Eclectic and esoteric religions and belief systems Books

Book SynopsisDouglas Ezzy is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Tasmania, Australia.Trade ReviewDouglas Ezzy offers an intriguing and rich ethnographic study of rituals that confront sex and death in a Contemporary Pagan temporary community setting. In the first in-depth study of its kind, he discusses and analyzes these important yet contentious themes in Pagan ritual in a respectful manner that provides much insight into the practitioners’ mindsets. It is exciting to see a scholar of Ezzy’s calibre grapple with these difficult issues. * Shawn Arthur, Assistant Professor of Asian Religions, Appalachian State University, USA *Douglas Ezzy offers us a potent brew of embodiment, performance, liminality, sexuality, myth-making, and much more. His clear analysis should inspire us to think again about ritual and religion from relational perspectives. * Graham Harvey, Reader in Religious Studies and Head of Department, The Open University, UK *Sociologist Ezzy takes readers inside the pagan subculture, showing how even short-lived festivals and gatherings exert a powerful force over practitioners. The book is an in-depth study of a controversial pagan festival in Australia, Faunalia, which ran for nine years beginning in 2000. The organizers reconstructed rituals with dark and contested pasts, particularly the erotic Baphomet rite, where participants celebrate a devil-like hermaphroditic deity by entering trance states and dancing around a bonfire naked. In the "Underworld" rite, participants role-play their own deaths. Ezzy's sympathetic account of these events is retold through participants' eyes rather than through his own firsthand observation, though he is a pagan and has participated in the festival. He argues that these emotionally intense rituals add "soul" to participants' lives, allowing them to transcend ordinary reality for a brief time and get in touch with their "true selves." Ezzy finds that participants report resolutions of internal conflicts and a new sense of self-worth, even years after taking part in these rituals. Summing Up: Recommended. Upperdivision undergraduate students and above. -- R. P. Cimino, University of Richmond * CHOICE *Sociologist Douglas Ezzy takes us to Australia in his new book about a pagan festival called by the pseudonym Faunalia […]For a few people for a little while at least, Faunalia appears to give purpose and transform consciousness; it would be interesting to know how long that purpose and transformation endure and what those individuals seek next. -- Jack David Eller * Anthropology Review Database *Table of Contents1. Introduction 2. Soul 3. Ritual 4. Death: The Underworld Rite 5. Shadow 6. The Baphomet Rite 7. Ethics 8. Religion 9. Conclusion

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis fully illustrated volume, including an eight-page colour-plate section, is the first in-depth study in English to examine the warrior and shamanic characteristics and significance of tengu in the martial art culture (bugei) of Muromachi Japan (1336-1573). According to Roald Knutsen, who is widely known for his writings on the samurai tradition, prompting his life-long study of tengu – the part-human, part-animal creatures – was the early discovery that the tengu of the Muromachi period were interacting with the deadly serious bugei masters teaching the arts of war. Here were beings who did not conform to the comic, goblin-like creatures of common folklore and were not the creations of the Buddhist priests intent on demonizing that which they did not understand and could not control. As this study shows, the part-hidden tengu under review passed on and taught the clearest theory of tactics and strategy to bushi of the highest calibre, the absorption and mastery of which often decided if the warrior and his clan lived or were annihilated on the all-too-frequent killing grounds of the Muromachi age. Tengu will be widely welcomed in many contexts including studies relating to martial arts, religion and folklore, shamanism and mythology, and the social and military history of Japan.Table of ContentsIntroduction; The Tengu; About Shamanism in the Present Context; Communing with the Gods; Origins, Cultic Symbols; The Transition from the Griffin to the Hawk and Crow; Shamanism and the Japanese Context; The Transition from the Ancient to the Medieval Period; The Introduction of the Buddhist Mikkyō; Were ‘The Protectors’ the Proto-Yamabushi?; Comparisons; Apparitions; Tengu Weapons and Other Items; Dai-tengu and Shō-tengu in the Iconography; Messenger of the Deities; Bugei Tengu Iconography; Marishit-ten and ‘Divine Assistance’; Tengu Revisited.

Read more less