Encyclopedia of Religion

entrance to thousands of churches throughout Mexico, one can buy prayers and spells “To Most Holy Death.” The most common of the ...

from the balance of evidence found among “primitives,” or what he had no hesitation in describing as “the lowest races of mankin ...

ed by his theology professor, Johann Konrad Dannhauer (1603–1666), who, among other things, deepened Spener’s lifelong interest ...

LIFE AND WORKS. On July 27, 1656, Bento de Spinoza was excommunicated by the ma’amad (ruling board) of the Am- sterdam Jewish co ...

have been his association with university life, where all in- struction was in Latin, that first moved Spinoza to use the Latini ...

ating, a rumor gained currency that I had in the press a book concerning God, wherein I endeavored to show there is no God” (Let ...

which is in itself and is conceived through itself. Because sub- stances having different attributes have nothing in common with ...

Theologico-Politicus, and as Isreal has emphsized, “no one else rivalled his notoriety as chief challenger of revealed religion” ...

his famous formulation that freedom of thought reached a limit only when it posed a “clear and present danger” appears to have b ...

Speculum Spinozanum, 1677–1977, edited by Siegfried Hessing (London, 1977); Spinoza: New Perspectives, edited by Robert W. Shaha ...

sirable, and the spirits are generally thought to be sympathet- ic. Peripheral possession does not support, at least directly, t ...

of deprivation include ideational and perceptual restrictions, blindfolding, and isolation. Fasting and other dietary restric- t ...

erally thought to exist by anyone other than the paranoid. In the second instance, the ancestral spirits are generally rec- ogni ...

spirit possession. (Aldous Huxley gives a particularly readable account of contagious possession in The Devils of Loudun, 1952, ...

on the part of well-known mythic and legendary figures. The ceremonies are often accompanied by sacrifices and commu- nal meals, ...

and institutionalized possessions, differ in each individual case. Generalizations tend to become overgeneralizations. The spiri ...

Caciola, Nancy. “Mystics, Demoniacs, and the Physiology of Spir- it Possession in Medieval Europe.” Comparative Studies in Socie ...

hosts of African and syncretic spirits found in vodou, San- tería, and Candomblé in all regions of the African diaspora (Brown, ...

is speaking. As a model of subjectivity it is the instrumentali- ty rather than the autonomy that marks the possessed per- son’s ...

with the assumption that an actor wills herself into a perfor- mative mode. Most possession traditions have rigorous tests with ...