Search Results (54)

Peking opera The Revenge of Prince Zi Dan reinterprets Shakespeare’s Hamlet by integrating supernatural elements and traditional rituals from Chinese folk religion. The religious transformation is revealed through the reworking of lines, incorporation of ritual traditions, and portrayal of supernatural figures. The divine entity that is invoked in Hamlet’s prayers (2.2.169, 5.2.316) and Claudius’s repentance (3.3.36–72) is translated as tian 天 (Heaven) in Revenge, thus introducing the concepts of the worship of tian and tianming 天命 (Mandate of Heaven). Revenge also adapts Claudius’s command of “give me some light” (3.2.261) by associating it with ancient exorcisms, thereby dramatizing his attempts to conceal the guilt for regicide. Ophelia’s “maimed rites” (5.1.208) are depicted as a deviation from Confucian funeral rites in Revenge, reflected in the simplified funeral banners and Hamlet’s transgressive mourning. The “sulphurous and tormenting flames” (1.5.3) and the morning cock’s crow (1.2.217) are reinterpreted through the introduction of the judicial system of the underworld. These changes are not merely transitions in performing conventions but reflect the deep connection between folk religion and traditional Chinese theater through these prayers, rituals, and supernatural elements, thus creating a specific theatrical “field” in which Chinese folk religion interacts with Western classics. Full article

The Druze community has survived for a thousand years, during which it witnessed the emergence of female political and religious leaders. However, the Isma‘ili foundations of the Druze religion favored women without offering them considerable rights. This study describes the political actions of women leaders who are considered unique and outstanding leaders in the history of Druze society. The women discussed in this article share some features: all came from an elite social background; all were endowed with outstanding leadership qualities, which gave them status and prestige in the community; and, in keeping with Druze female leadership, all were identified with female sanctity and spirituality. Additionally, these women were portrayed in folk stories and biographies as women characterized by boldness, courage, leadership, and especially charisma to lead in the public sphere and not just the private one, in contrast to what is expected of Druze women as belonging to the private sphere, the family. This article argues that the combination of the level of positive consciousness toward women in the Druze religion and the elite status of these women, in addition to being unique charismatic personalities in Druze society and in their era, explains how they acquired their leadership role in the Druze community. Furthermore, while engaging in social and political activism, these women never employed their privileged status to promote gender equality in their societies. Full article

This article examines the influence of local government on the folk rituals of Rebgong in China’s Amdo Tibetan region, by highlighting the example of Wutu, a tiger festival held in one Tu minority village. In particular, it encapsulates the impact of local government intervention through the changed meaning of the “magic” bread in the ritual. Originally, the dough was rubbed on sick parts of the villagers’ bodies, and the bread was subsequently removed from the village by the Wutu performers as a medium for the elimination of sickness. In recent years, however, the bread has become one of the important positive symbols of the festival, and, during one dance performance in the 2018 ceremony, was actively promoted for consumption as “healthy for old people and good for healing diseases!” This intervention on the materiality at the heart of the festival has influenced its meaning away from that of a negative shamanic rite concerned with the expulsion of evil towards a more positivist celebration of China’s minority ethnic cultural heritage. Full article

This paper elucidates the cognitive and cultural underpinnings that facilitate the coexistence of multiple—occasionally contradictory—interpretive frameworks of magico-religious beliefs and practices within a single sociocultural context. Religious beliefs and practices frequently transcend the boundaries established by a tradition’s official doctrines and normative frameworks. From the perspective of religious authorities and theological elites, such transgressions may constitute sites of tension and doctrinal concern. However, individuals, as the primary agents of lived religion, rarely conceptualize these situations as crises of faith or legitimacy. Instead, they develop improvisational strategies to negotiate these apparent contradictions within their sociocultural milieus. At the cultural level, religious beliefs and practices are not rigidly constrained by dominant official doctrines and normative prescriptions; rather, they accommodate a diverse range of interpretive possibilities. Focusing on a specific rainmaking ritual known as “Tiger Head Sinking” from the Joseon Dynasty—a period marked by the hegemony of Neo-Confucian doctrinal and normative structures—this study investigates how the dynamic interplay between cognitive constraints and cultural schemas facilitates the coexistence of seemingly incompatible interpretations and folk theories of the ritual. Full article

