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Ancient religions are definitely complex systems of gods, which resist our understanding. Divine names provide fundamental keys to gain access to the multiples ways gods were conceived, characterized, and organized. Among the names given to the gods many of them refer to spaces: cities, landscapes, sanctuaries, houses, cosmic elements. They reflect mental maps which need to be explored in order to gain new knowledge on both the structure of the pantheons and the human agency in the cultic dimension. By considering the intersection between naming and mapping, this book opens up new perspectives on how tradition and innovation, appropriation and creation play a role in the making of polytheistic and monotheistic religions. Far from being confined to sanctuaries, in fact, gods dwell in human environments in multiple ways. They move into imaginary spaces and explore the cosmos. By proposing a new and interdiciplinary angle of approach, which involves texts, images, spatial and archeaeological data, this book sheds light on ritual practices and representations of gods in the whole Mediterranean, from Italy to Mesopotamia, from Greece to North Africa and Egypt. Names and spaces enable to better define, differentiate, and connect gods.
Ancient religions are definitely complex systems of gods, which resist our understanding. Divine names provide fundamental keys to gain access to the multiples ways gods were conceived, characterized, and organized. Among the names given to the gods many of them refer to spaces: cities, landscapes, sanctuaries, houses, cosmic elements. They reflect mental maps which need to be explored in order to gain new knowledge on both the structure of the pantheons and the human agency in the cultic dimension. By considering the intersection between naming and mapping, this book opens up new perspectives on how tradition and innovation, appropriation and creation play a role in the making of polytheistic and monotheistic religions. Far from being confined to sanctuaries, in fact, gods dwell in human environments in multiple ways. They move into imaginary spaces and explore the cosmos. By proposing a new and interdiciplinary angle of approach, which involves texts, images, spatial and archeaeological data, this book sheds light on ritual practices and representations of gods in the whole Mediterranean, from Italy to Mesopotamia, from Greece to North Africa and Egypt. Names and spaces enable to better define, differentiate, and connect gods.
From Greece to Palmyra, Tyre or Babylon, the names of the gods, like 'Thundering Zeus', 'Three-faced Moon', 'Baal of the Force' or the enigmatic YHWH, reveal their history, family ties, fields of competence and capacity for action. Shared or specific, these names bring to light networks of gods: the Saviour gods, the Ancestral gods, the gods of a city or a family. Names tell stories about the relationship between men and gods, gods and places, places and cultures and so on. They show how gods travel and spread, how they appear and disappear, how they participate in the political, social, intellectual history of each community. Through the study of divine names, the twelve chapters of this book unfold a gallery of portraits that reveal the changing aspects of the divine throughout the ancient Mediterranean.
Divine Names are a key component in the communication between humans and gods in Antiquity. Their complexity derives not only from the impressive number of onomastic elements available to describe and target specific divine powers, but also from their capacity to be combined within distinctive configurations of gods. The volume collects 36 essays pertaining to many different contexts - Egypt, Anatolia, Levant, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome - which address the multiple functions and wide scope of divine onomastics. Scrutinized in a diachronic and comparative perspective, divine names shed light on how polytheisms and monotheisms work as complex systems of divine and human agents embedded in an historical framework. Names imply knowledge and play a decisive role in rituals; they move between cities and regions, and can be translated; they interact with images and reflect the intrinsic plurality of divine beings. This vivid exploration of divine names pays attention to the balance between tradition and innovation, flexibility and constraints, to the material and conceptual parameters of onomastic practices, to cross-cultural contexts and local idiosyncrasies, in a word to human strategies for shaping the gods through their names.
