Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Anna-Leena Siikala
21 citations
Changes in the field of observation and body image, attenuated grasp of reality and self-control, which may lead to identification with authority in the case of the shaman with supranormal powers, are all identifying features of shamanic ecstasy. It also appears that some of the basic elements of the shamanic tradition can be explained on the basis of typical marks of identification of altered...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Nils Holm
21 citations
Scholars have always been interested in distinctive phenomena in culture and religion. Thus the accounts and achievements of yogis and mystics received attention at an early stage. There is a similar tendency with shamans, different kinds of sorcerers and with the "group-hysterical" phenomena that have appeared from time to time. There is, on the other hand, no major collection of research...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Owe Wikström
4 citations
The focus of this article is on the individual's specific experience of his personality being possessed, either partially or completely, momentarily or for an extended period of time, by evil spirits. It must be seen as necessary to supplement the narrow medical model for interpreting states of possession. The clinically interested psychologist of religion, in particular, needs consider aspects...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Marja-Liisa Swantz
2 citations
The discussion on the spirit possession phenomenon is related in this study to the more general question of the role of religious institutions as part in the development process of a people living in a limited geographical area of a wider national society. It is assumed that religion, like culture in general, has its specific institutional forms as result of the historical development of a...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Åke Hultkrantz
2 citations
As is well known large parts of native North America with the Prairies and Plains in the middle of the continent as the centre of diffusion have constituted, since the end of the last century, the scene of a nativistic Indian movement, the so-called peyote cult. The peyote cult—or, as it should have been called, the peyote religion — is named after its central cultic action, the consumption (by...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Ing-Britt Trankell
The function of the ritual is to assert a transcendental power over everyday experience and rituals therefore tend to be formalized, repetitive and conservative events. The purpose of this paper is to show the importance for ritual studies of ritualised strategies for the negotiation of power and influence. Here, research on a spirit possession cult among the Muslim Cham in Cambodia will serve...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Per-Arne Berglie
This paper describes a short study of the séances and trance-performances of three Tibetan spirit-mediums (dpa' bo) from a refugee-community in Nepal. The field-work on which this study is based was carried out in a Tibetan refugee-village in Nepal during 1970 and 1971. For each dpa' bo: dBang phyug, Sri gcod, and Nyi ma don grub, a summary of personal thoughts and beliefs concerning possession...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Tina Hamrin
The woman who founded Tenho-kötai-jingii-kyö, Kitamura Sayo (1900-1967), publicly announced in July 1945 that the world was coming to an end and that she had been chosen by the absolute deity Tensho Kotai Jingu to be the savior of the world. People began to gather to her banner, a religious organization was formed, and legal incorporation of the group as a religious juridical person took place...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Jussi Sohlberg
As in the other Scandinavian countries, so in Finland an exceptionally high percentage of the population belongs to a religious community. Today, about 82 per cent of Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. However, the picture of the Finnish religious and spiritual landscape is more complex than it may at first appear. The project ‘Religions in Finland’ was started in 2003. The...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Jan Hjärpe
Ta'ziya, "consolation", has become the Shi technical term for the liturgical mourning and commemoration of the martyred Imams, particularly the ritual lamentation for the death of Husayn, celebrated formerly often in the form of passion plays in which the heart is the drama of Kerbela, but in which in addition the whole of human history is viewed sub specie Kerbelae. Nowadays the celebration is...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Lilian Portefaix
In dealing with ecstasy in antiquity, scholars usually refer to Euripides' "Bacchanals"' as one of the most reliable sources with regard to this phenomenon. This drama can also be supplemented by vase paintings, which to a great extent deal with motives from the circle of Dionysos. We can observe that the ecstatic experience, as depicted by Euripides contains such psychological phenomena as...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Birgitte Sonne
The professional ecstatic is a religious specialist, who has become recognized as a person able to carry out an ecstatic ritual, corresponding with the local cultural expectations in force. The ecstatic ritual per se comprises a number of persons, i.e. it is a collective ritual. Part of the criteria that may be employed as a measure of the professional ecstatic's social status, is covered by...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Kocku von Stuckrad
Often, when people nowadays talk of ‘esotericism’, they are using this word either as more or less synonymous with ‘New Age’, or as a term for movements that are based on a secret wisdom that is only accessible to an ‘inner circle’ of initiates. In academic discussions, however, during the past fifteen years, a field of research has been established that critically engages these assumptions and...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Kennet Granholm
In the last fifteen years the study of Western esotericism has become an academic discipline in its own right. The vast majority of research conducted within the field is focused on older, historical developments, with recent expressions of esotericism receiving far less attention. This has a bearing on the conceptual and methodological tools used in the field as well. The dominant definition...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Henrik Bogdan, Olav Hammer
The title of this paper can be understood in two senses. In the sense of ‘research on esotericism carried out by Scandinavian scholars’, the field is blossoming. Several dozen individuals, at various points in their academic careers, are pursuing research on some aspect of Western esotericism however the concept is defined. In the other conceivable sense, ‘research on Scandinavian esotericism’,...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Tore Ahlbäck
Editorial note of the Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, vol. 20, based on papers read at the symposium 'Western Esotericism', held at Åbo, Finland, on 15-17 August 2007.
