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Iconic Texts: Damascus in the Medieval Imagination

Nancy Khalek

in Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam

This chapter describes the literary and architectural processes whereby Damascus, indeed Syria itself, received a sacred “treatment” at the hands of Muslim historians and patrons who incorporated ... More

This chapter describes the literary and architectural processes whereby Damascus, indeed Syria itself, received a sacred “treatment” at the hands of Muslim historians and patrons who incorporated Damascus and its environs into a sacred cosmology aimed at both locating and elevating the Muslim community in relation to the Byzantine world. Analyzing “ekphrastic” or iconic texts (namely geographies, religious merits literature, and biographies) the chapter traces how Damascus was construed by a variety of medieval authors. It also discusses Damascus as one part of a network of politically and spiritually charged localities across the Muslim world, spanning from Jerusalem to Constantinople.Less

1 Loca sacra: Religion and the Landscape before the Reformation

Alexandra Walsham

in The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity, and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

This chapter examines the relationship between religion and the landscape of the British Isles from the prehistoric era to the eve of the Reformation. It explores the sacred geography of ancient ... More

This chapter examines the relationship between religion and the landscape of the British Isles from the prehistoric era to the eve of the Reformation. It explores the sacred geography of ancient paganism and analyses how this was simultaneously repudiated and appropriated by missionaries and church authorities in the era of Christianization. The process by which the landscape was overlaid with legends about the Christian faith and the cult of saints is traced, alongside the ways in which it became a focus for pilgrimage, devotion, and the pursuit of miracles. The chapter also assesses the enduring current of anxiety about ‘superstitious’ belief and practice linked with holy places and shows how this culminated in humanist and lollard critique. It suggests that a focus on the landscape emphasizes both the vibrancy of late medieval piety and highlights some significant frictions and tensions within it.Less

The Post-Soviet Treasure Hunt: New Sacred Histories and Geographies

Anya Bernstein

in Religious Bodies Politic: Rituals of Sovereignty in Buryat Buddhism

This chapter shifts the focus back to contemporary Buryatia, taking a close look at the strategies used to re-consecrate postsocialist Buddhist landscape and the production of new sacred geographies, ... More

This chapter shifts the focus back to contemporary Buryatia, taking a close look at the strategies used to re-consecrate postsocialist Buddhist landscape and the production of new sacred geographies, historiographies, and cosmologies of time and space. While proposing to look at these phenomena in the context of the widely known Tibetan phenomenon of “treasures”— objects found underground that are accorded a revelatory status— the chapter expands the understanding of “treasures” through highlighting the special role of dead bodies as quintessential objects of the post-Soviet treasure hunt. It looks at the necropolitics that have developed around the bodies of two lamas: Itigelov who died in the 1920s and on whose “miraculously incorruptible” body, unearthed in 2003, the autonomy of Buryat Buddhism is said to currently rest; and Sodooi-Lama, at whose burial site, a new “self-arisen” image of the goddess Yanzhima had recently been discovered. Through making claims that these bodies and objects associated with them intentionally manifested themselves in these troubled postsocialist times, Buryat Buddhists create a renovated cosmology that overwrites their otherwise seemingly peripheral location in the Mongol-Tibetan world.Less

Tantric Buddhist India and Its Tibetan Appropriation

in The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India

During the imperial era of Tibetan history, when peoples of the high plateau of Tibet began their slow conversion to and assimilation of Buddhism, the bulk of Buddhist practices, narratives, and ... More

During the imperial era of Tibetan history, when peoples of the high plateau of Tibet began their slow conversion to and assimilation of Buddhism, the bulk of Buddhist practices, narratives, and doctrines that were reliably available to them were those of the Mainstream (or Hinayāna) and particularly Mahāyāna styles of Buddhism. It is evident that a culturally creative background interest in Indian Tantra developed in imperial Tibet, and that it continued despite the widespread decline of Buddhist monasticism there following the disintegration of the empire during the ninth and tenth centuries. This chapter describes the pītha sites as the Buddhists of Tibet have come to know, understand, and engage with them as a particular construction of place. Tibetan acquisition of the pītha cult was an important factor in their development of a new and far more extensive, subcontinental vision of India as Buddhist holy ground. Moreover, the thorough appropriation of this Indian scheme of sacred geography contributed to the alternative creation of a new type of Tantric Buddhist geography in Tibet itself.Less

Tantric Places or Practices

André Padoux

in The Hindu Tantric World: An Overview

This chapter examines how Tantra appears materially on the ground in pilgrimages, temples, and iconography. Born in the Indian subcontinent, Hinduism, whether Tantric or “mainstream,” is deeply ... More

