Converse with the dead as a technology of the self: agreements to return from the other-world in Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Michael D. Barbezat
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Dead ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
George Pattison

AbstractNoting Heidegger’s critique of Kierkegaard’s way of relating time and eternity, the paper offers an alternative reading of Kierkegaard that suggests Heidegger has overlooked crucial elements in the Kierkegaardian account. Gabriel Marcel and Sharon Krishek are used to counter Heidegger’s minimizing of the deaths of others and to show how the deaths of others may become integral to our sense of self. This prepares the way for revisiting Kierkegaard’s discourse on the work of love in remembering the dead. Against the criticism that this reveals the absence of the other in Kierkegaardian love, the paper argues that, on the contrary, it shows how Kierkegaard conceives the self as inseparable from the core relationships of love that, despite of death, constitute it as the self that it is.


Inner Asia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Humphrey
Keyword(s):  
The Dead ◽  

AbstractThis article explores the implications of the fact that shamans’ mirrors, and mirrors in general, have two quite different sides, one reflecting images and the other a dull blank or imagined as a teeming other world. It is argued that, for shamanists, the far side of themirror is conceived as the world of the dead, which is populated by spirits. Living people can, in certain circumstances such as divination, see ‘through’ the mirror into that world, and shamans when interacting with spirits in trance place themselves inside it. Two different perspectives, of the living and of the souls/spirits, are thus produced. The article ends with some speculations about the non-symmetrical character of these perspectives and concludes that the Mongols upholding these traditions are not post-moderns.


Anthropos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 527-534
Author(s):  
Zdzisław Kupisiński

The article presents beliefs and rituals related to All Souls’ Day typical for folk Catholicism in Poland. It is based on the results of the ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Radom and Opoczno regions (central Poland), in the years 1980-1983, 1990-1993 and 1998-2005 (a total of 414 days, 650 interviews with 998 informants), as well as on the literature concerning this and other regions of Poland. The popular remembrance of the dead and care for their graves is noticeable throughout the year. Cemeteries in Poland are often visited by people whose relatives passed over to “the other world,” who place flowers and candles on the graves, tidy them up, and pray. Commemoration of the dead takes on a special dimension such days as Christmas, Easter, All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day. Many old All Souls’ rituals disappeared already in the Middle Ages as a result of Christianization and eradication of pre-Christian beliefs. Still, until the 1970s one could observe or reconstruct (relying on the memory of informants) many pre-Christian beliefs and customs that used to be regulated by the ancient ritual calendar based on the solar cycle and the worship of ancestors. The presence of those ancient elements in folk beliefs and rituals indicates a strong faith of the people in life after death, exhibited also by the inhabitants of the area under study both in past centuries and today, although today those customs are given a Christian theological interpretation.


Author(s):  
Ю.И. Чаптыкова

В статье впервые рассматривается образ шаманки в героических сказаниях хакасов, тексты алыптыг нымахов, записанные от сказителя С. И. Шулбаева, вводятся в научный оборот. Целью исследования является определение типа женщин, сведущих во всех трёх мирах, сравнение топосов, встречающихся на пути шаманки в Нижнем мире героического эпоса и в путешествии в «мир мертвых» реального шамана. Для осуществления поставленной цели исследования использованы описательный, сопоставительный методы. В героическом эпосе хакасов типы женщин, сведущих во всех трех мирах, обладающих магическими свойствами, волшебными предметами, встречаются часто. Сказитель обозначает их словами пiлiгҷi, кöрiгҷi.В алыптыг нымахе есть много женщин, умеющих предсказывать будущее, благословляющих главных героев на подвиги, давая ценные советы. Есть героини сказаний, умеющие исцелять, лечить богатырей,женщин, умеющих перевоплощаться в различных птиц и зверей. Богатырки, имеющие «птичье» одеяние,являются переходными, когда образ зооморфных помощников уходит, вера, связанная с тотемом-предком, потихоньку угасает, на смену приходят образы женщин-помощниц и советниц эпического богатыря. Новизна исследования в том, что данный тип женщин в эпосе впервые рассматривается на образе шаманки. Ранее обозначались как защитницы рода, советчицы богатыря. В древних хакасских сказаниях образ мужчины-шамана встречается редко. Как мы знаем, данный персонаж был введён намного позднее, когда помощь шамана, имеющего девять бубнов, стал необходим. В сказании «Хубан Арыг» вводится образ Толгай-хама, подробно описано камлание шамана с девятью бубнами. Мы считаем, что данный эпизод более поздно привнесен в тело эпоса, тем более традиции жанра это позволяют. В статье также проведён сравнительный анализ образа шамана в этнографической литературе и в эпосе хакасов. Выявлены схожие элементы в описании дороги героя в «мир мертвых», шаманы имеют одинаковые средства передвижения по потустороннему миру, аналогичные хитрые уловки, помогающие перемещаться в ином мире, похожие способы проверки состояния «души» умершего. Следует отметить, что данное исследование может способствовать дальнейшему раскрытию образа шаманки в эпосе и более глубокому рассмотрению этой проблемы. The article for the first time examines the image of a shamaness in the heroic tales of the Khakases, the texts of Alyptyg nymakhs recorded from the narrator S. I. Shulbaev are introduced into the scholarly turnover. The aim of the study was to determine the type of women versed in all three worlds, to compare the topoi encountered on the way of a shaman in the Under World of the heroic epic and in the journey to the “world of the dead” of a real shaman. Descriptive and comparative methods were used to achieve the goal of the research. In the Khakas heroic epic, the types of women versed in all three worlds, possessing magical properties and magical objects are common, the narrator denotes them by the words piligchi, kerіgchi. The alyptyg nymakh has many women capable of foretelling the future and blessing the main heroes for feats of arms, giving valuable advice; there are heroines of tales able to heal and treat heroes, women who can transform into various birds and beasts. Bogatyrs dressed as “avian” are transitional, when the image of zoomorphic helpers disappears, the belief connected with the totem ancestor slowly subsides, and images of women assistants and advisers to the epic hero replace them. The novelty of the research is that this type of women in the epic was considered in the image of a shamaness for the first time. Earlier they were designated as protectresses of a family, advisers of a bogatyr. In ancient Khakas tales, the image of a male shaman is rare. As we know, this hero was introduced much later, when the help of a shaman with nine tambourines became necessary. In the tale “Khuban Aryg”, the image of Tolgai-khama is introduced, the shaman's calamation with nine tambourines is described in detail. We believe that this episode was introduced into the body of the epic later, all the more so because the traditions of the genre allow it. The article also provides a comparative analysis of the image of the shaman in ethnographic literature and in the Khakas epic. Similar elements in the description of the hero's road to the “world of the dead” were revealed, shamans have the same means of travel in the other world, similar tricks to help travel to the other world, similar ways of checking the state of the “soul” of the deceased. It should be noted that this study can contribute to the further disclosure of the image of a shamaness in the epic and a deeper consideration of this problem.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 85-118
Author(s):  
V. Milkov

