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| the year the Incas in Peru, were destroyed by Spanish Conquistadors, ROman Catholicism was enforced from then on |
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| Mughal emperor who fused Persian-Indian sensibilities inspired him to create a small college of comparative religion at his north Indian court and to establish in 1582 a new universal religion later dubbed the Divine Faith (Din-i-Ilahi) |
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| (1375--‐1350 BCE), , previously Pharaoh Amenophis IV, was a visionary Egyptian pharaoh who “reformed” Egyptian religion to focus solely on the sun-god. Aten, suppressing traditional state religion and gods; some have argued that this is not only the birth of monotheism, but that it is also likely the source of Moses, the Egyptian reformer |
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| religious categories that are designed to estalish the superior truths of one's own religious worldview |
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| a Belgian anthropologist who observed that many rituals follow a tripartite pattern in which there are components of separation, transition, and reincorporation |
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| one of four stages in the Hindu age-based social system. The layers consist of students, householders, retirees, and renouncers |
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| the elief that there are no deities |
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| an incarnation of God as one of many forms |
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| society in Valley of Mexico and founded city about 1370 CE; fed sun with blood through up to 20,000 human sacrifices each year |
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| “Before Common Era”; a way of structuring time that aligned with the Christian way but is the scholarly attempt to combine both practicality (the commonness of the Christian time system) and objectiveness (changing the name from B.C. “Before Christ” to something more secular) |
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| time period (approximately 3300-1200 BCE) marked by use of bronze |
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| “Common Era”; a way of structuring time that aligned with the Christian way but is the scholarly attempt to combine both practicality (the commonness of the Christian time system) and objectiveness (changing the name from A.D.- “anno domini”/ “year of the Lord” to something more secular) |
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| a Protestant branch of Christianity that originated with the French theologian-reformer John Calvin [1509-1564] |
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| body of Authoritative texts |
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| a term no longer used as a cultural marker; had an intense localism in their religions: reported to believe in reincarnation and supposedly were addicted to human sacrifice in larger whicker figures, but both may be projections and/or propaganda; animal sacrifice certainly existed, and probably human sacrifice |
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| The figure of Christ as seen as a in the Bible alone- religious figure who possessed divine traits, rose from the dead and can save souls. |
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| the cutting off of the prepuce in males or the inner labia in females as a religious rite |
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| an intense community spirit, the feeling of great solidarity and togetherness. Communitas is characteristic of people experiencing liminality together |
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| a chinese scholar-sage and political theorist credited with the founding of Confucianism |
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| the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Examples include the Romantics, hippies, Vietnam-protestors, etc |
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| Greek philosophy that held that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and living a simple life free from all possessions. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society. Many of these thoughts were later absorbed into Stoicism. |
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| (1711-1776) England's most eloquent voice / philosopher during the Enlightenment |
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| Author of The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835). He was a pantheist |
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| the natural theology that views the universe as a kind of machine with God as its assembler, a God, moreover, who “steps back” and takes no more concern in the world |
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| in Hinduism, cosmic order, the law of existence, right conduct. In Buddhism, the teaching of the Buddha. |
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| members of a major sect of Jains who followed Mahavira in believing in the virtue of total nudity. Numerous in the south of India |
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| were important in Celtic societies and religion, although their teachings and roles are largely unknown |
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| Sumerian shepherd who marries the goddess Inanna and is carried off to the underworld; re--‐enacted between king and priestess in sacred marriage ceremony to ensure prosperity |
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| When the Akkadians arose in 2300BCE, they set up the Semitic empire; under them, the Sumerian god Anu became El |
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41. Enlightenment: idea arising in eighteenth-century France, England, Germany, and America that there was only one sure and safe way to guarantee that human beings would arrive at real and reliable truths about the world: human reason. Only reason freed from any and all external authorities, especially religious and political ones, could act as a reliable guide for human conduct and the search for truth.
a. In England, the Enlightenment found its most eloquent voice in the thoughts of the philosopher David Hume (1711-1776); in France, in the satirist Voltaire (1694-1778); in America, in the pamphleteerist, political theorist, and provocateur Thomas Paine (1737-1809); and in Germany (really Prussia), in the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). |
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41. Enlightenment: idea arising in eighteenth-century France, England, Germany, and America that there was only one sure and safe way to guarantee that human beings would arrive at real and reliable truths about the world: human reason. Only reason freed from any and all external authorities, especially religious and political ones, could act as a reliable guide for human conduct and the search for truth.
