Search Results (150)

The Mutanchis, known by their derogatory exonymic term ‘Lepcha’, are autochthonous to Sikkim, India. The name ‘Mutanchi’ derives from the phrase ‘Mutanchi Rumkup Rongkup’, eliciting the response ‘Achulay’, meaning ‘Beloved children of It-bu-mu, who have come from the snowy peaks’. The nomenclature prompts an ontological understanding rooted in the community’s eco-geographical context. Despite possessing a well-developed script categorised within the Tibeto-Burman language family, the Mutanchis remain a largely oral community. Their diminishing, scarcely documented repository of Mutanchi clan narratives underscores this orality. As a Mutanchi, I recognise these narratives as a medium for expressing Indigenous value systems upheld by my community and specific villages. Mutanchi clan narratives embody spiritual and cultural significance, yet their fantastic rationale reveals complex epistemological tensions. Ideally, each Mutanchi clan reveres a chyu (peak), lhep (cave), and doh (lake), which are propitiated annually and on specific occasions. The transmigration of an apil (soul) is tied to these three sacred spatial geographies, unique to each clan. Additionally, clan etiological explanations, situated within natural or supernatural habitats, manifest beliefs, values, and norms rooted in a deep ecology. This article presents an ecosophical study of selected Mutanchi clan narratives from Dzongu, North Sikkim—a region that partially lies within the UNESCO Khangchendzonga Man-Biosphere Reserve. Conducted in close consultation with clan members and in adherence to the ethical protocols, this study examines clans in Dzongu governed by Indigenous knowledge systems embedded in their narratives, highlighting biocentric perspectives that shape Mutanchi lifeways. Full article

This study aimed to investigate the practical effects of symbolic imagery on shamanic religious rituals, emotional modulation, belief deepening, and alterations in the state of consciousness. Thirty participants were recruited and randomly assigned to either a control group or an experimental group for comparative investigation. The results indicated that participants in the experimental group showed significant increases in supernatural belief scores after the ritual, along with notable decreases in negative emotions such as tension, anger, and fatigue. Additionally, the state of consciousness of both groups of participants changed significantly after the ceremony, and the changes in the experimental group were more significant. These findings provide preliminary empirical support for the hypothesis that shamanic symbolic imagery promotes the transformation of consciousness, and affects emotion regulation and belief formation by activating visual perception and symbolic psychological mechanisms. This study not only provides preliminary empirical evidence for the effectiveness of image-based interventions in inducing altered states of consciousness (ASC), but also deepens the understanding of the role of religious symbolic mechanisms in consciousness transformation and provides a new theoretical direction for applied research in the field of religious psychology and consciousness research. Full article

How humans perceive and interact with other animal species is critical in enhancing conservation initiatives. The study recorded and analyzed people’s knowledge and perceptions of birds of prey and their interactions in three rural communities in Paraíba, Brazil. The data were collected by face-to-face interviews using semi-structured questionnaires. One hundred ninety-one people were interviewed, and 19 species were recorded. Based on the answers to the questionnaires, the species are considered omens of climatic/ecological and supernatural events. They are important in the maintenance of ecosystems (predation of rodents and snakes and feeding on dead animals). However, most birds of prey are killed because they cause damage by preying upon domestic animals or for being associated with bad omens. The diversity of information listed here shows the need for complex and interdisciplinary studies to understand the human dimensions of knowledge and relationships between people and birds, contributing to species conservation and encouraging coexistence between people and birds of prey. Full article

Oxford’s Alister McGrath undoubtedly reflects a paradigm of meaningful intersection in the scholarship of science and religion, especially Christian theology. McGrath’s life journey from loving science to discovering God in Christianity is particularly intriguing because his convictions were not supernatural but intellectual, rooted in multiple conscientious inquiries culminating in his conclusion that through Christianity, humanity and creation can be better understood. A recurring quote in McGrath’s writings comes from C.S Lewis: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else”. How do spiritual eclipses influence religious belief? What might non-Christian theistic religion like African traditional perspectives glean from a uniquely Christian outlook? This paper, leveraging McGrath’s unique journey as a bridge between religion and science, unravels intelligible parallels between two different religious perspectives and learnings that non-Christian theists can glean from exclusively Christian scholarship. Full article

