Theosis A publication of the Center for the Study of World Religions THE USE OF THE PLOTINIAN SOUL TODAY Anna Corrias MYSTERIES ABIDE A conversation on consciousness with Michael Pollan THE BODY IN YORUBA TRADITION Ayodeji Oggunaike WATER WORLDS Charles Stang WAKING FROM THE FLESH DREAM An interview with Alex and Allyson Grey MAGIC AND TIME: LESSONS FROM THE TAROT Giovanna Parmigiani CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF WORLD RELIGIONS 42 Francis Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138 cswr.hds.harvard.edu cswr@hds.harvard.edu DIRECTOR Charles Stang ADMINISTRATION Gosia Sklodowska, Executive Director Bhaswar Khan, Assistant Director Laurie Sedgwick, Events Coordinator Sarah Iannotti, Administrative Coordinator Chris Lisée, Communications Specialist Deborah Blackwell, Communications Specialist ADVISORY BOARD 2023-2024 Giovanni Bazzana, Ann Braude, Mohsen Goudarzi, Diane Moore 2024-2025 Mohsen Goudarzi, Tracey Hucks, Teren Sevea THIS PUBLICATION Editor in Chief: Gosia Sklodowska Content: Tristan Angieri, Chris Lisée, Faith McGuire, Gosia Sklodowska Front Cover, Research, and T&T Illustrations: Mark Pernice Photography: Muwen Li, Gosia Sklodowska, Ashley Zigman, Justin Knight, Jeffrey Blackwell, Paula Ortiz Proofreading and Editing: Chris Lisée, Deborah Blackwell Design: Chris Lisée, Gosia Sklodowska PERIPHERIES Editor in Chief: Sherah Bloor Design: Gabby Woo CONTENTS 2 Letter from the Director 4 Year in Review 12 Research 34 Transcendence and Transformation 52 Thinking with Plants and Fungi 58 CSWR Collaborations 62 Looking Ahead Mysteries Abide A conversation on Consciousness with Michael Pollan 56 The Use of the Plotinian Soul Today Anna Corrias The Body In Yoruba Tradition Ayodeji Oggunaike Water Worlds Charles Stang Waking From The Flesh Dream An Interview With Alex and Allyson Grey Magic And Time: Lessons from The Tarot Giovanna Parmigiani 42 20 24 16 17 2 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 In the pages of Theosis we hope to provide you with a window into the important work of our researchers, our unique programs and events, and our continued progress in reaching and growing our diverse community. LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR Charles Stang, Director, Center for the Study of World Religions. Photo: Jeffrey Blackwell. 3Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 Dear colleagues, Our Center may be located on the geographic periphery of Harvard University, in a quiet, oa- sis-like corner of the campus, but I feel that the exciting research and programming we are doing as part of the Transcendence and Transformation initiative has brought us closer to the University’s and the public’s interest. I am delighted to bring our Center’s work into greater focus in our first edition of Theosis, a collection of essays, inter- views, news stories, imagery, and data highlights, inviting you to discover the richness and depth of our research and programming. The Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) was founded in the late 1950s, when Harvard Divinity School was resolutely Christian in its identity, to herald and catalyze the integration of the study of the world’s religions into the School’s curriculum. Since the success of its founding mission, the Center has been reimagined multiple times. Under my tenure, the Center’s research and programming have been organized around twin poles, transcendence and transformation, by which we mean to highlight traditions and practices that aim to transcend our ordinary states of being, consciousness, perception, and embodiment, thus to transform the individual, community, and society. We have chosen “theosis” to capture the Center’s range of research and programming under the Transcendence and Transformation initiative. We borrowed the Greek term from Eastern Christian theology, in which it names the process of becoming ever more divine, participating ever more fully, even uniting with God. A Latin-derived equivalent would be “divinization.” There are analogous terms in Judaism and Islam: devekut and fanāʾ. Outside these Abrahamic monotheisms, “theosis” can mean any effort to live a divine life, transcend the normal conditions of human consciousness, transform into something more than human, and become a god. We trust you will see the “theosis” thread woven throughout. It has been another remarkable year at the CSWR. While it’s impossible to showcase all the incredible research, programming, and publications in a single letter, I’m delighted to share some of our most exciting research and programming and the exceptional scholars, researchers, students, and staff who have made it all possible. This past year, our research community has expanded to include 24 researchers, visiting scholars, research associates and affiliates, and post-doctoral fellows, and 13 student research assistants. Their work, spanning a diverse array of religious traditions and disciplines, has been instrumental in advancing the Center’s expansive view of humanity