Wie wird Raum durch historische und religiöse Ansprüche auf Grundbesitz konzipiert und konstituiert? Wie wird Enteignung in sich verändernden Eigentumsordnungen umgesetzt und theoretisiert? Die Beiträge dieses Bandes befassen sich mit postkolonialen Kritiken des Grundbesitzes und bieten eine dringend benötigte Kontextualisierung der Art und Weise, wie die Geschichte des göttlichen Besitzes, des Imperiums, des Siedlerkolonialismus, der Sklaverei und der Enteignung indigener Völker die heutige Praxis des Grundbesitzes beeinflusst. Das Buch vereint dafür Perspektiven aus den Bereichen Religionswissenschaft, Geschichte, Philosophie, Rechtsgeschichte, Ökonomie und Soziologie und leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Verknüpfung von Theorie und Praxis in der Kritik zeitgenössischer Eigentumsordnungen in Europa und Nordamerika; es liefert zudem methodische Anregungen, um theoretische Diskussionen auf ein nuanciertes Verständnis der Vergangenheit zu gründen. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Explores beliefs and myths from Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, and around the Mediterranean, revealing how ancient goddesses were powerful Queens of the Heavens and Guardians of the Underworld, not passive fertility symbols • Looks at creator goddesses, sun goddesses, lunar goddesses, warrior maiden goddesses, and night goddesses, including Hathor, Asherah, Inanna, Hekate, Athena, Astarte, and Gula-Bau • Includes modern adaptations of ancient goddess magic rituals and instructions for creating divine amulets, figurines, and stones blessed with the goddesses’ powers In the most ancient cultures of our world, goddesses were seen not as passive fertility symbols but as powerful, active Queens of the Heavens who protected cities, guided the dead and dying, and oversaw all forms of rebirth and transformation. Sharing her years of research and personal exploration into ancient goddess mythology, evolution, and ritual, Vanessa Lavallée explores the animistic beliefs of our long-forgotten ancestors, especially in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, and around the Mediterranean, and shows how the Queens of the Heavens still have a vital role to play in modern spirituality. She looks at sun goddesses who were often viewed as the mothers of the gods and shows how to spiritually and magically work with the Great Mothers of the Sky. Examining maiden warrior goddesses such as Athena, Circe the sorceress, Britomartis, Dyktinna, and Aphaia from the island of Aegina, the author explains their connections to the Eagle constellation and eagle lore and reveals how to work with the Warrior goddess archetype. Looking at night goddesses, the author describes their connection to the Goat Star, the Milky Way, Death, and the Underworld and explores their star magic and healing powers, including working with Vega, Sirius, Inanna, Hekate, and Gula-Bau. Exploring lunar goddesses, their role as protectors, and their connections to the Swan and the Cygnus constellation, she looks at how to work with guardian goddesses such as Astarte, Aphrodite, and Tanit. Offering modern adaptations of ancient goddess magic rituals and tools, the author explains how to perform rituals for healing, protection, and purification and how to create divine amulets, figurines, and stones blessed with the goddesses’ powers. She also reveals how to practice astral bathing for spiritual help and guidance. Presenting initiation practices throughout to help you connect with each Queen of the Heavens, this guide to the myth, magic, and history of ancient goddesses reveals that their legacy is still spiritually alive.
'Ancient Greek and Semitic languages resorted to a large range of words to name the divine. Gods and goddesses were called by a variety of names and combinations of onomastic attributes. This broad lexicon of names is characterised by plurality and a tendency to build on different sequences of names; therefore, the Mapping Ancient Polytheisms project focuses on the process of naming the divine in order to better understand the ancient divine in terms of a plurality in the making. A fundamental rule for reading ancient divine names is to grasp them in their context - time and place, a ritual, the form of the discourse, a cultural milieu...: a deity is usually named according to a specific situation. From Artemis Eulochia to al-Lat, al-'Uzza and Manat, from Melqart to "my rock" in the biblical book of Psalms, this volume journeys between the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim and late antique magical practices, revisiting rituals, hymnic poetry, oaths of orators and philosophical prayers. While targeting different names in different contexts, the contributors draft theoretical propositions towards a dynamic approach of naming the divine in antiquity.'
Which dimensions of the religious experience of the ancient Greeks become tangible only if we foreground its local horizons? This book explores the manifold ways in which Greek religious beliefs and practices are encoded in and communicate with various local environments. Its individual chapters explore 'the local' in its different forms and formulations. Besides the polis perspective, they include numerous other places and locations above and below the polis-level as well as those fully or largely independent of the city-state. Overall, the local emerges as a relational concept that changes together with our understanding of the general or universal forces as they shape ancient Greek religion. The unity and diversity of ancient Greek religion becomes tangible in the manifold ways in which localizing and generalizing forces interact with each other at different times and in different places across the ancient Greek world.
From even before the time of Alexander the Great, the Greek gods spread throughout the Mediterranean, carried by settlers and largely adopted by the indigenous populations. By the third century b.c., gods bearing Greek names were worshipped everywhere from Spain to Afghanistan, with the resulting religious systems a variable blend of Greek and indigenous elements. Greek Gods Abroad examines the interaction between Greek religion and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean with which it came into contact. Robert Parker shows how Greek conventions for naming gods were extended and adapted and provides bold new insights into religious and psychological values across the Mediterranean. The result is a rich portrait of ancient polytheism as it was practiced over 600 years of history.
"A cross-cultural study of how religious practices--particular attitudes toward the dead seen in funerary rites, mortuary practices, and pilgrimage patterns-- have influenced the formation of cultural identity and social structures throughout world history"--Provided by the publisher.