Material culture of religion

Photographic representations of the Meiji emperor began to circulate to select gov- ernment officials in 1873, but their sale in general commerce was banned in 1874. In sharp contrast, the government attempted to mandate the display of jingū taima, a Shintō amulet that bore the seal of the emperor, in every household from 1871 to 1878. This paper explores how the early photographs of the emperor and the amulets were distributed within the fluctuating context of the early Meiji years. By considering in tandem two objects that played pivotal roles in defining the public image of the little-known emperor, this article departs from previous studies in an attempt to articulate the roles of the distribution systems in construing images of the Meiji emperor.

Ornament as Argument  explores notions of ornamentation and materiality in 10th and 11th-century Christian manuscript illumination. In particular, the book investigates the function and metaphoric meaning of so-called textile pages—images evoking the weave patterns of Byzantine and Islamic silk. An analysis of a broad range of objects situates textile pages in the context of medieval reading practice, visual exegesis, and worship. Based on various theological arguments that bear on the images and the book as an object in itself, the illuminations emerge as powerful textile metaphors. These concern material approaches to scripture, textile readings of the incarnation, and the physical book as body. Ornament as Argument thus contributes to a new understanding of the vital role illuminated manuscripts played in medieval material culture.

Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM) is a biannual, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes the latest social scientific, historiographic, and ecclesiastic research on religious institutions and their practices. SHERM is dedicated to the critical and scholarly inquiry of historical and contemporary religious phenomena, both from within particular religious traditions and across cultural boundaries, so as to inform the broader socio-historical analysis of religion and its related fields of study.

In partnership with the FaithX Project, SHERM is a full, no-fee, open access academic journal, which means it publishes and publicly makes available your research without charging subscription dues or publishing fees. Whereas other open access journals still require authors to pay for making their publications available, SHERM believes in making high-quality scholarship accessible to the public while promoting the wide dissemination and visibility of your published article. Our goal is to increase the opportunity for erudite academicians to publish their work, gain a larger readership outside the confines of conventional journals, and receive citations from future researchers.

Religions are deeply, stubbornly physical and sensual. This course aims to re-imagine our understanding of religion by grounding traditions in physical encounters between human bodies and sensual objects.

Playing drums, telling stories, touching stones, creating wildly colorful altars, dancing, eating and drinking special substances are all basic religious activities. Examples will range across Native American, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish rituals and symbols, and materials will traverse fields from art history to anthropology, philosophy to poetry, science to religious studies. We will toggle between broad theories of religions and specific case studies.

Introduction to new English translation of an article by Jiří (Georg) Mordechai Langer  (Prague, 1894 - Tel Aviv, 1943): ''On the Function of the Jewish Doorpost Scroll (Mezuzah),'' first published in Freud's Imago Journal in 1928. Langer suggests an explanatory model for the ritual object in the context of compulsion neuroses and totem theory.

Errata: Note 3 should read: Elliot R. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005); Note 14 should read: Mordechai G. Langer, Die Erotik der Kabbala (Prague: Verlag Dr. Josef Flesch, 1923).

Finalist, 2021 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies

Honorable Mention, 2021 Saul Viener Book Prize, given by the American Jewish Historical Society

Reveals nostalgia as a new way of maintaining Jewish continuity

In 2007, the Museum at Eldridge Street opened at the site of a restored nineteenth-century synagogue originally built by some of the first Eastern European Jewish immigrants in New York City. Visitors to the museum are invited to stand along indentations on the floor where footprints of congregants past have worn down the soft pinewood. Here, many feel a palpable connection to the history surrounding them.

Beyond the Synagogue argues that nostalgic activities such as visiting the Museum at Eldridge Street or eating traditional Jewish foods should be understood as American Jewish religious practices. In making the case that these practices are not just cultural, but are actually religious, Rachel B. Gross asserts that many prominent sociologists and historians have mistakenly concluded that American Judaism is in decline, and she contends that they are looking in the wrong places for Jewish religious activity. If they looked outside of traditional institutions and practices, such as attendance at synagogue or membership in Jewish Community Centers, they would see that the embrace of nostalgia provides evidence of an alternative, under-appreciated way of being Jewish and of maintaining Jewish continuity.

