Shamanic Christianity

A guide to reconnecting with Jesus, Mary, and the saints as shamanic teachers of divine mysteries • Contains meditations, contemplations, parables, and active ritual tasks that help bring forth a shamanic understanding and practice of Christianity • Shows shamanic experience to be the root of mystical communion When the missionaries came to North America to “save” the American Indians, they were perplexed to discover that while they talked about Jesus, some of the Indians claimed to talk directly with him. Among Christians there is almost complete silence on the subject of the place of shamanism in experiencing the divine, yet shamanic experience is at the root of all mystical communion. Shamanic Christianity offers a chance to rekindle the shamanic practices of Christianity to those who wish to restore their direct connection to the spirit world. In the tradition of contemplative practice, this reconnection takes the form of devotions. Presented in four forms, these devotions begin with a specific contemplation, followed by a meditative focus, then a parable from the author’s own visionary experiences, and finally an active mystical practice to help ground the meditations and contemplations in a ritual or ceremony that involves active participation. These four forms serve to reintroduce Jesus, Mary, and the historically renowned saints as shamanic teachers of divine mysteries whose spiritual presence is readily available to contemporary lives. The author also presents specific directives for handling everyday challenges in a shamanic-inspired manner, drawing upon creative activities and resources that encourage approaching the world with the imaginative and playful spirit of a child, whose personal freedom and creative expression is always wide open to possibilities.

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Inuit Shamanism and Christianity

Using archival material and oral testimony collected during workshops in Nunavut between 1996 and 2008, Frédéric Laugrand and Jarich Oosten provide a nuanced look at Inuit religion, offering a strong counter narrative to the idea that traditional Inuit culture declined post-contact. They show that setting up a dichotomy between a past identified with traditional culture and a present involving Christianity obscures the continuity and dynamics of Inuit society, which has long borrowed and adapted "outside" elements. They argue that both Shamanism and Christianity are continually changing in the Arctic and ideas of transformation and transition are necessary to understand both how the ideology of a hunting society shaped Inuit Christian cosmology and how Christianity changed Inuit shamanic traditions.

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Shamanism and Violence

Proposing a new theoretical framework, this book explores Shamanism’s links with violence from a global perspective. Contributors, renowned anthropologists and authorities in the field, draw on their research in Mongolia, China, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, India, Siberia, America, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan to investigate how indigenous shamanic cultures dealt, and are still dealing with, varying degrees of internal and external violence. During ceremonies shamans act like hunters and warriors, dealing with many states related to violence, such as collective and individual suffering, attack, conflict and antagonism. Indigenous religious complexes are often called to respond to direct and indirect competition with more established cultural and religious traditions which undermine the sociocultural structure, the sense of identity and the state of well-being of many indigenous groups. This book explores a more sensitive vision of shamanism, closer to the emic views of many indigenous groups.

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Ritual and Christian Beginnings

This book examines the role of ritual in the emergence of the early Christian movement. Ritual is ubiquitous in all human societies, past and present. It is striking how little attention scholars of early Christianity have paid to this omnipresent aspect of human behaviour in their accounts for the rise of Christianity. However, researchers in diverse areas of Religious Studies and behavioural sciences have developed promising new theories to explain ritual interms of the cognitive and evolutionary roots of human behaviour. This book argues that these new theories and findings are relevant for the study of ancient rituals, including early Christian ones. Itdevelops a novel approach to Christian beginnings which highlights the role of ritual innovation, cooperative signalling, and the importance of bodily actions for the generation and transmission of religious knowledge.

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Shamanism and Christianity

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Shamanic Secrets for Material Mastery

It is well known among the curious that Sedona, Arizona, and its surrounding regions have seen some of the world's all-time, most-intense UFO, paranormal and spiritual activity. The question is, why?

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Shamanism and Northern Ecology

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems – both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

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The Nature of Shamanism and the Shamanic Story

The book makes out a case for the introduction of a new genre of tale, the shamanic story, which has either been based on or inspired by a shamanic journey, or contains a number of the elements that are typical of such a journey. The stories featured are the Book of Jonah from the Old Testament, two traditional stories from the Republic of Georgia–The Earth will take its Own and Davit, a contemporary German tale Bundles, and the Korean story of Shimchong, the Blindman’s Daughter. By making use of textual material from a number of different cultures and times, the intention is to highlight the pervasive influence shamanism has had and to show how the “new” genre being proposed is a universal one. The research questions addressed include 1) defining what shamanism is, deciding whether it should be classified as a religion, a methodology or a way of life 2) considering whether a case can be made out for the introduction of a new genre of tale and, if so, what its characteristics are. It is hoped the book will be of interest not only to those involved in the study of shamanism but also to those whose interest is in the study of literary texts. Since the old bearers of shamanic traditions quite often were, and even today are, illiterate, the study of their folklore–epic songs, laments, narratives–undoubtedly provides a rich source for research.

