August 24, 2008
Tricycle's Daily Dharma
Boredom, Impatience, and Fear
If we do a little of one kind of practice and a little of another, the work we have done in one often doesn't continue to build as we change to the next. It is as if we were to dig many shallow wells instead of one deep one. In continually moving from one approach to another, we are never forced to face our own boredom, impatience, and fears. We are never brought face to face with ourselves. So we need to choose a way of practice that is deep and ancient and connected with our hearts, and then make a commitment to follow it as long as it takes to transform ourselves.
--Jack Kornfield in A Path with Heart
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Asatru
Asatru
Posted by: "Grannulus1 at [childrenofgaia]
Sat Aug 23, 2008 4:50 pm (PDT)
Asatru (Norse Heathenism)
History:
Asatru is frequently regarded as one of the Neopagan family of religions.
That family includes _Wicca_ (http://www.religioustolerance.org/witchcra.htm),
_Celtic Druidism_ (http://www.religioustolerance.org/druid.htm), and
re-creations of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and other ancient Pagan religions. However,
many Asatruers prefer the term "Heathen" to "Neopagan" and look upon their
tradition as "not just a branch on the Neopagan tree" but as a separate tree.
Unlike Wicca, which has gradually evolved into many different traditions, the
reconstruction of Asatru has been based on the surviving historical record.
Its followers have maintained it as closely as possible to the original
religion of the Norse people.
Asatru or Ásatrú is an Icelandic word which is a translation of the Danish
word "Asetro." Asetro was "first seen in 1885 in an article in the periodical
"Fjallkonan". The next recorded instance was in "Heiðinn siður á Íslandi"
("Heathen traditions in Iceland.") by Ólafur Briem (Reykjavík, 1945)." It means
"belief in the Asir," the Gods. "Asatru" is a combination of "Asa" which is
the possessive case of the word Æsir (Aesir) and "Tru" which means belief or
religion.
Throughout Scandinavia the religion is called Forn Siðr (which means the
Ancient way or tradition), Forn sed (the Old custom), Nordisk sed (Nordic
custom), or Hedensk sed (Pagan custom). Other names are:
Norse Heathenism, Germanic Heathenism, the Elder Troth, the Old Way, Asetro,
Vor Si r (our way), Forn Si r (Ancient way), Forn sed (the old custom),
Nordisk sed (Nordic custom), or Hedensk sed (Pagan custom), Odinism or Folkish
Ásatrú.
The religion's origin is lost in antiquity. At its peak, it covered all of
Northern Europe. Countries gradually converted to Christianity. In 1000 _CE_
(http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce.htm), Iceland became the second last
Norse culture to convert. Their prime motivation was economic. Sweden was ruled
by a Pagan king until 1085 CE.
Icelandic poet Gothi Sveinbjorn Beinteinsson promoted government recognition
of Asatru as a legitimate religion; this status was granted in 1972. Since
the early 1970's, the religion has been in a period of rapid growth in the
former Norse countries, as well as in Europe and North America.
Corruption of Asatru:
It is not unknown for otherwise decent religions to become corrupted by
incorporating racist, sexist, anti-semitic, and homophobic beliefs. For example:
The _Christian Identity_ (http://www.religioustolerance.org/cr_ident.htm) movement is one wing of the Christian religion which has adsorbed such
beliefs. During the early part of the 20th Century, The National Socialist Party
in Germany under Adolf Hitler attempted to pervert Asatru by grafting parts
of the religion onto the Nazi racist beliefs. This blasphemy died by the end
of World War II, although some neo-Nazi groups -- largely in the U.S. -- are
now attempting to continue the practice.
This type of activity is in no way related to the restoration of Asatru as a
legitimate Heathen religion. There is a very strong anti-racist, anti-Nazi
stance among national Asatru groups in the Scandinavian countries. This is also
found in almost all Asatru groups in English speaking countries. They
typically have a clear rejection of racism written into their constitutions.
Unfortunately, some anti-racism groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (in its Megiddo report) have mistakenly
accused the entire religion of racism.
Many people are exposed to the name "Asatru" through _role playing games_
(http://www.religioustolerance.org/d_a_d.htm), such as Mage: The Ascension.
Unfortunately, the Asatru of these games bear little resemblance to the real
religion.
Asatru Beliefs:
Asatru is a polytheistic religion. There are three races of Deities in the Norse pantheon. They are all regarded as living entities who are involved in human life:
The Aesir: These are the Gods of the tribe or clan, representing Kingship, order, craft, etc.
The Vanir: These represent the fertility of the earth and forces of nature. They are associated with the clan but are not part of it.
The Jotnar: These are giants who are in a constant state of war with the Aesir. They represent chaos and destruction.
At the battle of Ragnarok, many of the Gods will die, the world will come to an end and be
reborn.
Specific Gods:
Some of the more important are:
Thor is the Thunderer, who wields Mjolnir, the divine Hammer. His chariot racing across the
sky generates thunder. Thursday (Thor's Day) was named after him.
Odin is the one-eyed God; he gave up one of his eyes in order to drink from the
Fountain of Knowledge (some sources say Fountain of Wisdom). He is a magician. He
learned the secrets of the runes (Northern European alphabet) by hanging
himself on the tree Yggdrasil for nine nights.
Frey (a.k.a. Freyr) is the God of fertility, the weather and farming. He was born on the _Winter Solstice_ (http://www.religioustolerance.org/w_solsti.htm) , typically December 21. His
father was Njord.
Specific Goddesses:
Some important ones are:
Freya (aka Freyja) is the Goddess of love, beauty and sexuality, and perhaps a dozen other attributes. She leads the Valkyries who take the souls of slain soldiers to Valhall (Odin's great hall).
Frigg is Odin's wife. Her name has been secularized to a slang term which refers to sexual intercourse. She is the patroness of the household and of married women.
Skadi is the Goddess of independence, death, hunting and skiing. Scandinavia may have been named after her.
Ostara, is a Goddess of fertility who is celebrated at the time of the Spring equinox. She was known by the Saxons as Eostre, the Goddess of Spring, from whom we have derived the word Easter. Ostara's symbols are the hare and the egg.
Other Entities Other Deities are Aegir, Balder, Bragi, Forseti, Heimdall, Hel, Loki, Njord, Ran, Tyr, Ull and Vithar.
Followers of Asatru also honor the Landvaettir (land spirits) of the forest, earth and streams.
Life Values: Asatruars in North America have created a list of Nine Noble Virtues: Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance and Perseverance.
The family is greatly valued and honored. They reject any form of discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, language, nationality, race, sexual orientation, or "other divisive criteria".
Origins: Humanity is literally descended from the Gods. Three brothers, Odin, Vili, and Ve created people from two trees and gave them the names Ask and Embla. One deity, Rig visited the earth and established the social classes.
Od: This is the gift of ecstasy provided to humans by the Gods. It is what separates humanity from other animals, and is our eternal link with the Gods.
Creation Story: A poem Voluspa (Prophecy of the Seeress) contains an Asatru story of the creation of the universe. Between Muspelheim (The Land of Fire) and Niflheim the Land of Ice was an empty space called Ginnungigap. The fire and ice moved towards each other; when they collided, the universe came into being. Odin, Vili and Ve later created the world from the body of a giant that they had slain.
After death: Those who die in battle will be carried to Valhall by the Valkyries. There they will eat Saehrimnir (a pig that is daily slaughtered and resurrected) with the Gods. The Goddess Hel (who's name has been borrowed by Christians) rules over dishonorable people (oath breakers)
and those who die ingloriously of old age. Niflhel is the the abode for all others.
The end of the world: Ragnarök (a.k.a. Ragnarøkkr, Ragnarøk, Ragnarok; literally the fate of the Gods) is the anticipated apocalypse. It involves a great battle between the Gods and the Jötnar -- a race of giants with superhuman strength. Unlike Revelation in the Christian Scriptures, prophecies of Ragnarök are very specific: the events leading up to the battle, the timing of the battle, who will kill whom, etc. are all known. Wolves will eat the sun and moon. The stars will stop shining. Mountains will fall; trees will be uprooted; "Fumes will reek and flames will burst, scorching the sky with fire. The earth will sink into the sea." Most of the Gods will die. Only one woman and one man, Lifthrasir and Lif, will survive. Their offspring will
eventually repopulate the world and live in peace. 13
Posted by: "Grannulus1 at [childrenofgaia]
Sat Aug 23, 2008 4:50 pm (PDT)
Asatru (Norse Heathenism)
History:
Asatru is frequently regarded as one of the Neopagan family of religions.
That family includes _Wicca_ (http://www.religioustolerance.org/witchcra.htm),
_Celtic Druidism_ (http://www.religioustolerance.org/druid.htm), and
re-creations of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and other ancient Pagan religions. However,
many Asatruers prefer the term "Heathen" to "Neopagan" and look upon their
tradition as "not just a branch on the Neopagan tree" but as a separate tree.
Unlike Wicca, which has gradually evolved into many different traditions, the
reconstruction of Asatru has been based on the surviving historical record.
Its followers have maintained it as closely as possible to the original
religion of the Norse people.
Asatru or Ásatrú is an Icelandic word which is a translation of the Danish
word "Asetro." Asetro was "first seen in 1885 in an article in the periodical
"Fjallkonan". The next recorded instance was in "Heiðinn siður á Íslandi"
("Heathen traditions in Iceland.") by Ólafur Briem (Reykjavík, 1945)." It means
"belief in the Asir," the Gods. "Asatru" is a combination of "Asa" which is
the possessive case of the word Æsir (Aesir) and "Tru" which means belief or
religion.
Throughout Scandinavia the religion is called Forn Siðr (which means the
Ancient way or tradition), Forn sed (the Old custom), Nordisk sed (Nordic
custom), or Hedensk sed (Pagan custom). Other names are:
Norse Heathenism, Germanic Heathenism, the Elder Troth, the Old Way, Asetro,
Vor Si r (our way), Forn Si r (Ancient way), Forn sed (the old custom),
Nordisk sed (Nordic custom), or Hedensk sed (Pagan custom), Odinism or Folkish
Ásatrú.
The religion's origin is lost in antiquity. At its peak, it covered all of
Northern Europe. Countries gradually converted to Christianity. In 1000 _CE_
(http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce.htm), Iceland became the second last
Norse culture to convert. Their prime motivation was economic. Sweden was ruled
by a Pagan king until 1085 CE.
Icelandic poet Gothi Sveinbjorn Beinteinsson promoted government recognition
of Asatru as a legitimate religion; this status was granted in 1972. Since
the early 1970's, the religion has been in a period of rapid growth in the
former Norse countries, as well as in Europe and North America.
Corruption of Asatru:
It is not unknown for otherwise decent religions to become corrupted by
incorporating racist, sexist, anti-semitic, and homophobic beliefs. For example:
The _Christian Identity_ (http://www.religioustolerance.org/cr_ident.htm) movement is one wing of the Christian religion which has adsorbed such
beliefs. During the early part of the 20th Century, The National Socialist Party
in Germany under Adolf Hitler attempted to pervert Asatru by grafting parts
of the religion onto the Nazi racist beliefs. This blasphemy died by the end
of World War II, although some neo-Nazi groups -- largely in the U.S. -- are
now attempting to continue the practice.
This type of activity is in no way related to the restoration of Asatru as a
legitimate Heathen religion. There is a very strong anti-racist, anti-Nazi
stance among national Asatru groups in the Scandinavian countries. This is also
found in almost all Asatru groups in English speaking countries. They
typically have a clear rejection of racism written into their constitutions.
Unfortunately, some anti-racism groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and
the Federal Bureau of Investigation (in its Megiddo report) have mistakenly
accused the entire religion of racism.
Many people are exposed to the name "Asatru" through _role playing games_
(http://www.religioustolerance.org/d_a_d.htm), such as Mage: The Ascension.
Unfortunately, the Asatru of these games bear little resemblance to the real
religion.
Asatru Beliefs:
Asatru is a polytheistic religion. There are three races of Deities in the Norse pantheon. They are all regarded as living entities who are involved in human life:
The Aesir: These are the Gods of the tribe or clan, representing Kingship, order, craft, etc.
