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- Convenors:
-
Peter Jan Margry
(University of Amsterdam Meertens Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences)
István Povedák (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design)
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- Format:
- Roundtables Workshops
- Stream:
- Religion and Rituals
- Location:
- Aula 24
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 17 April, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses the issue of new (implicit) expressions of religiosity (c.q. spirituality) and of new religious movements that came into being during the past years.
Long Abstract:
This panel addresses the issue of new expressions of religiosity (c.q. spirituality) and of new religious movements which came into being during the past decades. Due to modern (social) media it became in recent years easier to disseminate and establish new or alternative religious views and movements. The topic relates to an increasing idiosyncratic or subjectivated behaviour of people to change track and to find religious meaning or comfort outside the institutional/traditional religions. Sometimes explicit as in obvious cults and sects, however many expressions are constituted in an implicit way and are seemingly of a secular nature. For example, in Santiago de Compostela a 'Camino of the atheists' came into being by people who did not want to relate their walking to the Church and preferred to walk the 'Celtic' path towards the Finisterre cape, last year Avatar, the human potential movement, was again frontpage news as a sectarian 'threat', and celebrity adoration may also gain religious characteristics, albeit it remains unclear if musician Prince († 2016) gained a religious following or not. Papers are preferred that bring up new religious expressions - whether small-local or big-global - and discuss their nature, the ways on how they are created and how they were able to establish and keep following (motifs); further, papers evaluate the aspect of religiosity, especially for implicit expressions found somewhere betwixt and between the secular and sacred; also relevant is the movement's position in society and possible confrontations with authorities (civil or clerical) and others.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 17 April, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
This communication proposes an analysis of Andean ritual practices extension towards urban and international contexts. The analysis intend characterizing the type of experiences and relationships established, as well as the relevance and effectiveness of these ritual acts.
Paper long abstract:
This communication proposes an analysis of Andean ritual practices extension towards urban and international contexts. It seeks to characterize the type of experiences and relationships observed under the influence of migration and the demand of the societies that adopt them.
An ethnographic work on religious acts, festive and ritual events in northern Ecuador Quechua communities revealed the cohabitation of important Andean mythical figures with those of the Catholic religion. Analyzing this relation within new contexts, led us to discover the magnitude of ceremonial practices (shamanic) in a society such as the French one.
Celebrations such as the cult of the Moon or the Sun, healing therapies, shamanic journeys are one of the many ceremonies that periodically gather groups whose diversity creates a multiplicity of forms, merging the background with new concepts to give them a cultural coherence.
The analysis intend characterizing the type of experiences and relationships that are established, as well as the relevance and effectiveness of these ritual acts.
In these forms of religious expression observed in Western societies, the figure of the shaman is a fundamental element of analysis. Neo-shamanism is the bearer of specificities and the creator of universal values. It proclaims a harmonious communion between divinities and human beings.
To understand the richness of these new rituals it is necessary to articulate them to the beliefs, practices and aesthetics of traditional ceremonies. It is in this continuity that the interest of this study is situated.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores apocalyptic narratives emerging within the last three years in modern Paganisms, a group of New Religious Movements that revive, reinvent and experiment with polytheistic worship. It analyzes these tales as responses to global climate change and political upheavals.
Paper long abstract:
When modern Paganisms emerged in the mid-20th century, they were, uncharacteristically for New Religious Movements, free of apocalyptic narratives. Rooted in romanticism and buoyed by feminism, environmentalism, and the counterculture of the 1960s, Paganisms sacralized nature and the material world, exalting the body, viewing divinity as immanent, and eschewing eschatology. Seventy-five years after their emergence, and not twenty years into the twenty-first century, that has changed. This paper tracks the recent emergence of apocalyptic narratives in modern Pagan religions. These narratives began to be published in Pagan blogs and on websites during the summer of 2016, following the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and preceding the election of a reactionary administration in the United States in November 2016. They emerged first as visions of individual writers and community spokespersons (modern Paganisms are diffuse networks of individuals without a single prophet or leader), imagining a world wracked by climate change and political disruption in which social structure and infrastructure no longer functioned to maintain order. The image that became associated with these visions was the tarot card of "The Tower:" a tall building stricken by lightning, broken in the center and collapsing as desperate individuals were thrown from its height. The narratives highlight the important role Paganisms have to play in this time of disruption by preserving traditional ways of knowing, building self-sufficiency, and helping to create small-scale communities that could survive in troubled times. This paper analyzes these narratives as responses to global climate change and current political upheavals.
