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| public rites; what people do in church |
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| paraliturgies or devotional practices |
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| private rites; what people do at home or in a private chapel. Includes the divine office; sacraments; prayers, blessings, rites which protect and sanctify normal human events or activities (cycles of the week, annual feast days, birth, death, marriage, or events such as undertaking new ventures or journeys, planting or harvest etc) |
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| This involves the principle that invisible but natural rays pervade the universe, flowing down from the stars to imbue things corresponding to them (as silver to the moon, amber to the sun etc). These rays can be legitimately harnessed and used for human health and well being. Medieval medicine incorporated principles that the microcosm (human body) reflects the macrocosm (the universe); rays unite both. |
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| or classical magic arts: centered around controlled randomization: lot casting, reading of entrails, flights of birds, astrology. Astrology overlapped with natural magic/science. |
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| practices without a clear meaning. Includes charms for good luck or averting bad luck (eg throwing salt over the left shoulder, avoiding walking under a ladder). |
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| black magic: anything done with demons, eg calling their images into shiny surfaces (water, mirrors, crystals, bones rubbed with oil); forcing them to do things for you (harm enemies, obtain sex etc). Overlaps with the practice of exorcism |
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| Practices that involved invoking angels (eg the Ars notoria), usually for purpose of acquiring knowledge. Overlaps with devotion to angels and necromancy. (EG shiny surface divination called up angels as often as it did demons.) |
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| Sunnis believe that no one succeed Muhammad as a prophet, but a caliph could succeed him as a guardian of the prophetic legacy, responsible for the administration of community affairs in accordance to the Qur’an. The caliphs would be chosen by consensus of the community from the Quarish tribe to which Muhammad belonged. |
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| Although Shi’a Muslims believe that Muhammad was the last prophet to ever be, they believe that the imams, their religious authority leaders, have the ability for inspired and infallible interpretations of the Qu’ran. The first imam was Ali, cousin, adopted son, and son-in-law of Muhammad. Further imams also came from direct descendence from Muhammad. The majority of Shi’a believe that the 12th and final imam has withdrawn into occulation since the 3rd century of Islam and his return will have a messianic quality heralding the end of the world. religious authority leaders, have the ability for inspired and |
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| mystical order of Islam. They are not a distinct group or sect (Shi’a and Sunnis can also be Sufi), they simply seek intimacy with God through spiritual purification. Their “universalistic”, highly-syncretic doctrines made them very successful in spreading Islam to many regions through conversion |
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| the Muslim holy book. The first (chronologically) books are about impending end of the world, then there are retellings of stories of Muhammad and then books on how the umma should be formed. Its words are considered the actual words of God, not inspired words like in Christianity. |
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| The leader of Sunni Islam. Responsible for the administration of community affairs and making sure they are in accordance with the Qur’an. Chosen by consensus of the community from the Quarish tribe to which Muhammad belonged. |
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| Comprehensive system of community law developed over time in Sunni Islam. Allows variance for the four main schools of legal thought, the Malikis, Hanafis, Shafi’is, and Hanbalis. |
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| the collection of stories about and sayings of Muhammad, supplementary to the Qu’ran, not a part of it. |
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| Born in 570. Died in 632. The last prophet of God and the man who began Islam. Began receiving messages from Allah in 610. In 622 migrated with followers to Medina (known as the hijrah), where Islam began to take shape. In 630, he and his followers took over Meccas, converting many. |
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| Shia religious authority leaders. Have the ability for inspired and infallible interpretations of the Qu’ran. The first imam was Ali, cousin, adopted son, and son-in-law of Muhammad. Further imams also came from direct descendence from Muhammad. Many believe that the 12th and final imam has withdrawn into occulation since the 3rd century of Islam and his return will have a messianic quality heralding the end of the world |
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| Many features of Islam are based on the idea that that the majority will never agree on the wrong. Sharia law and the selection of caliphs are supposed to be decided in accordance with whatever the majority of Muslims believe. In terms of Sharia law, however, this consensus is often among legal scholars rather than the general populace |
