Entangled Religions
July 3, 2023
Louise Nelstrop
1 citation
Contemplative action, or 'social mysticism', is a form of non-doing that flows from contemplation, distinct from ordinary action. Examining the medieval English mystical tradition, the essay argues that actions arising from contemplation are detached. A coda considers three twentieth-century anglophone writers influenced by medieval Christian mysticism, showing that focusing on mysticism and action questions whether ineffability is the most useful marker for Christian mysticism.
Entangled Religions
July 16, 2026
Carola Erika Lorea, Rohit Singh
Tantra is not an esoteric system but a set of pragmatic practices embedded in ecological, political, and multispecies contexts. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with humans, nonhumans, and material traditions across South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, and Europe, this collection examines Tantric careers in relation to labor, gender, embodiment, temporality, and more-than-human environments. The concept of 'tantricking' frames these practices as specialized forms of labor and relational work mediating between humans, deities, forests, political power, and fragile ecosystems. The contributions challenge anthropocentric tendencies in Tantric studies and point toward new directions for ethnography.
Entangled Religions
July 16, 2026
Carine Plancke
Neo-Tantra, often dismissed as a consumerist distortion of authentic South Asian Tantric traditions, may instead represent a creative synthesis of Western countercultural themes with South Asian sources. This ethnographic study of tantric women's workshops in Belgium traces their roots in the Osho movement and its evolution into a network of therapists and facilitators. The workshops blend Tantric teachings with therapeutic New Age techniques, emphasizing the recovery of sexual and vital energy by taking the body and self as the locus of authority. The paper highlights neo-Tantra's focus on self-determination, women's empowerment, and revaluation of the feminine, noting key dynamics of continuity and change when compared to communities rooted in South Asian traditions.
Entangled Religions
July 16, 2026
Maciej Karasinski, Fathima Fasleena
Sacred groves (kāvus) in Kerala hold deep cultural and spiritual significance, shaped by indigenous reverence, fear, and awe of nature. Using textual sources, oral exegesis, and anthropological fieldwork, the article examines spaces within the groves designated for Tantric healing and empowerment. It focuses on indigenous reverential eco-fear, festival rituals, acts reversing misfortune, and the conferral of blessings at Kaḷiyāṭṭakkāvu. The paper also explores how mantravādins and Tantric experts invoke animal spirits and interact with natural and supernatural environments. Indigenous environmental knowledge emerges from encounters between humans, forest spirits, multi-faith communities, and local Tantric experts, motivated by fear.
Entangled Religions
June 18, 2026
Dylan Esler
No Summary
Entangled Religions
June 18, 2026
Henrik H. Sørensen
In late medieval Chinese Chan Buddhism, the concepts of non-doing (wuwei) and effortlessness (wu gongyong) were central soteriological strategies for attaining nirvana, buddha-nature, or buddha-mind. Drawing on primary sources from the Tang dynasty, the Five Dynasties, and the early Northern Song, the article elucidates the hermeneutics and doctrinal interpretations that shaped how Chan practitioners constructed and practiced these ideas, particularly remaining aloof from the conditioned world of phenomena.
Entangled Religions
December 2, 2025
Louis Komjathy
Daoist effortless meditation, rooted in classical Daoism's inner cultivation lineages (ca. 350–90 BCE), centers on wúwéi (non-action or effortlessness). The practice involves specific techniques intimately tied to this concept, along with related contemplative states and traits. The article urges examining meditation beyond mere technique, considering its aesthetics, material culture, place, and spatiality. It concludes with reflections from a lived Daoist perspective.
Entangled Religions
June 26, 2025
David Germano
The Seminal Heart (snying thig) tradition of Tibetan Buddhist Great Perfection (rdzogs chen) underwent dramatic changes in contemplative practices from the eighth century onward. A key innovation was the shifting roles of volitional effort and agency in meditation, alongside changes in transitivity—the directional transfer of energy and locus of agency among agents and patients. Understanding effort/lessness and agency requires close attention to the contemplative lexicon and grammar, including scripted shifts from procedural techniques to the unfolding logic of experience. This article focuses on the formative eleventh through fourteenth centuries, offering speculative thoughts on how these contemplative issues drove the tradition's dynamic changes.
Entangled Religions
April 14, 2023
D. Johannsen
William Butler Yeats, a poet and member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, developed a concept of 'immortal moods' to reconcile supernatural and naturalistic views of magic. He argued that symbols in rituals or poems could evoke these moods, which would descend into people's minds and cause great changes in the world. Through theoretical writings, poetry, and ritual practice, Yeats explored how his own imagination intertwined with past imaginations. By 1901, he condensed these ideas into doctrines of a 'great mind and great memory,' showing how his fusion of literary and folkloristic theorizing connected magical and poetic practice to emerging psychological discourse.