Casper ter Kuile, a Harvard Divinity School fellow and cohost of the popular Harry Potter and the Sacred Text podcast, explores how we can nourish our souls by transforming common, everyday practices—yoga, reading, walking the dog—into sacred rituals that can heal our crisis of social isolation and struggle to find purpose—a message we need more than ever for our spiritual and emotional well-being in the

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This book came about upon a request made by a friend, on how to perform a demon binding operation (or evocation), which is also known by the Ancient Greek derived name "Goetia." This friend had read Crowley's 1904 co-edited publication The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King, but was struggling with the concepts and with its magical operations. At first, as I have a background in medieval and religious history, I believed that the task would be...

Caregiving practices in churches often center around listening and giving counsel, making referrals, and creating support groups for specific needs. In Caring Liturgies, Susan Marie Smith proposes that Christian ritual is both a method and a means for helping people through liminal times of transition and uncertainty, even vulnerability and fear. It teaches readers to recognize the ritual needs of fellow Christians and thus create post-baptismal rites...

The essential resource and guide to African American spirituality and traditions. This is a fabulous resource for anyone who wants to understand African American spirituality, shamanism, and indigenous spiritual practices and beliefs. It is designed to be informative while providing hands-on recipes, rituals, projects, and resources to help you become an active participant in its wonderfully soulful traditions. Inside you will find: 1. A celebration...

Offers a compelling intercultural perspective on body, art, self, and society. Reconsidering the Life of Power examines Chinese perspectives on bodily self-cultivation and explores how these can be resources for working past the ritual scripts of everyday life. In recent decades, European and American thinkers like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler have called attention to the way that people live out ritual scripts in order to be recognized by...

What are we doing when we gather around the sacraments- or when we make the same breakfast every morning? Embodying rituals, says Dru Johnson. And until we understand what we're doing and why, we won't know how these rituals work, what they mean, or how we might adapt them. In Human Rites Johnson considers the concept of ritual as seen in Scripture and its role in shaping our thinking. He colorfully illustrates both the mundane and the sacred rituals...

Explores the sometimes amusing and often profound intersection between coffee and religion. Along the way, Schenck examines the power of ritual, introduces readers to the patron saint of coffee, addresses ethical considerations for today's coffee lovers, and reveals what coffeehouse culture teaches us about the art of building a healthy, authentic community. --From publisher description.

Mrs. Loosli is old. Her husband died many years ago; her children have moved out. She spends her days alone on her farm at the foot hills of the Swiss Alps. She knits. She keeps in shape on her treadmill. She listens to the radio. She fires up the oven and fetches wood. She bakes an apple pie for herself. She spends time with her dog. A young film crew documents how each morning she braces herself against her life’s loneliness and the absurdity...