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| A Jew born before the death of Herod in 4BCE in a stable in Bethlehem. He was baptized by his cousin John the Baptist around the age of thirty and this begins his ministry. He traveled around for about three years publicly preaching on ideas such as the dangers of becoming too attached to material wealth, while also healing and performing miracles. He refused to recognize class distinctions as important, including the distinction between Jew and Samaritan and gentiles, and his followers even included prostitutes. His teachings were opposed to traditional Judaism. He was eventually arrested by Jewish leaders and executed by the Romans. In Christian tradition, he was resurrected three days later to give some last instructions to his apostles, and is considered the son of God. |
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| new testament and the New Testament |
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| The New Testament are a collection of 27 books originally written in Greek that tell the story of Jesus’ life, contain letters from Paul to various early churches and other letters of other early Christian religious leaders and the visionary revelation about the apocalypse. Combined with the Old Testament, it makes up the Bible. The New Testament and the teachings of Christ offered a new covenant (testament) with God, seen as replacing that made between God and the Jews. |
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| Examples are: the Q[uelle], [kernal of] Gospel of Thomas. Early Christians, especially within the first decades, had to rely on speech gospels, or oral accounts of Jesus for their practices. There were as yet no written works. |
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| The synoptic (“summary”) gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, all seem to write from one point of view about the same events. (John’s writing is different, and probably was written after these three). These similarities lead to the question of how Mathew, Mark, and Luke have so many similarities. |
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| James, brother of Jesus: An early leader of the Christian church. Early sources referred to him as the brother of Jesus, although it is unknown whether this meant a spiritual brother or blood/step brother. Little is known about his life, although he is the probable author of the Epistle of James |
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| was an apostle and Jewish rabbi who never met the historical Jesus 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. The Jerusalem Council taking place sometime between 48 and 50 CE brought up the question as to whether converted Gentiles needed to be circumsized. Paul argued that baptism served as the new circumcision. |
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| There were many instances of the Roman Empire persecuting Christians. Rome was an orthopraxic religion that valued ‘right practice’ over ‘right belief’. Because Christians refused to participate in the various Roman religious festivals, they represented a danger to the entire state because they might be offending the gods. Furthermore, Christians were often accused of eating children and participating in wild orgies. |
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| Trajan told Pliny to persecute the crimes only. If Christians would renounce Christianity, then Pliny was to do nothing. If not, he was to kill them. Trajan was adamant that Pliny not seek out Christians, as they didn’t really don’t matter to the Romans/ weren’t much of a threat. |
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| Jewish revolt in 135. Jerusalem destroyed and renamed and Jews and Christians are expelled |
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| In January 250, Decius issued an edict for the suppression of Christianity requiring all to sacrifice to the Roman gods before a magistrate and must receive a certificate acknowledging that they had done so on pain of death. Some prominent Christians refused to do so and were executed, including Pope Fabian. |
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| 257/258 first empire-wise persecution of Christians, although Christians still allowed to go free if they renounced Christianity. |
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| were co-emperors for a period of time. Around 299 they attempted to have the future read, but the haruspices blamed the presence of Christians in the imperial household for making this impossible. The entire army was required to perform certain sacrifices in order to purify the empire and enable the divinations. In 302, Diocletian ordered that Christians were to be barred from positions within the bureaucracy and military, but Galerius demanded the execution of all Christians. The Oracle of Apollo echoed Galerius’ statements, and executions began. |
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| There were three major Jewish rebellions against the Roman Empire. The first was in 66-70 CE, the Kitos War in 115-117, and Bar Kokhba’s Revolt in 132-135. The last war had tremendous outcomes: in some accounts, approximately 600,000 Jews were killed, and hundreds and towns and villages were destroyed. The Torah law and calendar were forbidden and Jewish scholars were executed. Jerusalem was renamed Aelia Capitolina and Jews were forbidden to enter or live there. |
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| (272-337 CE) the first Christian Roman emperor. He reversed persecutions that took place and allowed Christianity to be openly practiced in Rome. |
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| Battle of the Milvian Bridge |
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| a battle that took place between Constantine I and Maxentius, This battle was the starting point for a campaing that eventually allowed Constantine to become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. |
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| the letter signed by Constantine I that proclaimed religious tolerance for Christians |
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| Council of Nicaea (325 CE) |