Tracing American Jews’ involvement in a broad array of ostensibly nonreligious activities, including conducting Jewish genealogical research, visiting Jewish historic sites, purchasing books and toys that teach Jewish nostalgia to children, and seeking out traditional Jewish foods, Gross argues that these practices illuminate how many American Jews are finding and making meaning within American Judaism today.

In Clothing as Devotion in Contemporary Hinduism, Urmila Mohan explores the materiality and visuality of cloth and clothing as devotional media in contemporary Hinduism. Drawing upon ethnographic research into the global missionizing group “International Society for Krishna Consciousness” (ISKCON), she studies translocal spaces of worship, service, education, and daily life in the group’s headquarters in Mayapur and other parts of India. Focusing on the actions and values of deity dressmaking, devotee clothing and paraphernalia, Mohan shows how activities, such as embroidery and chanting, can be understood as techniques of spirituality, reverence, allegiance—and she proposes the new term “efficacious intimacy” to help understand these complex processes. The monograph brings theoretical advances in Anglo- European material culture and material religion studies into a conversation with South Asian anthropology, sociology, art history, and religion. Ultimately, it demonstrates how embodied interactions as well as representations shape ISKCON’s practitioners as devout subjects, while connecting them with the divine and the wider community.

The early ethnological works of Alfred Métraux are analysed bearing in mind his first fieldwork trip to the Chiriguano, in 1929. The paper discusses personal, academic and professional features of Métraux’s ethnological experience, the nature of the 1929 trip and his concrete relationships with the Chiriguano groups and individuals. Next, we analyse his ideas on material culture as a privileged means of understanding the synthesis of Andean, Chaco and Amazonian cultural influences. Finally, the dilemmas and limitations of his analytical approach regarding Créole cultural influence and social and cultural change are discussed. [Key words: Alfred Métraux, Chané, Chiriguano, material culture, change.]
Se analiza la etnología temprana de Alfred Métraux a la luz de su primer viaje de campo a los chiriguanos, en 1929. Se discute el perfil personal, académico y profesional de Métraux, las peculiaridades de su trabajo de campo en 1929 y sus relaciones concretas con los indígenas chiriguanos en el terreno. Se examinan luego sus ideas sobre la cultura material como campo experimental privilegiado para rastrear procesos de síntesis de influencias culturales andinas, chaqueñas y amazónicas, así también sus dilemas y límites a la hora de interpretar el factor de la influencia criolla y el proceso de cambio social y cultural en un sentido amplio. [Palabras clave: Alfred Métraux, Chané, Chiriguano, cultura material, cambio.]

Until 1993 there were conducted first excavations in what promised to be the site of one of the most important buildings of Petra, the stunning capital of the Nabataean kingdom. Its construction, whose initiation century BC, several changes, reconstructions and landslides along its more than five hundred years of operation. But despite this still unknown for certain functions for which it was designed and that, regardless of the construction elements, materials have been located just still less inscriptions that shed some light on a mystery that will try here exhibit various theories that enable closer to resolution.

Jodi Shaw theorizes the sacred in South Indian Hindu temples by maneuvering affect theory and her current ethnographic work in Cidambaram into dialogue. Shaw directs our attention to the pre-verbal and extra-linguistic elements of temple encounters in order to shape a sense of the sacred as "visceral conversations."

https://jugaad.pub/unfinished-ness-ritual-temple/

Guest contribution for the blog 'Urban-rural migration and rural revitalization in Japan' funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and hosted by Professor Cornelia Reiher from the Institue of Japanese Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. ベルリン大学日本社会学科管理のブログに、鳥取で行っている山岳信仰に関わる現場調査から得た成果やフィールドワークの現況についてくゲスト投稿. https://userblogs.fu-berlin.de/urban-rural-migration-japan/2021/10/29/guest-contribution-revitalization-attempts-of-buddhist-temples-in-the-rural-regions-of-tottori/

