Mind, Body and Spirit in Basket Divination: an Integrative Way of Knowing
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DIVINATION SYSTEMS Written by Nicole Yalsovac Additional Sections Contributed by Sean Michael Smith and Christine Breese, D.D
DIVINATION SYSTEMS Written by Nicole Yalsovac Additional sections contributed by Sean Michael Smith and Christine Breese, D.D. Ph.D. Introduction Nichole Yalsovac Prophetic revelation, or Divination, dates back to the earliest known times of human existence. The oldest of all Chinese texts, the I Ching, is a divination system older than recorded history. James Legge says in his translation of I Ching: Book Of Changes (1996), “The desire to seek answers and to predict the future is as old as civilization itself.” Mankind has always had a desire to know what the future holds. Evidence shows that methods of divination, also known as fortune telling, were used by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Babylonians and the Sumerians (who resided in what is now Iraq) as early as six‐thousand years ago. Divination was originally a device of royalty and has often been an essential part of religion and medicine. Significant leaders and royalty often employed priests, doctors, soothsayers and astrologers as advisers and consultants on what the future held. Every civilization has held a belief in at least some type of divination. The point of divination in the ancient world was to ascertain the will of the gods. In fact, divination is so called because it is assumed to be a gift of the divine, a gift from the gods. This gift of obtaining knowledge of the unknown uses a wide range of tools and an enormous variety of techniques, as we will see in this course. No matter which method is used, the most imperative aspect is the interpretation and presentation of what is seen. -
OCCULT BOOKS Catalogue No
THOMPSON RARE BOOKS CATALOGUE 45 OCCULT BOOKS Catalogue No. 45. OCCULT BOOKS Folklore, Mythology, Magic, Witchcraft Issued September, 2016, on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of the Opening of our first Bookshop in Vancouver, BC, September, 1986. Every Item in this catalogue has a direct link to the book on our website, which has secure online ordering for payment using credit cards, PayPal, cheques or Money orders. All Prices are in US Dollars. Postage is extra, at cost. If you wish to view this catalogue directly on our website, go to http://www.thompsonrarebooks.com/shop/thompson/category/Catalogue45.html Thompson Rare Books 5275 Jerow Road Hornby Island, British Columbia Canada V0R 1Z0 Ph: 250-335-1182 Fax: 250-335-2241 Email: [email protected] http://www.ThompsonRareBooks.com Front Cover: Item # 73 Catalogue No. 45 1. ANONYMOUS. COMPENDIUM RARISSIMUM TOTIUS ARTIS MAGICAE SISTEMATISATAE PER CELEBERRIMOS ARTIS HUJUS MAGISTROS. Netherlands: Aeon Sophia Press. 2016. First Aeon Sophia Press Edition. Quarto, publisher's original quarter black leather over grey cloth titled in gilt on front cover, black endpapers. 112 pp, illustrated throughout in full colour. Although unstated, only 20 copies were printed and bound (from correspondence with the publisher). Slight binding flaw (centre pages of the last gathering of pages slightly miss- sewn, a flaw which could be fixed with a spot of glue). A fine copy. ¶ A facsimile of Wellcome MS 1766. In German and Latin. On white, brown and grey-green paper. The title within an ornamental border in wash, with skulls, skeletons and cross-bones. Illustrated with 31 extraordinary water-colour drawings of demons, and three pages of magical and cabbalistic signs and sigils, etc. -
Divination, According to the Routledge Encyclopaedia
INTRODUCTION1 n Divination, according to the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, comprises ‘culturally sanctioned methods of arriving at a judge- ment of the unknown through a consideration of incomplete evidence’ (Willis 2012: 201). In Chinese, it is often referred to as ‘calculating fate’ (suanming 算命). In this ethnography, divination mainly refers to the multiple forms of Chinese divination using traditional techniques without involving communication with gods and other beings. Its text-based knowledge with a coherent system of symbols and a naturalist ontology are a result of centuries of development. Two reactions were common during my fieldwork on divination. Often, people would laugh when they heard the topic of my research; several people would gather around, and the whole circle would burst into laughter. However, when it was a private chat with two or three people, their response was, ‘Ha-ha! You study fate calculation?!’ But they usually showed great interest after their initial chuckle and would ask me, ‘Do you think it is accurate?’ Another commonplace event was that whenever I met a diviner for the first time, he or she always talked eloquently for hours to convey the positive meaning of their vocation, such as the grand role divination has played in Chinese culture, and the accuracy of their predictions. Anthropologists studying Chinese popular religion often have to deal with ‘people’s insouciant attitude toward explicit interpretation’ (Weller 1994: 7); my informants, on the contrary, had a strong motivation to offer me the meaning of their practice and did it eloquently with an ‘interpretative noise’ through their constant bragging and legitimation efforts. -