This chapter examines how Tantra appears materially on the ground in pilgrimages, temples, and iconography. Born in the Indian subcontinent, Hinduism, whether Tantric or “mainstream,” is deeply rooted in the Indian soil. The main deities—Ś iva, Viṣṇu, the Goddess—are “pan-Indian,” worshipped everywhere. There are also local forms of the main deities, as well as a number of local deities, linked to specific places in India or Nepal where devotees can go from this world to the Other one. These sacred places spreading over South Asia form the sacred geography of the Indian subcontinent. The chapter first considers how sacred geography is experienced exoterically by a Hindu devotee (Tantric or, more currently, “mainstream”) during pilgrimage before turning to Hindu temples where Tantric rites are performed. It also describes Tantric icons and iconography, installations, and pantheons.Less

The Sainte-Baume and Its Many Layers

Anna Fedele

in Looking for Mary Magdalene: Alternative Pilgrimage and Ritual Creativity at Catholic Shrines in France

This chapter analyses the multiple meanings the pilgrims ascribe to the mountain, shrine and the cave of the Sainte-Baume. This was the most important pilgrimage site associated with Mary Magdalene. ... More

This chapter analyses the multiple meanings the pilgrims ascribe to the mountain, shrine and the cave of the Sainte-Baume. This was the most important pilgrimage site associated with Mary Magdalene. Following Jungian theories the pilgrims considered it a place to commune with Mary Magdalene and Mother Earth. The pilgrims learn from their leaders a kind of sacred geography whereby the mountain is a power place rich in healing energy where important ley lines intersect. The pilgrims believe that as other power places the Sainte-Baume was used in pre-Christian times to venerate the Goddess, until it was appropriated and monopolized by the patriarchal Catholic Church. The chapter details the pilgrims’ comments about their perceptions as they visit the cave of the Sainte-Baume and the chapel of Saint-Pilon; it focuses upon their strategies for bypassing Christian strata of these places and connecting with what they hold to be more ancient, pre-Christian and pre-patriarchal layers. Individual pilgrims attribute different meanings associated with Mary Magdalene and have different nuances of attraction and repulsion towards Christianity.Less

Sacred Spaces and Interreligious Learning

Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook

in Teaching Interreligious Encounters

The major religious traditions of the world—Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, to name but a few—all stress the need for human beings to create sacred spaces where they can thrive. This ... More

The major religious traditions of the world—Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, to name but a few—all stress the need for human beings to create sacred spaces where they can thrive. This chapter utilizes the idea of sacred spaces as a means for teaching interreligious studies, and as a pedagogical tool for enabling interreligious learning. Human beings are persistently inclined to ground their religious and spiritual experience in sacred spaces. This commonality arises from the important role sacred spaces play in human attempts to structure and understand religious (spiritual) experience. The chapter also explores the relationship between “third space” thinking and interreligious spaces. How might a new spatial language of interreligious learning help communities engage the complexities of religious pluralism?Less

Reading Henry Maundrell’s Sacred Geography in Eighteenth-Century England and Germany

Simon Mills

in Textual Transformations: Purposing and Repurposing Books from Richard Baxter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This chapter explains the remarkable popularity of Henry Maundrell’s A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD 1697 (1703). It argues that Maundrell’s eye-witness reportage of his travels in ... More

This chapter explains the remarkable popularity of Henry Maundrell’s A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD 1697 (1703). It argues that Maundrell’s eye-witness reportage of his travels in the Holy Land provided the book’s readers with a storehouse of geographical observations and descriptions of eastern customs with which they could recreate imaginatively the world of the Scriptures. Tracing the book’s use by editors, commentators, translators, and paraphrasts, it argues that Maundrell was most often put to work in defence of the Bible against attacks on its claims to truth. Yet in the hands of Maundrell’s late eighteenth-century German translator, the naturalist and historicist tendencies inherent in his account were brought into sharper focus; ‘sacred geography’ was transformed into a history of biblical culture.Less

Dealing with the Dragon: Urban Planning in Hanoi

Tam T. T. Ngo

in Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century

This chapter examines the religious and utopian nature of urban planning in Hanoi, Vietnam. Hanoi's cityscape can be read as a text that discusses political, economic, social, and cultural processes ... More

This chapter examines the religious and utopian nature of urban planning in Hanoi, Vietnam. Hanoi's cityscape can be read as a text that discusses political, economic, social, and cultural processes and the functions of culture itself. Like elsewhere, urban planning in Hanoi may appear technical, scientific, and secular in its birthplaces—the offices of professional planning bureaus. This chapter first considers the metaphysics of urban planning, with particular emphasis on how urban planning is intertwined with utopianism. It then discusses two of many episodes that occurred in the process of realizing a new master plan to make Hanoi a modern megacity. It also places the discourse of Hanoi urban planning in a theoretical debate about urban religiosity to stress the consequences of urban renewal in Hanoi for sacred geography, national history, and political transition in contemporary Vietnam.Less