In the collection of Vatopediou Monastery (Mount Athos) there is a Late Byzantine vestment called by the monks the “Arabic stole” (arabikon ōmophorion). This quite unique vestment probably owes its name to two bands of embroidered Arabic inscriptions on the lower part of each end. It is one of the very few known Byzantine religious objects to feature legible Arabic inscriptions, a visible symbol of Islamic otherness juxtaposed with the standard Christian iconography. Apart from bringing into the spotlight a medieval vestment that has been overlooked by scholars, this article traces possible sources of artistic transfer through a discussion of texts and extant objects. Finally, it aims at expanding our understanding of the reception of Islamic art in Late Byzantium, a time of both political decline and cultural renewal.

The Introduction to this book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/34095644/Introduction_to_Materiality_and_the_Study_of_Religion_The_Body_of_St_Cuthbert.pdf

Material culture has emerged in recent decades as a significant theoretical concern for the study of religion. This book contributes to and evaluates this material turn, presenting thirteen chapters of new empirical research and theoretical reflection from some of the leading international scholars of material religion. Following a model for material analysis proposed in the first chapter by David Morgan, the contributors trace the life cycle of religious materiality through three phases: the production of religious objects, their classification as religious (or non-religious), and their circulation and use in material culture.

The chapters in this volume consider how objects become and cease to be sacred, how materiality can be used to contest access to public space and resources, and how religion is embodied and performed by individuals in their everyday lives. Contributors discuss the significance of the materiality of religion across different religious traditions and diverse geographical regions, paying close attention to gender, age, ethnicity, memory and politics. The volume closes with an afterword by Manuel Vásquez.

For the published version, see Adam Bursi, "Mijn poep, mijn zelf. Identiteit en religie door de lens van ontlasting," in Wie is er bang voor religie? Waarom kennis van religie belangrijk is, ed. Joas Wagemakers and Lucien van Liere (Almere: Parthenon, 2019), 246-252. Please be aware that the published and the preprint version are not 100% the same. This preprint version is deposited under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC) licence. This means that anyone may distribute, adapt, and build upon the work for non-commercial purposes, subject to full attribution.

Drawing upon the notions of nature as a community of other-than-human persons and of relational cosmos, the overarching aim of the CAMNES webinar is to discuss and highlight different ways of understandings the relationships occurred between human beings, animals, plants and the land in the religious life of ancient societies. During the online conversation, scholars of different disciplines (archaeology, anthropology, iconography, philology, history of religions) will explore the perception of nature and its other-than-human inhabitants and readdress some notions about nature, personhood/agency, divinity/sacrality, and materiality/spirituality in religions and cosmologies of ancient communities inhabiting both the Old and the New World. Especially we wish to pinpoint those beliefs, representations and practices that express relational and non-binary ontologies, epistemologies, cosmologies, according to which nature is a place of agency, relationality and spirituality, and that challenge dualities such as immanent/transcendent, material/spiritual, body/soul, disclosing a multiplicity of relationships. In this line, the conference aims at promoting starkly inter-disciplinary and religious-anthropological approaches to definitions of ‘sacred nature’ that will take on the categories of animism, totemism, analogism and naturalism as analytical concepts that can enhance the investigation of human-environmental relations in the ancient religious conceptions, representations and practices. Finally, in order to uncover and further explain the connection between nature, the sacred, and the materiality of ancient religions interpreted as embodied experiences, particular emphasis will be devoted to those researches finalized at answering questions related to how nature materialized cosmological and spiritual essences.
Free Online webinar ... limited spot available .. You can enroll at the following link: https://camnes.it/sacred-nature-workshop

Accumulations of pot shards, many of them from common vessels and deposited below surface, are ubiquitous phenomena in Greco-Roman sacred places. The modern denomination of this pottery in fills, terraces, or pits, as 'sacred waste' falls short, since it implies its use- and meaninglessness after deposition. The first part of the article sets out to discuss the life cycle, transformation and potential agency of these ceramic remains in order to reveal their continuous impact on establishing the places as sacred places through their embeddedness in religious practices. Drawing on examples from Archaic to Roman Imperial times I explore in the second part the production, consumption and deposition of the pottery objects as elements in the chain of interactions with human agents. I argue that very mundane, even invisible, pieces of pottery, due to deposition, establish memories and contribute to the religious significance of the places over generations.