and the humanities—what my friend and colleague Jeff Kripal terms “the superhumanities.” Their work has been shared Charles M. Stang, ThD Director, Center for the Study of World Religions Professor of Early Christian Thought, Harvard Divinity School through a variety of channels, including a podcast (Matt Dillon’s Pop Apocalypse), journal papers, conference presentations, classes, books (for example, Andrew Jacob’s Gospel Thrillers and Keith Cantú’s Like a Tree Universally Spread), speaker series (Giovanna Parmigiani’s “Gnose- ologies”), and popular essays (for example, Nick Low’s and Russell Powell’s essays in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin). I want to draw your attention to the Center’s new “Research Reflections” series, in which our affiliates translate their research and scholarship for a broader audience. I want to thank Gosia Sklodowska for launching and overseeing this important new series and Aaron Ullrey for his editorial acumen. You can find 18 recent reflections on our website, including four thought-provoking pieces featured in this publication. On the programming side, I’m delighted to highlight two exceptional events we hosted in Spirituality and the Arts. In the fall, we hosted “Enheduanna: Voicing the Feminine Divine” and, in the spring, “The Thunder, Perfect Mind.” In each case, we sought to bring an ancient text to life for contemporary readers through scholarly lectures and artistic performances. Specially-commissioned world premiere musical pieces were performed, and portions of the ancient texts—poems in Sumerian and Cop- tic—were sung in their original languages! These events were unlike any other I’ve ever hosted or attended, and we have CSWR Visiting Scholar Anne Harley to thank. On November 30, we celebrated the release of the latest issue of Peripheries, the annual literary and arts journal published by the CSWR and edited by CSWR resident Sherah Bloor. That evening, I said, “Of all the efforts the CSWR has supported over these past five years, the launch of the series on ‘Poetry, Philosophy, and Religion’ and the publication of the journal Peripheries were our earliest successes, and are perhaps what I am most proud of as I look back on my tenure so far.” The event featured poetry readings from Victoria Chang, Jorie Graham, and Alice Oswald and a jazz improvisation with Sam Weinberg. The CSWR is pleased to partner with the Mahindra Humanities Center (FAS) and the Petrie-Flom Center (HLS) on the Harvard Study of Psychedelics in Society and Culture. As part of that Study and our years-long investment in “Psychedelics and the Future of Religion,” the CSWR hosted its second annual conference, “Psychedelic Intersections: Cross-cultural Manifestations of the Sacred,” on February 17. Keynote speakers included Luis Eduardo Luna, Director of the Wasiwaska Research Center, and Carl Hart, Professor at Columbia University and author of Drug Use for Grown-Ups. That conference was organized by Jeffrey Breau and Paul Gillis-Smith, who both recently graduated from Harvard Divinity School and joined the CSWR as full-time project leads for the CSWR’s portion of the Harvard Study. We ended the year’s programming on a very high note with our conference, “Platonism as a Living Tradition.” Although the conventions of contemporary scholarship discourage them from admitting it, scholars of Platonism very often un- derstand themselves as Platonists and as part of a living Platonist tradition. Our conference aimed to gather scholars whose writings demonstrate an existential investment in that tradition and to invite them to reflect on their part in it. The later Platonists spoke of a Golden Chain, a community of philosophers for whom Platonism was a way of life, a path of intellect and heart, of reason, revelation, and reverence. We wished to honor this tradition and its relevance for the world today. We are also laying the groundwork for an exciting conference next May 2025, culminating our initiative, “Thinking with Plants and Fungi,” generously supported by the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation and Wonderstruck Podcast. This initiative builds on the momentum created by the CSWR’s reading group, “Plant (and Fungi!) Consciousness,” which has been running for two years and is led by Rachael Petersen and Natalia Schwien. You might be interested in reading Rachael’s interview with Michael Pollen, who was a member of the reading group in its first year, or Natalia’s review essay in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, or reading about our field trip to the “Church of the Woods” in Canterbury, New Hampshire. Looking ahead, we are laying the foundation for another year of rich and dynamic programming. Highlights include music, arts, and transcen- dence, including an organ concert of Arvo Pärt’s music, art exhibits, movements workshops, and a conference on G. I. Gurdjieff (c. 1867 –1949), the esoteric philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, composer, and dance teacher, whose teachings and legacy reverberate around the world to this day. We also have an exciting lineup of events in Psychedelics and Spirituality centered around the themes of psychedelic chaplaincy, psychedelics and aesthetics, and Indigenous traditions. I invite you to visit us at cswr.hds.harvard.edu and sign up for our newsletter to stay abreast of our 2024-2025 programming. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about our Center. I look forward to connecting with you and seeing you at our upcoming events! Photos credits, clockwise from top left: Muwen Li, Paula Ortiz, Lisa Gorelik, Muwen Li, Justin Knight, Ashley Zigman. 5Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 Year in Review As the Center for the Study of World Religions looks to the future, we celebrate an amazing year of ground-breaking research, exciting events, and publications reaching a growing and diverse community worldwide. From in-depth lectures bringing ancient texts to life, interdisciplinary conferences, and artistic performances including world-premiere music and dance, to the creation of a new podcast that explores the mystical, mythical, psychedelic, and paranormal aspects of popular culture—our programming balances gravity, novelty, and relevance to today’s world. 6 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS: Swami Medhananda, “Theologizing with Sri Ramakrishna & Swami Vivekananda” Psychedelic Intersections 2024: “Psychedelic Spirituality and the Underground” Panel 1 Psychedelic Intersections 2024: “Psychedelic Exceptionalism is Killing Us” Keynote by Carl Hart YEAR IN REVIEW CSWR in Numbers The CSWR has led innovative programming and research in the areas of interest to our funders, the Harvard community, and mainstream audiences. 24 postdoctoral fellows, research associates, affiliates, and visiting scholars 13 student research assistants 10 Harvard Divinity School faculty members (through the CSWR Advisory Board, hosting and co-sponsoring events, and speaking engagements) 8,129 e-newsletter readers 4,218 attendees of CSWR public programming IN THE 2023-2024 ACADEMIC YEAR, THE CSWR ENGAGED 18 research talks 58 public programs, including: 5 speaker series • Gnoseologies • Poetry • Psychedelics and the Future of Religion • Psychedelics and Ethics • Thinking with Plants and Fungi 11special events musical performances • book and journal launches • art exhibits • field trips • and more 9 workshops, with 25 individual sessions HOSTED 18 research reflections 38 conference talks 41 videos, with over 7,600 views PRODUCED WATCH CSWR VIDEOS: youtube.com/@HarvardCSWR 7Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 IN THE 2023-2024 ACADEMIC YEAR, CSWR FACULTY AND RESEARCHERS AND BUILT PARTNERSHIPS WITH 3 European centers on joint fellowships and conferences THE CENTER ALSO COLLABORATED WITH 20 Harvard-based and external centers and programs on joint appointments and programming TAUGHT 13 courses at Harvard and other universities and colleges HAD OVER 72 speaking engagements including close to 40 at conferences, and many others as guest lecturers, panel chairs and speakers, and podcast guests PUBLISHED OVER 32 journal papers 26 essays and chapters in magazines and books PUBLISHED 8 books GAVE 7 performances MADE 7 music recordings ARE WORKING ON close to 30 journal papers and book chapters 5 books SEE PAGE 58 FOR MORE ABOUT THE CSWR’S COLLABORATIONS History of Hermetic Philosophy and related currents 8 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 CSWR COMMUNITY In the Words of Our Affiliates “It is a rare kind of place that can bring together equal measures of human kindness and scholarly rigor. As a scholar and resident, my experience at the CSWR has been enriched with consistent opportunities for productive dialogue with fellow residents and visiting scholars, and daily moments of genuine warmth and camaraderie.” Jonathan Thumas CSWR Resident and PhD Candidate, Harvard University “My experience at the CSWR has been simply wonderful. It is an unparalleled academic sanctuary, exemplifying schol- arly excellence and rigorous inquiry, and its warm, open, and collaborative culture, coupled with the profound significance of its research questions, creates an intellectual haven like no other.” Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm Visiting Scholar “When you deeply miss your family and friends, you’ll discover a warm, caring family among the people at the Center. Attending weekly meetings reveals new worlds, rich with spiritual insights. It’s not just an institute; it’s a family and a genuine academy for learning together through listening and care.” Zahra Moballegh CSWR Resident and WSRP Research Associate “The work environment is very stimulating. People are very open to new ideas and also to unconventional projects. When you present projects, for example, or work on articles or a monograph, people will always listen to what you say very carefully and give you their very honest opinion but in a very charitable way. Having such a work environment is not a given