The Vanir: These represent the fertility of the earth and forces of nature. They are associated with the clan but are not part of it.
The Jotnar: These are giants who are in a constant state of war with the Aesir. They represent chaos and destruction.
At the battle of Ragnarok, many of the Gods will die, the world will come to an end and be
reborn.
Specific Gods:
Some of the more important are:
Thor is the Thunderer, who wields Mjolnir, the divine Hammer. His chariot racing across the
sky generates thunder. Thursday (Thor's Day) was named after him.
Odin is the one-eyed God; he gave up one of his eyes in order to drink from the
Fountain of Knowledge (some sources say Fountain of Wisdom). He is a magician. He
learned the secrets of the runes (Northern European alphabet) by hanging
himself on the tree Yggdrasil for nine nights.
Frey (a.k.a. Freyr) is the God of fertility, the weather and farming. He was born on the _Winter Solstice_ (http://www.religioustolerance.org/w_solsti.htm) , typically December 21. His
father was Njord.
Specific Goddesses:
Some important ones are:
Freya (aka Freyja) is the Goddess of love, beauty and sexuality, and perhaps a dozen other attributes. She leads the Valkyries who take the souls of slain soldiers to Valhall (Odin's great hall).
Frigg is Odin's wife. Her name has been secularized to a slang term which refers to sexual intercourse. She is the patroness of the household and of married women.
Skadi is the Goddess of independence, death, hunting and skiing. Scandinavia may have been named after her.
Ostara, is a Goddess of fertility who is celebrated at the time of the Spring equinox. She was known by the Saxons as Eostre, the Goddess of Spring, from whom we have derived the word Easter. Ostara's symbols are the hare and the egg.
Other Entities Other Deities are Aegir, Balder, Bragi, Forseti, Heimdall, Hel, Loki, Njord, Ran, Tyr, Ull and Vithar.
Followers of Asatru also honor the Landvaettir (land spirits) of the forest, earth and streams.
Life Values: Asatruars in North America have created a list of Nine Noble Virtues: Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Hospitality, Industriousness, Self-Reliance and Perseverance.
The family is greatly valued and honored. They reject any form of discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, language, nationality, race, sexual orientation, or "other divisive criteria".
Origins: Humanity is literally descended from the Gods. Three brothers, Odin, Vili, and Ve created people from two trees and gave them the names Ask and Embla. One deity, Rig visited the earth and established the social classes.
Od: This is the gift of ecstasy provided to humans by the Gods. It is what separates humanity from other animals, and is our eternal link with the Gods.
Creation Story: A poem Voluspa (Prophecy of the Seeress) contains an Asatru story of the creation of the universe. Between Muspelheim (The Land of Fire) and Niflheim the Land of Ice was an empty space called Ginnungigap. The fire and ice moved towards each other; when they collided, the universe came into being. Odin, Vili and Ve later created the world from the body of a giant that they had slain.
After death: Those who die in battle will be carried to Valhall by the Valkyries. There they will eat Saehrimnir (a pig that is daily slaughtered and resurrected) with the Gods. The Goddess Hel (who's name has been borrowed by Christians) rules over dishonorable people (oath breakers)
and those who die ingloriously of old age. Niflhel is the the abode for all others.
The end of the world: Ragnarök (a.k.a. Ragnarøkkr, Ragnarøk, Ragnarok; literally the fate of the Gods) is the anticipated apocalypse. It involves a great battle between the Gods and the Jötnar -- a race of giants with superhuman strength. Unlike Revelation in the Christian Scriptures, prophecies of Ragnarök are very specific: the events leading up to the battle, the timing of the battle, who will kill whom, etc. are all known. Wolves will eat the sun and moon. The stars will stop shining. Mountains will fall; trees will be uprooted; "Fumes will reek and flames will burst, scorching the sky with fire. The earth will sink into the sea." Most of the Gods will die. Only one woman and one man, Lifthrasir and Lif, will survive. Their offspring will
eventually repopulate the world and live in peace. 13
Catholic Group Calls for More Women in Mass Texts
Friday August 22, 2008
Catholic Group Calls for More Women in Mass Texts
By Mallika Rao
c. 2008 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) A letter was sent from Ohio to Vatican City this month with a message for Pope Benedict XVI backed by thousands of women from around the world.
"We want women to stop being invisible in the church's proclamation," said Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of Cleveland-based FutureChurch. "If you try to make it look like God likes men better than women, people just aren't going to buy it."
FutureChurch, an independent Catholic renewal group that counts some 5,000 members worldwide, is broadcasting a plea ahead of a key Vatican meeting this October. The group wants more Bible passages featuring women to be read at Catholic Masses throughout the world.
So far, FutureChurch has sent more than 18,000 e-mails and letters to bishops, including Benedict, who will preside over the synod on "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church."
"When we heard that the synod was going to focus primarily on Scripture we knew that we had to raise awareness about the hidden women of the lectionary," said Schenk, a member of the Cleveland-based Congregation of St. Joseph.
The body of scriptural texts read at Mass every day, known as the lectionary, is determined by the Vatican. For churchgoers who seldom read the Bible, those extracts may comprise their only knowledge of the holy book, Schenk said.
And women are conspicuously absent from the lectionary, she added.
"When you can show a systematic exclusion of biblical women leaders in the text," she said, "it sends a really unhealthy message to our daughters and our sons."
Schenk's argument appears to be bolstered by a 1996 article in the American Benedictine Review. The article's author, Sister Ruth Fox, cites Mass readings that stop just before a woman's vital role is mentioned, or leave her out altogether.
For example, Fox writes, take Exodus 15:20-21, in which Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, is identified as a prophet and leads a liturgy of thanksgiving after the crossing of the Red Sea. That passage is not in the lectionary.
And Phoebe, a woman who in the Greek translation of the New Testament is called a "deaconess," does not appear once in the daily readings.
Likewise, the role of Mary Magdalene, who according to the Gospels is the first to witness Jesus' resurrection, is never recounted on Sundays, Schenk said, while "we hear about doubting Thomas every single year."
At a time when women hold powerful political offices worldwide, the lectionary seems, at best, outdated, the sister said.
The one woman the lectionary does mention is Mary, the mother of Jesus, who, as a virgin and a mother, is "a pretty hard act to follow," Schenk said. "And it's not all women can be. We also need to hear about women leaders who evangelized, proclaimed the gospel and founded churches."
Monsignor Anthony Sherman, of the Secretariat for Divine Worship at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said FutureChurch is not alone in questioning the Mass readings.
The world -- and the status of women -- has changed drastically since the current lectionary was approved in the 1960s, Sherman said.
But the lectionary has not. "It's been around for 40 years, since Vatican II. A lot of people have problems with it."
He said FutureChurch has a shot at achieving its goal, as long as bishops are persuaded to speak.
Schenk said most bishops have responded positively. Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., met with FutureChurch women, she said, and other bishops say they are interested. None, however, have committed to bringing the topic to the synod.
Even if the issue gets play in October, Sherman said, rewriting the lectionary is a "monumental" task. But that doesn't mean the Bible's women will necessarily go unheard.
As Sherman pointed out, "There's nothing preventing Catholics from owning and reading a whole copy of the Bible themselves."
Copyright 2008 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
Catholic Group Calls for More Women in Mass Texts
By Mallika Rao
c. 2008 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) A letter was sent from Ohio to Vatican City this month with a message for Pope Benedict XVI backed by thousands of women from around the world.
"We want women to stop being invisible in the church's proclamation," said Sister Christine Schenk, executive director of Cleveland-based FutureChurch. "If you try to make it look like God likes men better than women, people just aren't going to buy it."
FutureChurch, an independent Catholic renewal group that counts some 5,000 members worldwide, is broadcasting a plea ahead of a key Vatican meeting this October. The group wants more Bible passages featuring women to be read at Catholic Masses throughout the world.
So far, FutureChurch has sent more than 18,000 e-mails and letters to bishops, including Benedict, who will preside over the synod on "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church."
"When we heard that the synod was going to focus primarily on Scripture we knew that we had to raise awareness about the hidden women of the lectionary," said Schenk, a member of the Cleveland-based Congregation of St. Joseph.
The body of scriptural texts read at Mass every day, known as the lectionary, is determined by the Vatican. For churchgoers who seldom read the Bible, those extracts may comprise their only knowledge of the holy book, Schenk said.
And women are conspicuously absent from the lectionary, she added.
"When you can show a systematic exclusion of biblical women leaders in the text," she said, "it sends a really unhealthy message to our daughters and our sons."
Schenk's argument appears to be bolstered by a 1996 article in the American Benedictine Review. The article's author, Sister Ruth Fox, cites Mass readings that stop just before a woman's vital role is mentioned, or leave her out altogether.
For example, Fox writes, take Exodus 15:20-21, in which Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, is identified as a prophet and leads a liturgy of thanksgiving after the crossing of the Red Sea. That passage is not in the lectionary.
And Phoebe, a woman who in the Greek translation of the New Testament is called a "deaconess," does not appear once in the daily readings.
Likewise, the role of Mary Magdalene, who according to the Gospels is the first to witness Jesus' resurrection, is never recounted on Sundays, Schenk said, while "we hear about doubting Thomas every single year."
At a time when women hold powerful political offices worldwide, the lectionary seems, at best, outdated, the sister said.
The one woman the lectionary does mention is Mary, the mother of Jesus, who, as a virgin and a mother, is "a pretty hard act to follow," Schenk said. "And it's not all women can be. We also need to hear about women leaders who evangelized, proclaimed the gospel and founded churches."
Monsignor Anthony Sherman, of the Secretariat for Divine Worship at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said FutureChurch is not alone in questioning the Mass readings.
The world -- and the status of women -- has changed drastically since the current lectionary was approved in the 1960s, Sherman said.
But the lectionary has not. "It's been around for 40 years, since Vatican II. A lot of people have problems with it."
He said FutureChurch has a shot at achieving its goal, as long as bishops are persuaded to speak.
Schenk said most bishops have responded positively. Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., met with FutureChurch women, she said, and other bishops say they are interested. None, however, have committed to bringing the topic to the synod.
Even if the issue gets play in October, Sherman said, rewriting the lectionary is a "monumental" task. But that doesn't mean the Bible's women will necessarily go unheard.
As Sherman pointed out, "There's nothing preventing Catholics from owning and reading a whole copy of the Bible themselves."
Copyright 2008 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
Five Religions You've Never Heard Of
From Beliefnet.com: Five Religions You've Never Heard Of
Yeah, right, if they can name 5 I've never, ever heard of, I'll be surprised...may not know much about, but I'll bet I've heard of them...
Five Religions You've Never Heard Of
Beliefnet Community members represent more than 120 faith traditions. In addition to a wide array of Christian denominations, and major world religions like Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, we also host faith communities for an astonishing variety of belief systems that are widely practiced and historically grounded... even though you may never have heard of them.
Here are five of our most interesting Beliefnet faith communities, and some of their members to tell you why they chose their faith. Visit them and ask them about their beliefs--they will be happy to answer your questions.
Whatever your beliefs, Beliefnet welcomes you!
Asatru: Faith of the Vikings
Asatru is a modern revival of the beliefs in the ancient Gods of the Germanic and Nordic peoples: Freya, Thor, Odin and others. For many Asatruar, embracing this faith feels like being called home to the way of their ancestors. Although a small number of white supremacists have claimed to follow Asatru, generating controversy in the news, they are not representative of Asatru at large. Following a moral code, Asatruar believe that life is good and should be lived with boldness and enthusiasm, and value courage, honor, industriousness, and personal responsibility. Gathering by "hearths" and "kindreds" they honor the Gods, ancestors, and tribal connections to family and kin.
"Asatru fits like a comfortable pair of jeans. It's intrinsic and natural. The honor code appeals to me as well; chief among these the concept of personal responsibility. I also like the rootedness of it. That being how it connects me to my European and Northern Isles ancestors." --Beliefnet member Rimes_Glimmer
"I was always very fascinated with mythology, especially Norse. I kept on reading and also began to notice my thoughts start to change from 'what a load of...' to 'well that's interesting' and then finally to 'well that's just plain awesome.' I started to get more and more interested in Asatru and eventually found I was calling myself one." --Beliefnet member Jonny
"I will face my challenges with a grin, accept nothing less than victory until death, and face my gods and ancestors secure in the knowledge that I made the most of the life they gave to me, and that my children and neighbors will face less danger and strife for my efforts." --Beliefnet member John_T_Mainer
Visit Beliefnet's Asatru community
Yep, heard about this one, and know a few people who believe in this one.