[Introductory essay in:] "Sikh Heritage: Ethos and Relics" by Bhayee Sikandar Singh and Roopinder Singh. (New Delhi: Rupa)

    This book's two authors have worked in a unique partnership that transcended their individual accomplishments. Bhayee Sikandar Singh is co-editor of the magazine Nishaan. His position within the cultural life of the Punjab gives him unprecedented access. His upbringing, training and interest give him a unique insight into the subject that he has tackled in this book.
    Roopinder Singh is deputy editor of the 131-year-old daily newspaper, The Tribune, which is the largest circulated English newspaper in North India. A respected editor, scholar, journalist and an accomplished photographer, he is author of many books, including a critically-acclaimed volume on the founder of the Sikh religion, Guru Nanak Dev.
    Together, they worked for five years and combined their different kinds of expertise to write with profound authority and eloquence. As a result of this successful teamwork the general reader--even those readers with little awareness of Sikh traditions-will surely feel the powerful appeal of being led along the very same paths trodden by the founding Gurus of Sikhism.
    The immediacy and presence of history is all around us as we read this book, particularly because history inheres within the Sikh 'relics' or heirloom heritage objects from throughout the Punjab and beyond, in ways that few, if any other, authors could more authentically describe.
    As the authors note, many of the families who own the heirloom artefacts most directly associated with the earliest founders of the Sikh faith have made them available for publication here for the first time, for which historians and the public owe a debt of gratitude to these families, to the authors and to the many others who have helped bring this book to print.

Decoration on ceramics can be viewed as internal history, as the functional equivalent of the Anabaptist annalistic record. A significant part of the large Anabaptist archive survived in the so-called chronicles (240 are known today) that functioned as history books and have been transmitted to every new generation. As a result of the aggressive Habsburg policy against religious minorities, the Anabaptist communal organization was dissolved in 1685. A sudden decrease in written record followed. Around this date, the continental chinoiserie style appeared on Anabaptist ceramics. After careful visual analysis, these ornaments become narratives alongside the chronicles. Ceramics helped to keep the collective memory and Anabaptist identity alive. Both the texts and the ceramics were part of the same successful strategy of identity preservation; this rich heritage held together the Anabaptist communes from the sixteenth century to the present.

Christianity is basically understood as the scriptural religion; a religion, which presents a book, the contents of which are made known by preaching and listening. The truth of Christianity – and of every other ‘book religion’ as well – can therefore only be found by deciphering the Holy Scriptures, so the religious experts insist.
Besides holy texts, most religions, however, also offer an extremely rich visual cosmos, consisting of architectural works, sculptures, statues and paintings of saints, prophets, teachers, demons, angels, mythical animals, monsters, gods and goddesses.
It may be a truism that religion expresses itself in texts, images and actions, but the scholarly treatment of religions has exclusively (and astonishingly) privileged the study of texts over a long period of time.
If we regard Christianity not exclusively as a text-based but also as an image-based religion, it is worth asking how the visual universe was perceived and transformed wherever it was transmitted to non-Western cultures by missionaries.

The human body serves as a symbolic bridge between communities of the living and the divine. This is clearly evident in mythological stories that recount the creation of humans by deities within ancient and contemporaneous societies across a very broad geographical environment.
In certain circumstances, parts of selected humans can become an ideal proxy for connecting with the supernatural, as demonstrated by the cult of human skulls in Near Eastern Neolithic communities, as well as the cult of relics of Christian saints from the early Christian era.
To go deeper into this topic, this volume aims to undertake a cross-cultural investigation of the role played by both humans and human remains in creating forms of relationality with the divine in antiquity. Such an approach will highlight how the human body can be envisioned as part of a broader materialization of religious beliefs that is based on connecting different realms of materiality in the perception of the supernatural by communities of the living.

