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Battlefield miracle stories are not rare. This paper suggests a typology of battlefield miracles. From this perspective it asks what sort of miracles can we expect to see in battle and when can we expect to see them? After presenting the main points of discussion regarding miracles, it proposes a range of categories for military miracles (miracles as acts that violate nature versus miracles as everyday acts having a clear purpose versus acts where there is disagreement regarding interpretation). After discussing these categories, the articles uses Operation Cast Lead (December 2008–January 2009) as a case study to test the typology suggested above. Since this field is underdeveloped, this paper sets out to initiate a conversation on battlefield miracles, with hope that future studies will build upon it. those involving the divine versus occurrences not requiring the presence of a heavenly emissary acts of benevolence versus acts with no such intent

In discussing the arrival of Buddhism to China, Erik Zürcher describes the meeting of “a jungle of Buddhist metaphysics” with other local philosophies and practices. This period was a transformative encounter with wide-ranging ramifications, including for textual traditions. Non-complete Emptiness (Bu zhenkong lun 不真空論), written by Seng Zhao 僧肇, is one product of this encounter. While explaining the principle of emptiness, Non-complete Emptiness incorporates Daoist and Confucian terminologies and elements. Nevertheless, the text is considered formative for the development of Buddhist writing and practice during the critical period of Buddhism’s assimilation into China in the third to fifth centuries AD. This study of Non-complete Emptiness looks at the philosophical and cultural relevance of the text. It suggests a methodological solution to some of the tensions that have arisen from Seng Zhao’s notion of emptiness. The article begins by looking into the historical and hermeneutical tendencies in the scholarship of Non-complete Emptiness. The following section provides a textual and cultural analysis of the text and its author, viewing the sage as an “open entity”, to understand Seng Zhao’s idea of emptiness. This analysis suggests that a multiple dialectic approach should be followed to improve the understanding of the text’s Buddhist message and Seng Zhao’s position as a scholar-monk in medieval China.

This paper examines the benefits of ethnographic film for the study of religion. It argues that the exploration of gaps between colloquial descriptions of divinities and their practical manifestation in ritual is instructive of the way religious categories are conceptualized. The argument is developed through an analysis of selected scenes from the documentary AVATARA, a meditation on goddess worship (Śaktism) among the Khas ethnic majority of the Hindu Himalaya (Himachal Pradesh, India). Centering on embodiments of the goddess in spirit possession séances, it points to a fundamental difference between the popular depiction of the deity as a virgin-child (kanyā) who visits followers in their dreams and her actual manifestation as a menacing mother (mātā) during ritual activities. These ostensibly incongruent images are ultimately bridged by the anthropologically informed edition of the material caught on camera, illustrating the added advantage of documentary filmmaking for approximating religious experiences.

The paper surveys and discusses the updated archaeological evidence for Philistine cult and religion, and cult and religion in Philistia during the Iron Age. The evidence can be related to public or official cult, represented in temple and shrine structures, and to that coming from households, representing possibly more popular religion. The evidence of public cult, so far mostly from peripheral sites, includes largely cultural elements linked with the local Canaanite cult and religion. Yet, within households at the Philistine cities there is more evidence for cultic elements of Aegean affinity during Iron Age I. In particular, figurines and ceramic figurative vessels and objects will be discussed. It seems that the Philistine religion may have retained certain distinctive elements also during Iron Age II. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to reconstruct the details of the nature of the Philistine religion due to the limited amount of evidence and lack of textual records.

In recent decades the relationship between tantric traditions of Buddhism and Śaivism has been the subject of sustained scholarly enquiry. This article looks at a specific aspect of this relationship, that between Buddhist and Śaiva traditions of practitioners of physical yoga, which came to be categorised in Sanskrit texts as haṭhayoga. Taking as its starting point the recent identification as Buddhist of the c.11th-century Amṛtasiddhi, which is the earliest text to teach any of the methods of haṭhayoga and whose teachings are found in many subsequent non-Buddhist works, the article draws on a range of textual and material sources to identify the Konkan site of Kadri as a key location for the transition from Buddhist to Nāth Śaiva haṭhayoga traditions, and proposes that this transition may provide a model for how Buddhist teachings survived elsewhere in India after Buddhism’s demise there as a formal religion.

Indic rites of purification aim to negate the law of karma by removing the residues of malignant past actions from their patrons. This principle is exemplified in the Kahika Mela, a rarely studied religious festival of the West Himalayan highlands (Himachal Pradesh, India), wherein a ritual specialist assumes karmic residues from large publics and then sacrificed to their presiding deity. British officials who had ‘discovered’ this purificatory rite at the turn of the twentieth century interpreted it as a variant of the universal ‘scapegoat’ rituals that were then being popularized by James Frazer and found it loosely connected to ancient Tantric practises. The However, observing a recent performance of the ritual significantly complicated this view. This paper proposes a novel reading of the Kahika Mela through the prism of karmic transference. Tracing the path of karmas from participants to ritual specialist and beyond, it delineates the logic behind the rite, revealing that the culminating act of human sacrifice is, in fact, secondary to the mysterious force that impels its acceptance.

philological analysis to elucidate the conflictual relationships between sub-traditions like the Mind Series (sems sde), the Seminal Heart (snying thig), and the Crown Pith (spyi ti), this article proffers a transdisciplinary perspective, which complements history with psychological investigations into myth and cognition. Introducing research from cognitive science, trauma studies, attachment theory, and dissociation, it scrutinizes fascinating Dzogchen myths of luminous bodies, playful children, and abusive grandmothers. Ultimately, this transdisciplinary approach results in a new interpretation of the early history of the Great Perfection, as marked by an internal division in the tradition that was the direct result of a historical trauma, which was first processed, then internalized, and finally perpetuated. (gsar ma) rose to prominence and challenged the legitimacy of the established ones, Dzogchen underwent radical transformations and grew into a complex of contradictory voices. Unlike existing scholarship, which relies exclusively on textual&ndash (rnying ma) of Tibetan Buddhism, known as the Great Perfection (rdzogs chen). Between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, when the &ldquo This contribution explores the development of the highest teachings of the &ldquo New Schools&rdquo Old School&rdquo