Malleable Fixity: Indian Astrologers on Destiny and Human Choices

By Audrius Beinorius Contemporary investigations into the history of science reveal the close interweaving of religious, scientific and magical discourses in traditional cognitive strategies. And astrology is India’s richest and most vibrant tradition, with obvious religious, social and medical-psychological dimensions (Beinorius 2017). However, there is still prevailing perception that Indians’ commitment to the so-called “law […]

Ziyārah, Mystical Poetry, and Resurrection of Sufi Saints in Post-Mao China

By Tommaso Previato The Qadiriyya and Jahriyya confraternities (Ch. menhuan) contributed to shaping the religious landscape of northwest China through their mystical views, beliefs and practices. My project analyzes their textual constructions of sainthood (Ar. walāya, lit. “friendship [with God]”) in the post-Maoist Islamic revival (early 1980s to mid 2010s), a period when China’s opening […]

What Kind of Instrument Am I?

By William Mazzarella What is it about those bits of writing that grab you? The ones that seem to reach out of a text right in the moment you read them, prompting something like a fascinated shudder of assent. But a particular kind of assent. Not quite assenting to a proposition, but to something more […]

The Sacred Gaze: Some Reflections on the Act of Seeing in Religion and Beyond

By Roger Canals What does it mean “to see”? At first glance, the question seems rather obvious: “seeing” means perceiving through the sense of sight what we have in front of us. Yet the comparative study of visual religious experience shows us that this issue is much more complex. And if “seeing” would imply something […]