A conundrum in the cognitive, evolutionary, and anthropological study of religion is how to propose descriptions and explanatory models of the structure and functions of supernatural dreaming and its relationship to action imagery, the use of experience, and, importantly, cultural transmission (factors) associated with these representations. Research has long emphasized the important function and significance of dreams and dreaming in beliefs and practices related to religious phenomena. The literature of anthropology and religious studies shows that dreams, dream experiences, and narratives are often associated with religious ideas and practices, both in traditional societies and in the world religions. Indeed, at the very beginning of the anthropological study of human beings, scholars proposed that dreaming is a primary source of religious beliefs and practices. Another facet of this is the recurrent manifestations of divinities, spirits, ancestors, and demons—in short, imagery of various supernatural agents—together with the occasional ritualization of dreams in the waking state. However, we know less about the associated phenomenon of dreams about ritual imagery. The aim of this paper is to elucidate and map dream imagery about rituals, drawing on simulation theories from dream research and prominent models of ritual behavior in the cognitive and evolutionary science of religion (CESR). This theoretical and methodological endeavor is illustrated by examples from dream narratives collected in Nepal before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Full article

The question of whether ethics is possible without God is a non-issue. While many believe that without God, morality collapses, I contend that the existence or non-existence of God has no bearing on whether ethics is possible, whether moral truths exist, or whether ethical inquiry is viable. Ethics is no more secure within a theistic framework than an atheistic one. I establish this by critically examining Divine Command Theory (DCT) and its variants, including Divine Nature Theory, demonstrating that they fail to provide truthmakers for moral statements, explain moral truths, generate moral knowledge, or serve as a practical guide for ethical decision making. If one seeks a way to justify ethical principles or resolve moral dilemmas, appealing to God does not improve the situation; supernatural explanations, including those invoking divine commands or nature, fail to meet the criteria of explanatory adequacy. I conclude by suggesting a secular approach to ethics—drawing from Ted Schick’s inference to the best action—that does not depend on God’s existence. Ultimately, if moral nihilism is a concern, God’s existence offers no solution. If ethics is possible at all, it is possible regardless of whether God exists. Full article

This article aims to explain why, in some European representations of the Annunciation, a bundle of rays of light comes from the mouth of God the Father toward the head/ear of the Virgin Mary. In order to find a satisfactory answer to this problem, the author first studies a series of biblical, patristic, theological, and liturgical sources referring to the supernatural human conception of the Word of God in Mary’s immaculate womb. He then analyzes eleven images of the Annunciation that present this peculiarity. Finally, through a comparative analysis between the doctrinal texts and these exceptional images, the author concludes that the latter illustrate as visual metaphors the textual metaphors contained in the writings of some Church Fathers, medieval theologians, and liturgical hymnographers; that is to say, the beam of rays of light emitted by the mouth of the Most High to the Virgin’s head/ear metaphorizes the human conception/incarnation of the Word of God in the virginal womb of Mary. Full article

French political scientist Olivier Roy maintains that the West is undergoing a ‘crisis of culture’. The crisis derives from a process of ‘deculturation’ where superficial, deterritorial subcultures become the basis for shared understanding, rather than values. Roy maintains that this is a ‘dehumanising’ process. This paper seeks to understand by what means the West might recover a culture. This question demands understanding the concept itself, including its relationship to things material and transcendent. Drawing on the work of the 20th century Jesuit priest and theologian Henri de Lubac, as well as contemporary theologians like John Milbank and Carmody Grey, the paper will base its conclusions on the idea that nature and grace are correlative terms, and culture is not opposed to either. Such a conclusion, however, requires a certain religious logic that is rare in current philosophical discourse. A catholic understanding of the human can help to weave back nature, grace and culture into a proper relationship which does not isolate the natural from the supernatural, and informs the remaking of a culture shaped by Christian humanism. Full article