Sacraments of Initiation Fallow Year Reflection Resource Document
DIOCESAN LITURGY COUNCIL Sacraments of Initiation A fallow year reflection resource … … You will sow your land and gather its produce, but (in the year of pandemic) … you will let it lie fallow and forgo all its produce … (Ex 23:10-11) In ancient times the ‘fallow’ year was concerned with the wellbeing of the land/creation and feeding the poor. The fallow year was also associated with Sabbath and time to rest with God. Sabbath is about becoming whole as a person, as a society, and in our case, as a church specifically in regard to the ministry of Christian Initiation with regard to children and families. 1 | P a g e Prayer of Teilhard de Chardin - Patient Trust Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability— and that it may take a very long time. And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually—let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. -
Surviving and Thriving in a Hostile Religious Culture Michelle Mitchell Florida International University, [email protected]
Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 11-14-2014 Surviving and Thriving in a Hostile Religious Culture Michelle Mitchell Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FI14110747 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the New Religious Movements Commons Recommended Citation Mitchell, Michelle, "Surviving and Thriving in a Hostile Religious Culture" (2014). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1639. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1639 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida SURVIVING AND THRIVING IN A HOSTILE RELIGIOUS CULTURE: CASE STUDY OF A GARDNERIAN WICCAN COMMUNITY A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in RELIGIOUS STUDIES by Michelle Irene Mitchell 2014 To: Interim Dean Michael R. Heithaus College of Arts and Sciences This thesis, written by Michelle Irene Mitchell, and entitled Surviving and Thriving in a Hostile Religious Culture: Case Study of a Gardnerian Wiccan Community, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this thesis and recommend that it be approved. _______________________________________ Lesley Northup _______________________________________ Dennis Wiedman _______________________________________ Whitney A. Bauman, Major Professor Date of Defense: November 14, 2014 The thesis of Michelle Irene Mitchell is approved. -
The Cultural Evolution of Epistemic Practices: the Case of Divination Author: Ze Hong A1, Joseph Henricha
Title: The cultural evolution of epistemic practices: the case of divination Author: Ze Hong a1, Joseph Henricha Author Affiliations: a Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, 02138, Cambridge, MA, United States Keywords: cultural Evolution; divination; information transmission; Bayesian reasoning 1 To whom correspondence should be addressed: [email protected] 1 ABSTRACT While a substantial literature in anthropology and comparative religion explores divination across diverse societies and back into history, little research has integrated the older ethnographic and historical work with recent insights on human learning, cultural transmission and cognitive science. Here we present evidence showing that divination practices are often best viewed as an epistemic technology, and formally model the scenarios under which individuals may over-estimate the efficacy of divination that contribute to its cultural omnipresence and historical persistence. We found that strong prior belief, under-reporting of negative evidence, and mis-inferring belief from behavior can all contribute to biased and inaccurate beliefs about the effectiveness of epistemic technologies. We finally suggest how scientific epistemology, as it emerged in the Western societies over the last few centuries, has influenced the importance and cultural centrality of divination practices. 2 1. INTRODUCTION The ethnographic and historical record suggests that most, and potentially all, human societies have developed techniques, processes or technologies that reveal otherwise hidden or obscure information, often about unknown causes or future events. In historical and contemporary small-scale societies around the globe, divination—"the foretelling of future events or discovery of what is hidden or obscure by supernatural or magical means” –has been extremely common, possibly even universal (Flad 2008; Boyer 2020). -
Performance and Beliefs in Argentinean Folk Narrative
Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 64(2), 353–368 (2019) DOI: 10.1556/022.2019.64.2.7 Charms and Wands in John the Lazy: Performance and Beliefs in Argentinean Folk Narrative María Palleiro Full Professor, National University of Arts/Buenos Aires University, Argentina Senior Researcher, Folk Narrative National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Argentina Abstract: “Virtue wands” do appear in Argentinean folk narrative as useful devices used by the hero to achieve his dreams. Using the correct charm and waving his wand, the Argentinean folk hero John the Lazy manages to marry the princess and to live without working. Charms show in this way how to do things with words, pronouncing the proper words in the right situation. In this presentation, I deal with the formulaic use of a magic charm in this Argentinean folktale, collected in fieldwork in 1988. This charm deals with an invocation to the “Wand of virtue” given to the hero by God`s mercy, whose proper use shows the performative force of language. The tension between the absence of effort and the need of working is solved in this tale in a world of dream, in which the real effort is to learn how to use the correct words. Social beliefs in the supernatural are expressed in this tale, in which the wand is a God`s gift that allows the hero to avoid struggling. But the main gift is actually the knowledge of language which permits the hero to make an accurate usage of formulaic discourse, structured in the charm in an epigrammatic way. In this way, I propose a metapragmatic consideration of such charms that, as Urban (1989) says, deal with “speech about speech in speech about action”. -
African Concepts of Energy and Their Manifestations Through Art
AFRICAN CONCEPTS OF ENERGY AND THEIR MANIFESTATIONS THROUGH ART A thesis submitted to the College of the Arts of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Renée B. Waite August, 2016 Thesis written by Renée B. Waite B.A., Ohio University, 2012 M.A., Kent State University, 2016 Approved by ____________________________________________________ Fred Smith, Ph.D., Advisor ____________________________________________________ Michael Loderstedt, M.F.A., Interim Director, School of Art ____________________________________________________ John R. Crawford-Spinelli, D.Ed., Dean, College of the Arts TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………….. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS …………………………………… vi CHAPTERS I. Introduction ………………………………………………… 1 II. Terms and Art ……………………………………………... 4 III. Myths of Origin …………………………………………. 11 IV. Social Structure …………………………………………. 20 V. Divination Arts …………………………………………... 30 VI. Women as Vessels of Energy …………………………… 42 VII. Conclusion ……………………………………….…...... 56 VIII. Images ………………………………………………… 60 IX. Bibliography …………………………………………….. 84 X. Further Reading ………………………………………….. 86 iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Porogun Quarter, Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria, 1992, Photograph by John Pemberton III http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/cosmos/models.html. ……………………………………… 60 Figure 2: Yoruba Ifa Divination Tapper (Iroke Ifa) Nigeria; Ivory. 12in, Baltimore Museum of Art http://www.artbma.org/. ……………………………………………… 61 Figure 3.; Yoruba Opon Ifa (Divination Tray), Nigerian; carved wood 3/4 x 12 7/8 x 16 in. Smith College Museum of Art, http://www.smith.edu/artmuseum/. ………………….. 62 Figure 4. Ifa Divination Vessel; Female Caryatid (Agere Ifa); Ivory, wood or coconut shell inlay. Nigeria, Guinea Coast The Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org. ……………………… 63 Figure 5. Beaded Crown of a Yoruba King. Nigerian; L.15 (crown), L.15 (fringe) in. -
The Evolution of Variability in Magic, Divination and Religion
THE EVOLUTION OF VARIABILITY IN MAGIC, DIVINATION AND RELIGION: A MULTI-LEVEL SELECTION ANALYSIS A Dissertation by CATHARINA LAPORTE Submitted to the Office of Graduate and Professional Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Chair of Committee, Michael S. Alvard Committee Members, Jeffrey Winking D. Bruce Dickson Jane Sell Head of Department, Cynthia A. Werner December 2013 Major Subject: Anthropology Copyright 2013 Catharina Laporte ABSTRACT Religious behavior varies greatly both with-in cultures and cross-culturally. Throughout history, scientific scholars of religion have debated the definition, function, or lack of function for religious behavior. The question remains: why doesn’t one set of beliefs suit everybody and every culture? Using mixed methods, the theoretical logic of Multi-Level Selection hypothesis (MLS) which has foundations in neo-evolutionary theory, and data collected during nearly two years of field work in Macaé Brazil, this study asserts that religious variability exists because of the historic and dynamic relationship between the individual, the family, the (religious) group and other groups. By re-representing a nuanced version of Elman Service’s sociopolitical typologies together with theorized categories of religion proposed by J.G. Frazer, Anthony C. Wallace and Max Weber, in a multi-level nested hierarchy, I argue that variability in religious behavior sustains because it provides adaptive advantages and solutions to group living on multiple levels. These adaptive strategies may be more important or less important depending on the time, place, individual or group. MLS potentially serves to unify the various functional theories of religion and can be used to analyze why some religions, at different points in history, may attract and retain more adherents by reacting to the environment and providing a dynamic balance between what the individual needs and what the group needs. -
And Corpse-Divination in the Paris Magical Papyri (Pgm Iv 1928-2144)
