Search Results (5)

The “hand-waving sacrifice” is a large-scale sacrificial ceremony with more than 2000 years of history. It was passed down from ancient times by the Tujia ethnic group living in the Wuling Corridor of China, and it integrates religion, sacrifice, dance, drama, and other cultural forms. It primarily consists of two parts: ritual content (inviting gods, offering sacrifices to gods, dancing a hand-waving dance, etc.) and the architectural space that hosts the ritual (hand-waving hall), which together constitute Tujia’s most sacred ritual space and the most representative art and culture symbol. Nonetheless, in existing studies, the hand-waving sacrifice ritual, hand-waving hall architectural space, and hand-waving dance art are often separated as independent research objects, and little attention is paid to the coupling mechanism of the mutual construction of space and ritual in the process of historical development. Moreover, with the acceleration of modernization, the current survival context of the hand-waving sacrifice has undergone drastic changes. On the one hand, the intangible cultural heritage protection policy and the wave of tourism development have pushed it into the public eye and the cultural consumption system. On the other hand, the changes in the social structure of traditional villages have led to the dissolution of the sacredness of ritual space. Therefore, using the interaction of “space-ritual” as a prompt, this research first uses GIS technology to visualize the spatial geographical distribution characteristics and diachronic evolution process of hand-waving halls in six historical periods and then specifically analyzes the sacred construction of hand-waving hall architecture for the hand-waving sacrifice ritual space throughout history, as well as the changing mechanism of the continuous secularization of the hand-waving sacrifice space in contemporary society. Overall, this study reveals a unique path for non-literate ethnic groups to achieve the intergenerational transmission of cultural memory through the collusion of material symbols and physical art practices, as well as the possibility of embedding the hand-waving sacrifice ritual into contemporary spatial practice through symbolic translation and functional extension in the context of social function inheritance and variation. Finally, this study has specific inspirational and reference value for exploring how the traditional culture and art of ethnic minorities can maintain resilience against the tide of modernization. Full article

Konparu Zenchiku (1405–c. 1470) was the son-in-law of Zeami Motokiyo. Zeami is the most famous nō actor–writer–composer–showman–impressario, but Zenchiku brought nō back from the shōgun’s court to the temples, effectively resacralising the art form for a troubled, violent age. This paper asks whether Zenchiku’s approach to theatre has anything to teach us as contemporary creators and audiences in our own unstable era and, simultaneously, whether contemporary modes of interpretation, such as queer musicology, can highlight new aspects of Zenchiku’s work. Focusing on the under-studied and under-performed play Mekari—which dramatises a ritual cutting of seaweed at the Kanmon Strait between the islands of Kyūshū and Honshū as the new lunar year dawns—this paper explores how Zenchiku’s work plays with—crosses back and forth over—multiple physical, temporal, and spiritual boundaries in both its text and performance, leaving the audience with a sense of ambiguity and questioning the received wisdom of conventional capitalist reality. This paper concludes with a look at Kyōto School philosopher Ueda Shizuteru’s concept of the hollow expanse, or a place of limitless possibility. This paper argues that the audience viewing these ambiguities cultivated by Zenchiku’s sacred dramas—via the music, words, and staging together—might themselves be given a glimpse into the radically open place of the ‘hollow expanse’. The first full English translation of Mekari is included in Appendix A. Full article

I introduce a Buddhist god named Jiedi, believed to be a personification of the renowned gate mantra in the Heart Sūtra. I argue for a complex genesis story where the transference of the nāga-taming function and aquatic setting from the rainmaking spell in the Great Cloud Sūtra to the Heart Sūtra Mantra, coupled with its exegetical tradition emphasizing the soteriological metaphor of crossing, created an independent cult of the Jiedi Mantra. In battling chthonic snake spirits demanding virgin sacrifice in Sichuan, a regional variation of a cosmopolitan alchemical theme, the mantra was personified into a god associated with water and warfare. The exorcistic function of the mantra was the motor behind its apotheosis in Middle-period China. While he was elevated from a mere spirit to a vidyārāja (“wisdom king”) in tantric Buddhism, his cult was also disseminated in the Song, witnessing him provide broad deliverance in diverse areas such as industry, agriculture, infrastructure, military, and civil service. In late imperial China, he further imprinted himself on sacred geography, became a special class of warrior god, made inroads into Daoism and local religion, and proliferated in vernacular fiction and drama. An exotic Indian god was born on Chinese soil. Full article

Baptism is the sacramental celebration of Christian initiation. Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is central to the understanding of baptism, characterizes this sacramental event as a dying with Christ and the beginning of a new existence. This new mode of existence gains an aesthetic-performative form in the liturgical rites. The design of the liturgical spaces can then be understood as “petrified rites”. The imperial church basilicas and baptisteries of the Byzantine period in Ravenna bear particular witness to such petrified manifestations of liturgy. What took place in the liturgical rites found an aesthetic counterpart in the interior design and in the rich mosaic art of the ancient buildings. The Ravennese color-intensive wall and ceiling motifs substantiate in a sensuous way the eschatological aesthetic, which is opened to believers through baptism. Biblical texts, architecture, rite, and pictorial program thus form an aesthetic ensemble whose elements mutually illuminate each other and only gain their full depth of meaning in the context of this performative dynamic. This contribution analyzes the interplay of these different registers, based on some selected examples of Ravenna’s sacred buildings, and explores how the baptismal event is conveyed in them as an aesthetic access to the world. Full article

This article explores the sculptural programme of the west portal of Saint-Martin-de-Besse, which places Penance and the Eucharist sacraments at the centre of its polysemic narratives, forming chiastic sequences. Concerned with the fall of humankind and the history of redemption, the portal of Besse presents a series of enigmatic figures from the Old and New Testaments, along with an early Christian figure, Saint Eustace. In this article, I first present a brief historical overview of the church and its surroundings and then proceed with an iconographical survey of its portal. I argue that the series of sculpted narrative vignettes forming the west façade of Besse are polysemic as they carry multiple meanings. Focusing on salvation through (re)conversion, where the liturgical sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist are fundamental, these polysemic narratives form and perform four distinct chiasmus interchanges involving the Garden of Eden, where time and space are in constant dialogue. Full article