Embodied, enactive cognition, which is also embedded or emplaced cognition and extended cognition through tools, including language, presents various challenges to the standard model of the cognitive science of religion. In its focus on unconscious brain mechanisms, the standard model downplays or eliminates religious meaning as epiphenomenal or illusory. It often denies that religion, once present, is adaptive or admits as adaptive only costly signaling. It regards humans’ perceptions of their environments as representations, mistaking an environment as determinate before cognition occurs. This support for indirect perception makes no sense given its emphasis on the need for sensing possible threats to survival. As brain mechanisms of individuals do all the heavy lifting, the model regards culture and its influence as nonexistent or insignificant. This stance denies how the social constitutes a huge part of our embodied preobjective and tacit engagement with the world, as well as socio-cultural realities, including religion, as self-organizing systems. The neglect of embodiment extends to its take on supernatural agents as allegedly disembodied minds. The standard model overlooks how ordinary rituals promote bonding through group presence, synchrony, and endorphin production and how some rituals increase knowledge of a particular natural environment, thus overlooking how religion can be adaptive. Full article

Among the multiple zoomorphic and geometric images that dominate Upper Paleolithic decorated cave walls in Europe, some intriguing human hand stencils and finger flutings stand out. Dozens of these marks are attributed to toddlers and children aged 2–12. Accompanied by older group members, they entered these deep, oxygen-depleted and sensory-deprived spaces, climbing and crawling in dark, wet, difficult-to-navigate environments where one might easily get lost or separated from the group. So, why would anyone bring young children into such dangerous locations? Relevant archaeological and anthropological studies form the basis of our hypothesis that the journeys of Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to the depths of deep caves along with their young children should be seen in the framework of active connection with the cosmos as practiced by many indigenous societies worldwide. Indigenous societies often view children as liminal agents with unique physical, cognitive, and mental qualities that allow them to return to the supernatural realm more easily than adults. This makes them especially adept mediators between the world of the living and that of the spirits. In this paper, we examine children’s contribution to the creation of Paleolithic cave art as active agents. Their presence in caves (liminal spaces in themselves) and their participation in the creation of rock art might thus reflect their unique role in early human cosmology and ontology. Full article

This article sheds light on the repercussions of the Proverbs sentence “Wisdom has built her house” on Christian doctrine and on the Marian iconography of the Annunciation. To achieve his objectives, the author uses a double comparative analysis as a methodology. To begin with, he analyzes a vast corpus of texts in which numerous Fathers, theologians, and liturgical hymnographers of Eastern and Western Churches interpret this biblical locution according to Mariological and Christological projections. Secondly, he analyzes eight pictorial Annunciations from the Italian Renaissance in which Mary’s house in Nazareth is depicted as a luxurious palace. As a result of these two sets of analyses, the author concludes that the interpretations of the Fathers, theologians, and hymnographers about the house built by Wisdom and the form of the house/palace in images of the Annunciation allude to the dogma of God the Son’s supernatural human conception/incarnation in Mary’s virginal womb. Full article

Why are rock art sites found in certain places and not others? Can locational or environmental variables inform an understanding of the function and meaning of the art? How can we move beyond observed patterning in spatial associations to a credible explanation of such meanings and ensure that we are not confusing correlation with causation? And what variables were most relevant in influencing site locational choices? These and related problems, whether recognized or not, are the subtext of the last three decades of rock art site distributional and landscape studies. They are now especially important to resolve given the need for accurate predictive modeling due to the rapid transformation of certain regions from undeveloped rural areas into rural industrial landscapes. Partly with this problem in mind, Whitley developed a descriptive model that provides an explanation for the location of Native Californian rock art in the Mojave Desert. It identifies the variables most relevant to site locations based on ethnographic Indigenous ontological beliefs about the landscape. These concern the geographical distribution of supernatural power and its association with certain landforms, natural phenomena and cultural features. His analysis further demonstrated that this model can account for two unusually large concentrations of sites and motifs: the Coso Range petroglyphs and the Carrizo Plain pictographs. But unanswered was the question of whether the model is applicable more widely, especially to smaller sites and localities made by different cultural groups. We documented and analyzed three petroglyph localities with seven small petroglyph sites in the southern Mojave Desert, California, to test this model. These sites are attributed to the Takic-speaking Cahuilla and Serrano tribes. Our study revealed a good fit between the expected natural and cultural variables associated with rock art site locations, with the number of such variables present at any given locale potentially correlated with the size of the individual sites. In addition to the research value of these results, this suggests that the model may be useful in the predictive modeling of rock art site locations for heritage management purposes. Full article

