In 1920 when hero Grant Kingsley returns from war and law school to Honolulu and his elite sugar baron family. Police arrest him for the brutal sacrificial style murder of his grandmother. A note at the scene signed "Ku" promises more murders of the Caucasian elite. Released from jail, Grant seeks the killer and encounters sides of the islands he never knew: criminal gangs, union politics, drugs, "locals", political corrruption,"Japanese military aggression in the Pacific, and a Euro-Asian scholar. Shocked to learn he might have Native Hawaiian blood, he seeks out Hawaiians for surfing and friendship. Brutal murders of the Caucasian elite with notes from Ku continue as he races to avoid a rush to justice and prison.
Within the city of Vancouver, and amongst the deep wilderness of B.C. dwells the Barrier Kult. They're an assembly of incognito professional skateboarders that ritualize their skill on concrete barriers. The team was created ten years ago by Deer Man of Dark Woods and Depth Leviathan Dweller, who decided to adorn a mask of anonymity after growing tired of the repetition of the professional skate world. One would argue that the Barrier Kult's entire way of skating is repetitive, but the team takes this as a challenge to land big tricks... on stone cold concrete. BA. KU.resembles a religious cult and is likewise intricate and timeless. The skaters' ages range from early twenties, to mid-forties, with members spread around the world and meet up in Vancouver, (or wherever there is a proper barrier) when it comes time to collect footage for a video/film. Though alchemy and other ritual practices interest the Barrier Kult, their true roots lie in music and nature. The team is promoted by and has worked with countless bands in the black metal/noise community and feels that the genre has been able to loan the group its face and image. By connecting with these heavy musical influences,BA. KU.has been able to grow a loyal fan base that is not concerned with who may be behind the balaclava mask. While watching the team perform, the vast nature of B.C. creates the atmosphere, and war metal amplifies the experience. Most of skateboarding culture has been linked to punk, rap, metal and other similar genres, so the rookie members ofBA. KU.are all proud to sport the musical inspirations of the organization.
Buddhists around the world celebrate the benefits of worshipping Kannon (Avalokiteśvara), a compassionate savior who is one of the most beloved in the Buddhist pantheon. When Kannon appears in multiple manifestations, the deity’s powers are believed to increase to even greater heights. This concept generated several cults throughout history: among the most significant is the cult of the Six Kannon, which began in Japan in the tenth century and remained prominent through the sixteenth century. In this ambitious work, Sherry Fowler examines the development of the Japanese Six Kannon cult, its sculptures and paintings, and its transition to the Thirty-three Kannon cult, which remains active to this day. An exemplar of Six Kannon imagery is the complete set of life-size wooden sculptures made in 1224 and housed at the Kyoto temple Daihōonji. This set, along with others, is analyzed to demonstrate how Six Kannon worship impacted Buddhist practice. Employing a diachronic approach, Fowler presents case studies beginning in the eleventh century to reinstate a context for sets of Six Kannon, the majority of which have been lost or scattered, and thus illuminates the vibrancy, magnitude, and distribution of the cult and enhances our knowledge of religious image-making in Japan. Kannon’s role in assisting beings trapped in the six paths of transmigration is a well-documented catalyst for the selection of the number six, but there are other significant themes at work. Six Kannon worship includes significant foci on worldly concerns such as childbirth and animal husbandry, ties between text and image, and numerous correlations with Shinto kami groups of six. While making groups of Kannon visible, Fowler explores the fluidity of numerical deity categorizations and the attempts to quantify the invisible. Moreover, her investigation reveals Kyushu as an especially active site in the history of the Six Kannon cult. Much as Kannon images once functioned to attract worshippers, their presentation in this book will entice contemporary readers to revisit their assumptions about East Asia’s most popular Buddhist deity.