Summary. Seven small tiles of green porphyry
and one of serpentine have been found in Sigtuna.
They are likely to have been used in portable
altars. This high number is unique in Scandinavia
and can only be compared with six porphyry
tiles found in Hedeby/Schleswig.
Red, black and green porphyry was prized by
the emperors in Rome and Constantinople and
later by Early Medieval monarchs. Green porphyry
was quarried in Greece. These quarries
were not in use during the Early Middle Ages.
Instead, the material was scavenged from the remains
of Roman buildings and reused e.g. to
cover the reliquaries in portable altars.
The Sigtuna tiles probably came from the ruins of
Cologne.
The Sigtuna tiles are particularly interesting
since they were not found in Medieval churches,
but when excavating the town plots. They appear
in contexts dated to the 11th and 12th centuries.
The earliest finds date from a time when there is
no archaeological or written evidence of any
churches, even wooden ones, in Sigtuna. It is
therefore suggested here that Christian cult then
took place in private banqueting halls, which
seem to have stood at the far end of each of the
more than hundred town plots in Sigtuna.
The first wooden churches were probably
built c. 1060 when a bishopric was established in
Sigtuna. About 1100 the building of six or seven
Romanesque stone churches commenced. They
are among the oldest masonry structures in all of
Sweden. Except for the cathedral in the middle
of town, all churches were built along a new
street, parallel to and north of the main street and
the settlement area. Sigtuna’s church topography
reflects an intention to create a sacred townscape
for ceremonial processions where both King and
God were praised. It also reflects the idea of the
holy and heavenly city.

Mainly we study the Iberian phase (fourth century BC) of one of the caves in the Sierra de los Hermanillos, identified as a sanctuary-cave, which is a new thing in Murcia, although these caves are well known in the surrounding areas of Alicante and Valencia.

A previous use of the cave is represented by Chalcolithic multiple burials, with objects such as fragments of plaster vessels.

Principalmente se estudia la fase ibérica (s. IV a.C.) de una de las cuevas de la Sierra de los Hermanillos, que se identifica como una cueva-santuario, lo que resulta novedoso en Murcia, aunque estas cuevas son bien conocidas en las zonas limítrofes de Alicante y Valencia.

Un uso previo de la cueva corresponde a enterramientos múltiples del Calcolítico, con objetos como fragmentos de vasos de yeso.

A SENSE OF MIGRATION
Place, Materiality and Religion in exhibitions at the Danish Immigrant Museum and the Museum of Copenhagen
This thesis explores both how place, the museums role as a social agent, and religion are relevant for the production of migration at the Danish Immigration Museum (2012) and the exhibition Becoming a Copenhagener (2012) at the Museum of Copenhagen.
The study is based on a display analysis using sensory ethnography, in order to explore how the exhibitions produce aesthetic and transformative experiences. This analysis is related to interviews with relevant museum professionals and the directors of the museums, and to a selection of written material by or about the museums.
As a general feature of the analysis of the thesis, the concept of materiality is used as a way of approaching the empirical material: In a topographical sense to explore the museums' relations to place, but also to explore how the exhibitions produce sensual and aesthetic experiences to communicate a highly politicized subject.
Immigration has been a general topic in the public Danish debates on cultural and value-based policies since the late 1990s. These debates particularly contextualized the immigrant as the 'religious other'.
The display of immigration as well as religion has generally not been subject to museal interest in Denmark. The opening of the two exhibitions therefore marks not only a turning point for Danish museums, but also tap directly into a highly policized field. The analysis of the thesis shows that the scaling of immigration, the production of aesthetic and epistemological experiences, and the production of religion as either an acceptable or problematic category, are applied as means to differentiate the concept of migration and distance the exhibition from the public debates on immigration.
Building on the study of the two museums exhibitions, the thesis point at an absence of the display of religion in the production of new Danish history at museums in general. I argue that this absence is cause by the protestant-secular logic that dominates the practices and traditions of the museums, and that this logic considers religion to be irrelevant in the public sphere and a potential threat for the founding elements of society. The mutual relation between museum and society have already been the object of study in major museological works, that point to museums being co-producers of the social and scientific categories and identities that we take for granted: nations, cities, women - as well as migrants and religion. Thus, the thesis argue, the museums' production of (material) religion is a very relevant - but sparsely explored field - from the perspective of sociology of religion.

