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[German Version] Holy mountains play a major role in many religious traditions. Little is known of the origins of this phenomenon and the real reasons for it – whether specific mountains were holy from the outset or came to be considered holy after the example of others. Apparently, though, neither Olympus, Kailas, Fuji, nor the mountains of Yahweh – not to mention the high places with sanctuaries of Canaanite and Germanic deities – owe their holiness simply to their physiogeographic features. As in the case of holy mountains in more recent traditions, such as the Mormons' hill Cumorah, probably the elevation itself gives the impression of something superhuman. Four ideal types of holy mountain can be identified, but in the reality of religious history they appear in many combinations: (a) mountains identified as numina (common in Japan and Mesoamerican cultures), (b) dwelling and assembly places of the gods or the supreme god and his court (Olympus; various mountains of the gods in Assyrian, Babylonian, and Phoenician mythology), (c) sites of groundbreaking revelation (e.g. to Moses and to Muḥammad), (d) and cosmic mountains as a kind of world axis, separating but also linking heaven and earth (gigantic massifs in the Himalayas [Mount Meru of many N…

[German Version] Firmicus Maternus, Julius, member of a respected Sicilian family. Trained in both Latin and Greek, toward the end of this career as a lawyer c. 335 he composed the most comprehensive Latin handbook of astrology, the Matheseos li…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies The term vision (from Lat. visio) denotes a clear perception of images of individual scenes or long sequences (some coupled with auditory [Auditory hallucination] or olfactory elements) in a waking state. Visions can arise spontaneously or be induced by rhythms, asceticism, meditation, psychedelic drugs, or rituals (Rite and ritual). They are experienced without exception as coming from without, although related external stimuli cannot be verified. Religiously dispose…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies 1. Phenomenology Western, Christian connotations of the concept of the soul, imposed on the religio-historical evidence by outside studies, must be generally excluded if the soul is understood as the principle of manifestations of life that are perceptible (or culturally considered to be perceptible), although they are rarely categorized under a common umbrella term. It is therefore reasonable to speak of a multiplicity of souls – for example four among the Ob-Ugrians (Hasenfratz, Einführung,…

[German Version] Virtually all over the world and among the most varied cultures, excavators of temples, fortifications, dikes, and other significant structures have found human and animal skeletons and vessels with vegetables, household objects, money, or decorations beneath foundations. In the case of human remains, it is often difficult to determine whether the remains simply belong to a resident who was interred there; often enough, injuries or wounds, e.g. to the skull, though also the arrangement of the ac…

[German Version] I. Archaeology – II. Religious Studies – III. House Church (in Early Christianity) – IV. Sociology I. Archaeology …

[German Version] Typology of religion groups religions according to shared features. Unlike the phenomenology of religion, which studies variations of particular phenomena in religions, typology of religion studies religions as totalities to determine common features. I. Typical Singularities G. Mensching was one of the few notable students of religion who followed F.D.E. Schleiermacher in treating type…

[German Version] In religious studies, intoxication is often understood as the state that is induced through the intake of euphoric substances. This is misleading because in an unfavorable setting or basic psycho- mental disposition of the consumer, it is not euphoria but states of anxiety (Anxiety and Fear) and depression that are induced. For this reason, it is preferable, in the history of religion and culture, to define intoxication as a state of enhanced emotionality induced by psychoactive d…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Prostitution, the “oldest profession,” is a form of surrendering one’s own body, tendentially at will, to other people for sex. It can have various motivations, but here we shall consider primarily its religious context. Sacral prostitutes, male and female, have often been associated with temples. The phenomenon was widespread in the ancient Near East, with prostitutes devoted to various goddesses. Even in Jerusalem, prostitutes of both sexes …