a. In England, the Enlightenment found its most eloquent voice in the thoughts of the philosopher David Hume (1711-1776); in France, in the satirist Voltaire (1694-1778); in America, in the pamphleteerist, political theorist, and provocateur Thomas Paine (1737-1809); and in Germany (really Prussia), in the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). |
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| an early piece of literature that probably predated the writing of Genesis and that includes a flood story |
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| the theory that the gods had originally been human beings who were worshipped in their own lives for their accomplishments and later, after their deaths, were divinized as local gods; advanced originally by Euhemerus (c. 330-260 BCE) |
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| (1775-1874) a German idealist active during the Renaissance |
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| (1770-1831) a German idealist active during the Renaissance |
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| Indian wisdom teacher and founder of Buddhism |
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| an ancient Sumerian "law book" inscribed on a piece of black basalt around 1780 BCE |
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| opinion held that is different from orthodoxy |
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| the Roman/ Greek god Hermes was a phallic god, associated with fertility, luck, roads and borders. Herms were a bust of Hermes' head, usually with a beard, sitting on the top of a pillar with male genitals adorning the base, and they were used as boundary markers on roads and borders |
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| the term used to described movements advocating Hindu nationalism |
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| A period of history in which eleven to seventeen million people, mostly Jews, lost their lives in the gas chambers, human ovens, and labor prisons of the Nazi concentration camps |
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| Hunting/Gathering societies |
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| ancient societal structure in which groups of people sustained themselves through hunting and gathering wild plants, as opposed to farming |
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a philosophical position that privileges Mind as the ultimate nature of reality. Hegel developed a version of idealism that asserted that a universal Mind or Spirit (Geist) is being increasingly revealed and actualized through the history of human civilization, culture, philosophy, and religion
a. A number of scholars have explained in great detail how the German philosopher, and indeed the Romantic movement as a whole, drew on both the earlier mystical strands of German mysticism, embodied best in figure like the medieval monk and preacher Meister (or “Master”) Eckhart (1260-1328) and the shoe-maker mystic Jacob Boehme (1575-1624), as well as on various Hermetic strands of thought and imagination |
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| Latin American society existing from 1200--‐1532 in Peru, were destroyed by Spanish Conquistadors and had Roman Catholicism enforced from then on |
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| Time period (approximately 1300 BCE) marked by use of iron and steel as most advanced technology |
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| When the Akkadians arose in 2300BCE, they set up the Semitic empire; under them, the Sumerian goddess Inanna became Ishtar |
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| Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
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| (1749-1832) a German idealist active during the Renaissance |
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| (1509-1564) a French theologian who was active during the Protestant Reformation |
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| (c. 1324-1384) probably the first man to try to translate the Latin Bible into the language of the people, in his case English; posthumously disgraced by the church for doing so |
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- (1440-1518 CE) a fifteenth-century Indian poet who attempted to sing his listeners out of the religious ideas that made normative discrimination based on religious beliefs possible, particularly between Hindus and Muslims
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| (1818-1883): Inspired by Hegel’s evolutionary view of history, advanced his own theory of history, whereby different socio-economic arrangements (how things are produced and sold toward the production of wealth and the stratification of society into “classes”) produce different forms of human consciousness, which in turn produce different socio-economic practices, which in turn produce different forms of consciousness, and so on |
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| a Chinese nature mystic credited of Daoism |
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- any approach to a scriptural text that locates its primary sense in the “literal” meaning of words
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Time period (before 30,000 BCE)characterized by:
a. -hunter gatherers
b. -pre-human hominids
c. -cross symbol, dividing the universe into four quarters
d. -Siberian peoples move to the new world 60k years ago
i. -others move to Australia around 30k years ago |
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| a great Jain teacher who abolished the distinctions of the caste system and tried to spread his teachings among the Brahmins. He starved himself to death at the age of 72 after having spent his last years completely naked |
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| (1433-1499) an Italian scholar who translated the Corpus Hermeticum or The Books of Hermes, a book influential on the humanism movement, for a wealthy patron. |
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| (called “dialectical materialism” by Marx):.argues that human consciousness and economic activity make each other up, that they cannot be separated. A form of materialism to the extent that it expresses the philosophical position that there is only matter; there is no such thing as spirit, soul, or Mind. Marxism views religion as essentially a form of “false consciousness,” that is, it is an illusion that encourages people to focus on non-existent fantasies (like “heaven” or “God” or “salvation”) and so prevents them from tending to the real material and economic structures that keep them oppressed |
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| society existing 300--‐900CE in Central America; religion was characterized by human sacrifice of the beating heart- rain gods or Chacs preferred child sacrifices. Teotihuacan in Valley of Mexico about same time—a theocracy fell to invaders around 700CE |
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| Master, medieval monk or preacher. cited often in IDealism and German mysticism |
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| liberation from samsara. Perfection of spiritual insight experienced by an enlightened soul after the physical body has died |
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| "a foundational story that grounds a particular worldview or culture" |
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| the prophetic section of the Hebrew scriptures |
