At The Mountains Altar

In high-Andean Peru, Rapaz village maintains a temple to mountain beings who command water and weather. By examining the ritual practices and belief systems of an Andean community, this book provides students with rich understandings of unfamiliar religious experiences and delivers theories of religion from the realm of abstraction. From core field encounters, each chapter guides readers outward in a different theoretical direction, successively exploring the main paths in the anthropology of religion. As well as addressing classical approaches in the anthropology of religion to rural modernity, Salomon engages with newer currents such as cognitive-evolution models, power-oriented critiques, the ontological reworking of relativism, and the "new materialism" in the context of a deep-rooted Andean ethos. He reflects on central questions such as: Why does sacred ritualism seem almost universal? Is it seated in social power, human psychology, symbolic meanings, or cultural logics? Are varied theories compatible? Is "religion" still a tenable category in the post-colonial world? At the Mountains’ Altar is a valuable resource for students taking courses on the anthropology of religion, Andean cultures, Latin American ethnography, religious studies, and indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Father Kaleeg Hainsworth, an Eastern Orthodox priest with a lifetime of experience in the Canadian wilderness, grounds this manifesto in the literary, philosophical, mystical and historical teachings of the spiritual masters of both East and West, outlining the human experience of the sacred in nature. The spiritual ecology described here is fully engaged with the wilderness beyond our backyards; it is an ecology which takes in nature as "red in tooth and claw" and offers a way forward in the face of accelerating climate change. This manifesto also challenges our modern self-conception as dominators or stewards of the natural world, claiming these roles emerged from western industrial history and are directly responsible for the environmental damage and alienation from nature we know today. The ecological scope of this book begins with a meditation on natural beauty as the divine that breathes through all aspects of life. We discover along the way that awe and mystery are so vital to the human experience of the natural world that without them we are doomed to treat nature as little more than a resource, a science or a playground for recreation alone. Instead, a new role emerges from these pages, one which accounts for the sacred in nature and places us in relationship to the world of which we are inextricably a part. This role is a priestly one, and Father Hainsworth outlines the significance and benefits of it in detail while also offering a vision of life in which a human being stands in the world of nature as at an altar built in the wilderness, a sacred offering in a holy place.

Book Review

We all have dreams, talents, gifts and destinies to fulfill. Many times we live unfulfilled dreams because we have not yet ignited nor maintained the fire on our personal altar. Having repeatedly seen this sad occurrence, I was burdened to study the bible with a burning desire to find out why this happens even after the Lord may have given a sure word of prophecy to His children. I diligently read the bible to find out solutions which we can apply to our lives to curb the tendency where an alarmingly high number of people never get to fulfill their destinies. One of the biggest strategies the devil uses to destroy a believer’s life is to ensure the fire on their personal altar dies down. One needs to know that the sole purpose of building an altar of sacrifice in God’s kingdom is not to offer up animal sacrifice but rather to have a quiet place of one-to-one communication with God. It is here that a believer can ask forgiveness of sins, a factor which separates man from God and thereafter proceed to worship Him. Building an altar of sacrifice means you having a sacred or consecrated place of worship and adoration with God Almighty. It is sad to know some believers do not have a personal altar of sacrifice. On the other hand, quite a number of those who have do not take time to keep the fire burning on their altar. Every believer needs to have their private altar of sacrifice and ensure that it is kept burning day and night throughout their lifetime. The specified and acceptable sacrifice to be offered in your altar to God is the sacrifice of a burnt-offering of ADORATION and INCENSE of PRAISE. As the altar of incense burns every morning and evening, so is God expecting your prayers and praises to be raised every time from your altar. If the fire in your altar of sacrifice goes off, your altar becomes dormant and falls into ruins rendering your guiding angel ineffective while at the same time, giving the Devil the opportunity to mess up your life. It is obvious we do ourselves harm if we do not tend daily to our altars to keep the fire burning.