Comparing religions (kripal)

Comparison

sameness difference

mystical

Axial Age

That period of time, roughly between 800 and 200 BCE, during which human civilizations around the world developed radically new religious orientations

Anthropomorphism

tendency to attribute human form to non-human entities like gods

diffusion theory

polytheism

Euhemerism

Platonic Orientalism

non-local self

evolutionary monotehismq

cosmotheism

A religious system that understands the physical universe to be a God and posits local gods as partial manifestations of this cosmic God

pantheism

panentheism

Chaos

state of complete disorder and non-meaning

cosmos

state of order and meaningful structure

mythology

the systematic study of myths and sacred stories

myth

a sacred story that founds or grounds a particular religious world

ritual

the re-enactment of a myth through repeated scripted actions, usually in a culturally prescribed space and time by a religious specialist

Creation myths

Sacred stories about how the world came into being

sky god

a deity, generally male, believed to reside in the sky

transcendence

state of being above, beyond, or outside the natural-physical world

immmanence

being present in (coextensive with) the natural or the physical world

hero/quest myths

a type of myth that works through the staged tropes of departure, adventure in a foreign land, temptation, battle, discovery or victory and return

trickster

a mythical figure who, through various comedic, deceitful, and offensive behaviors upsets the established order in order to mock, renew or reform the world

liturgical rituals

religious practices designed to honor, worship, or praise a deity

magical rituals

ritual practice in which an assumed correspondence between a mental state and some aspect of the physical worlds allows the former to influence the latter

funerary rituals

religious practices around death and the handling of corpses

libation rituals

religious practices of spilling a liquid, often over or before the image of a deity, and often in commemoration of the dead or chthonic deities

pilgrimage rituals

ritual acts of traveling, for a religious purpose, to a place held to be sacred

life-cycle rituals

religious practices around a biological event or a social transformation related to a biological event

civil religion

public ceremonies that draw on religious structures for political purposes, thus imbuing the city or nation-state with sacred values

blood sacrifice

a sacrifice that involves killing an animal or a human being

sacrifice

gift model of sacrifice

scapegoat model of sacrifice

Oracles

Divination

prophecy

omens

founding myth

hagiography

asceticism

a religious lifestyle of discipline and denial of bodily pleasures for spiritual ends

entheogen

shaman

gaia theory

anthropocentrism

tendency to think of human beings as the most valuable species on earth

deep ecology

A broad environmental movement that seeks to awaken human beings to the biological fact that they are intimate parts of a larger ecosystem, which is their bigger body

Cosmology

the study of the origin, evolution, and structure of the physical universe

structuralism

kosher laws

endogamy

commensality

the required practice of eating with one's own social class or subgroup

hierarchy

contagion

the belief that an attribute of a social nature (like pollution or impurity) can be transmitted through touch or physical contact

purity codes

binary

Any set of opposites within a cultural or cognitive system that structures thought, feeling, and behavior within that system

hierophany

ecology of religion

anthropogony

myth about how human beings came to be

Draper-White thesis

Merton thesis

Cosmogony

myth about the genesis of the universe

male androgyne

sexuality

gender

sexual orientation

celibacy

monasticism

queer criticism

third gender

patriarchy

paternity-patriarchy principle

circumcision

the cutting of the tip of the foreskin as a mark of religious identtiy

transgression

divinization

super sexualities

erotic

agricultural pattern

A widely distributed comparative pattern through which sexuality is rendered analogous to agriculture, the male being viewed as planter of the "seed" in the female "soil"

sexual trauma

Charisma

a special power attributed to or experienced in the presence of a religious figure who, by virtue of this power, is set apart as sacred or superhuman

tradition

institutionalization of charisma

prophet

priest

material religion

relics

ideal type

church

sect

denomination

modern sect that no longer takes a contentious position vis-a-vis the world and other religious communities but has become respectable and gone mainstream

mysticism

miracle

an anomalous, wondrous, or even simply uncommon event that functions as a "sign" for the truth of a particular religious tradition

saint

A religious prodigy considered to be especially representative of the values and worldview of a particular religious community