Sant Mat: Heaven Within
"Kabir" posted by agochar Sant Mat, which means "teachings of the saints," teaches that everything lies inside us and that God is within. Revived in 1891 from a 13th century practice, spreading to North America and Europe in the 1950s-1960s, Sant Mat is a practical path of spiritual self-development based on Sikh traditions, with Sufi influences. Through a simple version of Yoga known as Surat Shabd Yoga, practitioners learn to listen within for the Inner Light and Sound of God. Sant Mat is a solitary practice done in one's own home for 2 1/2 hours each day, while remaining in one's present religion (Sant Mat teaches that all major world religions are rooted in the same Divinity). Followers are strict vegetarians and do not consume alcohol or recreational drugs. Sant Mat emphasizes an ethical lifestyle, selfless service, nonviolence, truthfulness, and love for all.
"I find this approach of inner seeing and hearing to be extremely logical and necessary in order to explore the 'Kingdom of the Heavens that are within' or Inner Space. I am very happy with this direct path to God here and now via contemplative meditation." --Beliefnet member agochar
Visit Beliefnet's Sant Mat community
Okay, so they got me, I have never heard of this one...(above)
Eckankar: Dream Better
Eckankar is an offshoot of Sant Mat, founded by Paul Twitchell in 1965 following his studies with Sant Mat masters from India and Tibet. Like Sant Mat, Eckankar emphasizes meditation to listen to the Inner Light and Sound of God, but also teaches lucid dreaming, past life discovery, and soul travel as ways of hearing God. Eckists describe the Inner Sound as "the voice of God calling us home" and the Inner Light as "a beacon to light our way." Through chanting, contemplation, meditation, singing, trance work and visualization, Eckists seek to reunite the soul with God.
"Eckankar had all the answers that I had found elsewhere, all in a coherent form, consistent with itself so I didn't have to keep changing gears all the time. Eckankar is literally beyond your wildest dreams, because it teaches you how to understand your dreams and to dream better, as it were. It teaches you how to find and listen to the voice of God in your life. What could be more rewarding than that?" --Beliefnet member charlesnotprince
Visit Beliefnet's Eckankar community
Okay, heard of this one (above) but don't know much about.
Ahmadiyya: Heretics or Reformers?
The Ahmadis are a messianic Muslim sect based in Pakistan, with perhaps eight million members in seventy countries. The Ahmadi movement was founded in 1876 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a Punjabi Muslim believed by his followers to have been the Mahdi or Messiah, sent to reform and purify Islam. Members of the movement are considered heretics by most Muslims and are barred entry to Mecca. In the Ahmadi version of religious history Jesus escaped from the cross and made his way to India, where he died at the age of 120.
"Our philosophy, attitude and approach towards the spread of our faith is tolerant, progressive, rational, and liberal and meets the needs of our times in the modern age, which allows us to live peacefully among all religions and nations and peoples of the earth." --Beliefnet member Muhammad_Ahmad
"Ahmadiyya is something new, something I enjoy learning about, and teaches many beliefs I hold myself." --Beliefnet member TheMungunjiasticMan
Visit Beliefnet's Ahmadiyya community
Okay, got me again, never heard of this one either, geesh.
Maltheism: God vs. Humanity
Maltheism is the belief that God does exist, and that God is evil. Maltheists see God as the true spiritual enemy of humanity, and oppose God because of this. The Maltheist movement was founded by Paul Zimmerman, who was active on Beliefnet until his death in 2003. His motto was "God against Humanity: choose a side!" Maltheists believe the most important thing is how we treat each other as human beings, and support the self-empowerment of the human race.
"I think living in a world where we get to define the meaning and purpose of our lives is something extremely positive that generates hope, not hopelessness." --Beliefnet member Maltheist (Paul Zimmerman)
"I came to believe in God through a personal spiritual experience, and came to hate God through personal hardships, tragedies and disappointments. I wish there were a benevolent God who wanted happiness for the human race, but experience tells me that God is really a egomaniacal control freak who craves worship and suffering... We are simply a group of people who share a negative view of God." --Beliefnet member Mohanchous
"Maltheism allows me to criticize and question God. Maltheism allows me to consider myself a imperfect but still valuable decent human being. I can reject completely the label that I am a worthless sinner who deserves eternal damnation. Maltheism makes more sense of the condition of the world and the nature of religious conflict than anything else to me." --Beliefnet member Whichone
Visit Beliefnet's Maltheism community
Never heard of this one either, but geesh, really?
Okay, so I really knew of 1.5...amazing.
Yeah, right, if they can name 5 I've never, ever heard of, I'll be surprised...may not know much about, but I'll bet I've heard of them...
Five Religions You've Never Heard Of
Beliefnet Community members represent more than 120 faith traditions. In addition to a wide array of Christian denominations, and major world religions like Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, we also host faith communities for an astonishing variety of belief systems that are widely practiced and historically grounded... even though you may never have heard of them.
Here are five of our most interesting Beliefnet faith communities, and some of their members to tell you why they chose their faith. Visit them and ask them about their beliefs--they will be happy to answer your questions.
Whatever your beliefs, Beliefnet welcomes you!
Asatru: Faith of the Vikings
Asatru is a modern revival of the beliefs in the ancient Gods of the Germanic and Nordic peoples: Freya, Thor, Odin and others. For many Asatruar, embracing this faith feels like being called home to the way of their ancestors. Although a small number of white supremacists have claimed to follow Asatru, generating controversy in the news, they are not representative of Asatru at large. Following a moral code, Asatruar believe that life is good and should be lived with boldness and enthusiasm, and value courage, honor, industriousness, and personal responsibility. Gathering by "hearths" and "kindreds" they honor the Gods, ancestors, and tribal connections to family and kin.
"Asatru fits like a comfortable pair of jeans. It's intrinsic and natural. The honor code appeals to me as well; chief among these the concept of personal responsibility. I also like the rootedness of it. That being how it connects me to my European and Northern Isles ancestors." --Beliefnet member Rimes_Glimmer
"I was always very fascinated with mythology, especially Norse. I kept on reading and also began to notice my thoughts start to change from 'what a load of...' to 'well that's interesting' and then finally to 'well that's just plain awesome.' I started to get more and more interested in Asatru and eventually found I was calling myself one." --Beliefnet member Jonny
"I will face my challenges with a grin, accept nothing less than victory until death, and face my gods and ancestors secure in the knowledge that I made the most of the life they gave to me, and that my children and neighbors will face less danger and strife for my efforts." --Beliefnet member John_T_Mainer
Visit Beliefnet's Asatru community
Yep, heard about this one, and know a few people who believe in this one.
Sant Mat: Heaven Within
"Kabir" posted by agochar Sant Mat, which means "teachings of the saints," teaches that everything lies inside us and that God is within. Revived in 1891 from a 13th century practice, spreading to North America and Europe in the 1950s-1960s, Sant Mat is a practical path of spiritual self-development based on Sikh traditions, with Sufi influences. Through a simple version of Yoga known as Surat Shabd Yoga, practitioners learn to listen within for the Inner Light and Sound of God. Sant Mat is a solitary practice done in one's own home for 2 1/2 hours each day, while remaining in one's present religion (Sant Mat teaches that all major world religions are rooted in the same Divinity). Followers are strict vegetarians and do not consume alcohol or recreational drugs. Sant Mat emphasizes an ethical lifestyle, selfless service, nonviolence, truthfulness, and love for all.
"I find this approach of inner seeing and hearing to be extremely logical and necessary in order to explore the 'Kingdom of the Heavens that are within' or Inner Space. I am very happy with this direct path to God here and now via contemplative meditation." --Beliefnet member agochar
Visit Beliefnet's Sant Mat community
Okay, so they got me, I have never heard of this one...(above)
Eckankar: Dream Better
Eckankar is an offshoot of Sant Mat, founded by Paul Twitchell in 1965 following his studies with Sant Mat masters from India and Tibet. Like Sant Mat, Eckankar emphasizes meditation to listen to the Inner Light and Sound of God, but also teaches lucid dreaming, past life discovery, and soul travel as ways of hearing God. Eckists describe the Inner Sound as "the voice of God calling us home" and the Inner Light as "a beacon to light our way." Through chanting, contemplation, meditation, singing, trance work and visualization, Eckists seek to reunite the soul with God.
"Eckankar had all the answers that I had found elsewhere, all in a coherent form, consistent with itself so I didn't have to keep changing gears all the time. Eckankar is literally beyond your wildest dreams, because it teaches you how to understand your dreams and to dream better, as it were. It teaches you how to find and listen to the voice of God in your life. What could be more rewarding than that?" --Beliefnet member charlesnotprince
Visit Beliefnet's Eckankar community
Okay, heard of this one (above) but don't know much about.
Ahmadiyya: Heretics or Reformers?
The Ahmadis are a messianic Muslim sect based in Pakistan, with perhaps eight million members in seventy countries. The Ahmadi movement was founded in 1876 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, a Punjabi Muslim believed by his followers to have been the Mahdi or Messiah, sent to reform and purify Islam. Members of the movement are considered heretics by most Muslims and are barred entry to Mecca. In the Ahmadi version of religious history Jesus escaped from the cross and made his way to India, where he died at the age of 120.
"Our philosophy, attitude and approach towards the spread of our faith is tolerant, progressive, rational, and liberal and meets the needs of our times in the modern age, which allows us to live peacefully among all religions and nations and peoples of the earth." --Beliefnet member Muhammad_Ahmad
"Ahmadiyya is something new, something I enjoy learning about, and teaches many beliefs I hold myself." --Beliefnet member TheMungunjiasticMan
Visit Beliefnet's Ahmadiyya community
Okay, got me again, never heard of this one either, geesh.
Maltheism: God vs. Humanity
Maltheism is the belief that God does exist, and that God is evil. Maltheists see God as the true spiritual enemy of humanity, and oppose God because of this. The Maltheist movement was founded by Paul Zimmerman, who was active on Beliefnet until his death in 2003. His motto was "God against Humanity: choose a side!" Maltheists believe the most important thing is how we treat each other as human beings, and support the self-empowerment of the human race.
"I think living in a world where we get to define the meaning and purpose of our lives is something extremely positive that generates hope, not hopelessness." --Beliefnet member Maltheist (Paul Zimmerman)
"I came to believe in God through a personal spiritual experience, and came to hate God through personal hardships, tragedies and disappointments. I wish there were a benevolent God who wanted happiness for the human race, but experience tells me that God is really a egomaniacal control freak who craves worship and suffering... We are simply a group of people who share a negative view of God." --Beliefnet member Mohanchous
"Maltheism allows me to criticize and question God. Maltheism allows me to consider myself a imperfect but still valuable decent human being. I can reject completely the label that I am a worthless sinner who deserves eternal damnation. Maltheism makes more sense of the condition of the world and the nature of religious conflict than anything else to me." --Beliefnet member Whichone
Visit Beliefnet's Maltheism community
Never heard of this one either, but geesh, really?
Okay, so I really knew of 1.5...amazing.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Catholics Will No Longer Recite "And Also With You"
Commentary
Catholics Will No Longer Recite 'And Also With You'
by James Martin
Some Mass Changes
The changes to the Roman Catholic Mass announced Aug. 4 won't take effect for a few years. In the meantime, new prayer books will be printed and distributed to dioceses, parishes and priests. Below, a few of the old responses, followed by the new:
"The Lord be with you"
Old : "And also with you."
New : "And with your spirit."
Before Communion:
Old: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
New: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."
The refrain, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again" has been deleted.
All Things Considered, August 11, 2008 · The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Aug. 4 released the official text of a new English-language translation to the Roman Catholic Mass. It's the first time the Mass will change since the 1960s — though the changes will not take effect for a few years. Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, reflects on the changes.
What's your response to the following: "The Lord be with you."
