Aztec Goddesses and Christian Madonnas
Aztec Goddesses and Christian Madonnas

Author: Joseph Kroger

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1351956116

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The face of the divine feminine can be found everywhere in Mexico. One of the most striking features of Mexican religious life is the prevalence of images of the Virgin Mother of God. This is partly because the divine feminine played such a prominent role in pre-Hispanic Mexican religion. Goddess images were central to the devotional life of the Aztecs, especially peasants and those living in villages outside the central city of Tenochtitlan (present day Mexico City). In these rural communities fertility and fecundity, more than war rituals and sacrificial tribute, were the main focus of cultic activity. Both Aztec goddesses and the Christian Madonnas who replaced them were associated, and sometimes identified, with nature and the environment: the earth, water, trees and other sources of creativity and vitality. This book uncovers the myths and images of 22 Aztec Goddesses and 28 Christian Madonnas of Mexico. Their rich and symbolic meaning is revealed by placing them in the context of the religious worldviews in which they appear and by situating them within the devotional life of the faithful for whom they function as powerful mediators of divine grace and terror.

The Goddess Discovered
The Goddess Discovered

Author: Shelley A. Kaehr

Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide

Published: 2023-12-08

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0738771848

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Your Complete Guide to Hundreds of Goddesses Around the World Meet the many incarnations of the divine feminine, past and present, with this comprehensive reference guide by bestselling author Shelley A. Kaehr, PhD. Featuring more than five hundred goddesses, over forty exercises and journal prompts, and guided journeys for understanding yourself at the soul level, this book connects you with ancestral energy and can bring peace and balance to your life. Shelley first introduces you to goddesses of the ancient world, exploring Egyptian, Celtic, Greek, Norse, and Mesoamerican pantheons. She then shares the living goddesses of modern world religions—African, East Asian, Hindu, and Indigenous peoples. Each goddess entry features her keywords, categories, history, and lore. In discovering these deities, you can enliven goddess energy within you and even uncover past lives.

World Christianity and Indigenous Experience
World Christianity and Indigenous Experience

Author: David Lindenfeld

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-05-20

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 1108917070

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In this book, David Lindenfeld proposes a new dimension to the study of world history. Here, he explores the global expansion of Christianity since 1500 from the perspectives of the indigenous people who were affected by it, and helped change it, giving them active agency. Integrating the study of religion into world history, his volume surveys indigenous experience in colonial Latin America, Native North America, Africa and the African diaspora, the Middle East, India, East Asia, and the Pacific. Lindenfeld demonstrates how religion is closely interwoven with political, economic, and social history. Wide-ranging in scope, and offering a synoptic perspective of our interconnected world, Lindenfeld combines in-depth analysis of individual regions with comprehensive global coverage. He also provides a new vocabulary, with a spectrum ranging from resistance to acceptance and commitment to Christianity, that articulates the range and complexity of the indigenous conversion experience. Lindenfeld's cross-cultural reflections provide a compelling alternative to the Western narrative of progressive development.

Transforming Saints
Transforming Saints

Author: Charlene Villaseñor Black

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Published: 2022-07-15

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 0826504728

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Transforming Saints explores the transformation and function of the images of holy women within wider religious, social, and political contexts of Old Spain and New Spain from the Spanish conquest to Mexican independence. The chapters here examine the rise of the cults of the lactating Madonna, St. Anne, St. Librada, St. Mary Magdalene, and the Suffering Virgin. Concerned with holy figures presented as feminine archetypes—images that came under Inquisition scrutiny—as well as with cults suspected of concealing Indigenous influences, Charlene Villaseñor Black argues that these images would come to reflect the empowerment and agency of women in viceregal Mexico. Her close analysis of the imagery additionally demonstrates artists' innovative responses to Inquisition censorship and the new artistic demands occasioned by conversion. The concerns that motivated the twenty-first century protests against Chicana artists Yolanda López in 2001 and Alma López in 2003 have a long history in the Hispanic world, in the form of anxieties about the humanization of sacred female bodies and fears of Indigenous influences infiltrating Catholicism. In this context Black also examines a number of important artists in depth, including El Greco, Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera, Pedro de Mena, Baltasar de Echave Ibía, Juan Correa, Cristóbal de Villalpando, and Miguel Cabrera.

Sacred Dialogues: Christianity and Native Religions in the Colonial Americas 1492-1700
Sacred Dialogues: Christianity and Native Religions in the Colonial Americas 1492-1700

Author: Nicholas Griffiths

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 632

ISBN-13: 0244019630

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A Spanish conquistador who posed as a sorcerer and cured native Americans as he trekked across an unknown wilderness; a French Jesuit who conjured rain clouds in order to impress his indigenous flock with the potency of Christian magic; a Puritan minister who healed a native chief in order to win him for God; a Mexican noble who was burned at the stake for resisting the gentle Franciscan friars; an Andean chief who was haunted by nightmares in which his native gods did battle with the Christian Father; a Huron magician who vied with French missionaries over spirits of the night in a shaking tent ceremony. These are a few of the individuals whose struggles are brought to life in the pages of this book. Their experiences, among others, reveal what happened when Christianity came into contact with Native American religions in three distinct regions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonial America: Spanish, French and British.