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Transpersonal Psychotherapy

Breaches the wall between the psychotherapeutic and the sacred as respected pioneers in the field give their vision of the synergistic potential in these two powerful traditions.

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The Burning Mirror

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Dark Shamans

DIVUses an ethnographic example of ritual violence to illuminate cultural expression more widely and thereby reformulate anthropological and historical approaches to warfare and violence./div

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Native North American Shamanism

Gives the reader access to a wealth of information on an essential part of Native North American spiritual life.

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Christian Systematic Theology in a World Context

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Shamanism in Korean Christianity

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Finding New Cosmologies

This book deals with a broad range of shamanic activities in contemporary Europe. Based on fieldwork in France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland, it provides a comprehensive overview of European neo-shamanism and its various directions and currents. The study does not focus on casual practitioners but on neo-shamanic healers with many years of experience. Their work, ritual techniques, worldviews, social networks and relations to shamans outside of Europe are analysed - as well as the transformation of shamanic techniques and cosmologies in an increasingly globalised world.

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Natasha s Dance

History on a grand scale--an enchanting masterpiece that explores the making of one of the world's most vibrant civilizations A People's Tragedy, wrote Eric Hobsbawm, did "more to help us understand the Russian Revolution than any other book I know." Now, in Natasha's Dance, internationally renowned historian Orlando Figes does the same for Russian culture, summoning the myriad elements that formed a nation and held it together. Beginning in the eighteenth century with the building of St. Petersburg--a "window on the West"--and culminating with the challenges posed to Russian identity by the Soviet regime, Figes examines how writers, artists, and musicians grappled with the idea of Russia itself--its character, spiritual essence, and destiny. He skillfully interweaves the great works--by Dostoevsky, Stravinsky, and Chagall--with folk embroidery, peasant songs, religious icons, and all the customs of daily life, from food and drink to bathing habits to beliefs about the spirit world. Figes's characters range high and low: the revered Tolstoy, who left his deathbed to search for the Kingdom of God, as well as the serf girl Praskovya, who became Russian opera's first superstar and shocked society by becoming her owner's wife. Like the European-schooled countess Natasha performing an impromptu folk dance in Tolstoy's War and Peace, the spirit of "Russianness" is revealed by Figes as rich and uplifting, complex and contradictory--a powerful force that unified a vast country and proved more lasting than any Russian ruler or state.

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Witchcraft and the Shamanic Journey

Revealing the spiritual roots of Western culture, this in-depth study of witchcraft trial records and the testimony of the witches themselves prove that European peasants accused of witchcraft died, in fact, for the sake of the world's oldest spiritual path. Illustrated.

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The Holy Spirit and Ch i Qi

This book articulates a contextual pneumatology from a perspective of the Eastern idea of ch'i (ki in Korean). Rather than understanding the Spirit from a Westernized philosophical perspective, this book utilizes East Asian categories rooted in the I Ching and Asian religions in dialogue with such prominent Western theologians as Barth, Pannenberg, Moltmann and Harvey Cox. The result is an exciting interaction between the Bible, traditions of the West, and experiences of the Spirit rooted in East Asia. Yun argues that the formal dimension of the Spirit (sangjeok) is present and active in all cultures and religions while the material dimension of the Spirit (muljeok) is categorically revealed and embodied through the life of Jesus Christ, the event of Pentecost, and Charisms given to the church. In making his case, he mediates a creative balance between countercultural and exclusivist models on the one hand, and pluralistic and anthropocentric models on the other.

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Six Ways of Being Religious

This text gives students a framework for their comparative study of religion that includes full, in-depth descriptions of each ''way of being religious.''

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Prescriptions For Living

A pioneer in mind-body medicine, Dr Bernie Siegel has led the way in demonstrating how a positive attitude and an ability to give and receive love can influence our health, our ability to heal and most importantly, the quality of our lives. In this extraordinary book he addresses all of us who are seeking a more joyful and productive life, and uses personal anecdotes and touching stories that go far beyond his previous work. Full of wise insights and Siegel's deep compassion, Prescriptions for Living undoubtedly has the ability to transform our lives.

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