The Brill Dictionary of Religion
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Subject: Religious Studies
Edited by: Kocku von Stuckrad
The impressively comprehensive Brill Dictionary of Religion (BDR) Online addresses religion as an element of daily life and public discourse, is richly illustrated and with more than 500 entries, the Brill Dictionary of Religion Online is a multi-media reference source on the many and various forms of religious commitment. The Brill Dictionary of Religion Online addresses the different theologies and doctrinal declarations of the official institutionalized religions and gives equal weight and consideration to a multiplicity of other religious phenomena. The Brill Dictionary of Religion Online helps map out and define the networks and connections created by various religions in contemporary societies, and provides models for understanding these complex phenomena.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
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The impressively comprehensive Brill Dictionary of Religion (BDR) Online addresses religion as an element of daily life and public discourse, is richly illustrated and with more than 500 entries, the Brill Dictionary of Religion Online is a multi-media reference source on the many and various forms of religious commitment. The Brill Dictionary of Religion Online addresses the different theologies and doctrinal declarations of the official institutionalized religions and gives equal weight and consideration to a multiplicity of other religious phenomena. The Brill Dictionary of Religion Online helps map out and define the networks and connections created by various religions in contemporary societies, and provides models for understanding these complex phenomena.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Mysteries
(1,614 words)
The Concept 1. Mysteries are ‘mysterious’—it sounds banal, and suggestive of a detective story: a “mystery thriller.” Nevertheless, the expression indicates an important characteristic. The topic is cults, which comprise the secret actions (rites), narratives (myths), or teachings accessible to or comprehensible by the initiated alone. There are ‘private parties,’ which seek to guarantee the participants special experiences. They are not exhausted by the fact of → secrecy, to be sure, though the ‘secret,’ the
mysterion, aroused much curiosity. Mysteries are often condu…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Mysticism
(3,449 words)
Definition 1.
Definition: Mysticism is an umbrella concept for (1) experiences in which boundaries are dissolved—those of the subject, such as in a vacuum of thought, or in ecstasy; those of the object, so that dualities are removed; those of space, to experience the infinite in the finite; those of time, when the ‘timeless, everlasting now’ replaces successive time. ‘Mysticism’ also denotes (2) the concepts, teachings, and literary genres that contemplate, recount, or describe this immanent trans…
Source:
The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Myth/Mythology
(3,238 words)
“Essence” of Myth? 1. a) The ‘essence’ of myth resists univocal definition. Myth has a narrative structure; certain repeatable events are narrated that lie beyond space and time, and are deposited at certain nodal points of human existence. In a broader sense, myth is a recounted history (of gods and demigods) by means of which a body of knowledge is handed on that grows from generation to generation. Today, a distinction between myth and other narratives is regarded as impossible, and seen rather …
Source:
The Brill Dictionary of Religion