legitimate when it makes reference to the forms of expression of the group to which it belongs.

The papers we presented in this volume focus on the phenomenological investigation of the religious phenomena. Scholars belonging to different phenomenological traditions addressed the following groups of questions in order to describe the structure that makes a phenomenon religious. First, is it actually possible to talk about religious experience? In this issue we decided not to give a final answer, but rather to refer to religious experience as the religious structure of the phenomena. In fact, the main question that informs our current literature is: could there be a phenomenology of religious experience? Secondly, we would like to ponder what different forms of phenomenological investigations can add to the description of the religious structure of the phenomena. In this case we referred to the philosophical and psychological reflection of Dewey's, Husserl's, Heidegger's, Ricoeur's, James' and so forth, in order to shed light on religious phenomena. Thirdly, we would like to address the question that gives the title to this issue: Do these phenomena present themselves as religious or is their structure as it interacts with our sense of self, our beliefs, our sense of the sacred and our transcendental attitude that attribute the phenomena a religious color? Can a religious sentiment be grounded in a perceptual and experiential quality? Or is our way of relating to neutral matter that colors them in a theological and axiological quality? Anna Varga-Jani approached religious experience through a twofold phenomenological investigation aimed at discovering, (1) how religious experiences reflected on reality, and (2) how the methodology of phenomenology lead to the wider ontology of theology. These two divergent approaches to religious experiences found their source in the phenomenological reflection on reality, and this reality, in view of the substantially non-real experience of religiosity, urged the creation of a new ontology in the donation of revelation. Ricoeur's phenomenological approach was used to inquiry into this layer of reality. Drawing on Husserl's egology, Marc Applebaum's contribution Remembrance: A Husserlian Phenomenology of Sufi Practice, discussed the traditional Sufi practice of " remembrance of God " (dhikr), which can be understood as " the primary meditative practice " within Islam (Elias 2013, 199). The aim was to describe dhikr as a religious phenomenon consisting in turning from a condition of heedlessness and duality to a unitive experience of remembering God and being remembered by God. Remembrance was framed not as a metaphysical doctrine but as a lived-experience situated in the practice of classical Sufism, traditionally understood as a lifelong, sapiential path.