San Antonio College Library

From ancient yoga practices, Native American smudging and medicine wheels, and Balinese traditions, to Kabbalistic protection ceremonies, feng shui, candle magic, and more.

Among the many religions of the world one can still clearly observe the shamanic imperative to enter the realm of the sacred-and some practitioners will do whatever it takes to reach that elevated state. This program looks at rites and rituals designed to achieve spiritual awakening through physical pain and bodily injury. A village in Nepal welcomes the New Year with a tongue-boring ceremony. In Bali, the faithful turn knives against their own bodies....

"Living with the Dead in the Andes considers recent research by archaeologists, bioarchaeologists, ethnographers, and ethnohistorians whose work reveals the diversity and complexity of the dead-living interaction. The book's contributors reap the salient results of this new research to illuminate various conceptions and treatments of the dead: 'bad' and 'good' dead, mummified and preserved, the body represented by art or effigies, and personhood in...

Corinne Dempsey profiles an unusual South Indian temple community in Rush, New York, outside Rochester. The temple, established by a charismatic non-Brahman Sri Lankan Tamil, stands out for its combination of orthodox ritual meticulousness and socioreligious iconoclasm. The vitality with which devotees participate in ritual themselves and their ready access to the deities contrasts sharply with ritual activities at most North American Hindu Temples,...

Answers questions concerning the origins, development, doctrines and practices, ethics, spirituality, and other aspects of three major East Asian belief systems. 101 Questions & Answers on Confucianism, Daoism, and Shinto packs a great deal of information about three major East Asian faith communities--Confucianism, Daoism, and Shinto---into a series of brief, thematically arranged sections, all in the popular question and answer format. Major areas...

Paganism is a broad term that includes such paths as Wicca, Druidism, and Asatru, whose practitioners embrace the idea that the natural world is sacred. Introduces the beliefs, ethics, and practices of modern Pagans and answers such questions about Pagan beliefs as: What are Pagan rituals like? ; When are the Pagan holidays? ; What do Pagans believe about God? ; What is magick? ; How do Pagans view Satan? ; and What ethics do Pagans follow?

Even before the time of the Celts, Ireland was believed to be a land of power that "welled up" from the earth in the form of bubbling springs and healing waters. The myths and rituals surrounding these holy wells have been modified through the centuries as pre-Celtic and Celtic rituals blended with Christian traditions to form the combination of rites performed at these sites today. Drawing on fifteen years of fieldwork and archival research, conversations...

Around the world, throughout time, cultures have marked the intimate and transformative events of a woman's life - the onset of puberty, her first sexual experience, conceptian, childbirth, menopause - with myths and rituals. Today, such significant feminine rituals are missing, but these transitions still profoundly affect a woman's body, mind, and soul. Offering a compelling vision of psychotherapy as a sacred space for women's rites of passage,...

This eye-opening journey through the terrain of Native American spirituality contrasts contemporary society's rejection of the sacred--and its arrogant belief in its own power to control the cosmos--with native traditions of reverence for the earth. The author reconstructs the archetypal and symbolic significance of indigenous rituals and sacred sites, placing Native American spirituality in the context of the world's great religions. The comparison...