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| a council of Christians that was assembled by Constantine I to settle early consensus issues within the church. They determined calculations for the date of Easter, wrote the first part of the Nicene creed, and discussed the relationship of Jesus to God. |
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| the name given to the second, newer, division of the Christian Bible. |
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| he quality of something being without ownership or authorship. |
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| the quality of something being attributed to an author other than the person who wrote it, or attributed to a pen-named author. |
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| refers to “hidden” texts that are important parts of Christian history, but are not part of the canon. |
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| a collection of Christian Gnostic texts that were discovered near the town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. The Gospel of Thomas is the most famous of the texts found there, providing the only complete copy recovered to date. |
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| include St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, and St. Polycarp of Smyrna. They were early Christian authors (1st and 2nd century CE) who wrote influential texts that were not included in the New Testament. They were direct disciples of the Twelve Apostles. |
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| refers to the writings of the early fathers of the Church. |
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| efers to theologies that have at their base the idea that God is on the side of those who suffer most, and is geared towards liberation of Black people from oppression. |
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| the act of exerting and asserting power in a way that is demeaning or unjust to certain groups of people. |
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| the point when an individual is free from societal trappings, oppression, and the will of others. |
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| he idea that something can be non-physically black, but black in terms of being. Here it refers to the idea that because Jesus was most on the side of the suffering, and that black people are suffering, that Jesus was ontologically black. Likewise, if one believes in the tenants of Black Liberation Theology, then s/he might be considered ontologically black. |
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| the life of Christ, especially when in the context of the crucifixion story. |
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| a theologian who is a member of Faculty at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is considered a founder of Black Liberation Theology and was the author of Black Theology and Black Power, published in 1969. |
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| (1006 – 586 BCE) The period beginning with the reign of King David when Jerusalem was declared capital. David’s son, Solomon built the First Temple as a holy site for pilgrimage and worship. |
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| with the destruction of the First Temple by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian exile began. |
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| the structure built after the Jewish exiles were allowed to return to Judea. The existed on the site that the Dome of the Rock is built upon today. |
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| (536 BCE -70 CE) The period during the existence of the Second Temple, beginning with a proclamation by King Cyrus that allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem. |
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| conflict or discrimination that arises from the perception that there are irreconcilable differences between subdivisions within a group. Here used to describe the oppression of Jews by members of Judeo-Christian faiths. |
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| (c. 150 BCE) a group of Jewish rebels who took control of Judea and founded the Hasmonean dynasty which asserted the Jewish religion among the previously Hellenistic society. |
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| a settlement that is near to the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were first discovered in 1947. |
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| (1469-1539) the founder of Sikhism. By birth, he was a Hindu of the Khatri caste, and administrator working for a Muslim nobleman
. Around 30, he experienced a revelation of the divine reality while bathing; disappeared for three days and emerged uttering the famous words, “There is no Hindu. There is no Muslim.” |
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| term denoting the entire community of baptized Sikhs. The baptism or initiation ritual consists of taking a sacred drink, Amrit, during a special ceremony involving prayer and concoction of the drink. |
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| kes or uncut hair
, kangha or comb,
kirpan or sword,
kacha or shorts
, and kara or steel bracelet |
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| the end of the line of living Gurus, ending after the tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh |
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| the holiest shrine of Sikhism. It is located in Amritsar, and was founded by the fourth Guru, Guru Ram Das. |
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| the founding date of the Golden Temple |
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| the scriptures of Sikhism. |
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| another name for the Adi Granth, literally meaning “Sir Teacher Book.” |
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| literally, “door of the Teacher” – the name given to a Sikh temple. |
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| community service that is important to the Sikh tradition |
