The Dialogue Of Earth And Sky

In Mexico’s Sierra Norte de Puebla, beliefs that were held before the coming of Europeans continue to guide the lives of modern Aztecs. For residents of San Martín Zinacapan, life in and on the earth is animated by the same forces, through which people seek to maintain a cohesive view of the relationship of mankind, the cosmos, and the natural world. This delicate balance of the human spirit maintains the health and well-being of villagers, and is an essential part of the social and ideological framework that makes a person’s life whole. This book describes the basic elements of a belief system that has survived the onslaught of Catholicism, colonialism, and the modern world. Timothy Knab has spent thirty years working in this area of Mexico, learning of the Most Holy Earth and following what its people there call "the good path." He was initiated as a dreamer, learned the prayers and techniques for curing maladies of the human soul, and from his long association with the Sanmartinos has constructed a thorough account of their beliefs and practices. Learning to recount dreams, forming a dreamtale, and "carrying it on one’s back" to the waking world is the first part of the practitioner’s labor in curing. But dreamtales are shown to be more than parables in this world, for they embody the ethos and cosmovision that link Sanmartinos with their traditions and the Most Holy Earth. Building on this background, Knab describes how the open-ended interpretation of dreams is the practitioner’s primary instrument for restoring a client’s soul to its proper equilibrium, thus providing a practical approach to finding and resolving everyday problems. Many anthropologists hold that such beliefs have long since disappeared into the nebulous past, but in San Martín they remain alive and well. The underworld of the ancestors, talocan or Tlalocan for the Aztecs, is still a vital part of everyday life for the people of the Sierra Norte de Puebla. The Dialogue of Earth and Sky is an important record of a culture that has maintained a precolumbian cosmovision for nearly 500 years, revealing that this system is as resonant today with the ethos of Mesoamerican peoples as it was for their ancestors.

Indigenous Tales of Nature from Around the World An array of vivid responses to nature from indigenous oral traditions in Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas.

Yezidis are a religious minority living in Kurdistan as the native land. They also live in Transcaucasia and in other countries as diaspora communities such as Russia and Western Europe and particularly in Germany. Their shared language is Kurmanji-Kurdish dialect. Yezidism is a cultural and religious system based on ancient religious traditions and it has roots in some ancient Iranian religions, Mesopotamian cultures and Sufism. Generally, it is regarded as a way to understand life, not an acquired dogma. In addition, each of monotheism, gnosticism, orthopraxy and the holiness of elements of nature play a central role in its traditions. What is more, its religious beliefs and practices have been preserved through oral traditions, which can be considered as a religious literature that has its own forms and categories such as Qewl, Beyt and Qeside, etc. Lalish which is located in Kurdistan is the Yezidis’ holiest place in the world. This book contains a detailed study of describing and analyzing the considerable role that the elements of nature, notably the four elements: fire, water, earth and air/wind play in Yezidism, in its religious beliefs and practices, and on the basis of the religious poetic texts and living religious traditions. The fieldwork of the study was carried out in Yezidi areas in the Kurdistan region of Iraq which is the centre of their religion.

This edited volume critically engages with contemporary scholarship on museums and their engagement with the communities they purport to serve and represent. Foregrounding new curatorial strategies, it addresses a significant gap in the available literature, exploring some of the complex issues arising from recent approaches to collaboration between museums and their communities. The book unpacks taken-for-granted notions such as scholarship, community, participation and collaboration, which can gloss over the complexity of identities and lead to tokenistic claims of inclusion by museums. Over sixteen chapters, well-respected authors from the US, Australia and Europe offer a timely critique to address what happens when museums put community-minded principles into practice, challenging readers to move beyond shallow notions of political correctness that ignore vital difference in this contested field. Contributors address a wide range of key issues, asking pertinent questions such as how museums negotiate the complexities of integrating collaboration when the target community is a living, fluid, changeable mass of people with their own agendas and agency. When is engagement real as opposed to symbolic, who benefits from and who drives initiatives? What particular challenges and benefits do artist collaborations bring? Recognising the multiple perspectives of community participants is one thing, but how can museums incorporate this successfully into exhibition practice? Students of museum and cultural studies, practitioners and everyone who cares about museums around the world will find this volume essential reading.

This book shows how to use our homes to realign ourselves with the basic forces of nature: heaven and earth, the four directions, and the elemental energies that arise from them. Based on Tibetan Buddhist teachings on energy mandalas and the practice of space awareness, it includes playful quotes, provocative illustrations, and practical exercises for discovering the inspiration and delight hidden in our homes. And it explains the role of wakefulness in contemplative arts and design. Berliner proceeds from living room to bedroom to kitchen to home office, illustrating with rigorous practicality how we can join space, color, function, harmony, and our senses to create functional, welcoming rooms. She draws on traditional geomantic systems from Celtic wisdom to feng-shui to show that home design and ecology are one and the same, and that intuition and our senses are our most effective decorating tools. Working with wakefulness and natural patterns of energy, we can create enlightened environments—and in this case enlightenment begins at home!

Exposes the core of tragic absolutes in German Romantic and Idealist philosophy.

In this innovative volume, Jay McDaniel creatively weaves various strands of contemporary theology into a vibrant pattern for an ecological spirituality. Influenced by process theology, the author synthesizes core insights of feminism, liberation theology, creation theology, and world religions. He focuses this varied knowledge around the central theme of an ecologically sound and nurturing faith. The work is strengthened by provocative study questions, an insightful appendix on the role of silence in ecological spirituality, and a comprehensive, annotated bibliography.