Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion

by Moro, Pamela; Myers, James

• ISBN13: 9780078140013
• ISBN10: 0078140013
• Edition: 8th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-09-18
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages

Summary

This comparative reader takes an anthropological approach to the study of religious beliefs, both strange and familiar. The engaging articles on all key issues related to the anthropology of religion grab the attention of students, while giving them an excellent foundation in contemporary ideas and approaches in the field. The multiple authors included in each chapter represent a range of interests, geographic foci, and ways of looking at each subject. Divided into ten chapters, this book begins with a broad view of anthropological ways of looking at religion, and moves on to some of the core topics within the subject, such as myth, ritual, and the various types of religious specialists.

Table of Contents

The Anthropological Study of Religion

Religion

Why We Became Religious and The Evolution of the Spirit World

Religious Perspectives in Anthropology

Anthropologists Versus Missionaries: The Influence of Presuppositions

Thai Buddhism and the Popularity of Amulets in Anthropological Perspective

Myth, Symbolism, and Taboo

The Study of Mythology

Nyoro Myth

Harelips and Twins: The Splitting of a Myth

The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol

Taboo

Serpent-Handling as Sacrament

Ritual

Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage

"I Bow My Head to the Ground": Creating Bodily Experience Through Initiation

Return to Wirikuta: Ritual Reversal and Symbolic Continuity on the Peyote Hunt of the Huichol Indians

Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations Among a New Guinea People

A Handmaid's Tale

Body Ritual Among the Nacirema

Shamans, Priests, and Prophets

Religious Specialists

Shamanism

Dark Side of the Shaman

Training for the Priesthood Among the Kogi of Colombia

Reflections After Waco: Millennialists and the State

Altered States of Consciousness and the Religious Use of Drugs

Trance, Possession, Shamanism, and Sex

Hypnosis and Trance Induction in the Spirit Surgeries of Brazilian Spiritist Healer-Mediums

On the Peyote Road

Ritual Enemas

The Sound of Rushing Water

The Rave: Spiritual Healing in Modern Western Subcultures

Ethnomedicine: Religion and Healing

Eyes of the Ngangas: Ethnomedicine and Power in Central African Republic

Swallowing Frogs: Anger and Illness in Northeast Brazil 249

Mothering and the Practice of "Balm" in Jamaica

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Witchcraft, Sorcery, Divination, and Magic

An Anthropological Perspective on the Witchcraze

Sorcery and Concepts of Deviance Among the Kabana, West New Britain

The Goat and the Gazelle: Witchcraft

Consulting the Poison Oracle Among the Azande

Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings

Baseball Magic

Ghosts, Souls, and Ancestors: Power of the Dead

The Real Vampire

Vodou

Death Be Not Strange

The Cremated Catholic: The Ends of a Deceased Guatemalan

Old and New Religions: The Changing Spiritual Landscape

Revitalization Movements

The Ghost Dance Religion

Cargo Cults

Urban Rastas in Kingston, Jamaica

Speaking Is Believing

Islamic Law: The Foundation of Muslim Practice and a Measure of Social and Political Change

Religion as Global Culture: Migration, Media, and Other Transnational Forces

The Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads: Veiling Practices and Muslim Women

Ritual and the Performance of Buddhist Identity Among Lao Buddhists in North America

Religious Terror and Global War

Eric Michael Mazur, and Monica Siems, Homer the Heretic and Charlie Church: Parody, Piety, and Pluralism in The Simpsons

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

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