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[German Version] The fugitive soul is represented pictorially in many forms. Late, principally Roman sarcophagi depict Prometheus (Culture hero) forming a human being as a statuette, to which Athena adds a butterfly (Gk ψυχή/ psychḗ ). Frequently the soul is represented as a bird. The soul bird itself comes from ancient Egypt. In the earliest period, a bird resembling a stork, later a falcon, was considered the embodiment of divine powers called ba. Probably on account of a later shift in meaning, this term was already translated by Horapollon as psychḗ or “soul.” In the Old Kingdom, this interpretation did not coincide with the meaning of psychḗ/soul, because in that period nothing was ever said about a sou…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Suicide is the violent taking of one’s own life by one’s own hand; it also includes voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. Cultural traditions vary greatly regarding the admissibility of suicide. In tribal cultures, the aged and infirm in the Kalahari or other extremely arid regions ask their relatives for death. Kings and chiefs in African tribal cultures must kill thems…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Practical Theology I. Religious Studies Especially in Germany, occultism (from Lat. occultum, “what is hidden [in the mysteries]”) became a collective term for all theories and practices dealing with “extrasensory” and “supernatural” forces after the appearance of H.P. Blavatsky’s theosophy in the 19th century. It differs from spiritualism in explaining spiritualist phenomena as being caused by an unspecified natural force. But since religions, Gnosis, and esotericism also have an interest in hidden secrets …

[German Version] I. Natural Science – II. Religious Studies – III. Practical Theology I. Natural Science Parapsychology is the study of supranormal psychic phenomena (also known as psy-phenomena) such as extrasensory perception, telepathy, telekinesis or psychokinesis, remote viewing or second sight, spiritual healing, out-of-body and near-death experiences. All these phenomena are (psychic) effects from a distance, and therefore mental connections that obviate physical causal …

From Lat. occultus, “secret, hidden,” the term “occult” has reference to phenomena, processes, and practices in nature, the spiritual world, or the extraterrestrial sphere that point to hidden forces that escape both normal sensory observation and the knowledge that rests on it. From the end of the 19th century, the term “occultism” came into use primarily for practical or theoretical dealings with transcendental phenomena of this kind. Today it is usually related to the occult worldview that is b…

In distinction from Indian or pseudo-Indian theosophical societies (see 4) of the Blavatsky type, theosophy in the traditional sense represents the concern in all religions to penetrate the deepest mysteries of the deity. In the early church and the Middle Ages “theosophy” was another term for theology. It came to be restricted to special kinds of Christianity only in the 18th century and now applies analogously to non-Christian phenomena. 1. Features As distinct from metaphysics and philosophy, theosophy relies generally on revelation. If this is not found in the …

T. Vaughan first introduced the term “anthroposophy” at the beginning of the 18th century in the title of a book. Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) adopted it to advance his Adyar theosophy. 1. Development Steiner was born on February 27, 1861, in Kraljevec, which was then in Austria, near the Hungarian-Croatian border. Early in life he had spiritist and occult experiences. He was also attracted by the solemnity of Roman Catholic worship and by the exact sciences. As a student of nature and literature at Vienna, he developed his mental powers in such a way as to arrive at a higher reality embracing both matter and spirit. Reinforced by encounters with an otherwise unknown herb gatherer and a theos…

In contrast to astronomy, which operates mechanistically, astrology rests on the conviction that the character and destiny (Fate and [Good] Fortune) of people can be decisively affected by the position of the stars at the moment of their birth. Only heavenly bodies that may be seen with the naked eye are relevant: the sun, the moon, the planets, and the “houses” to which these belong in the zodiac. Fixed stars outside the zodiac may figure in the calculations in a supplementary capacity. The demonstrable physical influence of heavenly bodies (…

In antiquity the word “esoteric” was used for knowledge that was imparted only to an inner circle of fully initiated students, while “exoteric” denoted that which in principle was accessible to everybody. In a broader sense the esoteric soon became anything that is entrusted only to a select group on the basis of certain qualities. In contrast to secret societies, whose very existence is meant to be secret, such a circle is a nonsecret order or group that guards a secret. We find such circles in all cultures in the cultic field, as well as philosophical and, increasingly, political fields. Whereas in modern usage the adjective “esoteric” may be used for anything that is not accessible to the public at large, in practice the derived noun “esotericism” has come to be equated with occultism, a new term for magic without the connotation of dealings with the devil. In the widest sense esotericism presupposes that alongside objective things that we try to explain rationally and scientifically there are hidden forces at work in us and the world that transcend normal sensory experience an…

Since the ninth and tenth centuries the Gk.-Arab. word alchēmeia has denoted the attempt to change base metals into silver and gold. This effort has been more than a mere curiosity in the history of science and technology, however, for in alchemy the smelting, alloying, and tinting of metals have been linked with the belief that one can help what is thought of as living nature achieve its quickest possible development and fulfillment. It was probably in Alexandria in the second ce…