Over the last two decades, cacao has become a sacrament within increasingly popular syncretic religious ceremonies that promote the energetic healing of the sacred self. Cacao is a psychoactive substance that is regarded by members within some new religious communities as a plan…
"98" Result
Sort By:
As evangelical Christian demographics in the United States have increasingly diversified, pundits and scholars have sought to understand the persistent political power of white American evangelicals. This interdisciplinary dissertation argues that a key mechanism of the politica…
This dissertation concerns the ways in which the ritualized materials and ritualized practice of the Neo-Assyrian temple, through their culturally valued and prioritized visual and experiential characteristics, created and marked the special status and divine aspect of the house…
This thesis examines the Solomonic grimoire manuscripts between 1400-1800. Grimoires, as books of magic materials, claim an ancient lineage from the time of King Solomon of Israel. Modern scholarship has attempted to argue either for or against such a claim, but has not adequate…
This dissertation analyzes changes in social identity from the distant past to the early colonial years in the western Serengeti, Mara Region, Tanzania, through an interpretation of oral tradition. My analysis of the core spatial images of oral tradition demonstrates the link be…
Sacred values, this is, values people refuse to trade off for material gain, have been shown to have counterintuitive effects on decision-making. When reasoning about their sacred values, people seem to use rule-based reasoning concerned with moral duties and sacred commitments.…
Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation is a comparative ethnography of one Muslim (Al-Jalil) and one Christian Palestinian refugee camp (D ̇bayeh) in Lebanon. It utilizes a ritual approach for understanding two contrasting patterns of social organization …
In the Yoruba-speaking Shabe region which spans the border of the Republic of Benin and Nigeria, the changing historical constraints and political economy of the borderland intersect with constructions of identity and ideologies of gender in complex ways. Informal trade across t…
Violence served to uphold the Egyptian concept of correct order, known as Ma'at. Some violence, such as sacrificial servant burial, did so by ensuring that correct social order continued in the next life. Most violence in the service of order was aimed at the destruction of chao…
In this dissertation I examine Balinese musical meaning as situated knowledge. I analyze ways that people interpret the significance of musical sound in theatrical and ceremonial performances, considering the diversity of views and practices and abundant regional and personal va…
This Project/Dissertation was an investigation into the role of the guide on pilgrimage. An incident experienced by the author provoked an examination of the tradition of pilgrimage, which identified a biblical tension between the pilgrimage of freedom in the exodus from Egypt a…
This research is a comparative study between the meaning and function of mythology in ancient Egypt and Greece. Focus is given to Egyptian Osiris and Greek Dionysus and the ritual dramas that surrounded the deities. Egyptian myths about Osiris tell of his mutilation and dismembe…
This dissertation seeks to determine the best way to translate the key terms baptize and Lord's Supper into the Nuaulu language (spoken on Seram island, Maluku, Indonesia) considering world view, ritual symbolism, and functions of ritual in Nuaulu and biblical cultures. I discus…
This dissertation provides a political, cultural, and social history of central Nigeria. The time frame spans from the initial arrival of hunting, farming and fishing communities in the fourth millennium BCE until the nineteenth century CE. This work differs from other histories…
How does the ritualist conceptualize the educational elements of the brit milah process? Jewish educators function in diverse roles and venues. Teachers formally instruct in classroom settings, camp counselors informally teach in the bunk or dining hall and clergy teach about ou…
This dissertation examines the Sitz im Leben of Psalm 143, the final Penitential Psalm of the Psalter. In order to locate a context for Psalm 143, two basic efforts are used. First, a thorough examination of Psalm 143 is performed to examine its meaning and to determine the pres…
Animal bone archaeology commonly focuses on identifying patterns of animal exploitation, with a great deal of research devoted to determining an animal's economic importance to society. This study focused on the symbolic power associated with animals in ancient Near Eastern comp…
This thesis reports on ethnographic fieldwork in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia in 1993–1996. Economic development associated with tourism has resulted in conservation, development and intensification of aspects of traditional culture. Tourism is built upon the marketing of an image of t…
Every day at sunrise millions of Tamil women throughout Tamil Nadu perform the ritual practice called the kōlam on the thresholds of their homes, temples and shrines. These kōlams, ritual drawings made of wet and dry rice flour, are designed to invite, host and maintain close re…