"In the remoteness of their mountain retreat, the herders of Chillihuani, Peru, recognize that respect for others is the central and most significant element of all thought and action," observes Inge Bolin. "Without respect, no society, no civilization, can flourish for long. Without respect, humanity is doomed and so is the earth, sustainer of all life." In this beautifully written ethnography, Bolin describes the rituals of respect that maintain harmonious relations among people, the natural world, and the realm of the gods in an isolated Andean community of llama and alpaca herders that reaches up to 16,500 feet. Bolin was the first foreigner to visit Chillihuani, and she was permitted to participate in private family rituals, as well as public ceremonies. In turn, she allows the villagers to explain the meaning of their rituals in their own words. From these first-hand experiences, Bolin offers an intimate portrait of an annual ritual cycle that dates back to Inca and pre-Inca times, including the ancient Pukllay; weddings; the Fiesta de Santiago, with its horse races on the top of the world; and Peru's Independence Day, when the Rituals of Respect for elders and young people alike are carried out within male and female hierarchies reminiscent of Inca times.

Death is a topic that has fascinated people for centuries. In the English-speaking world, eulogies in poetic form could be traced back to the 1640s, but gained prominence with the 'graveyard school' of poets in the eighteenth century often stressing the finality of death. Chinese American Death Rituals examines Chinese American funerary rituals and cemeteries from the late nineteenth century until the present in order to understand the importance of Chinese funerary rites and their transformation through time. The authors in this volume discuss the meaning of funerary rituals and their normative dimension and the social practices that have been influenced by tradition. Shaped by individual beliefs, customs, religion, and environment, Chinese Americans have resolved the tensions between assimilation into the mainstream culture and their strong Chinese heritage in a variety of ways. This volume expertly describes and analyzes Chinese American cultural retention and transformation in rituals after death.

This book codifies, describes, and contextualizes group rituals and individual practices from world religious traditions. At the interface of religious studies, psychology, and medicine, it elucidates the cultural richness of practices and rituals from numerous world religions. The book begins by discussing the role that religious rituals and practices may play in the well-being of humans and the multi-dimensional cultural and psychological complexity of religious rituals and practices. It then discusses rituals and practices within a number of religions, including Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, Taoist, Sikh, Hindu, Confucian, and other traditions. There is a need for a more inclusive collection of religious rituals and practices, as some practices are making headlines in contemporary society. Mindfulness is one of the fastest-growing psychological interventions in healthcare and Yoga is now practiced by tens of millions of people in the U.S.A. These practices have been examined in thousands of academic publications spanning neuroscience, psychology, medicine, sociology, and religious studies. While Mindfulness and Yoga have recently received widespread scientific and cultural attention, many rituals and practices from world religious traditions have remained underexplored in scholarly, scientific, and clinical contexts. This book brings more diverse rituals and practices into this academic discourse while providing a reference guide for clinicians and students of the topic.

Reverence is a worldview: a way of approaching life with wonder, care, gratitude, and respect. Right now on earth, this lkind of attention is vital. The invitation to reverence, and all the suggestions in this book for anchoring meaning in daily life, is to walk in awareness, especially an awareness of our precious connections to each other and to the planet we are part of. Awareness makes us more conscious of our choices. This is the essence of spiritual ecology: the re-enchantment of our relationship to earth and each other as part of earth.Our awareness of all the things life brings: the tender, fierce, resilient, calm, despairing, joyous aspects of life? these are what we are here to experience. These are what incarnation is about. With reverence, we slow down and witness and feel and celebrate and make meaning, alone, and together with others. We make little spots of beauty. Pause before meals to drop into full appreciation. We say "thank you" to plants before harvesting them. We mark important moments in a new way. We rebind ourselves to the cycle of the day, the moon, the seasons. With attention, we might even more deeply connect to milestone events and life phases, such as coming of age or an empty nest or a reconciliation.Reverence offers ways to think about ritual and ceremony. The dozens of rituals, ceremonies and designed experiences feed the reader's own instinct and intuition about meaning-making, and inspire the reader to deeply drink in the beauty of life- in all of its daily joys, milestone celebrations and losses. Christine includes personal, partner and communal rituals for daily living, for thresholds, new beginnings, celebrations and losses.

Volume two of Theorizing Rituals mainly consists of an annotated bibliography of more than 400 items covering those books, edited volumes and essays that are considered most relevant for the field of ritual theory. Instead of proposing yet another theory of ritual, the bibliography is a comprehensive monument documenting four decades of theorizing rituals.

The book explores the links between mythic and rituals, arguing that the connectedness with ritual endows a story with a mythic essence. Detailed discussions of various rituals exemplify the major theoretical discourse. The book is of interest to scholars in the areas of religious studies, the anthropology of religion, and Halakhah (law and ritual).