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Vadim Zhdanov
Time and again, the terms gnosticism and esotericism appear in connection with one another. Most esoteric teachings, for example, draw on the higher knowledge of the secrets of nature or deity. The terms esoteric and esotericism even surface in connection with antique gnosticism—and this is not a rare occurrence. Just think of the famous definition of gnosis suggested by leading scholars in the...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Jole Shackelford
The history of science and the history of medicine were, from their beginnings as subjects in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment periods, hostile to esoteric ideas and practices and generally excluded them from the scope of academic study. Esoteric belief systems by definition prioritize inner knowledge, knowledge that is not attainable or transferable by the standard practices of public...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Owe Wikström
This article has three aims: 1) to plead for an approach to the study of the liturgy based on the psychology of religion, 2) to draw up a preliminary theoretical model for how the liturgy can be interpreted, and 3) to narrow down the field for further interdisciplinary development and empirical analysis. People undergo more or less strong experiences during and in conjunction with church...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Hans Åkerberg
It is generally maintained within the Carmelite tradition that Teresa (1515-1582) showed an extraordinary facility in describing the stages of mysticism with experimential vigour and deep intensity, compared for example to John of the Cross, whose mystical presentation is of a more dogmatic and systematic nature. In this sense she would appear to be unsurpassed within the entire Roman Catholic...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Åke Hultkrantz
The Spirit Lodge is a variety of shamanism characterized by its divining functions. Herein lie its limitations: the shamanistic trance is there, and so are the helping spirits, but the curing activity so typical of shamanism is absent, or principally absent. The act of divining shows a certain affinity with the shamanistic pole-climbing performances and may originally have been related to...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Nora Ahlberg
The intention of this article is to present some psycho-physiological perspectives of recent date concerned with the phenomenon of ecstasy. As almost none of this research has yet been assimilated by comparative religion, the focus here is on illustrating some of the background for renewed speculation on the relationship between psyche and soma. Traditional Western science has usually operated...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Carl-Martin Edsman
An evident experience of God's presence is the basis for all religion. Mysticism is considered to be piety in so far as primary importance is attached to inner religious experience, to religion as occurring in the soul. Mysticism is pure religious introversion. The special religious experience of mysticism, its epistemology and its ascetic ethics or technique, occur with startling likeness in...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Niklas Foxeus
The achievement of independence in 1948 was in many ways a watershed in Burma’s history. At this time, a variety of Buddhist movements emerged that were part not only of a ‘Burmese Buddhist revival’, in which even the government was involved, but also a general re-enchantment of Asia. In the period following World War II, projects of nation-building and further modernization were implemented in...
Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis
January 16, 2019
Göran Ogén
The purpose of this essay is to shed some light on the phenomenon of religious ecstasy as met within Islamic mysticism and there particularly during its classical period. In this case, the expression "classical Sufism" refers to the period of Sufi history from about 850 A.D. until circa 1100 A.D. In the Sufi vocabulary there is even a rather differentiated terminology concerning these ecstatic...