Paper short abstract:
This paper intends to investigate paleoastronautic myths in Hungary from the folkloristic perspective.
Paper long abstract:
According to the widespread concept of paleoastronautics the evolution or even the genesis of human civilization occurred as a consequence of alien visitations on the Earth. (e.g. Pauwels&Bergier, Däniken, Sitchin, Temple, Icke) Only few know that the concept also appeared behind the Iron Curtain in the 1950s and gained significant popularity in certain subcultures (See Agrest, Shklovsky), moreover, the communist regime had an ambivalent attitude towards the theory. In the countries of the socialist bloc the initial phase of UFO-culture followed a somewhat different path from that of the "West". Here the living conditions and the atheistic cultural policy represented a major obstacle to any kind of spiritual, transcendent search or movement regarded with suspicion. Nevertheless, belief in extraterrestrial astronauts did exist and in certain periods was even allowed to appear openly, but only as long as it remained on the level of popular science; any attempts to give it a religious character or to institutionalize it were firmly opposed.
Today this theory is virulent in contemporary new Hungarian mythology as well. Moreover, the extraterrestrial concept of Hungarian origin has become the basic theory of Arvisura, the most important collection of new Hungarian myths (Paál).
My paper intends to approach this phenomenon from the folkloristic perspective and addresses the question of how folklorists can investigate and analyze these narratives? How these Hungarian paleoastronautic myths fit into a more general frame and how they correlate with basic transformations of culture?
Paper short abstract:
The 3HO movement and and their practitioners -gora sikhs- are the result of the reformulation of some principles and practices of traditional Sikhism that responds to Western needs and values but also avoid the conflicts and cultural clashes with the most traditional Sikhism.
Paper long abstract:
The 3HO movement was originated in the 1960s by a Sikh from India known as Yogi Bhajan. Bhajan was a visionary who combined his teaching in yoga with some precepts from the Sikh religion and the values of a healthy and holy life. His message quickly caught on in a white young middle-class, counter-culture audience in North America.
Through the practice of Kundalini Yoga and the emphasis on the avoidance of any toxic to the body, he offered a path to fulfillment and enlightenment through a rigorous yogic discipline and a healthy life.
His teachings begin to make impression on these young students who felt attracted to his way of life. His teachings combined meditation based on the Sikh scriptures, an egalitarian view of people and personal commitment, initiation into the khalsa and a rigid discipline that included vegetarian feeding and the prohibition of any intoxicants for the body, as well as of the practice of sex outside of marriage.
It is therefore a practice of Sikhism carried out by Westerners, whose number was already estimated at 250,000 followers in 1975. This practice is the result of the reformulation of some principles and practices of traditional Sikhism that fits the needs and an ideology of religion that responds to a greater extent to Western needs and values. And what is more, it allows to avoid the conflicts and cultural clashes that in the western countries arise with the most traditional Sikhism and their Hindu practitioners immigrated to Western countries.
Paper short abstract:
Despite the Communist repressions, religiosity played already in the Polish People's Republic an important role. Nevertheless, new religious movements are a post-1989 phenomenon. A prime example of them is the Rosary Crusade for the Homeland fighting against the "dechristianization" of Poland.
Paper long abstract:
The Polish (trans)formation of new clerical-religious movements is the result of the change in the social position of the religion after 1989. Since the collapse of communism, an intense "renaissance of the religiousness" can be observed in Poland. At the same time, however, it can be diagnosed, that the sphere of religiosity cannot elude the tremendous impact of the modernization, secularization and individualization of religious practices.
As a result, on the one hand, there is a weakening of the social relevance of religion and the Catholic Church in certain parts of the country and in anticlerical social groups visible. On the other hand, paradoxically, these very processes of cultural modernization and differentiation lead to a defensive reaction of conservative milieus and to the revitalization of the meaning of religiosity in post-communist Poland.
The emergence of controversial new religious movements like the 2012 founded fundamentalist Rosary Crusade for the Homeland with over 125.000 members is the result of this development. Supported by communities like the Enthronement Movement of Jesus Christ as King of Poland, the politically active "patriots" come into conflict with the official Catholic doctrine and become labeled as "sectarians". By analyzing their cultural practices like demonstrations, billboard campaigns or clothing style, I would like to present the movement's xenophobic, anti-modern ideas and Manichaean worldviews. Further, by evaluating this controversial expression of "political Catholicism", I would like to outline the role of the movement and what does it reveal about the socio-political structures of the Polish post-communist religiosity.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the process whereby a Hungarian seer, who has had visions of Jesus since 1993, manages to meet the expectations of her followers for a greater inclusion of the Virgin Mary in the cultic life of the group while also maintaining her unique emphasis on Jesus Christ.
