Using data from the Survey of Professional Forecasters, we observe that a large fraction of analysts’ expectations about future economic growth is not due to technology or other shocks to ...fundamentals measured by the business cycle literature. We find that these unexplained changes in forecast revisions predict significant boom-bust dynamics in the key macroeconomic aggregates. We offer a novel theory where boom-bust dynamics stem from expectation shocks orthogonal to fundamentals.
•We analyze revisions of analysts’ expectations about future economic growth.•About half of these revisions are not due to changes in measured fundamentals.•This unexplained component predicts boom-bust dynamics in economic activity.•We build a theory with financial frictions and self-fulfilling expectation changes.•Boom-bust dynamics stem from expectation shocks orthogonal to fundamentals.
The importance of worship for the Pentecostal church can hardly be overstated, and the worship practices of the global church have been altered significantly by the influence of the Pentecostal ...movement. This article will address the biblical and theological foundations of Spirit-filled worship, focusing particularly on the role of the Holy Spirit in worship, through a literary-theological interpretation of two key biblical texts—John 4:20-26 and Ephesians 5:18-20. The study finds that from the viewpoint of these texts, the Holy Spirit is an indispensable element in Christian worship and is deeply active in the practices of worship.
The Self Possessed Smith, Frederick
2006., 20061205, 2006, 2006-11-14
eBook
The Self Possessed is a multifaceted, diachronic study reconsidering the very nature of religion in South Asia, the culmination of years of intensive research. Frederick M. Smith proposes that ...positive oracular or ecstatic possession is the most common form of spiritual expression in India, and that it has been linguistically distinguished from negative, disease-producing possession for thousands of years. In South Asia possession has always been broader and more diverse than in the West, where it has been almost entirely characterized as "demonic." At best, spirit possession has been regarded as a medically treatable psychological ailment and at worst, as a condition that requires exorcism or punishment. In South (and East) Asia, ecstatic or oracular possession has been widely practiced throughout history, occupying a position of respect in early and recent Hinduism and in certain forms of Buddhism. Smith analyzes Indic literature from all ages-the earliest Vedic texts; the Mahabharata; Buddhist, Jain, Yogic, Ayurvedic, and Tantric texts; Hindu devotional literature; Sanskrit drama and narrative literature; and more than a hundred ethnographies. He identifies several forms of possession, including festival, initiatory, oracular, and devotional, and demonstrates their multivocality within a wide range of sects and religious identities. Possession is common among both men and women and is practiced by members of all social and caste strata. Smith theorizes on notions of embodiment, disembodiment, selfhood, personal identity, and other key issues through the prism of possession, redefining the relationship between Sanskritic and vernacular culture and between elite and popular religion. Smith's study is also comparative, introducing considerable material from Tibet, classical China, modern America, and elsewhere. Brilliant and persuasive, The Self Possessed provides careful new translations of rare material and is the most comprehensive study in any language on this subject.
This paper summarizes Spirit Rover operations in the Columbia Hills, Gusev crater, from sol 1410 (start of the third winter campaign) to sol 2169 (when extrication attempts from Troy stopped to ...winterize the vehicle) and provides an overview of key scientific results. The third winter campaign took advantage of parking on the northern slope of Home Plate to tilt the vehicle to track the sun and thus survive the winter season. With the onset of the spring season, Spirit began circumnavigating Home Plate on the way to volcanic constructs located to the south. Silica‐rich nodular rocks were discovered in the valley to the north of Home Plate. The inoperative right front wheel drive actuator made climbing soil‐covered slopes problematical and led to high slip conditions and extensive excavation of subsurface soils. This situation led to embedding of Spirit on the side of a shallow, 8 m wide crater in Troy, located in the valley to the west of Home Plate. Examination of the materials exposed during embedding showed that Spirit broke through a thin sulfate‐rich soil crust and became embedded in an underlying mix of sulfate and basaltic sands. The nature of the crust is consistent with dissolution and precipitation in the presence of soil water within a few centimeters of the surface. The observation that sulfate‐rich deposits in Troy and elsewhere in the Columbia Hills are just beneath the surface implies that these processes have operated on a continuing basis on Mars as landforms have been shaped by erosion and deposition.