in every academic context, so I would say that the main resource is really the feedback and the support that you can get here.” Fabien Muller Postdoctoral Fellow, Philosophy of Religion “Whereas often in an academic environ- ment one can feel really siloed, partic- ularly as a relatively young academic, it’s been wonderful here at the Center to have the kind of mentorship and support I’ve had from more senior academics and colleagues.” Tara Smith Postdoctoral Fellow, Spirituality and the Arts “This seemed like one of the best places to come because my advisor Professor Jacob K. Olupona is the world’s leading expert on Yorùbá religious traditions. But also, the Center has a really interesting history within the field of religion in Africa. A number of prominent scholars such as Geoffrey Parrinder and other very, very towering figures in that field have all actually been visiting fellows or visiting scholars at the CSWR.” Ayodeji Ogunnaike Visiting Scholar 9Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 In the Words of Program Attendees Thank you for such a beautiful, transformative week. I made new friends, deepened relationships with old friends, and learned more than I could have imagined. And I felt the warmth and humanity and open-minded curiosity of the CSWR community in every narrative beat of the conference.” – Michael Griffin, Head, Department of Ancient Mediterranean & Near Eastern Studies; Professor, Department of Philosophy and Department of Ancient Mediterranean & Near Eastern Studies, The University of British Columbia “ PLATONISM AS A LIVING TRADITION CONFERENCE, MAY 2024 [The workshop] masterfully guided the participants to unlock their vocal and physical flexibility, tapping into the holistic and embodied nature of sound production. … To truly understand and feel the impact of reclaiming the physical gesture needed to produce sounds of profound emotion, one must experience it.” – Leah Gawel, MDiv ’26 THE MUSCLE OF THE SELF WORKSHOP, FEBRUARY 2024 “ Attending Professor Parmigiani’s ‘Gnoseologies’ series was a transformative experience for me. Her exceptional work, combined with the wisdom of invited speakers, deepened my understanding and provided a lasting framework for how I consider what counts as ‘knowledge.’ Prof. Parmigiani’s breadth of knowledge and warm teaching style create a learning environment where everyone is welcome, and curiosity and wonder are championed.” – Joelle Te Paske, MDiv ’23 GNOSEOLOGIES SERIES “ [CSWR events] conjure a much more experiential aspect of the study of religion … it’s great to think [with these events] how can I adapt my own studies to be practically, sonically, experientially oriented.” – Paul Gillis-Smith, MDiv ’24 THE THUNDER, PERFECT MIND, APRIL 2024 “ [The event was] deeply evocative, contemplative and energizing! It is a gift to have experiences that bring you to an altered state and offer a door to a different time/space, even if for a moment. ... I left the building feeling like I was floating and yet anchored to an ancestral power. That feeling has been lingering since.” – Paula Ortiz, MDiv ’26 ENHEDUANA: VOICING THE FEMININE DIVINE, DECEMBER 2023 “ 10 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 AUGUST The CSWR welcomed eight new visiting scholars, five new postdoctoral fellows, and four new research associates and fellows, who joined three returning researchers as the research cohort for the 2023-2024 academic year. The research community was joined by 13 student research assistants, including MDiv, MTS, and PhD students, with research projects and interests spanning philosophy, arts, music, Buddhism, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Studies, Shamanism, Animism, and Mysticism. The Center launched four fall semester reading groups, covering the ancient poet Enheduana, plant and fungi consciousness, Paul Tillich, and psychedelics and spirituality. SEPTEMBER The CSWR kicked off an art exhibit of the works of Dexter Brightman. Inspired by the engraving and incunabula schools of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, his pieces featured themes from Platonism, Hermeticism, and alchemy, and evoked altered states of consciousness. Professor Adam Afterman gave the annual List Lecture in Jewish Studies: “Kabbalistic Neoplatonism: Divine Emanation and Mystical Integration.” Afterman argued that through an interpretation of Neoplatonic emanation in terms of substantive intra-divine emanation, the kabbalist developed for the first time a Jewish godhead. CSWR Visiting Scholar Anne Harley led “The Muscle of the Self Workshop,” a transformative exploration into the power of voice and its connection to the inner self. In response to its positive reception and high-interest level from the community, the workshop returned in the spring for three more sessions. An additional session was held with the support of a grant from the Office of the Associate Provost for Student Affairs. OCTOBER Organized by the CSWR resident Santosh Raut and co-hosted with the HDS Buddhist Ministry