A Semiotic Exploration of the World of Charismatic Christianity

Savio Abreu

in Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames: A Sociological Study of New Christian Movements in Contemporary Goa

In order to make sense of the worldview and ethos of the Charismatics, this chapter studies the symbolic world of the Charismatics—with their concepts of sacred and profane—and the structuring ... More

In order to make sense of the worldview and ethos of the Charismatics, this chapter studies the symbolic world of the Charismatics—with their concepts of sacred and profane—and the structuring Charismatic habitus. It tries to make sense of the various religious symbols and their supporting discourses, which have shaped and legitimized the world view and ethos of the Charismatics. For this purpose, it draws from the work of Geertz on religion as a cultural system of symbols that shapes and constitutes reality, seen in the light of Asad’s criticisms concerning the role of power. Drawing from Bourdieu’s idea of habitus, it also analyses the underlying Charismatic habitus that guides individual believers to understand and respond to the social reality around them. Additionally, various conceptions of the sacred and profane are explored, drawing from the works of Durkheim, Eliade, and others.Less

Introduction

in The Holy Land Reborn: Pilgrimage and the Tibetan Reinvention of Buddhist India

If there is one place, one land, which the peoples of Tibet have held in highest esteem, above all others—even often above their own land—it is India. In Tibetan thought and action, Tibet and India ... More

If there is one place, one land, which the peoples of Tibet have held in highest esteem, above all others—even often above their own land—it is India. In Tibetan thought and action, Tibet and India are inextricably bound together. India gained its high standing in Tibetan civilization as the land of the Buddha and of Buddhism, and also as the source or origin place of high culture. This book explores how the idea of India as a religious territory or sacred geography has been utilized by Tibetans as a type of cultural resource in the development of religion and society in Tibet itself. It argues that the “real” India of direct experience has mostly been irrelevant in Tibet, and that Tibetan constructs and appropriations of India have taken on a life of their own. Indeed, they have come to constitute an important type of cultural resource that individuals and institutions in Tibetan societies have often drawn upon as agents in their own internal negotiations of power, authority, and legitimacy.Less

Historical Representations and Recent Changes

Jürgen Schaflechner

in Hinglaj Devi: Identity, Change, and Solidification at a Hindu Temple in Pakistan

Chapter 3 introduces the tradition of ritual journeys and sacred geographies in South Asia, then hones in on a detailed history of the grueling and elaborate pilgrimage attached to the shrine of ... More

Chapter 3 introduces the tradition of ritual journeys and sacred geographies in South Asia, then hones in on a detailed history of the grueling and elaborate pilgrimage attached to the shrine of Hinglaj. Before the construction of the Makran Coastal Highway the journey to the Goddess’s remote abode in the desert of Balochistan frequently presented a lethally dangerous undertaking for her devotees, the hardships of which have been described by many sources in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Sindhi, and Urdu. This chapter draws heavily from original sources, including travelogues and novels, which are supplanted with local oral histories in order to weave a historical tapestry that displays the rich array of practices and beliefs surrounding the pilgrimage and how they have changed over time. The comparative analysis demonstrates how certain motifs, such as austerity (Skt. tapasyā), remain important themes within the whole Hinglaj genre even in modern times while others have been lost in the contemporary era.Less

“One Indian and a Negroe, the first thes Ilands ever had”

Heather Miyano Kopelson

in Faithful Bodies: Performing Religion and Race in the Puritan Atlantic

This chapter tells the full story of the definition of bodies on Bermuda by focusing on the island's Atlantic connections to Africa and the Caribbean. It begins with an overview of the origins of ... More

This chapter tells the full story of the definition of bodies on Bermuda by focusing on the island's Atlantic connections to Africa and the Caribbean. It begins with an overview of the origins of multicontinental habitation of Bermuda, one of the few places Europeans settled that did not have an indigenous population. In particular, it recounts the return in August 1616 of the English ship Edwin to Bermuda after a voyage to the Caribbean, carrying two pearl divers whose arrival marked an important event in Bermudian history and in the history of the Atlantic slave trade: “one Indian and a Negroe, the first thes Ilands ever had.” It then considers how the English colonizers institutionalized racial hierarchy and practiced slavery as a heritable condition by the end of the 1630s. It also examines how enslaved Africans and indigenous peoples from the Caribbean helped in the formation of Bermuda's sacred geography.Less