A broadly interdisciplinary study of the pervasive secrecy in America cultural, political, and religious discourse. The occult has traditionally been understood as the study of secrets of the ...practice of mysticism or magic. This book broadens our understanding of the occult by treating it as a rhetorical phenomenon tied to language and symbols and more central to American culture than is commonly assumed. Joshua Gunn approaches the occult as an idiom, examining the ways in which acts of textual criticism and interpretation are occultic in nature, as evident in practices as diverse as academic scholarship, Freemasonry, and television production. Gunn probes, for instance, the ways in which jargon employed by various social and professional groups creates barriers and fosters secrecy. From the theory wars of cultural studies to the Satanic Panic that swept the national mass media in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Gunn shows how the paradox of a hidden, buried, or secret meaning that cannot be expressed in language appears time and time again in Western culture. These recurrent patterns, Gunn argues, arise from a generalized, popular anxiety about language and its limitations. Ultimately, Modern Occult Rhetoric demonstrates the indissoluble relationship between language, secrecy, and publicity, and the centrality of suspicion in our daily lives.  
”Focusing on treating the spirit (神)” is an important principle in acupuncture and moxibustion. It is a unique psychosomatic therapy involving the doctor and the patient, which includes regulating ...the spirit and the body. Traditional Chinese medicine attaches great importance to it. Focusing on treating the spirit is also a component of the standards of medical ethics. Only when doctors have noble medical ethics can they achieve clinical treatment of the mind and give full play to their skills to cure diseases. Focusing on treating the spirit runs through the entire clinical process of acupuncture and moxibustion. Before the treatment, it is necessary to focus on the spirit to distinguish the spirit and qi. During the treatment, attention should be paid to the mind to regulate the spirit and qi. It is the premise of clinical diagnosis and treatment of acupuncture and moxibustion and the key to the curative effect. Focusing on treating the spirit is also in the realm of doctor-patient double treatment, which requires doctor-patient communication before treatment and the preservation of the body and spirit after treatment. Therefore, concentration of the mind is the key to acupuncture and moxibustion treatment.
This book offers an examination of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive occult iconoclasts. Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) was a study in contradictions. He was born into a Fundamentalist ...Christian family, and then he was educated at Cambridge where he experienced both an intellectual liberation from his religious upbringing and a psychic awakening that led him into the study of magic. He was a stock figure in the tabloid press of his day, vilified during his life as a traitor, drug addict and debaucher; yet he became known as perhaps the most influential thinker in contemporary esotericism. The practice of the occult arts was understood in the light of contemporary developments in psychology, and its advocates, such as William Butler Yeats, were among the intellectual avant-garde of the modernist project. Crowley took a more drastic step and declared himself the revelator of a new age of individualism. Crowley's occult bricolage, Magick, was a thoroughly eclectic combination of spiritual exercises drawing from Western European ceremonial magical traditions as practiced in the nineteenth-century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley also pioneered in his inclusion of Indic sources for the parallel disciplines of meditation and yoga. The summa of this journey of self-liberation was harnessing the power of sexuality as a magical discipline, an instance of the “sacrilization of the self” as practiced in his co-masonic magical group, the Ordo Templi Orientis. The religion Crowley created, Thelema, legitimated his role as a charismatic revelator and herald of a new age of freedom under the law of “Do what thou wilt.” The influence of Aleister Crowley is not only to be found in contemporary esotericism—he was, for instance, a major influence on Gerald Gardner and the modern witchcraft movement—but can also be seen in the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in many forms of alternative spirituality and popular culture. This book provides insight into Crowley's critical role in the study of western esotericism, new religious movements, and sexuality.
Currently, the South African Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (BELA) (Clause 37) replaces and adds provision to the South African Schools Act including regulating homeschooling. Home education ...research found that more and more parents appreciate/opt for the benefits of faith-based homeschooling, in this case, the Christian faith. The main reason is that since COVID-19, many Christian parents had the urge to preserve their Christian principles, Christian worldview, and quality education by opting for Christian faith-based homeschooling. This is a qualitative study and the purpose of this research was to determine which driving forces propel the choice of parents and their children to do homeschooling. The findings suggest that Christian faith-based homeschooling is a process facilitated by a triadic relationship consisting of the pastor, the parent/s, and the learner/s. In addition, based on the factors identified, their faith is paramount as they believe/think they are led by the Holy Spirit. Recommendations are offered regarding Christian faith-based homeschooling.
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