When the historical past in the study of Chosŏn Buddhism is unearthed, one would discover that Buddhist studies was in fact closely tied to Korea’s recent history of colonization by Japan and to the postcolonial influences of the West. This paper is an effort to re-examine the modern study of Korean Buddhism to trace the effects of past colonial forces that Korean Buddhist studies have experienced. The process of Japanese colonization of Korea was similar to the pattern of subjugation initially adopted by the early European discoverers, where academic developments synchronized with the colonizing process—the labeling of the subject culture as primitive and inferior as a basis and justification for colonization. In the past, it was claimed Korean folk religions and Buddhism were rife with cultic and superstitious practices, signs of backwardness, which coincided with the view that Korean society and people were underdeveloped and uncivilized. This paper, after discussions of the colonization process and its connection to the study of Korean Buddhism, makes an argument for a shift in the methodological approach to the study of Chosŏn Buddhism from an etic to an emic approach by taking into account how Buddhism was practiced on the ground and situated within the historical context of the Chosŏn period. Full article

We analyze the Google matrix of directed networks of Wikipedia articles related to eight recent Wikipedia language editions representing different cultures (English, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese). Using the reduced Google matrix algorithm, we determine relations and interactions of 23 society concepts and 17 religions represented by their respective articles for each of the eight editions. The effective Markov transitions are found to be more intense inside the two blocks of society concepts and religions while transitions between the blocks are significantly reduced. We establish five poles of influence for society concepts (Law, Society, Communism, Liberalism, Capitalism) as well as five poles for religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese folk religion) and determine how they affect other entries. We compute inter-edition correlations for different key quantities providing a quantitative analysis of the differences or the proximity of views of the eight cultures with respect to the selected society concepts and religions. Full article

Since achieving political independence in the 1960s, Anglophone Caribbean nations have faced the urgent task of exploring cultural independence. In the socio-cultural sphere, Black nationalism dominated, with Pan-Africanism and Rastafarianism exerting significant influence. In literary creation, writers and intellectuals sought to unearth local popular religions and folk traditions to produce literature that was distinctively Caribbean. In this quest, rituals—especially those involving religious possession—emerged as pivotal tools for writers to explore historical traditions and reflect on identity formation. Ritual plays, in particular, vividly represented these dynamics within the socio-cultural context. This paper examines the interaction between Black nationalist movements and ritual plays during this period, highlighting their significant role in shaping Caribbean identities. It reveals that ritual plays such as Dream on Monkey Mountain, Couvade, and An Echo in the Bone challenge Pan-Africanism promoted by Black nationalist movements. Instead, they employ ancestor possession rituals and elements from multiple religious rituals to construct a native Caribbean identity. These plays underscore the central role of Afro-Caribbean traditions while also highlighting the region’s diverse cultural heritage and the localized nature of Caribbean identity. Furthermore, they broaden the use of religious rituals in recalling and understanding traditions. Full article

The She (社) organization is an ancient Chinese folk religious group that was formed to worship the god of the soil through various activities. In contemporary society, the She organization plays a non-mainstream but important role in increasing social cohesion in China’s rural communities. This case study concentrates on the She organization in Songyang County to examine how its practices contribute to the Han and Non-Han peoples’ continued social cohesion and separate identities through observations, in-depth interviews, and the reviewing of local documentation materials. The findings are as follows: Firstly, as forms of social capital, the normative rituals, values, and informal situational networks of the She organization constitute the mechanisms for building trust, which ultimately promotes social cohesion between the Han and Non-Han peoples. Secondly, the coexistence between She and other belief systems is conducive to establishing the extended social capital of the She organization and maintaining the Han and Non-Han peoples’ separate identities according to their ethnic features. Finally, from the perspective of state-society relations, the social cohesion and continuation of the She organization in contemporary civil society are further interpreted as the results of state systems and policies. Full article