In the publication the apocryphal texts are reproduced and analyzed, which describe the other world and the posthumous destinies of souls of the dead people. A place of torment sinners and Paradise are described in such Apocryphas as "The Vision of the Apostle Paul", "Walking of the Virgin by Flour", "Questions and Answers of St. Athanasius to the Antiochus". In the analytical part of the publication the author systemizes data about the editions of the apocryphal works and gives information about the manuscripts in which the data revision submitted. The publication contains the translation of the Apocrypha in modern Russian language.


This chapter examines how the political ideas that would come to shape the civil rights movement in America were fomented and sometimes nearly thwarted by focusing on the many visual encounters with the dead and disfigured body of Emmett Till—some in the flesh, some mediated by photography. The chapter analyzes how the decision of Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett Till's mother, to have an open-casket funeral for her son made possible the wide-scale circulation of photographs of his body. An examination of the courtroom in which Till's murderers were tried makes clear the paradoxical uses of his image. This use demonstrates that the political utility of seeing another's disfigured body lies in recognizing that the violence enacted upon the Other is also violence enacted upon the Self. The chapter offers a psychoanalytic and deconstructionist interpretation of recognition, which is figured as a central project in the struggle for black liberation and civil rights.


W. T. Stead ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 135-164
Author(s):  
Stewart J. Brown

From the 1880s, W. T. Stead became increasingly interested in spiritualism and telepathy, believing paranormal communications provided proof of an afterlife and support for biblical accounts of angels, spirits, and miracles. Convinced that he possessed paranormal powers, he practiced automatic writing as a form of communication with the spirits of the dead. From 1893 to 1897, he edited the journal Borderland, aimed at promoting and popularizing occult studies. His Letters from Julia, first published in 1897 and claiming to be messages from the afterlife, became an international bestseller. For Stead, the Christian revival movement of 1904–5 was infused with elements of spiritualism and telepathy, and he was drawn to psychological views of religious experience. His ‘Julia’s Bureau’, formed in 1909, was meant to help individuals communicate with the spirits of the dead. While many were critical, Stead embraced spiritualism as supporting religious belief in an increasingly sceptical and secular era.


2021 ◽  
Vol 137 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-382
Author(s):  
E. Michael Gerli

Abstract Exemplum XI of Don Juan Manuel’s Libro del Conde Lucanor (“De lo que contesçió a un deán de Sanctiago con don Yllán, el grand maestro de Toledo”, ca. 1331‒1335) relates the encounter of Don Yllán de Toledo, a learnèd necromancer, and the ambitious Dean of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Exemplum XI is one of the best known and most celebrated stories in the book for its seemingly preternatural turn in the plot’s action and the characters’ visit to the Other World. The article seeks to identify Don Yllán with Archbishop Julian of Toledo (642‒690), author of the Prognosticon futuri saeculi (687), an important theological tract that circulated widely during the Middle Ages and that served as the basis for the doctrine of Purgatory. The Prognosticon contains illustrative anecdotes of dialogs with the dead and journeys to and from the Other World. As such, it endowed Julian with the legendary reputation of necromancer and probably served as inspiration for Don Juan Manuel’s Exemplum XI of El Conde Lucanor.


2002 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Ann Macy Roth ◽  
Catharine H. Roehrig

Four mud-bricks inscribed with spells from Chapter 151 of the Book of the Dead are often found in the burial chambers of royal and elite tombs dating from the New Kingdom. These bricks can be shown to represent the four bricks that supported women during childbirth. The use of bricks in a mortuary context is thus metaphorical, replicating the equipment of an earthly birth in order to ensure the deceased's rebirth into the other world. Such bricks may also have been used in the ‘Opening of the Mouth’ ritual, both at funerals and in temple foundation ceremonies. In connection with their role at birth, bricks also appear at the judgment a person faced after death. Like other artifacts surrounding birth in Egypt, bricks of birth had parallels in ancient Mesopotamia.


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