If you said, "And also with you," you're probably a Catholic who goes to Mass on Sunday.
Not so fast. That response is about to change, along with other familiar parts of the Mass.
Overall, the language in the new English translation, just released by the bishops, is more elevated than before.
Critics of the old translation thought that the language was too conversational to be reverent. On the other side were those who thought that conversational language helped people to pray to God more naturally.
One easy place to see the change is when the priest prays a blessing over the bread and wine.
Here's the old translation: "Let your Spirit come upon these gifts, to make them holy."
Here's the new one: "Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall."
And the familiar refrain, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again"? That's been deleted. Frankly, those two changes I'm not too crazy about.
But here's one I like.
Right before Communion we say this: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
Pretty soon we'll say, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." That sounds odd until you realize it's from the Gospels, when a centurion tells Jesus that he's not worthy to have him come under his roof.
By the way, the new response to "The Lord be with you" is "And with your spirit."
That means one of my favorite jokes goes by the wayside. A priest starts shouting into the microphone saying: "Is this thing on?"
He makes lots of noise and finally says: "Something is wrong with this mic!" And the congregation replies: "And also with you!"
Language is important in the spiritual life: The way you relate to someone influences the way you speak to someone, and vice versa. It's the same with God. The way you relate to God influences how you speak to God in prayer. And your language will influence your image of God.
What does all this mean? Well, for a few months, maybe even a few years, most Catholics aren't going to know what to say in Mass. Some parishioners will be delighted, others annoyed, others just confused. For a time, the most familiar thing in many Catholics' lives will become, at least in parts, unfamiliar.
But overall the upgrades are small. I don't mean to minimize the changes, or the change in tone, but in the end, Catholics will get used to the new Mass.
And I believe that, happily, God hears everyone's prayers, whether they're in conversational language, elevated speech, through tears or through laughter, or even in the midst of dewfall.
James Martin is a Jesuit priest and author of A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas and Life's Big Questions.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93419478
Catholics Will No Longer Recite 'And Also With You'
by James Martin
Some Mass Changes
The changes to the Roman Catholic Mass announced Aug. 4 won't take effect for a few years. In the meantime, new prayer books will be printed and distributed to dioceses, parishes and priests. Below, a few of the old responses, followed by the new:
"The Lord be with you"
Old : "And also with you."
New : "And with your spirit."
Before Communion:
Old: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
New: "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed."
The refrain, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again" has been deleted.
All Things Considered, August 11, 2008 · The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Aug. 4 released the official text of a new English-language translation to the Roman Catholic Mass. It's the first time the Mass will change since the 1960s — though the changes will not take effect for a few years. Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, reflects on the changes.
What's your response to the following: "The Lord be with you."
If you said, "And also with you," you're probably a Catholic who goes to Mass on Sunday.
Not so fast. That response is about to change, along with other familiar parts of the Mass.
Overall, the language in the new English translation, just released by the bishops, is more elevated than before.
Critics of the old translation thought that the language was too conversational to be reverent. On the other side were those who thought that conversational language helped people to pray to God more naturally.
One easy place to see the change is when the priest prays a blessing over the bread and wine.
Here's the old translation: "Let your Spirit come upon these gifts, to make them holy."
Here's the new one: "Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall."
And the familiar refrain, "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again"? That's been deleted. Frankly, those two changes I'm not too crazy about.
But here's one I like.
Right before Communion we say this: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
Pretty soon we'll say, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed." That sounds odd until you realize it's from the Gospels, when a centurion tells Jesus that he's not worthy to have him come under his roof.
By the way, the new response to "The Lord be with you" is "And with your spirit."
That means one of my favorite jokes goes by the wayside. A priest starts shouting into the microphone saying: "Is this thing on?"
He makes lots of noise and finally says: "Something is wrong with this mic!" And the congregation replies: "And also with you!"
Language is important in the spiritual life: The way you relate to someone influences the way you speak to someone, and vice versa. It's the same with God. The way you relate to God influences how you speak to God in prayer. And your language will influence your image of God.
What does all this mean? Well, for a few months, maybe even a few years, most Catholics aren't going to know what to say in Mass. Some parishioners will be delighted, others annoyed, others just confused. For a time, the most familiar thing in many Catholics' lives will become, at least in parts, unfamiliar.
But overall the upgrades are small. I don't mean to minimize the changes, or the change in tone, but in the end, Catholics will get used to the new Mass.
And I believe that, happily, God hears everyone's prayers, whether they're in conversational language, elevated speech, through tears or through laughter, or even in the midst of dewfall.
James Martin is a Jesuit priest and author of A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas and Life's Big Questions.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93419478
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Lord's Prayer: toddler-wise
This little girl is just so adorable. No matter what your religious beliefs, you have to admit that it is amazing that she remembered the whole thing to near perfection and had all the notes pretty much right too! Just too too cute!
Sunday, August 17, 2008
James Vanderkam - The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their Significance For Understanding the Bible, Judaism, Jesus, and Christianity by James VanderkamMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
needs more in depth reading, more that I can get out of it with a library check out. Of all the books at the library dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammuradi Library, this one seemed the best and the easiest to read or comprehend.
Added to wish list so I can peruse more thoroughly.
View all my reviews.
Denise Linn - Altars
Altars by Denise LinnMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Very interesting in that it gives you ideas for a personal altar and pictures. Just a "gives me creative ideas of setup" guide.
Wish List
View all my reviews.
Ari Elon - Trees, Earth, and Torah: A Tu B'Shvat Anthology
Trees, Earth, and Torah: A Tu B'Shvat Anthology by Ari ElonMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Another library book that needs more in depth reading. Very interesting. Earth centered Judaism.
View all my reviews.
Richard D. Bank - 101 Things Everyone Should Know About Judaism
101 Things Everyone Should Know About Judaism: Beliefs, Practices, Customs, And Traditions by Richard D. BankMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Very basic, rather easy to understand fundamentals that you would need/want to know about Judaism.
Added to wish list, checked out of library.
View all my reviews.
Historical Atlas of Religions by Karen FarringtonMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Checked this out of the library. It is really just a "primary" level book, but it does cover some lesser knows beliefs, and some interesting articles. Rather non-biased too, and I do appreciate that. Of course it covers Judeo-Christian-Islamic beliefs and origins, but also covers Hinduism, Buddhism, Tao, Confucianism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism,Shinto, the beliefs of the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans (north, central and south- I believe), Rasta, Voodoo, Old Norse, Old Greek/Roman, Egyptian, Maori, Easter Island, Quakers, Reformation, Moon, Theosophy, and several more.
Like I said, it's just an overview, introductory book, but a good simple format.
View all my reviews.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
St. John of the Cross: Dark Night of the Soul
Dark Night of the Soul: A Masterpiece in the Literature of Mysticism by St. John of the Cross by St. John of the CrossMy review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
First heard of this work thru a song by Loreena McKennitt, who based a song on it. I love it. Very moving and very, well don't really know the word. A must read, if at least once. And find the song by Loreena McKennett as well, it is just slightly different, but beautiful and haunting.
View all my reviews.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Interesting blog entry about...
the author of The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan:
http://rollanscensoredissuesblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/unexpected-kathleen-mcgowan.html
~~~~~~
http://rollanscensoredissuesblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/unexpected-kathleen-mcgowan.html
~~~~~~
Time, 1961: Massacre of the Pure
Time Magazine
Friday, Apr. 28, 1961
Massacre of the Pure
"These heretics are worse than the Saracens!" exclaimed Pope Innocent III, and on March 10, 1208, he proclaimed a crusade against a sect in southern France that became one of the bloodiest blots in European history.
The heretics called Cathari (from the Greek word for pure), or Albigenses, from the town of Albi, one of their centers in Languedoc, were stamped out in 35 ruthless years of fire and sword. But as the centuries rolled on, they have had a measure of revenge against the Roman Catholic Church. The hatred generated by the crusade prepared the way for Protestantism. And in modern France, where popular apostasy from Catholicism is today wider and deeper than anything Pope Innocent could have imagined, the ancient heresy of Catharism is enjoying a remarkable revival of interest.
The long-lived tradition of anticlericalism in southern France, which recruited the Huguenots in the 16th century and fueled Communism in the 20th, is finding a new outlet in a spreading bush fire of enthusiasm for the vanished sect whose 750-year-old lost cause against the church gave anticlericalism its biggest beachhead in France. Some 30 books have been published during the last 15 years about their beliefs and practices and their slaughterous persecution—most of them highly favorable to the heretics and critical of the church. Several plays have been written about them, and literary reviews have published long articles. Hundreds of weekenders are climbing the 4,000-ft. rock atop which stands Montségur, the holy citadel of Catharism, where 300 soldiers and 200 unarmed, pacifist Cathari stood off an army of 10,000 for ten months before being burned at one huge stake for their "pure Christian" beliefs.
How to Be Perfect.
Catharism was not an isolated phenomenon. It was part of an ancient heresy that flowed like an underground stream beneath the surface of Christianity and burst forth in many forms during the church's first 1,000-odd years. Gnosticism, Manichaeanism, Paulicianism, Bogomilism and the Albigenses all had basic characteristics in common: 1) rejection of the world of matter as a trap imprisoning the divine "spark," 2) the concept of the Saviour as a heavenly being merely masquerading as human to bring salvation to 3) the elect, who often have to conceal themselves from the world, and who are set apart by 4) their special knowledge and personal purity (sexual intercourse is usually forbidden as serving the ends of the evil creator-god).
Thanks to recent research, an increasing amount is known about Catharism. It began to spread through southern France and northern Italy in the 11th century; as early as 1022 in Orléans, 13 Cathari (ten of them canons of the church) were condemned to the stake. The heresy was aided by the corruption of the clergy of the time—against whose wenching and venality the puritanism of the "Pure'' was an attractive contrast. The inner circle of Cathari were the "perfect," who had received the "consolation"—a rite performed by another "perfect" in the laying on of hands and the placing of the Gospel of John on the head of the candidate. The "perfect" eschewed sexual intercourse, taking oaths, practicing war, owning property, eating meat or dairy products (since they are the products of the act of reproduction). Some of them carried their asceticism as far as the endura—suicide by self-starvation. Most of the Cathari, however, remained among the "believers," free to live ordinary lives in the world in the hope of salvation without the rigor of living as a "perfect."
The Cathari built no churches; they worshiped in private houses without the sacraments (being material, they were evil) or the cross (because Christ had no real body and died no real death). They read the Scriptures—especially the Gospel of John—listened to a sermon, said the Lord's Prayer (in native Languedoc dialect rather than Latin) and shared a common meal. The clergy wore black robes—until Pope Innocent's crusade began.
In July 1209, an army of crusaders marched down from northern France into Languedoc and besieged the city of éeziers. When the city fathers refused to hand over 222 Cathari heretics, the crusaders broke in and massacred every man, woman and child—priests included—of Béziers' 20,000 inhabitants. Before the massacre one of the crusaders is said to have asked his leader, Abbe Arnaud Amalric, head of the Cistercian monastic order, how to distinguish between the heretics and the faithful. "Kill them all," was the abbot's alleged reply. "God will recognize his own!" From then on, the crusade became a war without mercy, in which almost any southern Frenchman was assumed to be a heretic. Historians estimate the total number of casualties at 1,000,000.
A Period of Darkness.
The enthusiasm of these new-style heretic hunters is being fanned by a number of antiquarians. Dean of them all is tall, gaunt Déodat Roche, 79, a former magistrate of Arques, whose lifelong dedication to spreading the Cathar gospel, organizing pilgrimages to Montségur, and following the strict vegetarian regimen of his heretic ancestors has earned him the nickname "the Cathar Bishop." More active is Sociology Professor René Nelli of the University of Toulouse ("the vicar of Catharism"), who lectures on the subject all over France and has been commissioned by the French government to collect relics and documents for a Cathar museum-in the fortified city of Carcassonne.
Neo-Cathar Nelli explains the growing interest in the medieval heresy: "First the continued retreat of Roman Catholicism. Rome fails to answer people's questions. Secondly, the crusade's sites are admittedly picturesque, and the drama has an appealing epic character. Finally, we are living in a period of darkness, anguish, desperateness, wars, massacres, torture, atomic bombs. Isn't science itself satanic? People will talk about Catharism more and more unless we enter a period of 50 years of peace and prosperity. And that isn't likely."