Examples of how Spiritism merged with local beliefs have been the subject of research in religious studies, ethnology, and folkloristics. Serbian Spiritism can also be viewed as such, but its history is an under-researched topic. We examine the syncretic product we will call ‘folk Spiritism’, being different from the ‘high Spiritism’ of elite and middle-class intellectuals. Folk Spiritism was part of a grassroots movement for Church reform in the first half of the 20th century. The difference between folk and high Spiritism is also confirmed in the emic perspective. Based on a closer reading of its texts, we can discern a better image of the dead and communication with them in the practice of folk Spiritism. We conclude that the difference between the traditional and Spiritist image of the dead is that the former causes fear, while the later brings comfort; folk Spiritism gave preference to communication with heavenly forces (God, Christ, Holy Mother, angels, saints) while retaining the traditional view of the dead. Full article

Beyond the once dominant secularization thesis that anticipated the decline of religion in the modern era, the academic study of religion has in recent decades revisited secular as one of the factors that shape religion and religions in the globalized world. Against this theoretical backdrop, in this article, I use the case of South Korea to explore how secular and religion interact in contemporary global society. It focuses on describing the postcolonial reformulation of secularity and the corresponding transformation of religious diversity in Cold War South Korea. The Japanese colonial secularism rigidly banning the public and political engagement of religion was replaced by the flexible secular-religious divide after liberation of 1945. The porous mode of secularity extensively admitted religious entities to affect processes of postcolonial nation-building. Religious values, interests, and resources have been applied in motivating, pushing, and justifying South Koreans to devote themselves to developing the national community as a whole. Such a form of secularity became a critical condition that caused South Korea’s religious landscape to be reorganized in a vertical and unequal way. On the one hand, Buddhist and Christian populations grew remarkably in the liberated field of religion, while freedom of religion was recognized as a key ideological principle of the anticommunist country. On the other hand, folk beliefs and minority religious groups were often considered “superstitions”, “pseudo religions”, “heretics”, or even “evil religions”. With the pliable secularity at work, religious diversity was reconfigured hierarchically in the postcolonial society. Full article

Similarly to China, Japan has a long history of worshiping fortune gods. The act of making offerings and praying to these deities has been practiced since ancient times. Fortune gods are figures in Japanese folk religion that are believed to bring happiness, hope, and good luck. When speaking of fortune gods in Japan, people will first think of the Seven Lucky Gods. Apart from them, there are also some local fortune gods such as Fukusuke and Sendai Shiro. These gods share some common traits and also have connections with the Japanese folk belief in Fukuko (fortune child). This study adopts a comparative methodology to compare Japan’s Seven Lucky Gods with the local Japanese fortune gods as well as Fukuko, and then analyze their similarities. This article argues that the Japanese fortune gods have two major common characteristics: the super power to bring good fortune, and their distinctive appearance. By systematically analyzing the common features of Japanese fortune gods, this study will clarify the mechanism behind their deification as fortune deities and also help us to gain a better insight into the Japanese conceptions of deities and spirits. Full article

In the past, popular Catholicism in Latin America and the Caribbean was perceived with suspicion by liberation theologians and official Roman Catholicism for its eccentricities, lack of doctrinal coherence, and fears of syncretism with folk religions. Nowadays, popular Catholicism in Latin America and the Caribbean has been a source of theological reflection, ecumenism, and religious revitalization. The apparition of the Holy Mother in 1953 at barrio Rincón in Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico, is a case study in global Catholicism that exemplifies this turn to see popular Catholicism as a source of liberation, perseverance, and deep spiritual devotion by the faithful. Using cultural, social, and reception historiography, the article argues that the Puerto Rican faithful were not passive recipients of the literary narratives of journalists covering the events as narrated by the main protagonists, the children/seers, but rather themselves formulators of history through their reception and participation. This is demonstrated by the allegiances of the faithful to popular Catholicism and their rejection of the official mandates of the clergy to ignore the events taking place at barrio Rincón regarding the apparition of the Virgin. Full article

