Was vom Himmel kommt Gösta Gabriel, Brit Kärger, Annette Zgoll, Christian Zgoll
2021
eBook
In antiken Mythen ist der Himmel ein kosmischer und numinoser Raum. Was von dort kommt, besitzt herausragende Bedeutung. Der vom Collegium Mythologicum vorgelegte transdisziplinäre Band katalogisiert ...mythische Stoffe, die in antiken Kulturen des Mittelmeers und des Vorderen Orients von diesem Transfer berichten. Er greift dabei auf die von Christian Zgoll etablierte allgemeine und komparative Stoffwissenschaft (Hylistik) zurück und führt auf dieser gemeinsamen methodischen Basis die einzelnen Befunde systematisch und vergleichend zusammen. Hierdurch erschließt der Band ein reiches Spektrum an Mythen unterschiedlicher Kulturen in Form von Einzelstudien, Überblicksbeiträgen und weiterführenden Auswertungen. Behandelt werden u. a. das Herabbringen des ersten Tempels durch die mesopotamische Göttin Innana, der Feuerraub des Prometheus, der Transfer des Zauberbuchs des ägyptischen Thoth, der Sturz der Krankheitsdämonin Lamaštu sowie Jupiters Gabe des Unterpfands der römischen Weltherrschaft. Im Ergebnis erweisen sich die Transfers vom Himmel herab als kognitiv-strukturierend, legitimierend und affektiv-stabilisierend und letztendlich als wichtige mythisch-narrative Beschreibungen für die Numinosität dessen, was vom Himmel kommt.
Mahasu is the joint name of four gods whose influence is widespread throughout the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Like other deities in the Western Himalayas, they are regarded as ...royal gods who rule over territories and people. This book traces changes in faith and practices surrounding the Mahasu brothers, and shows how the locals understand these changes by emphasizing the dominant role of humans in the decisions of the gods. The locals are also constantly testing the authenticity of the human mediumship. Thus, the book presents the claim that the gap between local conceptions of divinity and the perceptions of anthropologists regarding gods may be narrower than we think.
The Biography of a God: Mahasu in the Himalayas is based on ethnographic research, resulting in an important contribution to the study of Indian village deities, Himalayan Hinduism, lived Hinduism, and the anthropology of religion.
In recent years, the British Army has begun to refer to its soldiers as ‘warriors’. This thesis asks as its central research question whether the term is appropriate. It explores the types of warrior ...represented in academia and examines the idea of ‘Warrior Ethos’; draws on concepts from evolutionary and social psychology; considers the warrior archetype; and discusses how these inform recent thinking about modern day warriorship. To see how the notion informs and reflects contemporary British Army martial identity, the views of soldiers, primary research collected through discussion groups, are documented; the opinions of a cohort of infantry Commanding Officers, offered by questionnaire, are recorded; and, finally, the thoughts of a number of senior officers, obtained through interview, are collated. In total over one hundred serving personnel were canvassed for their perception of martial identity and their sense of the word warrior. This is the first time that this issue has been examined in depth. The thesis makes an original contribution through extensive primary research with serving British soldiers in the immediate aftermath of recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. My argument is that the term warrior whilst superficially attractive, has a complex and multifaceted character which makes its adoption problematic. Other conclusions are that there is no agreed definition of a warrior in academia, in mythology, across armies, within the British Army or amongst British soldiers, and that the term can be simultaneously meaningful and inspiring but also banal or misleading. Further, it lacks authenticity, and in its current guise is an imposition rather than an organic reflection of British army culture. Accordingly it doesn’t resonate with British soldiers, and so is unlikely to gain purchase. This would not be the worst outcome: a more worrying consequence is a selective reading of the word that creates momentum toward behaviour in small groups or more broadly, that is contrary to army norms, the culture of the British Army and societal expectation.
What were the cosmogonies, mythologies, rituals and ontological beliefs of the LateUpper Palaeolithic peoples who returned to the 'British' peninsula when the ice sheets began to retreat, some 15,000 ...years ago? More specifically, can we come to understand how they conceived of place, landscape and the natural world? Those working within the field of archaeology are rightly circumspect, but artistic practitioners, I suggest, are not bound in the same way by material evidence, and can consequently venture more freely. What, therefore, can speculative creative writing say about the deep past, and how can it bridge the gulf of time between us and our ancestral selves? North of Here is a 'Creative Geographies: Writing Place' project in the form of a long poem; a dialogic and visionary narrative that imbricates both ancient and contemporary ways of being. Drawing on environmental science, archaeology and the anthropology of circumpolar Indigenous cultures, it explores the human and other-thanhuman in terms of shared personhood, and the values of respect and reciprocity that govern non-hierarchical 'social universes'. In particular, it examines consent-seeking and transgression in hunting, and the role of 'special' animals such as the bear in cosmogonic beliefs. This thesis will document the evolution of my interest in landscape and otherthan-human studies leading up to this PhD project. It will primarily contextualise the poem itself within anthropological and mythological literature, and therefore argue that the creative writer can meaningfully engage with cross-disciplinary subject matter. Moreover, in light of the so-called 'creative turn' in the humanities, it will suggest ways in which creative writers can contribute to interdisciplinary knowledge exchange.
The articles assembled in this volume present an important selection of Professor Jao Tsung-i’s research in the field of the early Chinese intellectual tradition, especially as it concerns the human ...condition. Whether his focus is on myth, religion, philosophy or morals, Jao consistently aims to describe how the series of developments broadly associated with the Axial Age unfolded in China. He is particularly interested in showing how early China had developed its own notion of transcendence as well as a system of prediction and morals that enabled man to act autonomously, without recourse to divine providence.
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