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- the followers of the philosophy of Plato in the Common Era who developed his ideas in new directions, largely under the influence of Plotinus
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Time period (approximately 10,000-3,000 BCE) characterized by:
a. -stone objects no longer chipped but ground and polished
b. -shift from hunting to agriculture and producing
c. -melting of ice age
d. -civilizations arise in Middle East, SE Asia and Central America
e. -horse domestication 900 BCE in Middle East
f. -maize around 5000 BCE
g. -inhumation (body burial), like a seed
h. -goddess figures and serpents as sexual/ fertility symbols
i. -bull as a fertility symbol
j. -megaliths in Europe
k. -Pyramids in Egypt and Mayan
l. -the centrality of the sacred kings, priestly hierarchy, rituals and sacrifices, sky as associated with Gods or God |
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| Scandinavian Viking culture from 800--‐1000 CE; what we know about their religion is from later Christian and Arabic writers; the god Thor was central for sure, particularly for the common people; Odin was king of the world and patron of warriors; Loki was the trickster; Frejya was the Lady; cosmology consisted of an immense Yggdrasil cosmic tree supporting nine different worlds, each populated by different beings: giants, elves, gods, dwarves, etc; there was conflict between the worlds |
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| Latin American society that existed 1200--‐500BCE on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. They built carefully-planned temple communities and their religion seems to have been focused on the jaguar in many forms |
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| what a religion considers correct teaching |
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| religious elements that places emphasis on right action or practice rather than right belief. |
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| the positition that "all is god" (pan-theos) |
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| (1463-1494 CE): Italian philosopher who wrote one of the era’s most famous essays, his "Oration on the Dignity of Man" (1486 CE). He wrote of the unimaginable powers of human nature, which he suggested resides in a third space between the natural and supernatural worlds. Positioned thus, human nature is capable of creating and recreating itself anew without end, essentially that there is no single way to be human, and to be human is to be potentially divine. |
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| religious categories that are designed to criticize, subordinate, or argue against another religious world view |
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| A theory that says the gods are "projected," like a movie, out of the human brain and its fantastic ability to tell itself stories or myths |
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| the ways in which a religious system controls people and implicitly and explicitly values some individuals over others many times based off of arbitrary ideas about cleanliness |
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| a social category describing ones membership into a group defined by culture, ethnicity, language, and/or social practices |
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| a 19th century author who fathered the transcendentalist movement |
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| fifteenth and sixteenth century intellectual movement centered in Italy that valued scholarship, language study, the arts, and particularly the ancient Greek and Latin classics in order to begin developing a worldview that could celebrate the human being as the unique pinnacle of God's creation |
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| making something known to the public through direct or indirect contact with divinity or a supernatural power |
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| a movement in response to the cold rationality of the Enlightenment that stressed poetic, religious, and visionary human experience; sought to combine the “reason” of the Enlightenment with a renewed “faith” in the poetic powers of the human being |
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| a Sumerian ritual in which a king and a priestess get married to reenact the marriage of the shepherd Dumuzi and the war goddess Inanna. The latter figures got carried off to the underworld after marriage because it was one between a divine figure and a mere mortal |
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| the Jain religious ritual of voluntary death by fasting |
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| the cycle of birth and death followed by rebirth applied both to individuals and to the universe itself |
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| a portion of a religious canon that is thought to be authoritative within a particular tradition, often because it is thought to be the word of the divine |
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| the agricultural metaphor for the roles of men and women in procreation |
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| members of Jain sect who rejected the Digambara value of total nudity |
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| a monotheistic Indian religion proclaimed by Guru Nanak that includes a theology that acknowledges the reality of reincarnation, insists on the equality of all human beings, and opposes the Hindu caste system |
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| a religion that developed in North India in the fifteenth century CE as a synthesis of Hinduism and Islam |
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| one who rejects the notion that anything can be certain. Subscribers to this position posit no certain truths about the world |
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| the formal name for the Quaker Church |
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| someone who believed that the world order reflects divine intelligence – logos present in all of creation. Humans can attain virtue by exercising courage and self-control |
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| In Hebrew, "the Law". Also used, more loosely, to refer to the entire set of Hebrew scriptures |
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| the name given to various collections of spells buried with the dead of ancient Egypt to assist their souls through judgment |
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| (1737-1809) germany philosopher enlightenment |
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| the norse god of thunder and lightning. he wields a great hammer and is the son of mother earth. his wife, Sif is a corn goddess. he is associated with agriculture and protects Midgard against the giants |
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| a human being who achieves enlightenment (perfect knowledge) through asceticism and who then becomes a role-model teacher for those seeking spiritual guidance. |
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| a civilization thriving around 980 CE in north-central Mexico. The fifth ruler fled to the Yucatan and built Chichen Itza. This civilization practiced human sacrifice |