Click to Print
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,897752,00.html
Friday, Apr. 28, 1961
Massacre of the Pure
"These heretics are worse than the Saracens!" exclaimed Pope Innocent III, and on March 10, 1208, he proclaimed a crusade against a sect in southern France that became one of the bloodiest blots in European history.
The heretics called Cathari (from the Greek word for pure), or Albigenses, from the town of Albi, one of their centers in Languedoc, were stamped out in 35 ruthless years of fire and sword. But as the centuries rolled on, they have had a measure of revenge against the Roman Catholic Church. The hatred generated by the crusade prepared the way for Protestantism. And in modern France, where popular apostasy from Catholicism is today wider and deeper than anything Pope Innocent could have imagined, the ancient heresy of Catharism is enjoying a remarkable revival of interest.
The long-lived tradition of anticlericalism in southern France, which recruited the Huguenots in the 16th century and fueled Communism in the 20th, is finding a new outlet in a spreading bush fire of enthusiasm for the vanished sect whose 750-year-old lost cause against the church gave anticlericalism its biggest beachhead in France. Some 30 books have been published during the last 15 years about their beliefs and practices and their slaughterous persecution—most of them highly favorable to the heretics and critical of the church. Several plays have been written about them, and literary reviews have published long articles. Hundreds of weekenders are climbing the 4,000-ft. rock atop which stands Montségur, the holy citadel of Catharism, where 300 soldiers and 200 unarmed, pacifist Cathari stood off an army of 10,000 for ten months before being burned at one huge stake for their "pure Christian" beliefs.
How to Be Perfect.
Catharism was not an isolated phenomenon. It was part of an ancient heresy that flowed like an underground stream beneath the surface of Christianity and burst forth in many forms during the church's first 1,000-odd years. Gnosticism, Manichaeanism, Paulicianism, Bogomilism and the Albigenses all had basic characteristics in common: 1) rejection of the world of matter as a trap imprisoning the divine "spark," 2) the concept of the Saviour as a heavenly being merely masquerading as human to bring salvation to 3) the elect, who often have to conceal themselves from the world, and who are set apart by 4) their special knowledge and personal purity (sexual intercourse is usually forbidden as serving the ends of the evil creator-god).
Thanks to recent research, an increasing amount is known about Catharism. It began to spread through southern France and northern Italy in the 11th century; as early as 1022 in Orléans, 13 Cathari (ten of them canons of the church) were condemned to the stake. The heresy was aided by the corruption of the clergy of the time—against whose wenching and venality the puritanism of the "Pure'' was an attractive contrast. The inner circle of Cathari were the "perfect," who had received the "consolation"—a rite performed by another "perfect" in the laying on of hands and the placing of the Gospel of John on the head of the candidate. The "perfect" eschewed sexual intercourse, taking oaths, practicing war, owning property, eating meat or dairy products (since they are the products of the act of reproduction). Some of them carried their asceticism as far as the endura—suicide by self-starvation. Most of the Cathari, however, remained among the "believers," free to live ordinary lives in the world in the hope of salvation without the rigor of living as a "perfect."
The Cathari built no churches; they worshiped in private houses without the sacraments (being material, they were evil) or the cross (because Christ had no real body and died no real death). They read the Scriptures—especially the Gospel of John—listened to a sermon, said the Lord's Prayer (in native Languedoc dialect rather than Latin) and shared a common meal. The clergy wore black robes—until Pope Innocent's crusade began.
In July 1209, an army of crusaders marched down from northern France into Languedoc and besieged the city of éeziers. When the city fathers refused to hand over 222 Cathari heretics, the crusaders broke in and massacred every man, woman and child—priests included—of Béziers' 20,000 inhabitants. Before the massacre one of the crusaders is said to have asked his leader, Abbe Arnaud Amalric, head of the Cistercian monastic order, how to distinguish between the heretics and the faithful. "Kill them all," was the abbot's alleged reply. "God will recognize his own!" From then on, the crusade became a war without mercy, in which almost any southern Frenchman was assumed to be a heretic. Historians estimate the total number of casualties at 1,000,000.
A Period of Darkness.
The enthusiasm of these new-style heretic hunters is being fanned by a number of antiquarians. Dean of them all is tall, gaunt Déodat Roche, 79, a former magistrate of Arques, whose lifelong dedication to spreading the Cathar gospel, organizing pilgrimages to Montségur, and following the strict vegetarian regimen of his heretic ancestors has earned him the nickname "the Cathar Bishop." More active is Sociology Professor René Nelli of the University of Toulouse ("the vicar of Catharism"), who lectures on the subject all over France and has been commissioned by the French government to collect relics and documents for a Cathar museum-in the fortified city of Carcassonne.
Neo-Cathar Nelli explains the growing interest in the medieval heresy: "First the continued retreat of Roman Catholicism. Rome fails to answer people's questions. Secondly, the crusade's sites are admittedly picturesque, and the drama has an appealing epic character. Finally, we are living in a period of darkness, anguish, desperateness, wars, massacres, torture, atomic bombs. Isn't science itself satanic? People will talk about Catharism more and more unless we enter a period of 50 years of peace and prosperity. And that isn't likely."
Click to Print
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,897752,00.html
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Book review: Kathleen McGowan: The Expected One
The Expected One: A Novel by Kathleen McGowanMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
NOTE::::: not for those who won't accept the possibility of MM and Jesus having a bloodline that still possibly exists.
Started this book, decided after reading the afterward and author's notes that I need one to highlight. So will return to library and keep an eye out for my own copy.
Okay, now half-way thru,changed my mind about buying it for myself...will just read the library book and when the sequels come out will do the same.
It is pretty well written, and rehashes some "theories" already out there, but a little different take than The DaVinci Code. Definitely harsh on Paul (in my mind that's okay by me, don't care for him anyhow), John the Baptist, and several others. Also doesn't idealizes DaVinci like the other book did.
I guess learning a bit more about the author has tinted my view of the book, as I was actually enjoying it before googling her and then "hearing" some of her actual beliefs from her own posts...I actually suppose that if I could speak to her face to face she wouldn't seem so....out there. But to read it without tone and inflection, she sounds a little loony. But her right and that's okay. She actually sounds like people I used to hang around a lot with before I moved to "small-town" America.
Some of the plot themes are now hindering my enjoyment of the book as well, but if it had been written about entirely fictional characters, would not be bothering me...so I adjust my thinking for that.
I don't want to turn anyone off the book, it isn't bad at all. Just my own preconceived notions block my complete enjoyment of the book.
I can accept the possibility of MM and Easa being wed and having children, that, in my mind, is NOT outside the realm of possibility. Nor is the presumption that she may have held a more "pure" interpretation of Easa's teachings. That also is firmly entrenched in my brain as not only acceptable, but probable.
But for the executions of Marie Antoinette and Louis as part of a grand scheme to wipe out the bloodline, ordered by the RC church seems just a wee bit farfetched...but that's okay too...whatever moves the plot along. And I know that some believe all the "theories" surrounding the legend of MM. But bits and pieces of it bug me, and I cannot explain why.
So read the book, make your own mind up...but it is most assuredly NOT FOR the most conservative christian mind.
Update:::: 1 August 2008
Finished book. Enjoyed it so much better there at the last half of the book. While it does go over SOME of the same material as DaVinci Code, it takes quite a few sudden turns away from it as well. As noted before, the issue of DaVinci is quite a bit different.
The author relates in the AUTHOR'S NOTE at the end of the book that it is based much on her own experiences. This is where I had a minor problem. Not a problem for me now, but it was while in the midst of reading it. Despite that, if even half of what she puts forward in this book is, in fact, well, factual and real, then it is impressive and hopeful. I am looking forward to the next part of the series.
The ONLY reservations I had with this book is the fact that I am overly skeptical when I cannot discern tone and intent because of no "face to face" interaction. Many of her, for lack of a better word, theories I do hold with. A lot of them I grew up believing, in some depth or another.
I have always had a problem with the church's stance on women's roles, Paul's theology, the lack of info on the female's in Jesus' life, and the dismissal of even the possiblity that Jesus could have married and had a family. Being a Jew of the times, it would have been strange if he did not. And Pope Gregory, I think it was, that made Mary Magdalene a prostitute did a great disservice to her. She was the one, the only one, who witnessed Jesus' return after the crucifixion. She was also termed the Apostle to the Apostles. And Jesus' closest companion. I believe these are all mentioned in the accepted form of the Bible. For her to be so denigrated as she has been for 2000 years is reprehensible and disgraceful. Not only for her, but for the church and for women everywhere.
I still am a bit skeptical of the author's assertions about Marie Antoinette, the Borgia's and various artists, but then I've never really done much research on the aforementioned people due to lack of interest.
Read this book with a somewhat open mind. The author writes a good story, whether or not you believe it is a fictional account of her own experiences.
View all my reviews.
An interesting new blog discovered
new to me anyhow...he has some interesting reads.
http://www.andrewgough.com/index.html
http://www.andrewgough.com/index.html
Rennes-le-Château Research and Resource
site on Rennes-le-Château
http://www.rlcresearch.com/
seems rather objective instead of propounding all sorts of mythos...
http://www.rlcresearch.com/
seems rather objective instead of propounding all sorts of mythos...
Books on Cathars and the Cathar Wars
from the site: http://www.renneslechateaubooks.info/languedoccathar/
Books on Cathars and the Cathar Wars
The following are books in English dealing with the Cathars, the so-called Cathar heresy, and the Crusade against the Cathars of the Languedoc.
These are all books worth reading, the modern ones selected for their objectivity and historical accuracy; the medieval reprints and translations purely for their historical interest. The star rating represents the webmaster's personal view.
Massacre at Montsegur: a history of the Albigensian Crusade
Zoe Oldenburg
Highly recommended. Not specifically about Montsegur but rather about the history of the Cathars in the Languedoc. Excellent introductory text.
The Original version is in French, but the English version is well translated so you'd never guess.
Zoe Oldenburg was originally a novelist, but this is a sound work of nonfiction (and built her an instant reputation as an historian).
The Cathars in The Languedoc
Malcolm Barber
An excellent book, but probably for academics and those who already know something about the Cathars.
Covers the area well, with interesting information on Catharism in Italy, the larger religious context, and modern Catharism. It traces the origins and spread of dualist ideas, assesses their attraction, and describes the reaction of the ecclesiastical and lay authorities in the form of preaching campaigns, crusades, and inquisitorial investigations.
A fascinating account of the development of religious belief and attempts to suppress it, touching on the nature of evil, the ethics of warfare, and the use made of history by later generations. The book will appeal to those interested in medieval perceptions of the world, the Crusades and the Inquisition.
Malcolm Barber is Professor of History at the University of Reading. He is the author of two books on the Templars, The Trial of the Templars (1978) and The New Knighthood (1994) (Both also highly recommended).
Paperback: 256 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.75 x 9.00 x 6.75 ; The book is illustratedPublisher: Pearson Longman; (July 27, 2000); ISBN: 0582256615
The Cathars
Malcolm Lambert
Another excellent text which traces the origins and spread of Dualist ideas, assesses their attraction, and describes the reaction of the ecclesiastical and lay authorities in the form of preaching campaigns, intellectual refutation, crusade, and inquisitorial investigations.
Though richly illustrated, this is for the enthusiast rather than the general reader. The author takes a chronological and regional approach (covering doctrinal material as the need arises). He covers heresy in Western Europe before the eleventh century and the Bogomils and early appearances of Catharism in the Rhineland. He goes on to the rise of Catharism in the Languedoc and the Roman Catholic Church's response to it (Innocent III, the crusade, and the Inquisition).
The book extends to the revival of Catharism around the beginning of the fourteenth century, and also deals with Italian Catharism, and the fate of the parent Bosnian Church.
Lambert notes that in Italy, unlike the Languedoc, conflicts over doctrine split Cathars into separate camps, and their survival for so long was largely attributable to the unwillingness of independent city-states to grant church authorities the powers needed to exterminate what the Roman Church saw as heresy.