While social scientists and historians have been exchanging ideas for a long time, they have never developed a proper dialogue about social theory. William H. Sewell Jr. observes that on questions of theory the communication has been mostly one way: from social science to history. Logics of History argues that both history and the social sciences have something crucial to offer each other. While historians do not think of themselves as theorists, they know something social scientists do not: how to think about the temporalities of social life. On the other hand, while social scientists’ treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, their theoretical sophistication and penchant for structural accounts of social life could offer much to historians. Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. In Logics of History, he reveals the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide.
This publication provides new information about the temple ritual texts from ancient Mesopotamia, in particular from the cities Uruk and Babylon, and shows how important the public cults were in Hellenistic times, at least until the first century B.C.
Austin Osman Spare is the definitive biography of the controversial occultist and artist, an enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world whose work was both hailed as genius and decried as immoral decadence. As George Bernard Shaw reportedly said, "Spare's medicine is too strong for the average man." Trained as a draughtsman, Spare enjoyed early acclaim when, at the age of seventeen, his work was shown at the Royal Academy in London. But his star soon declined; Spare went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity. After a brief association with Aleister Crowley, he became absorbed in occultism and sorcery, voyaging into inner dimensions, while developing his own magical philosophy of pleasure, obsession, and the subjective nature of reality. All the while, Spare continued to produce extraordinary art, and held his exhibitions outside of the conventional art world, in London pubs. Today Spare is both forgotten and famous, a cult figure whose modest life has been much mythologised since his death; the world's largest Spare collection is held by Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. Biographer Phil Baker separates fact from myth, providing wide-ranging insights into Spare's art and mind, reconnecting him with the art community that ignored him and exploring the rich tapestry of the culture that surrounded him, interweaving the birth of psychoanalysis, the historiography of the occult, and the British class system. This richly readable and illuminating biography, containing 50 black and white and 8 color photographs of Spare's art, takes us deep into the strange inner world of this enigmatic artist.
Both scholars and popular writers have long been fascinated with the cult of Molek in the Old Testament. Writers from John Milton to Charles Dickens have been tantalized by the awful rite of sacrifice. Heider's volume evaluates the significance of the Molek cult with regard to the biblical, archaeological, and literary evidence. He begins with a broad history of scholarship on Molek from the seventeenth century onward, paying special attention to the contributions of Otto Eissfeldt and Moshe Weinfeld. He also surveys the literary evidence-in particular the Eblaite, Amorite, Ugaritic, Akkadian, and Phoenician evidence. He also examines the archaeological evidence from the Mesopotamian region. The book concludes with a detailed look at the relevant biblical texts, with a detailed look at Leviticus 18 and 20, Genesis 22, and various passages in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets.
Tracing the history of St. Antoninus' cult and burial from the time of his death in 1459 until his remains were moved to their final resting place in 1589, this interdisciplinary study demonstrates that the saint's relic cult was a key element of Florence's sacred cityscape. The works of art created in his honor, as well as the rituals practiced at his fifteenth- and sixteenth-century places of burial, advertised Antoninus' saintly power and persona to the people who depended upon his intercessory abilities to negotiate life's challenges. Drawing on a rich variety of contemporary visual, literary, and archival sources, this volume explores the ways in which shifting political, familial, and ecclesiastical aims and agendas shaped the ways in which St. Antoninus' holiness was broadcast to those who visited his burial church. Author Sally Cornelison foregrounds the visual splendor of the St. Antoninus Chapel, which was designed, built, and decorated by Medici court artist Giambologna and his collaborators between 1579 and 1591. Her research sheds new light on the artist, whose secular and mythological sculptures have received far more scholarly attention than his religious works. Cornelison draws on social and religious history, patronage and gender studies, and art historical and anthropological inquiries into the functions and meanings of images, relics, and ritual performance, to interpret how they activated St. Antoninus' burial sites and defined them in ways that held multivalent meanings for a broad audience of viewers and devotees. Among the objects for which she provides visual and contextual analyses are a banner from the saint's first tomb, early printed and painted images, and the sculptures, frescoes, panel paintings, and embroidered textiles made for the present St. Antoninus Chapel.