The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World
The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World

Author: Jennifer Mara DeSilva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1317016785

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In the Early Modern period - as both reformed and Catholic churches strove to articulate orthodox belief and conduct through texts, sermons, rituals, and images - communities grappled frequently with the connection between sacred space and behavior. The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World explores individual and community involvement in the approbation, reconfiguration and regulation of sacred spaces and the behavior (both animal and human) within them. The individual’s understanding of sacred space, and consequently the behavior appropriate within it, depended on local need, group dynamics, and the dissemination of normative expectations. While these expectations were defined in a growing body of confessionalizing literature, locally and internationally traditional clerical authorities found their decisions contested, circumvented, or elaborated in order to make room for other stakeholders’ activities and needs. To clearly reveal the efforts of early modern groups to negotiate authority and the transformation of behavior with sacred space, this collection presents examples that allow the deconstruction of these tensions and the exploration of the resulting campaigns within sacred space. Based on new archival research the eleven chapters in this collection examine diverse aspects of the campaigns to transform Christian behavior within a variety of types of sacred space and through a spectrum of media. These essays give voice to the arguments, exhortations, and accusations that surrounded the activities taking place in early modern sacred space and reveal much about how people made sense of these transformations.

New Frontiers in Guadalupan Studies
New Frontiers in Guadalupan Studies

Author: Virgilio Elizondo

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2014-09-18

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 1625642083

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Historical writings on Our Lady of Guadalupe, the most revered sacred figure indigenous to the western hemisphere, have tended to focus on the sixteenth-century origins of her cult. But recent publications have increasingly extended Guadalupan studies beyond the origin debates to analyses of the subsequent evolution and immense influence of the Guadalupe tradition. New Frontiers in Guadalupan Studies significantly enhances this growing body of literature with insightful essays on topics that span the early stages of Guadalupan devotion to the milestone of Pope Benedict XIV establishing an official liturgical feast for Guadalupe in 1754. The volume also breaks new ground in theological analyses of Guadalupe, which comprise an ongoing effort to articulate a Christian response to one of the most momentous events of Christianity's second millennium: the conquest, evangelization, and struggles for life, dignity, and self-determination of the peoples of the Americas.

Place Meaning and Attachment
Place Meaning and Attachment

Author: Dak Kopec

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-03-10

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1000038726

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Revolutions have gripped many countries, leading to the destruction of buildings, places, and artifacts; climate change is threatening the ancestral homes of many, the increasingly uneven distribution of resources has made the poor vulnerable to the coercive efforts by the rich, and social uncertainty has led to the romanticizing of the past. Humanity is resilient, but we have a fundamental need for attachment to places, buildings, and objects. This edited volume will explore the different meanings and forms of place attachment and meaning based on our histories and conceptualization of material artifacts. Each chapter examines a varied relationship between a given society and the meaning formed through myth, symbols, and ideologies manifested through diverse forms of material artifacts. Topics of consideration examine place attachment at many scales including at the level of the artifact, human being, building, urban context, and region. We need a better understanding of human relationships to the past, our attachments to the events and places, and to the external influences on our attachments. This understanding will allow for better preservation methods pertaining to important places and buildings, and enhanced social wellbeing for all groups of people. Covering a broad range of international perspectives on place meaning from the United States to Europe, Asia to Russia, and Africa to Australia, this book is an essential read for students, academics, and professionals alike.

Iconicity of the Uto-Aztecans
Iconicity of the Uto-Aztecans

Author: Tirtha Prasad Mukhopadhyay

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2023-05-12

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1800739737

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Uto-Aztecan iconic practices are primarily conditioned by the consciousness of the snake as a death-dealing power, and as such, an animal that displays the deepest fears and anxieties of the individual. The attempt to study a snake simulacrum thus constitutes the basic objective of this volume. A long, all-embracing iconicity of snakes and related snake motifs are evident in different cultural expressions ranging from rock art templates to other cultural artifacts like basketry, pottery, temple architecture and sculptural motifs. Uto-Aztecan iconography demonstrates a symbolic memorial order of emotional valences, as well as the negotiations with death and a belief in rebirth, just as the skin-shedding snake reptile manifests in its life cycle.

Mary and the Liturgical Year
Mary and the Liturgical Year

Author: Katharine E. Harmon

Publisher: Liturgy Training Publications

Published: 2023-09-01

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 1616717289

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In Mary and the Liturgical Year: A Pastoral Resource, liturgical scholar and professor Katharine E. Harmon offers an engaging survey of Mary’s role in the Church’s liturgical prayer from the first days of the early Church to our own day. In this unique resource, Harmon examines the twelve prominent Marian solemnities, feasts, and memorials celebrated throughout the liturgical year. Pastoral ministers, theology students, and persons seeking to reflect on Mary as a source of wisdom and faith will discover the riches of Marian theology and will come to understand how Mary always leads us to a deeper and more intimate relationship with her son, Jesus.