Recently there has been considerable discussion on the concept of 'artificial life'. The very idea that life can be imagined outside of the body unsettles our habitual way of thinking. It opens up horizons of post-biological or extra-bodily life. Yet this notion would not have seemed so strange in ancient China, for the early Chinese idea of life is anything but bodycentric. For the ancient Chinese, the essence of life, far from being confined to the body, resided in the breath or qi, vital energy that permeates both the cosmos and the human body. Concentration of qi creates life; its dissipation spells death. So in the early Chinese context,
the line between 'artificial' and 'natural' was elusive. This view of life and the cosmos, as we shall see, informs the fundamental nature of the hu.

In an attempt to assist postgraduate students in the production of new knowledge about religion and religions David Chidester (2013:5-7) has offered for more than a decade a compulsory course on critical concepts at the University of Cape Town. In order to produce 'new' or 'original' knowledge in religious studies students are encouraged to 'look at something new in an old way' or to 'look at something old in a new way', but are simultaneously advised that a mere 'looking at' religious phenomena would not produce new knowledge. New knowledge in religious studies, Chidester (2013:6) is convinced, would be produced, when our analyses, arguments, interpretations and explanations are 'theoretically informed and methodologically rigorous'.
In this presentation I will take a critical 'look at' Chidester's theoretically informed use of 'the fetish' as a concept that has guided his own search for new knowledge on religion and religions, select case studies from his oeuvre to illustrate his use and application of this analytical term and identify a tension in his work that I will argue need further elaboration.

Regarding traditional beekeeping in Crete, based on the beekeeping methods and hives that have been recorded in recent centuries, we can distinguish two areas: central-western Crete, where vertical hives with movable combs were in use, and the eastern part of the island, where a horizontal hive with fixed combs was used. Hives with movable combs (or top-bar hives) were constructed from various materials such as clay, woven wicker branches or more rarely from wooden boards. The clay ones were the most widely used and were usually constructed by travelling potters, who organized artisanal groups (guilds) and travelled around the island selling their wares. The wicker top-bar hives, which usually did not have a base, were used in western Crete, mostly for migratory beekeeping, while the rectangular wooden top-bar hives were used only rarely in certain areas such as Sphakia. In eastern Crete a horizontal, ceramic beehive open at both ends with a truncated-cone shape was in use, usually placed in rows. All the hives in Crete were covered with various materials for protection from the elements and were often placed inside bee enclosures. The knowledge of traditional Cretan beekeepers regarding bees was limited. Despite this fact, however, the users of hives with movable combs practiced beekeeping in the most rational and effective way that has been recorded prior to the invention of the modern hive. In doing so, they executed a series of beekeeping tasks that were not possible for users of other types of hive. But even the beekeepers in the eastern part of the island, where a horizontal hive with fixed combs was used, applied certain unique methods, which are a testament to the advanced level of beekeeping knowledge they possessed.

This chapter examines Haitian Vodou epistemologies and African-centered ways of knowing in Edwidge Danticat’s work, focusing on her collection of short stories Krik? Krak! (1995) and her travelogue narrative, After the Dance: A Walk through Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti (2002). Using Jacob K. Olúpọ̀nà’s (2011) theoretical lens of indigenous hermeneutics, I analyze her work as Africana religious texts drawing from the fields of Black Atlantic religion, visual art, and material culture.