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| an American movement that locates divinity in nature and in the democratically shared "transcendental" spirit of the human being, sometimes called the Over-Soul |
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| he last books of the Indian Vedas which were written in Sanskrit between 800 and 400 BCE. They develop the concept of Brahman as the holy power released in sacrifice to the point where it becomes the underlying power of the universe. The soul, Atman, is identified with the holy power, Brahman. There is content showing how contemplation can lead to oneness with Brahman. |
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| the main division of Hindu society into four social classes: scholars, warriors, artisans and merchants, and laborers. |
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| scriptures which express the religionj of the Aryna peiople of India. They are composed of hymns, ritual guidelines, and cosmological speculations. There are four sections, each geared at discussion around a different area of religious undertaking. |
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| (1694-1778) french, satirist, enlightenement |
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| a transcendentalist poet-prophet who wrote ecstatic poetry. He is the author of Leaves of Grass and Democratic Vistas |
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| the study of religious movements claiming some secret or special knowledge of the divine, which often goes against or counters the assumed religion of the land (hence the need for secrecy) |
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| (1757-1827)Lived in the eighteenth century, just after the French and American revolutions, both of which were key inspirations for him. Blake was also an early and quite radical comparativist. Blake believed that "As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)." He also expressed the even more radical idea that the real origin—or what he called the One of all Religions—is not some particular deity or philosophical idea, but "the true Man . . .being the Poetic Genius," arguing that “…men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast,” yet also arguing that the human is also, in some real sense, “divine.” |
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| (1842-1910): one of America's most important and original thinkers. He was one of the chief inspirations of the modern study of religion, particularly in its psychological modes and its emphasis on mysticism. In his classic The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), he effectively showed how the religious experiences of crisis, conversion, and mystical ecstasy could be understood through the workings of the human psyche, but he also wondered out loud if there was not a "door" somewhere deep in the subconscious of that psyche that opened out into other dimensions and other forms of consciousness, into a More, as he put it |
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| the great ash tree which unifies the creation according to norse mythology. The tree holds together the nine worlds of giants, dwarfs, humans, light elves, dark elves, Aesir, Vanir, the dead, and the home of the world-destroyers. It is a tree of knowledge that is simultaneously being created and destroyed. |
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| the Indian virtue of non-violence. It applies to the harming of any living creature and hence to vegetarianism |
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| a medical movement originating in the late eighteenth century that posited the existence of cosmic energies or "magnetic" forces in the human body as the ultimate source of healing |
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the universal tendency of human beings to imagine their deities in human (anthropos) form (morphos), and more especially in their own particular ethnicities and local appearances
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| a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various sorts of worldly pleasures often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals |
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| love of, or deotion to, God. It is one of the paths to union with God. Worshippers form a sort of personal relationship with God |
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| reading the bible in a literal way |
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| in Hinduism, the divine abosolute reality |
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| the authoritative collection of books that would be the true plumbline or measure of an orthodox or "straight faith" |
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| intellectuals writing from the second to fifth centuries who developed the unsystematized stories and wide-ranging teachings of the New Testament into a systematic and coherent theology |
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| the place of an individual or group in a hierarchical social system, usually determined by wealth, education, and status |
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| a social category describing ones membership into a group defined by socioeconomic status or "place" in society |
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| the related position that all forms of human experience, including religious experience, are best understood as "constructed" through these same local contexts and processes |
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| the position that all human behavior and experience is best explained and interpreted through its local linguistic, cultural, and political contexts |
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| the study (logos) of human nature (anthropos) through the analysis of culture, social practices, symbols, rites, and so on |
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| the entire network or web of institutions, laws, customs, symbols, technologies, and arts that constitute the life of a particular society |
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| the lowest level of the Hindu caste system. the Untouchables |
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| a chinese term meaning "way" or "path" |
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| the idea that a religious complex in one place came from another, and that religious ideas and practices in general tend to “spread out” through migration, trade, war, and other human activities that involve travel |
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| literally, "teaching," that is, a teaching that is central to a particular religious tradition |
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| a plant or chemical substance—preferably taken in a ritual or sacramental context—that catalyzes or occasions (-gen) the experience of the divine (theos) within (en-) |
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| the conviction that one’s own way of life or “people” (ethnos) constitute the center of things |
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a way of being religious that relies on literalist readings of a scriptural text that is considered infallible or inerrant ("without error") in order to return to what are imagined to be the original and pristine "fundamentals" of the faith, that is, a set of doctrines or teachings that are held to be the center of the faith (the “fundamentals,” of course, are different for every fundamentalism).
