Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
August 4, 2026
Ziqiang Zhao
This article examines the role of embodied knowledge in translating practice-oriented religious texts through a case study of Livia Kohn’s Sitting in Oblivion: The Heart of Daoist Meditation . While Kohn’s translation of the Tang-dynasty Zuowang Lun 坐忘論 exhibits clear markers of phenomenological literacy – experientially precise terminology, recognition of practice progressions, and technical...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
May 19, 2026
Raji Soni
This brief article interleaves a reading of nom in Derrida’s Sauf le nom and a reading of nām , a term pivotal to Guru Nānak’s Japji , in Arvind Mandair’s Sikh Philosophy . I configure and construe the syntagm Sauf le nām to indicate a grammar of (un)translatability between not only French and Punjabi, but also between negative transcendence in Christian mysticism and positive immanence in Sikh...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
September 22, 2025
Alberto Cavallarin
2 citations
I take “neo-perennialists” to share the following, minimal claim: there exists a cross-cultural category of experiences that can be defined as “mystical”. I first clarify the neo-perennialist project and defend its overall feasibility. I then criticize the narrow focus on mystical experiences that has characterized much neo-perennialist research, and research based on the above-mentioned core...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
June 24, 2025
Carole M. Cusack
The emergence of the academic study of Esotericism was closely linked to both Religious Studies and Sociology. In the 1970s sociologists Colin Campbell, Marcello Truzzi, Edward A. Tiryakian, and Patricia A. Hartman, with historian of religion Mircea Eliade, wrote pioneering studies on occult and esoteric subjects. These initially marginal works gained traction in the study of new religious...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
June 24, 2025
Mark Q. Gardiner, Engler Steven
The guiding proposal for the ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ project (CAS-E) offers both a particular definition of ‘esotericism’ and an approach to the process of definition itself. This commentary first briefly compares this definition and approach to our parallel definitional work. The CAS-E definition begins by taking “contemporary scientific and...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
June 24, 2025
Michael Lackner, G. Maltese, Dominik Müller et al.
In this afterword, the directors of the Center for Advanced Studies ‘Alternative Rationalities and Esoteric Practices from a Global Perspective’ (CAS-E) at Friedrich- Alexander-Universität offer a brief response to the comments by Carole Cusack, Mark Q. Gardiner, Steven Engler, Wouter Hanegraaff, Elizabeth McAlister, Jason Josephson Storm, and Hugh Urban. Reflecting on various theoretical and...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
June 24, 2025
The study of esotericism emerged during the 1990s as a new academic program of research focused on previously-neglected historical traditions in Western culture. During the first decade of the 2000s, it established itself as a new field that was widely (although not exclusively) referred to as “Western esotericism.” But during the 2010s, questions began to be raised about this focus on the...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
December 17, 2020
Petter Grahl Johnstad
11 citations
Abstract Spiritual experiences with entheogens have usually been studied as a form of mystical experiences. However, entheogen users have also reported less intense experiences that they refer to as spiritual experiences. Using data from the Cannabis and Psychedelics User Survey, this study analyzed the characteristics of such experiences in 319 participants. It found evidence of two types of...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
2009
Steven Engler
AbstractThis article works with theory of ritual in order to begin addressing a series of questions raised by Brazilian spirit possession rituals (in Kardecism and Umbanda). Four contributions to theory of ritual highlight relevant conceptual issues: Humphrey and Laidlaw on non-intentionality; Bloch on deference; Houseman and Severi on social relations; and Kapferer on virtuality. Strawson’s...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
2004
Frederic Peters
1 citation
AbstractThe great majority of scholarly definitions of "religion" center around some notion involving experience or awareness of a supernatural dimension (forces, entities). This sense of the supernatural has been found in virtually all human societies extending back into paleolithic times. Advances in neuroscientific research technology have made it possible to assert that phenomenal...
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
2000
Frederic Peters
4 citations
AbstractAlthough the subject matter of religious studies is essentially phenomenal (e.g., conscious acts, attitudes, intentions, worldviews), the analysis of the basic datum, consciousness itself, remains of necessity incomplete because of the discipline's restriction to the phenomenal envelope. Philosophical and psychological analysis contributed to our understanding of consciousness, but,...