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| a member of society who is tasked with leading a community through ecstatic experience. The shamanic mystical vocation and his subsequent magico-religious powers are initiated by a crisis, often of a psychopathological nature—a sick man who has been cured, a neurotic or even psychotic who can now swim in these waters instead of being drowned by them. |
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| the use of séances, drumming, narcotics and psychotropic plants |
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| from Latin sanctus or "holy," is an individual who embodies in a socially recognized way the values and ideals of a religious tradition; it is originally of Christian origin as a word, but “saints” can be found in many religions; they are often believed to be the source of religious power and so are treated as mediators between the human and the divine |
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| the person whose job it is to test the case of the canon lawyer advancing the cause of sainthood |
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| body parts often held to be especially powerful and efficacious |
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| a dimension of any religious tradition that attempts, through ritual, bodily and mental practices and doctrine, to transcend the dualities of the tradition in an intense experience of communion or union that often must be kept "secret" |
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| “the doctrine of the [creation of the] world” |
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| branch of philosophy and theology dealing with the ultimate destination of humanity or the universe. Eschatologists are concerned with death, judgment, heaven, and hell. It is “the doctrine of the end [of the world],” here read as either the end of the person’s life or the end of the cosmos. |
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| near death experience characterized as “leaving the body.” |
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| cases of the reincarnation type as defined by Ian Stevenson. |
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| used in 1871 as “Psychic Force” by Serjeant Cox to English physicist William Crookes. Crookes never retracted from his conviction that “there exists a Force exercised by intelligence differing from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals”. Powers of the mind. |
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| coined around 1900, this term is used to discuss events or entities outside of normal occurrence. |
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| extra sensory perception. The ability to sense things that are noramally considered outside one’s senses. |
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| coined in 1942 by Robert Thouless. Was meant to code or point to what was thought to be the unitary nature of the disparate telepathic, precognitive, and the occult |
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| a particular structure of human consciousness that corresponds to a palpable presence, energy, or power encountered in the environment; a mystery at once terrifying and fascinating, a zone “set apart” from the ordinary world |
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| a method of understanding the history of religions whereby the religious past (folklore) is read anew in the critical but sympathetic light of psychical research. |
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| Jung developed notion with Wolfgang Pauli, a quantum physicist. Some events happen but have no causes. They are organized around meanings or metaphors, but no causal network. They are a coincidence between an event and a state of mind |
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| literary term meaning it is impossible to tell whether the story happened or not |
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| learning as “remembrance” of things one knew in a previous existence in the divine realm, particularly of a mathematical or philosophical nature |
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| literally, the “Third Thing”. Psychical research tradition was born as a “third thing” between science and religion and the cultural wars |
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| Myers believed that love was a kind of exalted but unspecialized telepathy. This is evidenced by the “pathos” part of telepathy, wherein it is passion and emotions which differentiate telepathy from telaesthesia, which merely brought one direct knowledge of facts. Eros meant not sexual or biological feelings, but a potentially mystical and hermeneutical experience. Plato himself defined it as ‘a desire for the eternal possession’ of the object of love. |
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| Most apparitions appear near times of crisis, often involving the dying or recently dead (usually less than twelve hours before or after the death, but as much as 24-48 hours) |
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| hallucinations or visions Coinciding with future events or apparently unknowable present realities |
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| when one’s mental state transcends not only space, but also time. In this context, it refers to the sensing or experience of events prompted by deep emotional states from an impossible distance. It refers not as much to “mind reading” in the lay sense, but rather the states of being aware of normally unknowable events because of powerful emotions or trauma. Coined by Myers in 1882. |
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| subliminal vs. superliminal: |