a. -fundamentalism as a broad-based modern Western movement was born as a response to and rejection of the critical study of religion, and especially the professional study of the Bible |
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| the modal model of what it means to be a man, woman, or some third gender in a particular culture or subculture |
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| a social category differentiating between groups of people based on their maleness or femaleness |
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| the ethical principle that the genders should be treated equally |
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| Jewish and Christian communities whose emphasis on personal and direct mystical knowing (gnosis) did not always sit well with the bishops and churches |
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| (1469–1539 CE) literally, “Spiritual Teacher Nanak.” Inspired by both Kabir and Sufi mysticism, he would proclaim a God who united Muslim and Hindu alike in a bold new theology that insisted on the equality of all human beings, acknowledged the reality of reincarnation or rebirth, and strongly opposed the Hindu caste system. And so was born a new religion called Sikhism |
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| a person who, instead of submitting to the authority of a tradition, willingly chooses to believe something else |
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| historical-critical method |
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| a way of reading a religious text by contextualizing it as a historical product of a particular time and place |
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| avid students of Western mysticism and magic whose primary method was to focus on the human being as a kind of mirror that reflects the deepest secrets of both the universe and the divine; the historical origin of our own “humanities” |
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| all those fields of study within a modern college or university that focus on the nature and construction of meaning, value, beauty, and narrative in the history of humanity as these have been crystallized in fields like philosophy, religion, literature, and art. Put more technically still, the humanities are all those forms of modern thought that assert that reality is not just made up of matter, numbers, objects, and causality (which is what the natural sciences assert), but also of experiences, meanings, values, words, subjects, and stories. Put most technically, the humanities constitute the study of human consciousness encoded in human culture |
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| a kind of promissory note that the faithful would purchase in order to shorten a loved one's stay in purgatory |
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| a set of formalized activities and teachings through which a person's social or religious identity is transformed |
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| Certain insights into religious systems are generally unavailable to the believers themselves, so determined are their thought processes by religious ideas and practices, part of whose very purpose is to conceal all sorts of things (often the very things scholars like to study) in order to justify their own “obvious” truths. Moreover, within any particular community or tradition there is always an elaborate system of subtle, and not so subtle, practices and values that largely determine what ideas seem plausible, even thinkable, and to whom. Conversely, we also know that certain insights into religious systems are generally unavailable to outsiders who have not fully internalized the languages and ritual forms of the religious complex being studied. Life is short, our cultural and linguistic experiences are always limited, and hence it is impossible to know a religious or cultural system the way someone who was raised in it knows and feels it |
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| a member of the jain tradition |
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| in islam, the "holy war" to be waged against infidel or non-believer considered to be one of the five "pillars" of the religion |
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| Jainn religious teachers who have attained enlightenment and omniscience by conquering samsara |
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| the moral law of cause and effect. every action has inevitable consequences which attach themselves to the doer requiring reward or punishment |
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| the “in between” phase of a ritual process in which the individual is removed from his or her world to undergo some sort of change. It is a neither-nor and a both-and state, a place of intentional confusion and profound ambiguity |
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| the scientific, comparative study of languages in an attempt to understand their deep or universal structures |
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| (1483-1546) a German monk and reformer who had strong opinions about the role of the Catholic Church in people’s religious lives |
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| the philosophical position that there is only matter; there is no such thing as spirit, soul, or Mind |
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| (1823-1900) author of the Sacred Books of the East translation series, which ran to fifty volumes between 1879 and 1910 |
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| the method or "way" (hodos) "after which" (meta-) one follows to get to where one is going |
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| in early Indian traditions, a person who is in no way a part of the cultural system or orthodox tradition, a "foreigner" |
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| faith in the pursuits of science, progress, and universalism |
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religious traditions that emphasize some "hidden" or "secret" (Greek: mystikos) communion, even complete identity, between the human and the divine
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| a collection of books making up the second half of the Christian Bible |
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| the first half of the Christian Bible, originally the Torah |
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| similar to “psychical” but appearing a bit later, around 1901, usually suggested some kind of mind-to-matter phenomenon |