Malcolm Lambert was a Reader in Medieval History at the University of Bristol in the U.K. He retired in 1991 but continues to write excellent history.
The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars
Stephen O'Shea
This account of tale of the Cathars of the Languedoc and their destruction is sympathetic, evocative and sometimes witty.
Catharism is presented as "a pacifist brand of Christianity embracing tolerance and poverty". Rejecting the authority of the Church, and claiming a series of contrary beliefs, it was considered "perfect heresy" ie complete and utter heresy.
Nobles, monks, popes and kings star in this story of the "abattoir Christianity" of conflict encompassing religious and secular motivation over decades. The book's recreations of of siege warfare are particularly good. Operational methods of the Inquisition are clearly explained.
This is an accessible text for non-specialists, but it is sound history, drawing on modern scholarship and providing good notes.
Stephen O'Shea is a Canadian historian, who was inspired to write this book after traveling in France.
Montaillou: village Occitan, 1294-1324
Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
A century after the Crusade against the Cathars, a local Catholic bishop discovered that that Cathars were still flourishing. He had a whole village arrested and interrogated in his role as Inquisitor. Unusually, he was actually interested in the truth and recorded a wealth of detail about his unfortunate victims. This Inquisitor, Jacques Fournier, was promoted from Bishop of Pamiers to Archbishop of Narbonne and later elected Pope. His records found their way into the Vatican archives, where they were studied in the twentieth century by the French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. Le Roy Ladurie has produced an astonishing, gripping, unique, work of history by collecting details about ordinary village life of a fourteenth century rural community.
The Albigensian Crusade
Jonathan Sumption
Excellent history, and a brave attempt at making the case for the behaviour Roman Church.
This book by the well know historian and English barrister takes a much more informed view of the international politics of the period than most other works available.
The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars, 1290-1329
René Weis
A century or so after the start of the first Cathar wars there was a short lived resurgence of the Cathar faith in the areas around Foix. (Another aspect of this resurgence is related in Montaillou - see above). Weis's book is about this resurgence.
The yellow cross of the title is a reference to to the yellow crosses that Cathars were obliged to wear by the Inquisition as a mark of public penance - similar to the yellow badges that Jews were obliged to wear as a mark of infamy, and a contrast to the red crosses worn by heroic crusaders.
One of the saddest and most moving parts of the story is that concerning a man called Belibast, the last known parfait in the area. Having led a colourful life, and having failed to live up to the high standards expected of a parfait, he nevertheless opted to die a most appalling death at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church rather than recant his faith, and spent his last days on earth trying to reconvert the erstwhile friend who had betrayed him to the Inquisition.
The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade
Michael Costen
A good all round work on the subject, though some reviewers have criticised it for an alleged pro-Catholic bias in its presentation and selection of sources.
The Song of the Cathar Wars.
William of Tudela and an Anonymous Successor (J. Shirley, translator,)
A contemporary history of the Albigensian Crusade. This is a poem, originally written in Occitan and later translated into French. This version is the first translation into English of this key text.
This is a prime source of information about the First Cathar Crusade, the House of Toulouse, medieval warfare and early heraldry.
If you try to compare the English and French translations, beware that the French translations are rather free, while the English one tries hard to remain faithful to the original, while still retaining the rhyme scheme.
The History of the Albigensian Crusade / Histoire Albigeoise
Peter des Vaux de Carney (W.A. & M.D. Sibly, translators)
This is a contemporary account of the Cathar wars, written by a cleric sympathetic to the crusader cause. It is interesting as much as anything as a demonstration of how badly twisted the religious mind can become by unthinking adherence to the misconceptions that motivate it. As one reviewer put it "Reading his History of the Albigensian Crusade, was a revolting experience. Peter seems like the sort of man who could easily today have written justifications of Stalinist / Nazi mass murder."
There are several French translations.
The English translators' extensive footnotes convert this work from a piece of medieval bigotry into a superb historical resource.
Chasing the Heretics: A Modern Journey Through the Medieval Languedoc
Rion Klawinski
Montsegur and the Mystery of the Cathars
Jean Markale
Histoire des Cathares
Michel Roquebert & Catherine Bibolleet
Cathares
Yves Rouquette
Montségur, Les cendres de la liberté
Michel Roquebert
The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens
Author: W.A. Sibly
Cathar Castles, Fortresses of the albigensian Crusade 1209-1300
Marcus Cowper, illustrated by Peter Dennis
An invaluable little guide to the so-called Cathar Castles of the Languedoc. Recommended for anyone planning a visit to one or more of these ruined fortifications.
A great advantage is that booklet steers well clear of the usual inaccurate hysterical tourist guff. Cowper is a medieval historian with a good grip on the intricacies of medieval warfare and of events during the Wars against the Cathars.
Illustrations by Peter Dennis are also excellent. Historically accurate and useful as a field guide.
Power and Purity: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy
Carol Lansing
Catharism was popular throughout Occitania, including areas that we now regard as part of Italy as well as those we now regard as parts of France.
This book explores the place of cathar heresy in the life of the medieval Italian town of Orvieto, as well as Florence and Bologna. Based on archival research, it details the social makeup of the Cathar community and argues that the heresy was central to social and political changes of the 13th century.
According to this book, the late 13th-century repression of Catharism by a local inquisition was part of a redefinition of civic and ecclesiastical authority.
Power and Purity will appeal to historians of society and politics as well as religion and even "gender studies".
Light reading.
Carol Lansing is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
• © Sanjil Tolosa, 2008 • Contact • Links •
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Edain McCoy: Celtic Myth & Magick: Harness the Power of the Gods and Goddesses
Celtic Myth & Magick: Harness the Power of the Gods and Goddesses by Edain McCoyMy review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Some people don't like Edain McCoy's books, they relegate them to "fluffy-bunny" status. I personally despise that term and think that the ones who use it are self-important wanna be know-it-alls. There, I said it, LOL. Whatever level ANYONE is in their own search for faith and spirituality should never be demeaned and condescended to as these people who use such a term tend to do.
I liked this book, it was more of a dictionary for me of some of the lesser known (to me) deities and figures in celtic mythos. The rituals would be helpful to those who use them, I personally would only use someone else's to build upon to make my own, if I were so inclined. But this is her, McCoy's, path and choice. She did a pretty decent job in this book.
Although the elitist crowd will still look down on her work, if you are just beginning your studies into Celtic Myth, then this is a good reference.
Also look into Patricia Monaghan!
View all my reviews.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
WHO WAS MARY MAGDALENE?
Links to articles at beliefnet.com...a joint effort with ABCNews
WHO WAS MARY MAGDALENE? WAS JESUS MARRIED? CHRISTIANITY'S HIDDEN GODDESSGOSPEL OF MARY GNOSTICISM THE DA VINCI CODE
She was an important disciple and witness for Jesus, but there is no historical evidence for a more intimate relationship. By Ben Witherington III
All New Testament references to the woman from Magdala
Tradition is not fixed. Newly discovered texts like the Gospel of Mary let us hear other voices in an ancient Christian debate. By Karen King
Like Jesus, Mary Magdalene is now the subject of a cultural makeover. What agenda do feminist scholars have in mind? By Kenneth L. Woodward
Mary Magdalene in the Bible and in pop culture
Which image of Mary Magdalene is most meaningful to you?
"Woman with the wild thing's heart," a poem about Mary Magdalene
Discussion: What did you think of the show?
Could Jesus Have Been Married?
A new novel forces people to confront a biblical puzzle. Was Mary Magdalene Mrs. Jesus?By Deborah Caldwell
If we ask what the hard evidence is that Jesus was married, there really is a very short answer. There is none. By Darrell Bock
He may have been too poor to support a family. By John Dominic Crossan
Was Jesus Married?
Discussion: Does it matter if Jesus was married?
Christianity's "Hidden Goddess"
Was she a Benjamite heiress destined to carry on a sacred bloodline?By Margaret Starbird
How divine figures from world religions, including Mary Magdalene, can help you in your daily life.By Laurie Sue Brockway
Discussion: Are You Inspired by Mary Magdalene?
The Gospel of Mary
An ancient manuscript, a radical interpretation of Jesus' teachings--written in the name of a woman.By Karen L. King
Link:
Discussion:
Gnosticism
What would Christianity be like if gnostic texts had made it into the Bible?Interview with Dr. Elaine Pagels, author of "Beyond Belief"
Gnostic gospels were never taken as historical documents. Why are they now in vogue?By James Hitchcock
Are noncanonical texts like "The Gospel of Mary" legit?
Mary Magdalene Saint or Sinner?
Monday, Aug. 11, 2003
Mary Magdalene Saint or Sinner?
A new wave of literature is cleaning up her reputation. How a woman of substance was "harlotized"
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
The gorgeous female cryptographer and the hunky college professor are fleeing the scene of a ghastly murder they did not commit. In the midst of their escape, which will eventually utilize an armored car, a private jet, electronic-surveillance devices and just enough unavoidable violence to keep things interesting, our heroes seek out the one man who holds the key not only to their exoneration but also to a mystery that could change the world. To help explain it to them, crippled, jovial, fabulously wealthy historian Sir Leigh Teabing points out a figure in a famous painting.
"'Who is she?' Sophie asked.
"'That, my dear,' Teabing replied, 'is Mary Magdalene.'
"Sophie turned. 'The prostitute?'
"Teabing drew a short breath, as if the word had injured him personally. 'Magdalene was no such thing. That unfortunate misconception is the legacy of a smear campaign launched by the early Church.'"
Summer page turners tend to sidestep the finer points of 6th century church history. Perhaps that is their loss. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, now in its 18th week on the New York Times hard-cover fiction best-seller list, is one of those hypercaffeinated conspiracy specials with two-page chapters and people's hair described as "burgundy." But Brown, who by book's end has woven Magdalene intricately and rather outrageously into his plot, has picked his MacGuffin cannily. Not only has he enlisted one of the few New Testament personages whom a reader might arguably imagine in a bathing suit (generations of Old Masters, after all, painted her topless). He has chosen a character whose actual identity is in play, both in theology and pop culture.
Three decades ago, the Roman Catholic Church quietly admitted what critics had been saying for centuries: Magdalene's standard image as a reformed prostitute is not supported by the text of the Bible. Freed of this lurid, limiting premise and employing varying ratios of scholarship and whimsy, academics and enthusiasts have posited various other Magdalenes: a rich and honored patron of Jesus, an Apostle in her own right, the mother of the Messiah's child and even his prophetic successor. The wealth of possibilities has inspired a wave of literature, both academic and popular, including Margaret George's 2002 best-selling historical novel Mary, Called Magdalene. And it has gained Magdalene a new following among Catholics who see in her a potent female role model and a possible argument against the all-male priesthood. The woman who three Gospels agree was the first witness to Christ's Resurrection is having her own kind of rebirth. Says Ellen Turner, who played host to an alternative celebration for the saint on her traditional feast day on July 22: "Mary [Magdalene] got worked over by the church, but she is still there for us. If we can bring her story forward, we can get back to what Jesus was really about."
In 1988, the book Mary Magdalene: A Woman Who Showed Her Gratitude, part of a children's biblical-women series and a fairly typical product of its time, explained that its subject "was not famous for the great things she did or said, but she goes down in history as a woman who truly loved Jesus with all her heart and was not embarrassed to show it despite criticism from others." That is certainly part of her traditional resume. Many Christian churches would add her importance as an example of the power of Christ's love to save even the most fallen humanity, and of repentance. (The word maudlin derives from her reputation as a tearful penitent.) Centuries of Catholic teaching also established her colloquial identity as the bad girl who became the hope of all bad girls, the saved siren active not only in the overheated imaginations of parochial-school students but also as the patron of institutions for wayward women such as the grim nun-run laundries featured in the new movie The Magdalene Sisters. In the culture at large, writer Kathy Shaidle has suggested, Magdalene is "the Jessica Rabbit of the Gospels, the gold-hearted town tramp belting out I Don't Know How to Love Him."
