Lost Saints

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-139
Author(s):  
Anna Lutkajtis

Mushrooms containing psilocybin have been used in Indigenous healing ceremonies in Mesoamerica since at least the sixteenth century. However, the sacramental use of mushrooms was only discovered by Westerners in the early to mid-twentieth century. Most notably, the meeting between amateur mycologist Robert Gordon Wasson and Mazatec curandera María Sabina in 1955 resulted in the widespread popularization of ingesting “magic mushrooms” in the West. To Sabina and the Mazatec people, psilocybin mushrooms were sacred and only to be used for healing. However, Western “hippies” viewed mushrooms as psychedelic drugs which they consumed with little regard for cultural sensitivities, rendering the mushrooms desacralized. This article argues that the desacralization of psilocybin mushrooms constitutes a form of spiritual abuse that has had far-reaching and long-lasting consequences at individual, local and global levels. Further, acknowledging and understanding the desacralization of psilocybin mushrooms as spiritual abuse has important implications for restorative justice and the understanding of psilocybin as a sacred medicine.

This book is devoted to the life and academic legacy of Mustafa Badawi who transformed the study of modern Arabic literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Prior to the 1960s the study of Arabic literature, both classical and modern, had barely been emancipated from the academic approaches of orientalism. The appointment of Badawi as Oxford University's first lecturer in modern Arabic literature changed the face of this subject as Badawi showed, through his teaching and research, that Arabic literature was making vibrant contributions to global culture and thought. Part biography, part collection of critical essays, this book celebrates Badawi's immense contribution to the field and explores his role as a public intellectual in the Arab world and the west.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-23
Author(s):  
Nela Štorková

While today the Ethnographic Museum of the Pilsen Region represents just one of the departments of the Museum of West Bohemia in Pilsen, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in 1915, it emerged as an independent institution devoted to a study of life in the Pilsen region. Ladislav Lábek, the founder and long-time director, bears the greatest credit for this museum. This study presents PhDr. Marie Ulčová, who joined the museum shortly after the Second World War and in 1963 replaced Mr. Lábek on his imaginary throne. The main objective of this article is to introduce the personality of Marie Ulčová and to evaluate the activity of this Pilsen ethnographer and the museum employee with an emphasis on her work in the Ethnographic Museum of the Pilsen Region. The basic aspects of the ethnographic activities, not only of Marie Ulčová but also of the Ethnographic Museum of the Pilsen Region in the years 1963–1988, are described through her professional and popularising articles, archival sources and contemporary periodicals.


Author(s):  
Yuriy Makar

On December 22, 2017 the Ukrainian Diplomatic Service marked the 100thanniversary of its establishment and development. In dedication to such a momentous event, the Department of International Relations of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University has published a book of IR Dept’s ardent activity since its establishment. It includes information both in Ukrainian and English on the backbone of the collective and their versatile activities, achievements and prospects for the future. The author delves into retracing the course of the history of Ukrainian Diplomacy formation and development. The author highlights the roots of its formation, reconsidering a long way of its development that coincided with the formation of basic elements of Ukrainian statehood that came into existence as a result of the war of national liberation – the Ukrainian Central Rada (the Central Council of Ukraine). Later, the Ukrainian or so-called State the Hetmanate was under study. The Directorat (Directory) of Ukraine, being a provisional collegiate revolutionary state committee of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, was given a thorough study. Of particular interest for the research are diplomatic activities of the West Ukrainian People`s Republic. Noteworthy, the author emphasizes on the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic’s foreign policy, forced by the Bolshevist Russia. A further important implication is both the challenges of the Ukrainian statehood establishing and Ukraine’s functioning as a state, first and foremost, stemmed from the immaturity and conscience-unawareness of the Ukrainian society, that, ultimately, has led to the fact, that throughout the twentieth century Ukraine as a statehood, being incorporated into the Soviet Union, could hardly be recognized as a sovereign state. Our research suggests that since the beginning of the Ukrainian Diplomacy establishment and its further evolution, it used to be unprecedentedly fabricated and forged. On a wider level, the research is devoted to centennial fight of Ukraine against Russian violence and aggression since the WWI, when in 1917 the Russian Bolsheviks, headed by Lenin, started real Russian war against Ukraine. Apropos, in the about-a-year-negotiation run, Ukraine, eventually, failed to become sovereign. Remarkably, Ukraine finally gained its independence just in late twentieth century. Nowadays, Russia still regards Ukraine as a part of its own strategic orbit,waging out a carrot-and-stick battle. Keywords: The Ukrainian People’s Republic, the State of Ukraine, the Hetmanate, the Direcorat (Directory) of Ukraine, the West Ukrainian People`s Republic, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, Ukraine, the Bolshevist Russia, the Russian Federation, Ukrainian diplomacy


Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman

The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the existing scholarly narratives. The Orientalizing period should be understood as a construct of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship that was structured around a false dichotomy between the Orient (the East) and the West. The designation “Phoenician” has a similarly complex historiographic past rooted in ancient Greek stereotyping that has profoundly shaped modern scholarly interpretations. This chapter argues that the luxury arts most often credited as agents of Orientalization—most prominent among them being carved ivories, decorated metal bowls, and engraved tridacna shells—cannot be exclusively associated with a Phoenician cultural origin, thus calling into question the primacy of the Phoenicians in Orientalizing processes. Each of these types of objects appears to have a much broader production sphere than is indicated by the attribute as Phoenician. In addition, the notion of unidirectional influences flowing from east to west is challenged, and instead concepts of connectivity and networking are proposed as more useful frameworks for approaching the problem of cultural relations during the early part of the first millennium bce.


2021 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 350-367
Author(s):  
Jennifer Birch ◽  
John P. Hart

We employ social network analysis of collar decoration on Iroquoian vessels to conduct a multiscalar analysis of signaling practices among ancestral Huron-Wendat communities on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Our analysis focuses on the microscale of the West Duffins Creek community relocation sequence as well as the mesoscale, incorporating several populations to the west. The data demonstrate that network ties were stronger among populations in adjacent drainages as opposed to within drainage-specific sequences, providing evidence for west-to-east population movement, especially as conflict between Wendat and Haudenosaunee populations escalated in the sixteenth century. These results suggest that although coalescence may have initially involved the incorporation of peoples from microscale (local) networks, populations originating among wider mesoscale (subregional) networks contributed to later coalescent communities. These findings challenge previous models of village relocation and settlement aggregation that oversimplified these processes.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 388
Author(s):  
Anton Lingier ◽  
Wim Vandewiele

The decline in numbers of religious in the West is discussed in numerous studies. While there is a consensus about the statistical reality of decreasing numbers, scholars disagree about the alleged reasons for this decline. This article maps the field and presents a survey of four categories of answers to the question of why religious life declined during the twentieth century. A distinction is made between theories that ascribe the decline to (1) historical, (2) societal, (3) ecclesial, and (4) theological reasons. The first category views the decline as part of a historical-cyclical pattern of growth and decline. The second encompasses explanations that focus on secularization, professionalization, or new societal opportunities for women. Thirdly, post-conciliar church-organizational reasons will be discussed. Finally, pre-conciliar theology is investigated as a potential reason for the decline. While none of the reasons discussed here can be excluded from at least contributing to the decline, we demonstrate that some authors are mistaken in their conclusions due to misinterpreting data in a way that obscures the possibility of an emerging decline before the statistics peak in 1965 (which marks the end of the Council). We also demonstrate how theology has been an underestimated but significant influence on the statistics of religious life.


1955 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Eleanor B. Adams

The island of Trinidad was discovered by Columbus on the third voyage in 1498. One of the largest and most fertile of the West Indian islands, for many years it remained on the fringe of European activity in the Caribbean area and on the coasts of Venezuela and Guiana. A Spanish settlement was founded there in 1532, but apparently it disintegrated within a short time. Toward the end of the sixteenth century Berrio and Raleigh fought for possession of the island, but chiefly as a convenient base for their rival search for El Dorado, or Manoa, the Golden Man and the mythical city of gold. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries explorers, corsairs, and contraband traders, Spanish, French, English, and Dutch, passed near its shores, and many of them may well have paused there to refresh themselves and to make necessary repairs to their vessels. But the records are scanty and we know little of such events or of the settlements that existed from time to time.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document