Performance, Religion, and Spirituality

From Grove to Temple

2023-02-05T19:41:27+00:00

Sacred groves are very important elements of Hinduism, and take on different characteristics in different parts of India, just like Hinduism does.

However, due to political, cultural or social processes, some of these forests have been converted into temples, and the rituals practiced there have been brought closer to the dominant Brahminical cult, with an evident loss to the richness and cultural diversity of Indian spiritual practices.

Those processes can mostly be viewed as Templisation, Sanskritization, and Hinduization. In this short essay we examine the consequences of those procedures upon the sacred groves of northern Kerala, and especially upon the ritual of the teyyams, living gods who inhabit these woods.

Contemplation in Action

2024-12-10T11:57:46+00:00

This essay considers the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius as a kind of philosophical performance manual. It argues that an appraisal of this text in terms of performance is one key way in which to understand the originality of the Meditations. Throughout much of the Meditations, Marcus surveys his own experience and the things occurring around him and attempts to create a kind of mental space (an “inner citadel”) from which to “correctly” perceive these experiences and events. But it is also clear that this “inner citadel” is a space that can only exist inasmuch as it is enacted, moment by moment. This essay follow’s Pierre Hadot’s claim that the Meditations offer a window into a set of “spiritual exercises” which would later be developed within a Christian context by Ignatius of Loyola. However, this essay argues that the Meditations differs considerably from the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises conceived thirteen centuries later, which envisions an ongoing dialogical relationship with a personal God rather than an inner dialogue set against the impersonal governance of Nature. It is this performative construction of the self, set in adversarial relation to the self-experiences of that self, that separates the Stoic spiritual experience from the Christian tradition that would eventually supplant it. In a contemporary secular context, however, it is very much this performative approach to aligning one’s identity with an all-encompassing world view, without encumbrance from organised religious structures, which ensures the continuing currency of the Meditations today.

2024-12-10T12:09:21+00:00

Table of Contents, Volume 6

Book Reviews, Vol. 6

2024-12-10T12:05:56+00:00

Creole Religions of the Caribbean from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo: An Introduction by Margarite Fernàndez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert (Edmund Lingan); Puppet and Spirit : Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects. Volume I Sacred Roots : Material Entities, Consecrating Acts, Priestly Puppeteers edited by Claudia Orenstein and Tim Cusack (Pallama Ghosh)