The only problem is that it turns out that she wasn't bad, just interpreted that way. Mary Magdalene (her name refers to Magdala, a city in Galilee) first appears in the Gospel of Luke as one of several apparently wealthy women Jesus cures of possession (seven demons are cast from her), who join him and the Apostles and "provided for them out of their means." Her name does not come up again until the Crucifixion, which she and other women witness from the foot of the Cross, the male disciples having fled. On Easter Sunday morning, she visits Jesus' sepulcher, either alone or with other women, and discovers it empty. She learns — in three Gospels from angels and in one from Jesus himself — that he is risen. John's recounting is the most dramatic. She is solo at the empty tomb. She alerts Peter and an unnamed disciple; only the latter seems to grasp the Resurrection, and they leave. Lingering, Magdalene encounters Jesus, who asks her not to cling to him, "but go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father ... and my God." In Luke's and Mark's versions, this plays out as a bit of a farce: Magdalene and other women try to alert the men, but "these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them." Eventually they came around.
Discrepancies notwithstanding, the net impression is of a woman of substance, brave and smart and devoted, who plays a crucial — perhaps irreplaceable — role in Christianity's defining moment. So where did all the juicy stuff come from? Mary Magdalene's image became distorted when early church leaders bundled into her story those of several less distinguished women whom the Bible did not name or referred to without a last name. One is the "sinner" in Luke who bathes Jesus' feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, kisses them and anoints them with ointment. "Her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much," he says. Others include Luke's Mary of Bethany and a third, unnamed woman, both of whom anointed Jesus in one form or another. The mix-up was made official by Pope Gregory the Great in 591: "She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark," Gregory declared in a sermon. That position became church teaching, although it was not adopted by Orthodoxy or Protestantism when each later split from Catholicism.
What prompted Gregory? One theory suggests an attempt to reduce the number of Marys — there was a similar merging of characters named John. Another submits that the sinning woman was appended simply to provide missing backstory for a figure of obvious importance. Others blame misogyny. Whatever the motivation, the effect of the process was drastic and, from a feminist perspective, tragic. Magdalene's witness to the Resurrection, rather than being acclaimed as an act of discipleship in some ways greater than the men's, was reduced to the final stage in a moving but far less central tale about the redemption of a repentant sinner. "The pattern is a common one," writes Jane Schaberg, a professor of religious and women's studies at the University of Detroit Mercy and author of last year's The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: "the powerful woman disempowered, remembered as a whore or whorish." As shorthand, Schaberg coined the term "harlotization."
In 1969, in the liturgical equivalent of fine print, the Catholic Church officially separated Luke's sinful woman, Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene as part of a general revision of its missal. Word has been slow in filtering down into the pews, however. (It hasn't helped that Magdalene's heroics at the tomb are still omitted from the Easter Sunday liturgy, relegated instead to midweek.) And in the meantime, more scholarship has stoked the fires of those who see her eclipse as a chauvinist conspiracy. Historians of Christianity are increasingly fascinated with a group of early followers of Christ known broadly as the Gnostics, some of whose writings were unearthed only 55 years ago. And the Gnostics were fascinated by Magdalene. The so-called Gospel of Mary [Magdalene], which may date from as early as A.D. 125 (or about 40 years after John's Gospel), describes her as having received a private vision from Jesus, which she passes on to the male disciples. This role is a usurpation of the go-between status the standard Gospels normally accord to Peter, and Mary depicts him as mightily peeved, asking, "Did [Jesus] really speak with a woman without our knowledge?" The disciple Levi comes to her defense, saying, "Peter, you have always been hot-tempered ... If the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely, the Savior loves her very well. That is why he loved her more than us."
Them's fightin' words, especially when one remembers that the papacy traces its authority back to Peter. Of course, the Gnostic Gospels are not the Bible. In fact, there is evidence that the Bible was standardized and canonized precisely to exclude such books, which the early church leaders regarded as heretical for many non-Magdalene reasons. Nonetheless, feminists have been quick to cite Mary as evidence both of Magdalene's early importance, at least in some communities, and as the virtual play-by-play of a forgotten gender battle, in which church fathers eventually prevailed over the people who never got the chance to be known as church mothers. "I think it was a power struggle," says Schaberg, "And the canonical texts that we have [today] come from the winners."
Schaberg goes further. In her book, she returns to John in light of the Gnostic writings and purports to find "fragments of a claim" that Jesus may have seen Magdalene as his prophetic successor. The position is thus far quite lonely. But it serves nicely to illustrate the way in which any retrieval of Magdalene as a "winner" inevitably shakes up current assumptions about male church leadership. After Pope John Paul II prohibited even the discussion of female priests in 1995, he cited "the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men ..." That argument would seem weakened in light of the "new" Magdalene, whom the Pope himself has acknowledged by the once unfashionable title "Apostle to the Apostles." Chester Gillis, chair of the department of theology at Georgetown University, says conventional Catholics still feel that Mary Magdalene's absence from many biblical scenes involving the male disciples, and specifically from the ordination-like ritual of the Last Supper, rule her out as a priest precedent. Gillis agrees, however, that her recalibration "certainly makes a case for a stronger role for women in the church."
Meanwhile, the combination of catholic rethinking and Gnostic revelations have reanimated wilder Magdalene speculations, like that of a Jesus-Magdalene marriage. ("No other biblical figure," Schaberg notes, "has had such a vivid and bizarre postbiblical life.") The Gnostic Gospel of Philip describes Magdalene as "the one who was called [Jesus'] companion," claiming that he "used to kiss her on her [mouth]." Most scholars discount a Jesus-Magdalene match because it finds little echo in the canonical Gospels once the false Magdalenes are removed. But it fulfills a deep narrative expectation: for the alpha male to take a mate, for a yin to Jesus' yang or, as some neopagans have suggested, for a goddess to his god. Martin Luther believed that Jesus and Magdalene were married, as did Mormon patriarch Brigham Young.
The notion that Magdalene was pregnant by Jesus at his Crucifixion became especially entrenched in France, which already had a tradition of her immigration in a rudderless boat, bearing the Holy Grail, his chalice at the Last Supper into which his blood later fell. Several French kings promoted the legend that descendants of Magdalene's child founded the Merovingian line of European royalty, a story revived by Richard Wagner in his opera Parsifal and again in connection with Diana, Princess of Wales, who reportedly had some Merovingian blood. (The Wachowski brothers, those cultural magpies, named a villain in The Matrix Reloaded Merovingian, filming him surrounded by Grail-like chalices. His wife in that film was played by Italian actress Monica Bellucci, who will also play Magdalene in Mel Gibson's upcoming Jesus film ... Sorry, this stuff is addictive.) The idea that Magdalene herself was the Holy Grail — the human receptacle for Jesus' blood line — popped up in a 1986 best seller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which inspired Brown's Da Vinci Code. When Brown said recently, "Mary Magdalene is a historical figure whose time has come," he meant a figure with a lot of mythic filagree.
Ellen Turner was 48 years old when she first learned that Mary Magdalene was not a whore. Through Catholic school and a Catholic college, she attests, "I thought about her in the traditional way, as a sinner." But eight years ago, the 56-year-old technical writer tapped into a network of neo-Magdalenites through her connection with the liberal Catholic groups Call to Action and Futurechurch. The discovery that, as Turner puts it, Magdalene "got the shaft" started her thinking about how to change the situation. She was happy to find that the two organizations, which see Magdalene's recovered image as an argument for their goal of a priesthood open to all those who feel called, coordinate celebrations around the world on her feast day.
Last month Turner and her husband Ray played host to such a celebration at their home in San Jose, Calif. About 30 participants drove in from as far away as Oakland. After meeting and greeting and strolling the meditation labyrinth in Turner's backyard, the group held something resembling a church service, with an opening hymn, a blessing over the bread and wine and readings about Magdalene from the four Gospels. There was no priest, but Turner herself read what, if this were a Mass, might be a homily. "From the beginning," she intoned as the sun sank over Silicon Valley, "her view has been ignored, unappreciated. The first to see the risen Lord — those with more power have sought to marginalize her. Yet she is faithful. She remains. She cannot be silenced."
Reported by Lisa McLaughlin
Copyright © 2003 Time Inc. All rights reserved.Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Privacy Policy
Mary Magdalene Saint or Sinner?
A new wave of literature is cleaning up her reputation. How a woman of substance was "harlotized"
By DAVID VAN BIEMA
The gorgeous female cryptographer and the hunky college professor are fleeing the scene of a ghastly murder they did not commit. In the midst of their escape, which will eventually utilize an armored car, a private jet, electronic-surveillance devices and just enough unavoidable violence to keep things interesting, our heroes seek out the one man who holds the key not only to their exoneration but also to a mystery that could change the world. To help explain it to them, crippled, jovial, fabulously wealthy historian Sir Leigh Teabing points out a figure in a famous painting.
"'Who is she?' Sophie asked.
"'That, my dear,' Teabing replied, 'is Mary Magdalene.'
"Sophie turned. 'The prostitute?'
"Teabing drew a short breath, as if the word had injured him personally. 'Magdalene was no such thing. That unfortunate misconception is the legacy of a smear campaign launched by the early Church.'"
Summer page turners tend to sidestep the finer points of 6th century church history. Perhaps that is their loss. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, now in its 18th week on the New York Times hard-cover fiction best-seller list, is one of those hypercaffeinated conspiracy specials with two-page chapters and people's hair described as "burgundy." But Brown, who by book's end has woven Magdalene intricately and rather outrageously into his plot, has picked his MacGuffin cannily. Not only has he enlisted one of the few New Testament personages whom a reader might arguably imagine in a bathing suit (generations of Old Masters, after all, painted her topless). He has chosen a character whose actual identity is in play, both in theology and pop culture.
Three decades ago, the Roman Catholic Church quietly admitted what critics had been saying for centuries: Magdalene's standard image as a reformed prostitute is not supported by the text of the Bible. Freed of this lurid, limiting premise and employing varying ratios of scholarship and whimsy, academics and enthusiasts have posited various other Magdalenes: a rich and honored patron of Jesus, an Apostle in her own right, the mother of the Messiah's child and even his prophetic successor. The wealth of possibilities has inspired a wave of literature, both academic and popular, including Margaret George's 2002 best-selling historical novel Mary, Called Magdalene. And it has gained Magdalene a new following among Catholics who see in her a potent female role model and a possible argument against the all-male priesthood. The woman who three Gospels agree was the first witness to Christ's Resurrection is having her own kind of rebirth. Says Ellen Turner, who played host to an alternative celebration for the saint on her traditional feast day on July 22: "Mary [Magdalene] got worked over by the church, but she is still there for us. If we can bring her story forward, we can get back to what Jesus was really about."
In 1988, the book Mary Magdalene: A Woman Who Showed Her Gratitude, part of a children's biblical-women series and a fairly typical product of its time, explained that its subject "was not famous for the great things she did or said, but she goes down in history as a woman who truly loved Jesus with all her heart and was not embarrassed to show it despite criticism from others." That is certainly part of her traditional resume. Many Christian churches would add her importance as an example of the power of Christ's love to save even the most fallen humanity, and of repentance. (The word maudlin derives from her reputation as a tearful penitent.) Centuries of Catholic teaching also established her colloquial identity as the bad girl who became the hope of all bad girls, the saved siren active not only in the overheated imaginations of parochial-school students but also as the patron of institutions for wayward women such as the grim nun-run laundries featured in the new movie The Magdalene Sisters. In the culture at large, writer Kathy Shaidle has suggested, Magdalene is "the Jessica Rabbit of the Gospels, the gold-hearted town tramp belting out I Don't Know How to Love Him."
The only problem is that it turns out that she wasn't bad, just interpreted that way. Mary Magdalene (her name refers to Magdala, a city in Galilee) first appears in the Gospel of Luke as one of several apparently wealthy women Jesus cures of possession (seven demons are cast from her), who join him and the Apostles and "provided for them out of their means." Her name does not come up again until the Crucifixion, which she and other women witness from the foot of the Cross, the male disciples having fled. On Easter Sunday morning, she visits Jesus' sepulcher, either alone or with other women, and discovers it empty. She learns — in three Gospels from angels and in one from Jesus himself — that he is risen. John's recounting is the most dramatic. She is solo at the empty tomb. She alerts Peter and an unnamed disciple; only the latter seems to grasp the Resurrection, and they leave. Lingering, Magdalene encounters Jesus, who asks her not to cling to him, "but go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father ... and my God." In Luke's and Mark's versions, this plays out as a bit of a farce: Magdalene and other women try to alert the men, but "these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them." Eventually they came around.