The purpose of this article is to present grassroots concepts and ideas about “the algorithm” in the religious context. The power and causality of algorithms are based on lines of computer code, making a society influenced by “black boxes” or “enigmatic technologies” (as they are incomprehensible to most people). On the other hand, the power of algorithms lies in the meanings that we attribute to them. The extent of the power, agency, and control that algorithms have over us depends on how much power, agency, and control we are willing to give to algorithms and artificial intelligence, which involves building the idea of their omnipotence. The key question is about the meanings and the ideas about algorithms that are circulating in society. This paper is focused on the analysis of “vernacular/folk” theories on algorithms, reconstructed based on posts made by the users of Polish Catholic forums. The qualitative analysis of online discourse makes it possible to point out several themes, i.e., according to the linguistic concept, “algorithm” is the source domain used in explanations of religious issues (God as the creator of the algorithm, the soul as the algorithm); algorithms and the effects of their work are combined with the individualization and personalization of religion; algorithms are perceived as ideological machines. Full article

In response to the trend of information technology development, religions in China are undergoing a process of mediatization. This study takes the popular Chinese animated films Ne Zha: Birth of the Demon Child (哪吒之魔童降世) (2019) and New Gods: Yang Jian (新神榜: 杨戬) (2022) as research cases of mediatization of religion and conducts a focused study of the respective protagonists Ne Zha (哪吒) and Yang Jian (杨戬), both prominent figures in Chinese religious and folk traditions. Through text analysis and empirical research on the two movies and their fans, this study examines how religion is being mediatized in contemporary China in the transformation to Religion 2.0 or a type of amalgamation of real- and virtual-world practices that enact a relationship with the divine, and how this shapes identity formation for fans, who are mostly young individuals in their teens and twenties. This research argues that to obtain permission for dissemination in mainstream media and thrive in the cultural context of China, religion chooses to assume the form of media products that can bypass scrutiny that forbids “supernatural phenomena” and aligns with the mainstream ideology. It has to be a “contributory religion” that contributes to the “revitalization” of national spirit and inherited Chinese culture, not a potential “superstitious” threat to the Marxist orthodoxy. In the context of official promotion of atheism and the regulation of public discourse, animated films with themes adapted from traditional mythological and religious stories, such as Ne Zha: Birth of the Demon Child and New Gods: Yang Jian, have become a major cultural form through which people in China engage with religious symbols and narratives. The enormous success of the two movies resulted in a large population of young fans. Influenced by these films, their fans have developed an egoistic religious perspective rather than assimilating the religious or cultural messages contained in the movies. These fans may experience solace and a call to faith to some extent in their consumption of the movies, but they selectively enhance religious literacy that only meets their personal needs. Interest in divine individuals far outweighs interest in or loyalty to the religious doctrine or sect itself. Pilgrimages are undertaken to fulfill personal fantasies, and the promotion of the divine is aimed at vying for influence within fan communities. The second part of this study examines the activities of the fans that I argue are characteristic of the age of Religion 2.0. Full article

Many taboos and a high resistance to change are the hallmark of posthumous rituals and customs among all Slavic peoples, which has helped maintain their archaic nature. According to Slavic beliefs, in the otherworld, the souls of the deceased who were kind-hearted during their lifetime join the group of their ancestors who guard the living, providing them with prosperity and fertility. In return, living descendants had an obligation to periodically organize commemorations for the deceased, invoke memories of them, and make (food) offerings meant for the salvation of their souls. On the other hand, Slavs believed that the deceased who died prematurely or violently, or those who were dishonourable throughout their lives, became “the revenant deceased” or “the impure deceased” and could bring harm, sickness, and death to the living. For these reasons, people tended to prepare all of the dead—particularly the ones whose souls could potentially become members of the “impure” group—adequately for the funeral and to see their souls off from this world following traditional rites. This research is based on the presupposition that, among folk beliefs, customs, and rituals regarding the deceased (and their souls), there is a substratum whose archaic nature reaches back to the period when Slavic peoples lived together. These are folk beliefs and customs which appear in all three groups of Slavic peoples but are not related to any of the predominant religions, primarily Christianity, nor did they emerge under the influences of those religions. The sources used in the research include a published ethnographic corpus of data and scientific papers on posthumous rites among the Slavs. Also taken into account were archaeological, historical, and linguistic sources. Full article