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| Myers believed that in the Human as Two. The sense of self one carried around most of the time as one’s social and personal identities is the supraliminal, often mistaken by the person as their complete and total self. However, the human also has a subliminal self that normally manifests itself only in altered forms of consciousness such as dreams or creative acts of genius or under traumatic conditions that temporarily break down the supraliminal. |
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| term coined by Myer in 1885. The supernormal are phenomena beyond what usually happens. These do not contravene or override natural laws, but act according to higher, more evolutionary-advanced laws |
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| the imaginal is the imagination temporarily empowered by an influx or inflow of spiritual energies; the imagination thus becomes an organ of knowing that can know things and see things that are otherwise impossible to know or see |
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| an American writer who read every newspaper and magazine he could find in French and English at the New York public library back to 1800 and kept notes on strange stories. He noticed that these events were worldwide and consistent, that they had a pattern. He concluded that ‘all life is a stage’, that everything that exists is one thing, taking on different forms |
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| we pretend that supernatural, strange events don’t happen, we ignore the trends. While an event might be reported as an aside in a newspaper one day, it is ‘damned’ to never be thought of or considered again afterwards |
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A Fortian idea that we don’t think, we are thought. We are thought by the culture of the times we’re living in. If born in another time or place, we’d think something entirely different thoughts. The three dominants are the three things which shape our thoughts the most
Religion/belief/priests
Science/explanation/scientists
Intermediatism/expression/wizards and witches |
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| later called later UFOs, flying saucers. Charles Fort felt that these were not innocent, but something we should be concerned about. We are like the Native Americans, understanding little of the European’s motives and technology. We are like a colony/farm for these super-constructions, their property. Religion has been one of their colonization techniques, trying to convince us they are deities |
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| Another Fortian idea. Paranormal powers innate in everyone, but in some more than others. These powers are wild right now, we need to nurture and train them. They are expressions of a guided evolution |
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| Super-embryonic Development: |
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Definition
| Fort rejected the theory of evolution in favor of "Super-embryonic development," which maintains that evolution is a guided process, not random. Things will have certain features in the present in order to fulfill functions they will have in the future. Darwinism, according to Fort, fails to account for "the influence of the future upon the present" |
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| was coined in 1931 by Fort to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which he suggested may be connected. The term and concept has been adopted and adapted into many science fiction books and media. |
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| : the rejection of other worlds based on the categories of one's own |
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Definition
| the acceptance of other worlds based on the categories of one's own |
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Definition
| the potential acceptance of all worlds as cultural approximations of the sacred, which overflows and transcends them all |
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| the explanation of religious phenomena through the identification and analysis of non-religious causal mechanisms |
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| psychological and neuroscientific reductionism: |
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Definition
| religious phenomena are products of natural psychological and neurological processes; religion meets certain psychological needs and appears to be “wired” into the cognitive structures of the brain; for many, these are the “edgiest” and most “critical” of all forms of reductionism |
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| sociological reductionism |
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Definition
| religious phenomena are products of social processes and projections of a particular society's codes and needs; religion binds a society together, religion creates meaning, a "sacred canopy" under which human beings can live; religious concerns are finally really social concerns; these forms of reductionism do not generally seek to criticize openly religion, but they do constantly point out “uncomfortable” demographic facts |
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| socio-economic reductionism: |
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Definition
| religious phenomena are products of class and economic status; religion tends to act as a conservative force, that is, it tends to preserve social and economic lines or divisions within a particular society; these lines of reductionism tend to be “edgier” and more “critical” than those of sociological reductionism |
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| dealing with an irreconcilable division between faith and reason. |
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| here, the idea that it is entirely possible to employ rational reductionist methods and acknowledge the possible revealed truths of the religious traditions. |
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| employing both-and terms to discuss topics within comparative religion. |
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