Reviews for The Myths and Religion of the Incas: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Gods, Myths and Lege...

The average rating for The Myths and Religion of the Incas: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Gods, Myths and Lege... based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-10-29 00:00:00 Vincent Pulcrano "Do something good for your body so that your soul will be thrilled to dwell in it," wrote the Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila. P 31 Contrary to what many people today think, spiritual paths do not only lead to greater inwardness. The path that leads inward is the first path of the journey, just as a walk in the mountains only ends after you return to the valley. And so each spiritual path actually runs right through the marketplace and is measured by how that spirituality is transfered to everyday life. P 31 The promise and realization of modernity has not resulted, as predicted by it's early advocates (eg. Enlightenment writers, Max Weber), in the teiumph of science and reason over faith in the non-rational and in the unseen. Quite the contrary. The accelerated pace of economic and technological change today is accompanied by an overflow in the vocabulary and means used to find, to name, and to make sense of traces of religious/spiritual presence. P 45 When the gods have died as meaningful ideas in Western society, the body is still left as the site of meaning. The modern package if spirituality is transformed into a therapeutics of the body and what Michel Foucault, recalling the ancient Greeks, called "the care of the self" ("la souci de soi"). P 75 The workout and the healthy eating habits of the mediated world are the new spiritual teachings. But this is not some imaginative freedom of the Swinging Sixties; it is the controlled regulation of everyday life, the new regime of the spiritual self worshipped in the gymnasium and idolized on the screen. The gods have died, but the body remains the spiritual center of gravity. P 75 This is the impossibility of desire, the human yearning for something beyond and yet within the body. P 75 In the field of politics, fundamentalism flourishes in the guise of right-wing populism. The "common sense" of the "silent majority" is to right-wing populism what the Word of God Is to religious fundamentalism: the core from which the moral ruled for a "good society" can and should be derived. P 110 Religious fundamentalism and right-wing populism offer the tempting possibility of eliminating doubt, because instead of a bewildering plethora of possibilities, there is only one form of faith or food society. // That signifies a fatal departure from the political. Collective processes of negotiation about the question of how people want to live together are no longer conceivable because it is no longer possible to debate social and political aims. The rules for a good society are already firmly fixed, so that differences in values and beliefs become nonnegociable and therefore insurmountable. But it also means that divergent beliefs are regarded as a threat to the community and it's values. Dialogue is no longer possible. P 111 It takes great self-assurance to adopt a moderate or mediating stance in such a climate and, as often as not, those who lack that quality can escape radicalization only through passivity and political apathy. P 112 Can religion helo us to resist the tendency toward radicalization? In order to do so, religion must not confine the individual within an ideological cage, but must contribute instead towards personal development and emancipation. P 112 'American secular apirituality' - a longing among many (especially the white and upper classes) who are still not satisfied with what they have and who want something more; who have all they can eat but are still searching for that special flavouring, some psycho-spice of self-acceptance, perhaps, some 'inner herb' of guilt-free self-satisfaction." P 128 Litsch implicitly supports both Hori's and Zizek's criticism by saying that many people in the West today are on an inner migration to Asian culture, that they take over Buddhist ways of thinking without knowing either their own or the other culture well enough. At the same time, they continue to feel, act and think in ways deeply informed by the Judeo-Christian heritage without being aware of their cultural conditioning. P 129 This would confirm Karlfried Graf Dürckheim's (1896-1988) opinion that a meditative form of consciousness is necessary for Europeans to come back to their spiritual roots. P 130 * the spiritual city . Philip Sheldrake Regaining a sense of "the spiritual" in the city is a form of resistance to the fragmentation if life, to self-absorbed individualism and to postmodern placelessness. P 145 Interestingly, the British architect Richard Rogers promotes the idea of public spaces such as the square or piazza as 'open-monded space.' This is person-centred, with functions left open rather than predetermined by architects or planners. It does not prioritize efficiency but participation. Consequently such space is accessible physically, intellectually and spiritually. It's very design should evoke inclusivity. Such space enables creativity, celebration and play versus constraint. P 148 The nature of sacred architecture changes to express the spirit of an age. The Victorian's thought that the Gothic style was the most spiritual (for churches) and generally elevating (for public buildings). Has Minimalism in either public or domestic buildinhs now become the new design spirituality that speaks of a higher life marked by pure, light spaces and few objects? P 149 John Pawson - Novy Dvur monastery Bohemia The positive aspect is that Minimalism, while an aesthetic, also embodies an ethic of simplicity and ecological sensibility in a world of excess. It seeks to create a kind of material "silence" in response to what might be called the spiritual problematic of the Western culture - restlessness and the desperate quest for distraction. P 149 What can't be counted doesn't count. P 331 Confusion is caused by imperceptibly mixing different levels of awareness. P 332 Accordingly, modern esotericism is a fluid and constantly changing mix of scientific findings and religious beliefs that neither purports to be a profession of faith nor recognizes the boundaries of science. Therein lies the fascinating power of esoteric teachings,.most of which stem from fear of commitment to a restrictive world view. P 339

Review # 2 was written on 2011-12-10 00:00:00 Leandro Duarte Great insight into the politics that happens in the SBC. In this work we see what power does to people. The kind of people Burleson speaks of are the very ones who should not be in leadership, but they are. Whatever happened to "whoever would be the greatest among you, would be the servant of all"? A sad treatise, that sadly, rings true. I have been a minister in the SBC for many years, and nothing that Mr. Burleson wrote surprised me.