敕建火德真君庙考

北京的地安门外，什刹海沿岸，被认为是旧京风水最好的一块地方，不但倚仗龙脉，还滨海临湖。所以，这里不但云集了广宅大院、朱门广堂，还建有为数众多的道观佛寺，神祠庵院，光现存的就有明代敕建的“广福观”，建筑华美的“广化寺”，曾写进《红楼梦》的“清虚观”，有着动人传说的坤道院“铸钟娘娘庙”，大太监小德张建的雄伟大庙“宏恩观”。但这些庙宇中，最著名，历史最悠久的还要数坐落在后门桥旁的“敕建火德真君庙”，俗称“火神庙”。北京火德真君庙建于大唐贞观六年(公元631年)，距今已有1370年的历史。比同时期的法源寺早三年(…     

鲁国大长公主与北京东岳庙

全国重点文物保护单位北京东岳庙、内蒙古应昌路鲁王城遗址都是闻名海内外的元代古文化遗存,每年都各自吸引着数以万计的中外游客前往寻古探奇,但是包括专家学者在内很少有人注意二者之间因一位公主而结下的历史渊源。近年来,随着许多碑刻的发现和铭文纪年文物的出土,元武宗的妹妹、元仁宗的姐姐、元文宗的姑姑兼岳母———鲁国大长公主祥哥刺吉,其显赫的地位、神秘的行踪逐渐浮出水面,尤其是其留下的珍贵文化遗产,吸引入们去深入探究这位蒙古族历史上的巾帼豪杰。至元八年(1271),开始建应昌府城封给那陈的儿子帖木儿;1277年,帖木儿北征建功…     

一座鲜为人知的皇家道场娑罗寺

<正>在清末民初的高鹤年居士所写的《五台山游访记》中载道:光绪二十九年(1903)五月"二十三日,游栖贤寺。里许观音洞,洞在岩畔,蹑     

A Queer Death: The Funeral of Diana,Princess of Wales

Abstract

Elizabeth Stuart opens her paper by commenting that she feels that the most significant part of Michael Vasey's book, Stranger and Friends, is the final chapter on death. Vasey, she notes is one of the very few people to address the question of sexuality and death and his call for the queering of death has to be taken seriously. Stuart goes on to explore what a queer death might actually look like by reference to the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Through a close reading of the event, combined with personal experiences of having been in Hyde Park, Stuart shows how the many different mixed and ambiguous messages were brought together in the one event. The overall effect of this ambiguity was to subvert what should have been a national establishment ritual to make it accessible to many different people, especially to those who are gay, lesbian or bisexual. Stuart sees this as a possible pattern for the future and calls for far more work on this neglected area of sexuality and worship.     

Ordeal by Fire: The Tragedy of the Solar Temple

On October 4th and 5th, 1994, fifty-three people were found dead in Switzerland and in Canada. Their bodies—some showing signs of violence suffered before the fires—were found in the incinerated centres of a neo-Templar movement called originally International Order of Chivalry Solar Tradition or, for short, Solar Tradition, and after 1990-91 Order of the Solar Temple. The movement is part of one of several currents which as a whole compose the universe of the contemporary occult-esoteric movements, the neo-Templar tradition. In this paper I propose to trace, first of all, the history of the neo-Templar tradition, then that of the Solar Temple, relating the essential information on the tragedy of October 1994, and finally suggesting some possible interpretations.     

The Greatest Christian Hero, Philosopher, and Poet: Christopher Dawson's Italian Trinity

Christopher Dawson (born 1889), a Catholic scholar and renowned philosophical historian, spent his academic life exploring the relationship of religion, sociology and culture. He believed that without an understanding of religion it is impossible to comprehend the culture of humanity or peoples. His magisterial work, Religion and Culture, established him as an historian's historian. He ended his days as Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard Divinity School, the first Catholic to occupy a chair there.     

Carmen Amaya: Gypsy Princess, Flamenco Dancer, and the Role of the Family

Carmen Amaya was a great Spanish Flamenco dancer raised in the Gypsy tradition, which strictly prescribes, among other things, gender obligations. The proper behavior of women is to bear children and maintain the home. Carmen, from an early age, showed extraordinary skill in the dance form that the Gypsies brought to Spain. Her grasp of the intense, sensual dance was quickly recognized and she became famous throughout the world. But she was trapped in a universal problem: How much loyalty does a great artist owe to family? She died of kidney failure at age 50 in 1963. Hers is an extreme case that focuses attention on a universal problem. She did not draw a dividing line between herself and family tradition.     

The De of Levinas: Cultivating the Heart-Mind of Radical Passivity

This essay explores the early Chinese text Guanzi to address the question of ethical responsibility in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. We begin with the premise that being responsive to the other, feeling the impossibility of renouncing ethical obligation, and experiencing the basic moral asymmetry at the heart of Levinas’s project all rely on the welcome openness of the subject that Levinas describes as the subject’s “radical passivity.” However, his emphasis on infinite responsibility, coupled with the theme of radical passivity, gives the problematic impression that ethics amounts to a never-ending to-do list for the other, and certainly this is not what Levinas means. We turn to the Guanzi, which recommends that the ethically efficacious sage-prince must cultivate a state of passive stillness and inner vacuity. Only because the sage-prince maintains this deferential heart-mind is he freely open and responsive to others. Here the sage-prince looks strikingly like a good Levinasian: He is deferential, sensitive to context, and hyper-aware of the limits of his own knowledge. The Guanzi goes on to describe specific practices the sage-prince can employ to cultivate his ethical prowess, including practices of meditation and gentle physical exercises. Taking this insight into Levinas’s context, we suggest that such practices of self-regulation are necessary to enable effective responsiveness to the other. From this perspective, responsibility is “infinite” not because I am perpetually beholden to the other’s whims, but because I am perpetually accountable for calming and clearing my own mind of the unstable emotions, selfish desires, and intellectual machinations that prevent the welcome openness of radical passivity.     

The hidden impact of conspiracy theories: perceived and actual influence of theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana

The authors examined the perceived and actual impact of exposure to conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. One group of undergraduate students rated their agreement and their classmates' perceived agreement with several statements about Diana's death. A second group of students from the same undergraduate population read material containing popular conspiracy theories about Diana's death before rating their own and others' agreement with the same statements and perceived retrospective attitudes (i.e., what they thought their own and others' attitudes were before reading the material). Results revealed that whereas participants in the second group accurately estimated others' attitude changes, they underestimated the extent to which their own attitudes were influenced.     

The Architectural Expression of Primitive Christianity: William Beveridge and the Temple of Solomon

Abstract

On the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a resurgent religious identity in church and state was informed by identifying the English nation with the biblical Israel, and the worship and buildings of the Church of England with those of the Temple in Jerusalem. The dedication of the Church of St Peter, Cornhill (rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 and designed by Christopher Wren) in 1681 by the Revd William Beveridge was an expression of the Church of England's confidence in its identity with the ‘primitive Church,’ and as the Church of a chosen and favoured people.