necromancy goes underground 255 NECROMANCY GOES UNDERGROUND: THE DISGUISE OF SKULL- AND CORPSE-DIVINATION IN THE PARIS MAGICAL PAPYRI (PGM IV 1928-2144) Christopher A. Faraone The practice of consulting the dead for divinatory purposes is widely practiced cross-culturally and firmly attested in the Greek world.1 Poets, for example, speak of the underworld journeys of heroes, like Odys- seus and Aeneas, to learn crucial information about the past, present or future, and elsewhere we hear about rituals of psychagogia designed to lead souls or ghosts up from the underworld for similar purposes. These are usually performed at the tomb of the dead person, as in the famous scene in Aeschylus’ Persians, or at other places where the Greeks believed there was an entrance to the underworld. Herodotus tells us, for instance, that the Corinthian tyrant Periander visited an “oracle of the dead” (nekromanteion) in Ephyra to consult his dead wife (5.92) and that Croesus, when he performed his famous comparative testing of Greek oracles, sent questions to the tombs of Amphiaraus at Oropus and Trophonius at Lebedeia (1.46.2-3). Since Herodotus is heavily dependent on Delphic informants for most of Croesus’ story, modern readers are apt to forget that there were, in fact, two oracles that correctly answered the Lydian king’s riddle: the oracle of Apollo at Delphi and that of the dead hero Amphiaraus. The popularity of such oracular hero-shrines increased steadily in Hel- lenistic and Roman times, although divination by dreams gradually seems to take center stage.2 It is clear, however, that the more personal and private forms of necromancy—especially consultations at the grave—fell into disfavor, especially with the Romans, whose poets repeatedly depict horrible 1 For a general overview of the Greek practices and discussions of the specific sites mentioned in this paragraph, see A. -
Book of African Divination
B 0 0 K S Destiny Books Rochester, Vermont I NTRO D UCTI ON 1 1. DIVINATION 2. AFRICA AND AFRICAN LIFE 9 3. AFRICAN DIVINATION 23 ~.. VENDA DIVINATION 28 5. ZULU DIVINATION 39 6. YORUBA DIVINATION 54 7. TIKAR SPIDER DIVINATION 8. SAMPLE READINGS 116 BIBLIOGRAPHY 135 INDEX 137 n Africa there is a strong relationship between divination and spirituality. A supernatural cause is attributed to all events in life, whether the life of the individual or of the society. There are many methods of divination by which humankind has tried, over millenia, to see into the future and to discover the will of the gods. Although some few methods have become popular around the world-Tarot cards and astrology, for example-most people are unaware of the wide diversity of systems in existence and certainly have only a vague idea of the types found in Africa. African divinatory practices are .remarkably varied and have traditionally embodied African spirituality in everyday life. We have tried to bring together some of the previously widely scattered information on African divination. With the continuing Western interest in all forms of fortune-telling, this constitutes a rich, virtually untapped vein of material, and one that-even apart from its interest to the occultist-should be preserved. A great deal of the religio-magical practices found throughout the Ameri- cas, among the descendants of the African slaves, remains very similar to the African Yoruba system. In the New World, individual peoples’ beliefs and meth- ods of divining suffered a blending as the Africans were mixed and then di- vided, to the point where the legends and myths found extended life in the Voodoo of Haiti, the Santeria of Cuba, and the Macumba, Candomb~, Umbanda, and CLuimbanda of Brazil and other parts of South America. -
Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation
KABBALAH, MAGIC AHD THE GREAT WORK Of SELf-TRAHSfORMATIOH A COMPL€T€ COURS€ LYAM THOMAS CHRISTOPHER Llewellyn Publications Woodbury, Minnesota Contents Acknowledgments Vl1 one Though Only a Few Will Rise 1 two The First Steps 15 three The Secret Lineage 35 four Neophyte 57 five That Darkly Splendid World 89 SIX The Mind Born of Matter 129 seven The Liquid Intelligence 175 eight Fuel for the Fire 227 ntne The Portal 267 ten The Work of the Adept 315 Appendix A: The Consecration ofthe Adeptus Wand 331 Appendix B: Suggested Forms ofExercise 345 Endnotes 353 Works Cited 359 Index 363 Acknowledgments The first challenge to appear before the new student of magic is the overwhehning amount of published material from which he must prepare a road map of self-initiation. Without guidance, this is usually impossible. Therefore, lowe my biggest thanks to Peter and Laura Yorke of Ra Horakhty Temple, who provided my first exposure to self-initiation techniques in the Golden Dawn. Their years of expe rience with the Golden Dawn material yielded a structure of carefully selected ex ercises, which their students still use today to bring about a gradual transformation. WIthout such well-prescribed use of the Golden Dawn's techniques, it would have been difficult to make progress in its grade system. The basic structure of the course in this book is built on a foundation of the Golden Dawn's elemental grade system as my teachers passed it on. In particular, it develops further their choice to use the color correspondences of the Four Worlds, a piece of the original Golden Dawn system that very few occultists have recognized as an ini tiatory tool.