Discrepancies notwithstanding, the net impression is of a woman of substance, brave and smart and devoted, who plays a crucial — perhaps irreplaceable — role in Christianity's defining moment. So where did all the juicy stuff come from? Mary Magdalene's image became distorted when early church leaders bundled into her story those of several less distinguished women whom the Bible did not name or referred to without a last name. One is the "sinner" in Luke who bathes Jesus' feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, kisses them and anoints them with ointment. "Her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much," he says. Others include Luke's Mary of Bethany and a third, unnamed woman, both of whom anointed Jesus in one form or another. The mix-up was made official by Pope Gregory the Great in 591: "She whom Luke calls the sinful woman, whom John calls Mary [of Bethany], we believe to be the Mary from whom seven devils were ejected according to Mark," Gregory declared in a sermon. That position became church teaching, although it was not adopted by Orthodoxy or Protestantism when each later split from Catholicism.
What prompted Gregory? One theory suggests an attempt to reduce the number of Marys — there was a similar merging of characters named John. Another submits that the sinning woman was appended simply to provide missing backstory for a figure of obvious importance. Others blame misogyny. Whatever the motivation, the effect of the process was drastic and, from a feminist perspective, tragic. Magdalene's witness to the Resurrection, rather than being acclaimed as an act of discipleship in some ways greater than the men's, was reduced to the final stage in a moving but far less central tale about the redemption of a repentant sinner. "The pattern is a common one," writes Jane Schaberg, a professor of religious and women's studies at the University of Detroit Mercy and author of last year's The Resurrection of Mary Magdalene: "the powerful woman disempowered, remembered as a whore or whorish." As shorthand, Schaberg coined the term "harlotization."
In 1969, in the liturgical equivalent of fine print, the Catholic Church officially separated Luke's sinful woman, Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene as part of a general revision of its missal. Word has been slow in filtering down into the pews, however. (It hasn't helped that Magdalene's heroics at the tomb are still omitted from the Easter Sunday liturgy, relegated instead to midweek.) And in the meantime, more scholarship has stoked the fires of those who see her eclipse as a chauvinist conspiracy. Historians of Christianity are increasingly fascinated with a group of early followers of Christ known broadly as the Gnostics, some of whose writings were unearthed only 55 years ago. And the Gnostics were fascinated by Magdalene. The so-called Gospel of Mary [Magdalene], which may date from as early as A.D. 125 (or about 40 years after John's Gospel), describes her as having received a private vision from Jesus, which she passes on to the male disciples. This role is a usurpation of the go-between status the standard Gospels normally accord to Peter, and Mary depicts him as mightily peeved, asking, "Did [Jesus] really speak with a woman without our knowledge?" The disciple Levi comes to her defense, saying, "Peter, you have always been hot-tempered ... If the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her? Surely, the Savior loves her very well. That is why he loved her more than us."
Them's fightin' words, especially when one remembers that the papacy traces its authority back to Peter. Of course, the Gnostic Gospels are not the Bible. In fact, there is evidence that the Bible was standardized and canonized precisely to exclude such books, which the early church leaders regarded as heretical for many non-Magdalene reasons. Nonetheless, feminists have been quick to cite Mary as evidence both of Magdalene's early importance, at least in some communities, and as the virtual play-by-play of a forgotten gender battle, in which church fathers eventually prevailed over the people who never got the chance to be known as church mothers. "I think it was a power struggle," says Schaberg, "And the canonical texts that we have [today] come from the winners."
Schaberg goes further. In her book, she returns to John in light of the Gnostic writings and purports to find "fragments of a claim" that Jesus may have seen Magdalene as his prophetic successor. The position is thus far quite lonely. But it serves nicely to illustrate the way in which any retrieval of Magdalene as a "winner" inevitably shakes up current assumptions about male church leadership. After Pope John Paul II prohibited even the discussion of female priests in 1995, he cited "the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men ..." That argument would seem weakened in light of the "new" Magdalene, whom the Pope himself has acknowledged by the once unfashionable title "Apostle to the Apostles." Chester Gillis, chair of the department of theology at Georgetown University, says conventional Catholics still feel that Mary Magdalene's absence from many biblical scenes involving the male disciples, and specifically from the ordination-like ritual of the Last Supper, rule her out as a priest precedent. Gillis agrees, however, that her recalibration "certainly makes a case for a stronger role for women in the church."
Meanwhile, the combination of catholic rethinking and Gnostic revelations have reanimated wilder Magdalene speculations, like that of a Jesus-Magdalene marriage. ("No other biblical figure," Schaberg notes, "has had such a vivid and bizarre postbiblical life.") The Gnostic Gospel of Philip describes Magdalene as "the one who was called [Jesus'] companion," claiming that he "used to kiss her on her [mouth]." Most scholars discount a Jesus-Magdalene match because it finds little echo in the canonical Gospels once the false Magdalenes are removed. But it fulfills a deep narrative expectation: for the alpha male to take a mate, for a yin to Jesus' yang or, as some neopagans have suggested, for a goddess to his god. Martin Luther believed that Jesus and Magdalene were married, as did Mormon patriarch Brigham Young.
The notion that Magdalene was pregnant by Jesus at his Crucifixion became especially entrenched in France, which already had a tradition of her immigration in a rudderless boat, bearing the Holy Grail, his chalice at the Last Supper into which his blood later fell. Several French kings promoted the legend that descendants of Magdalene's child founded the Merovingian line of European royalty, a story revived by Richard Wagner in his opera Parsifal and again in connection with Diana, Princess of Wales, who reportedly had some Merovingian blood. (The Wachowski brothers, those cultural magpies, named a villain in The Matrix Reloaded Merovingian, filming him surrounded by Grail-like chalices. His wife in that film was played by Italian actress Monica Bellucci, who will also play Magdalene in Mel Gibson's upcoming Jesus film ... Sorry, this stuff is addictive.) The idea that Magdalene herself was the Holy Grail — the human receptacle for Jesus' blood line — popped up in a 1986 best seller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which inspired Brown's Da Vinci Code. When Brown said recently, "Mary Magdalene is a historical figure whose time has come," he meant a figure with a lot of mythic filagree.
Ellen Turner was 48 years old when she first learned that Mary Magdalene was not a whore. Through Catholic school and a Catholic college, she attests, "I thought about her in the traditional way, as a sinner." But eight years ago, the 56-year-old technical writer tapped into a network of neo-Magdalenites through her connection with the liberal Catholic groups Call to Action and Futurechurch. The discovery that, as Turner puts it, Magdalene "got the shaft" started her thinking about how to change the situation. She was happy to find that the two organizations, which see Magdalene's recovered image as an argument for their goal of a priesthood open to all those who feel called, coordinate celebrations around the world on her feast day.
Last month Turner and her husband Ray played host to such a celebration at their home in San Jose, Calif. About 30 participants drove in from as far away as Oakland. After meeting and greeting and strolling the meditation labyrinth in Turner's backyard, the group held something resembling a church service, with an opening hymn, a blessing over the bread and wine and readings about Magdalene from the four Gospels. There was no priest, but Turner herself read what, if this were a Mass, might be a homily. "From the beginning," she intoned as the sun sank over Silicon Valley, "her view has been ignored, unappreciated. The first to see the risen Lord — those with more power have sought to marginalize her. Yet she is faithful. She remains. She cannot be silenced."
Reported by Lisa McLaughlin
Copyright © 2003 Time Inc. All rights reserved.Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Privacy Policy
Curious Site
Don't know what to make of it yet, or whether I find them credible or not, but will have to read more in depth before I make up my mind. Beyond that, here is the site address and you can make your own mind up. Polite, civil comments appreciated. Rude ones will be deleted.
http://www.thenazareneway.com/index.htm
http://www.thenazareneway.com/index.htm
India's New Buddhists
Tuesday, Jul. 15, 2008
India's New Buddhists
By Jyoti Thottam
Neha Mohan was 24 years old and living the new Indian dream, with a job at a New Delhi marketing firm that hitched her wagon to the country's chugging economy. And then she let it all go. "I wasn't satisfied," she says over a cappuccino in a shopping mall on the city's southern fringe. Mohan decided to ditch business and study French. With a widowed mother to support, Mohan says her family couldn't understand why she would turn her back on so much opportunity. "There was a lot of pressure," she says. But like many other urban, educated Indians, Mohan, now 29, has found strength and solace in Buddhism.
The faith that was started 2,500 years ago by a worldly, disaffected Indian prince, Siddhartha Gautama, is finding new adherents among the modern princes and princesses of the country's prosperous élite. They're facing some of the same tensions that have made Buddhist practice so popular in the U.S. and Europe. "As in America, there are all kinds of new pressures that are at work on people, all kinds of mental stress," says K.T.S. Sarao, a professor of Buddhist studies at the University of Delhi. The wealth created by India's technology boom has brought with it the realization that material comfort isn't the same thing as happiness. Caught in that tender trap, Sarao says, "People turn to meditation."
But while Buddhism in the West might carry with it a hint of the exotic, here the appeal has more to do with its simplicity and pragmatism. That's what has drawn so many New Delhi yuppies to Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist movement whose extensive land holdings and political influence have sometimes made it controversial in Japan, where it was founded. Soka Gakkai has had a tiny presence in India for decades. But the group has blossomed in the last eight years, growing from 5,000 to 35,000 members — 20,000 of them in New Delhi alone.
The core of the Soka Gakkai practice is the chanting of the phrase nam myoho renge kyo — "I devote myself to the mystic law of the Lotus Sutra" — but it is otherwise stripped of mysticism or ascetic self-denial. It teaches a mix of personal affirmation, positive thinking, and the basic Buddhist principles of peace and non-violence. Saurabh Popli, a lanky, 34-year-old architect, says he found in Soka Gakkai "a philosophy that can help us navigate these incredibly complex lives that we're living." He adds, "It doesn't require me to live in the mountains. It's a pragmatic way to live my life." Sunita Mehta, 60, a non-profit executive who's been part of the group for 13 years, says she's noticed that the newer members aren't the typical spiritual seekers: many are scientists, doctors or academics. Members chant privately, but meet regularly in each other's whitewashed apartment buildings and bougainvillea-shaded homes. They come, Mehta says, looking for a safe place to talk about their tough bosses and bad breakups. "These are not the things that you can take to the normal Hindu priest," she says.
Other established schools of Buddhist thought, like vipassana meditation and Tibetan Buddhism, are finding a newly receptive audience India as well. These new Buddhists don't convert officially; they simply take up some form of the practice, usually chanting or meditation, and often continue to observe the same holidays and family rituals they always did. That's another part of Buddhism's appeal in India, Sarao says. In a country where so much of social life revolves around religious festivals and ceremonies, Indians can enjoy the philosophical satisfactions of Buddhism without having to give up the faith they were born into. "They do not feel they're being disloyal to Hinduism in any way," he says.
Of course, that makes it difficult to know exactly how widespread Buddhist practice has become. About 1.7% of India's population, or 170 million people, were counted as Buddhist in the 2001 census, but the vast majority are the descendants of Dalits, who converted to Buddhism en masse in the 1950s as a reaction against their low status in the Hindu caste hierarchy. It was an inspiring political revolution, led by the great Dalit activist B.R. Ambedkar, but its success gave contemporary Buddhism in India the stigma of a lower-caste movement. That's changed with this recent move toward the faith among the élite. Sarao estimates that urban, affluent followers of Buddhism in India may number about 1 million.
With them, the story of Buddhism in India comes back to its beginnings. In his book An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, author Pankaj Mishra describes the troubled times in which the Buddha appeared. Dissatisfied with lives regimented around work, he writes, people gathered to listen to a new breed of freethinking philosopher, "India's first cosmopolitan thinkers." Those disaffected seekers came together in groves and parks built near the cities of the sixth-century B.C. Gangetic Plain. But any 21st century Delhi-ite would surely recognize the tensions driving their search for spiritual clarity.
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1822787,00.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)