This article explores how the unique cosmology of Korean shamanism, which continues to function as a living religion in contemporary Korea, has been shaped. A key characteristic of the cosmology in Korean shamanism is its combination of two cosmological beliefs. First, it adheres to the general shamanistic cosmology of protection, where suffering caused by supernatural beings can be overcome through the protection of even more powerful beings, who also assist in predicting the future. Second, it incorporates the belief that human life and the universe operate according to specific cosmological principles. The coexistence of these two distinct cosmologies which form an explanatory system of modern Korean shamanism reflects the historical experiences of Koreans with Confucianism during the Joseon dynasty and with Western modernity. In this paper, I analyze the dynamics of conflict and compromise between the two cosmologies through a historical approach and case studies. Specifically, I examine the use of the terms ‘unse (wheel of fortune)’ and ‘spirit’s intervention’ as conceptual metaphors representing each cosmology, as they are employed in interactions between shamans and their clients. Furthermore, I maintain that contemporary Korean shamanism is a form of religious practice constructed as a compromise between various worldviews, including those of shamans and their clients. Full article

The growing body of research on children’s understanding of extraordinary minds has demonstrated that children believe in the persistence of mental functioning after death. However, beyond the continuity of mind, the supernatural conception of death often involves the concept of the disembodied mind, which transcends the constraints of the physical body, possessing supernatural mental capacities. The current study investigated whether children differentiate between a dead agent’s mind and ordinary minds in terms of their perceptual and information-updating capacities. In a location-change false-belief task, which involved a story of a mouse protagonist that was either eaten by an alligator or not, 4- to 6-year-old Korean children (N = 114) were asked about the mental states of the protagonist, an ordinary adult (mom), and God. The results showed (1) older children’s tendency to respond in a way that differentiated (the living) mom from the dead protagonist, (2) an increasing trend of differentiating God’s super-knowingness from ordinary minds with age, and (3) inconclusive evidence regarding children’s differential responses to the dead versus living protagonist. This study suggests that children are not predisposed to view dead agents as possessing a disembodied and supernatural mind, highlighting the importance of cultural learning in the development of such religious concepts. Full article

This article attempts to document why the Virgin Mary is symbolically designated by the biblical figure “Ark of the Covenant” (Foederis Arca), as reflected in one of the invocations of the Litany of Loreto (Litaniae Lauretanae). To justify such a designation, the author refers to the systematic analysis of the patristic, theological, and hymnic sources of the Eastern and Western Churches, in which the Virgin Mary is labeled as the “Ark of the Covenant” for her virginal divine motherhood, her supreme holiness, and her supernatural privileges. The perfect coincidence, with which for more than a millennium the Fathers, theologians, and liturgical hymnographers of the Greek-Eastern and Latin Churches alluded to the Virgin Mary through this biblical symbol, demonstrates the strong coherence of the Mariological theses of the Christian doctrinal tradition on the person and spiritual attributes of the Virgin Mary. These coincident interpretations of the Fathers, theologians, and hymnographers of the Eastern and Western Churches will allow us to justify our iconographic interpretations of 10 European pictorial annunciations of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in whose scenes a container appears, almost always with books inside: such circumstance allows us to conjecture that the intellectual authors of these paintings of the Annunciation included in them this container to illustrate, as a visual metaphor, the textual metaphor with which the Fathers, theologians, and hymnographers symbolized the Virgin Mary as the Ark of the Covenant containing the Legislator of the new covenant. Full article