Medieval images and their content, intentions, and functions regularly followed specific strategies, rituals, and symbols of communication. This is true for religious as well as for secular images. One can recognize these strategies and rituals through analyzing the patterns that occur in the varieties of image construction, image space, image messages, and their perception. This book contains contributions by international specialists whose research interests concentrate on these patterns, the rituals associated with them, and the influences of these phenomena on the daily life of the image audience. (Series: History: Research and Science / Geschichte: Forschung und Wissenschaft - Vol. 39)

The pivotal events of our lives go by largely uncelebrated: children pass into adulthood, two people become parents, a family moves to a new home. Karyl Huntley's Real Life Rituals is a hands-on guide that offers you ways to celebrate the significant moments and passages of life. Designed to be adapted for large groups or parties of one, Huntley's rituals include spiritually grounded ways to: Celebrate the birth of a child; Honor a school graduate; Bless a new home; Commemorate an anniversary; Enhance or release romantic relationships. Real Life Rituals also provides celebrations for those special times of the year--solstices, equinox, and holidays--that have been acknowledged by people through the ages. Other rituals include: Blessing a New Home; Transitioning to a New Job; Welcoming a New Pet; Coming of Age for Girls and Boys; Blessing a Baby; Honoring a School Graduate; and Celebrating a First Driver's License, among others. From the Author: Many of life's experiences are so profound that they are difficult to describe in words. These are the precise experiences you invite when you perform a ritual: you move yourself into change or unity, surrender or gratitude, in ways that are so powerful that they are beyond words. You experience true spirituality. Though not associated with any particular denomination or philosophy, the essential nature of ritual is sacred. The rituals in this book speak to the experiences that we all share just by being born on this earth. We share the seasons of the year and the seasons of our lives. Built into these cycles are sacred lessons that you are here to experience--lessons of unity, creation, change, and release. The sacredness of a ritual allows your spirit to inhabit these lessons in a way that goes deeper than words; that is the blessing of ritual.

This multidisciplinary collection of essays explores the functions, meanings and use of images and objects in various late Medieval and Early Modern social practices, which were linked by their ritual character. The book approaches ‘ritual’ as an action which is discussed under the general umbrella term “performative practice”, and is characterised by a synthesis between the repetitive and the extraordinary that carries an intense symbolic meaning and is emotionally charged. Images, spaces and rituals were closely interconnected in both the religious and the secular spheres, and played a relevant role in the symbolic communication of the time. The essays in this volume are devoted to a complex study of these phenomena in Northern and Central Europe, including regions which, due to linguistic or cultural barriers, have thus far received comparatively little attention in Anglo-American scholarship, including Scandinavia, Poland and the Baltic states.

More than 150 inspired—and inspiring—novelists, poets, playwrights, painters, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians on how they subtly maneuver the many (self-inflicted) obstacles and (self-imposed) daily rituals to get done the work they love to do. Franz Kafka, frustrated with his living quarters and day job, wrote in a letter to Felice Bauer in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.” Kafka is one of 161 minds who describe their daily rituals to get their work done, whether by waking early or staying up late; whether by self-medicating with doughnuts or bathing, drinking vast quantities of coffee, or taking long daily walks. Thomas Wolfe wrote standing up in the kitchen, the top of the refrigerator as his desk, dreamily fondling his “male configurations”.... Jean-Paul Sartre chewed on Corydrane tablets (a mix of amphetamine and aspirin), ingesting ten times the recommended dose each day ... Descartes liked to linger in bed, his mind wandering in sleep through woods, gardens, and enchanted palaces where he experienced “every pleasure imaginable.” Here are: Anthony Trollope, who demanded of himself that each morning he write three thousand words (250 words every fifteen minutes for three hours) before going off to his job at the postal service, which he kept for thirty-three years during the writing of more than two dozen books ... Karl Marx ... Woody Allen ... Agatha Christie ... George Balanchine, who did most of his work while ironing ... Leo Tolstoy ... Charles Dickens ... Pablo Picasso ... George Gershwin, who, said his brother Ira, worked for twelve hours a day from late morning to midnight, composing at the piano in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers.... Here also are the daily rituals of Charles Darwin, Andy Warhol, John Updike, Twyla Tharp, Benjamin Franklin, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, Anne Rice, and Igor Stravinsky (he was never able to compose unless he was sure no one could hear him and, when blocked, stood on his head to “clear the brain”).

From Marx to Murakami and Beethoven to Bacon, 'Daily Rituals' examines the working routines of more than a 160 of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to have lived. Filled with fascinating insights on the mechanics of genius and entertaining stories of the personalities behind it, it is irresistibly addictive and utterly inspiring

Discover simple ways to live a more purposeful, peaceful, and enjoyable life with this empowering guidebook to intentional and mindful living. It’s time to put intention behind all of your actions and live a focused and fearless life! In this accessible guide, you’ll learn easy ways to infuse everyday activities—from waking and bathing to eating and walking—with a sense of purpose. Each act is designed to improve your sense of health, peace, prosperity, gratitude, and renewal. Examples include: —Eliminate thoughts of what is lacking —Move past perfection —Fire up your authentic voice —Strengthen love bonds —Learn to be precise Each chapter contains ritual sequences to help you carry your intentions throughout your day. With a wide and varied range of activities, you’ll be able to create a unique routine to fit every mood, need, interest, and desire. With How to Live with Intention, you’ll transform ordinary tasks into purposeful ways to relish each moment, live your best life, and experience true happiness.

Do I dare disturb the universe? It is a question recognized by people around the world. If typed into the internet, hundreds of examples appear. Many know that it comes from one of the best known poems of the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. What many do not know is that Eliot dramatically shifted his views at the height of his fame for writing such dark poetry as this and his also famous The Wasteland, becoming a sincere, devoted Christian. While his poetry is famous because it expresses the loss of a spiritual center in European civilization, a careful reading of it reveals that he was struggling with his Christianity from the beginning, not rejecting it, but trying to make it fit into the contemporary world. If a reader works through his love song for all of the esoteric meanings, as he demands, it quickly becomes evident that he intended it as a struggle between agape, amour and eros. Beginning it with a quote from Dante forces that into place. Though the protestant forms of Christianity have changed their views on these, the Roman Catholic holds fast. Eliot references Michelangelo in the poem, bringing in the great painter of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Most immediately recognize his name and work. Many do not realize how he expressed a similar personal struggle between the desires of the flesh and the spirit. Both of them admired Dante’s Divine Comedy, and its inclusion of amour as a means to salvation. His work is generally seen as the greatest literature ever to come out of Italy, sometimes referred to as the epic representation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, one of the central documents establishing Catholic doctrine. This book explores how these brilliant men struggle with the highest meanings of life in their artistic expressions and perhaps manage to express what Rudolph Otto designates the mysterium tremendum, the experience of a mystical awe, what he calls the numinous or, in more common terms, the experience of God.