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| was an apostle and Jewish rabbi who never met the historical Jesus (the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified by the Romans), but composed many of the key ideas that would come to define Christianity after a visionary encounter with a being of light he experienced as the resurrected Christ (“Christ” is Greek for the Hebrew “Annointed One” or “Messiah”—it was a religious title, not a last name) |
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| the conviction that the different major religions all point to a single mystical truth or core that perennially reappears in every age |
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| a term coined in 1871 referring to alleged powers of telepathy and telekinesis |
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| the perceived likelihood of an idea being right or wrong |
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| historical documents written from within a particular tradition or movement discussed above |
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| the ordinary or non=sacred |
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| roughly 2 century time period in European history -- very roughly the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries -- when numerous scholars, monks, priestss, reformers, and activists began to "protest" what they perceived to be political abuses and falsehoods of the Roman Catholic CHurch |
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| refers to temple worship in Hinduism and to the keeping of rights and ceremonies prescribed by the Brahmin |
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| the middle realm of afterlife where souls were believed to go if they were not sufficiently ready for heaven ut not sufficiently corrupt for hell |
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| a tradition that was founded by the charismatic preacher George Fox [1624-1691] and named for the way the early Friends “quaked” or shook in worship. It emphasized every individual’s direct access to a transcendental Inner Light |
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| a Jewish teacher-scholar who interprets the scriptures for the needs and nuances of each new generation of the community |
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| the assumed, and largely constructed, identity of a person or group based on skin color or physical features |
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| unique, human ability to think about thinking, reflect on reflection (the metaphor of the mirror again), become aware of awareness, and so free consciousness from the ruts of society and ego |
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| a structured system of beliefs, rituals, and myths that are part of an individuals worldview |
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| any set of writings believed to be revealed or divinely inspired by a particular community or tradition |
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| an essay or book written about a tradition or movement, either from the inside or the outside |
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| generally means some version of being "not religious" |
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| the biological distinction between male and female |
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| the specific ways a person’s sexual desires are oriented or directed toward a particular kind of sexual object or objects |
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| the Hebrew word for the Holocaust |
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| a rallying cry of Protestant reformers, literally meaning, "only the scriptures" |
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| the practice of communicating with the dead through mediums |
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| relating to ones recognition or understanding of a non-physical spirit |
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- mystical order of Islam. Their “universalistic”, highly-syncretic doctrines made them very successful in spreading Islam to many regions.
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| someone belonging to the civilization of Sumeria, which existed in southern Mesopotamia during the early bronze age |
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| the religious practice of creatively and selectively combining elements from different religious traditions in order to form a new religious complex, practice, or idea |
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| the belief in one supreme god who is both transcendent and involved in the workings of the universe |
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literally, a rational explanation (logos) of God (theos); today understood as the intellectual discipline that attempts to relate and synthesize the logical, philosophical, and scientific conclusions of human reason to the divine revelations of a particular faith
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| a new perspective through which some particular object of study takes on entirely new meanings |
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| modes that break the simple binarisms of traditional categories for sex, gender, etc. |
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- the "secret doctrines" that developed in India around the sixth and fifth centuries before the Common Era; considered to be part of the Vedas
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| the ancient Sanskrit texts widely considered to be the font and origin of what would later become classical Hinduism |
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| "language of the people," any language spoken by common people |
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| an American anthropologist who further refined the work of arnold van gennep by looking at the "liminal" quality of the transition period in many rituals |
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| (1770-1859) an english romantic poet |
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| a way to union with god in Hindu philosophy. In the Bhagavad Gita there are three paths to spiritual fulfillment: jnanayoga (path of knowledge/wisdom), karmayoga (path of work/action), and bhaktiyoga (path of devotion) |
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