The Haitian expression andaki or pale daki (“to speak andaki”) signals a secret code to discuss difficult or taboo subjects. I assert that Danticat’s representations of Vodou serve as pale daki, coded messages for readers to interpret Haitian mythic archetypes. Danticat thus emerges as what Nadège T. Clitandre (2018) calls the “daughter of a [divine] voice,” invoking powerful female ancestors who represent a quilted matriarchy of voices. Additionally, the presence of nature features prominently in Danticat’s work, as she unearths how environmental degradation is both a secular and sacred matter of grave concern. Her characters embody the presence of the lwa (spirits), zansèt yo (the ancestors), rasin yo (their roots), and anviwònman sakre (the sacred environment). I examine sacred space as hallowed ground and ritual objects as divine entities in six sites, including natural phenomena (forest, sea, sky, river) and human crafted sites/entities (stone, cemetery). Each sacred space is associated with a divine energy, and their respective lwa serve as our narrative guides. Ultimately, these sacred sites and mythic archetypes of spirit further illuminate the vibrant religious portraits of Danticat’s works.

The personal perspectives, professional interests, and visual models that influenced Horatio Greenough in crafting paired busts of “Lucifer” (ca. 1841–42) and “Christ” (ca. 1845) reveal both the aesthetic concerns of his era and the transnational nature of his sculptural enterprise. Examining links between objects and their beholders and the fraught relationships between sculpture and spirituality, past and present, in the United States, this article highlights Greenough’s ambitious efforts to produce a spiritual spectacle through this little-studied pair. As later iconoclastic reactions to Greenough’s busts also suggest, particularly in America embodied images possess the power to disturb or enthrall.

What role do objects play in crafting the religions of Southeast Asia and shaping the experiences of believers? The Spirit of Things explores religious materiality in a region marked by shifting boundaries, multiple beliefs, and trends toward religious exclusivism. While most studies of religion in Southeast Asia focus on doctrines or governmental policy, contributors to this volume recognize that religious "things"—statues, talismans, garments, even sacred automobiles—are crucial to worship, and that they have a broad impact on social cohesion. By engaging with `religion in its tangible forms, faith communities reiterate their essential narratives, allegiances, and boundaries, and negotiate their coexistence with competing belief systems. These ethnographic and historical studies of Southeast Asia furnish us with intriguing perspectives on wider debates concerning the challenges of secularization, pluralism, and interfaith interactions around the world.

In this volume, contributors offer rich ethnographic analyses of religious practices in the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Burma that examine the roles materiality plays in the religious lives of Southeast Asians. These essays demonstrate that religious materials are embedded in a host of practices that enable the faithful to negotiate the often tumultuous experience of living amid other believers. What we see is that the call for plurality, often initiated by government, increases the importance of religious objects, as they are the means by which the distinctiveness of a particular faith is “fenced” in a field of competing religious discourses. This project is called “the spirit of things” to evoke both the “aura” of religious objects and the power of material things to manifest “that which is fundamental” about faith and belief.

This article explores some of the myriad connections between geometric visuals, magic, and altered states of consciousness, more specifically looking at the colocation of geometric visuals and experiences of intermediary beings. The main focus here is on how geometric visuals relate to the consciousness experiments and magical practices of American author William Burroughs (1914–1997) and his Swiss-English collaborator Brion Gysin (1916–1986). Such an analysis will also dive into the broader intellectual currents that influenced Burroughs and Gysin’s uses of geometry, yielding more abstract conceptions of how geometry relates to altered states of consciousness and intermediary beings. Furthermore, understanding how geometric manipulation of the mind works has important consequences for multiple fields outside of the history of esotericism, including market-oriented disciplines like architecture and industrial design. As such, this essay proposes that the historical study of esotericism can promote and conduct itself as an interdisciplinary space that communicates the value of its data to market-oriented fields through “material approaches” to religion à la Birgit Meyer.