Paper long abstract:
During the past almost two centuries the world has witnessed a multitude of Marian visions, so much so that the period has often been characterized as the Age of Mary. In this sea of Marian apparitions a Hungarian seer --living in a Southern Hungarian village-- has had visions of Jesus Christ since 1993. Since the following year, she has relived His passion on the first Friday of each month (weekly during Lent). After s/he dies on the cross, Jesus speaks through her to those present -- on each occasion comprising roughly 140 to 160 faithful. Although she continues to see Jesus Christ, over the course of the history of the group, the figure of the Virgin Mary has become more prominent than it was at the beginning. I will argue that this happened as a result of a negotiation process in which she yielded to popular demand by granting a larger place to Mary while managing to maintain the initial premise of her Christic visions. The paper will explore this process and the way Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary figure in the material culture and ideology of the group as well as in the life of the faithful. I will argue that she walks a fine line between meeting the expectations of her followers, who are very much steeped in Marian lore, and holding onto what makes her unique.
Paper short abstract:
A transversal religiosity is shared by those who brave Nazaré waves, an ancient Marian pilgrimage site and a world-famous surfing spot in Portugal. This research focus on the beliefs and prayers of two different communities: traditional fishermen and modern surfers.
Paper long abstract:
Seas and Oceans have a special tropism on the people who face them and their forces of nature either for their daily livelihood or just for pleasure.
This paper addresses the religiosity of both traditional, centuries-old fishing communities and that of modern surfers.
Transversal spirituality manifestations are examined in a research study at a specific site in Portugal where traditional worship of a famous Marian shrine, which is also a pilgrimage sanctuary and linked to an old legend, a miracle and an ex-voto, is imbued with the respect and religiosity inspired by the Ocean: Nazaré.
Nazaré is also famous, worldwide, as one of the most valued, looked-for and feared surfing spots, as its waves are considered to be among the biggest ones in the world. The daring surfers are willing to face danger and even death there - and they show such respect for the Ocean that even the self-proclaimed atheists find their own way of invoking God's protection and praying.
The methodology of this research study comprises interviews and meetings with the two above-mentioned communities and the observation of their rituals.
The ongoing research among fishermen, their devotion and worship of the Lady of Nazaré and on the other hand among world surfers who meet and compete riding these waves, feeling a deep respect for the Divine and engaging on spiritual rituals, is the object of this paper.
Paper short abstract:
The paper investigates the identitarian transformations of a most particular Pentecostal church in Iasi, starting with the rise of an elitist, highly intellectual approach to religious experience and ending with the triumph of an experiential approach to the sacred and charisma.
Paper long abstract:
The paper investigates the identitarian transformations of a most particular Evangelical-Pentecostal church in Iasi, Romania. Minority in relation to the Eastern Orthodox majority, because they are evangelicals, but also in relation to the specificity of the local Pentecostal tradition (since they sing music in Romanian, Latin and Greek, practice a sacramental-liturgical theology and church-service, mostly of patristic and neo-patristic inspiration, with significant Roman-Catholic and Lutheran features, also integrating the celebration of the charismatic experiences), this community scandalizes the local evangelical mind and puzzles the orthodox and the catholic elites from Iași. The quest for identity is analyzed in terms of a tension between the intellectual discipline of the community's members and the "Pentecostal" need of charismatic experience. The tension takes successively different shapes (a. intellectual discipline over charismatic experience; b. intellectual discipline and charismatic experience; c. charismatic experience over intellectual discipline; d. charismatic experience versus intellectual discipline) and is analyzed diachronically in relation to the practices, the aesthetics, and material conditions of each phase of the quest.
At the same time, the paper is an exploration of Primiano's concept of vernacular religion, also integrating Talal Asad's, Clifford Geertz's and Birgit Meyer's reflections on religion.
Paper short abstract:
Native Baltic Faith paganism is in constant change. New developments of the native faith neo-pagan movement will be disused.
Paper long abstract:
The presentation (based on the new empirical research carried out in 2011-2018) will give attention to the new diversification of the Baltic Native faith paganisms, change of their self-expression and activities, symbolic attributes of their material culture, change of the ritual behavior and rituals, interaction between neo-pagans and the ritual environment, their new sacred places and the place-making process as well as on their other inner and public activities (socio-cultural and political power, self presentation in mass media, etc.).