Initiative, “Dhamma Chakra Day: Buddhism and Emancipation of Marginalized Classes in India” delved into the enduring legacy of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, PhD, whose peaceful and egalitarian movement has informed Indian society and politics. NOVEMBER The Center’s Common Room hosted pumpkin painting and carving festivities for residents and their friends. The Common Room was again transformed for Diwali, featuring music, prayers, and a commu- nal meal. More than 100 attendees celebrated the launch of the sixth issue of Peripheries, the Center’s annual literary and arts journal. The gathering featured two live musical performances and poetry readings from three acclaimed poets and Peripheries contributors: Alice Oswald, Victoria Chang, and Jorie Graham. DECEMBER “Enheduana: Voicing the Feminine Divine” featured the world premiere of a musical performance inspired by Enheduana, as well as two scholarly talks on the earliest known poet, author, and high priestess to Inana, the goddess of war, sex, change, and destruction in the ancient Sumerian city-state of Ur. YEAR IN REVIEW Highlights 2023-2024 Photo: Justin Knight. Photo: Gosia Sklodowska. Photo: Muwen Li. 11Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 As part of the Thinking with Plants and Fungi initiative, a diverse group of participants from Harvard Divinity School, including students, faculty, staff, and affiliates, embarked on a field trip to the unique spiritual community known as the Church of the Woods in Canterbury, New Hampshire. At the “Hindu View of Life Annual Lecture,” Swami Medhananda examined the lives and teachings of Sri Ramakrishna and his disciple Swami Vivekananda, whose religious pluralism affirmed the equal reality and value of multiple salvific goals. MAY The three-day “Platonism as a Living Tradition Conference” challenged speakers to step into a different voice from typical academic conferences and invited them to share how each of them, as scholars, embodies and furthers Platonism. Topics ranged from the Plotinian soul to living a theurgical life today. JANUARY A workshop led by Ayodeji Ogunnaike, Visiting Scholar, “Ifa Divination, Pedagogy, and the Cultivation of Wisdom in Modern Settings,” introduced participants to Ifa divination and Yoruba philosophical concepts. The “Studying Religion in Play” workshop, led by Syracuse University Professor William Robert, fostered an imbricated and immersive inquiry into not only the cerebral but also the corporeal and creative qualities of Euripides’ Bacchae. A fine art photography exhibit of Jean Schnell’s work opened with a talk and reception. The artist chronicles Quaker meeting houses from colonial to modern times. The three spring semester reading groups launched, covering psychedelics and spirituality, plant and fungi consciousness, and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. FEBRUARY The annual “Psychedelics Intersections: Cross-cultural Manifestations of the Sacred Con- ference” gathered 200+ in-person attendees and 600+ virtual registrants for a day of six panels, two workshops, and two keynote addresses on topics including psychedelic spirituality and race, underground and medicinal use, and ancient and Indigenous traditions. MARCH Giovanna Parmigiani, Research Associate and host of the Center’s long-running “Gnoseologies” series, engaged in conversation with Valentina Napolitano, PhD, on topics ranging from “Atlantic Return,” to Pope Francis, to migrants’ (im)mobility highlighting the “heart.” APRIL More than 100 people attended “The Thunder, Perfect Mind,” celebrating this powerful, 2,000-year-old text through a dramatic perfor- mance, scholarly talks by professors Karen King and Tilde Bak Haldegaard, and world premieres of two musical compositions. The two pieces, composed by Jullian Bennett and Jane Sheldon, were commissioned by Anne Harley as part of her “Voices of the Pearl” series. As part of its broader programming around psy- chedelics and spirituality, the CSWR launched the speaker series, “Psychedelics and Ethics.” The inaugural event, co-hosted with the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School, engaged three scholars in discussions on key philosophical, legal, and spiritual issues in the field of psyche- delics and ethics, including the contribution of bioethics, decolonial ethics, the role of informed consent, as well as the value of spiritual care. Photo: Paula Ortiz. Photo: Ashley Zigman. Still from video footage by Paula Ortiz. Photo: Lisa Gorelik. Still from video footage by Paula Ortiz. Photo: Gosia Sklodowska. SEE UPCOMING CSWR EVENTS: cswr.hds.harvard.edu/ news-events/calendar 13Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 Research CSWR research is broadening the bandwidth with which the humanities speak, diving into the complexity of human thought and belief, expanding our understanding of the ways we are in embodied communion with not only other humans but also the non-humans and more-than-humans with whom we share this world: animals, plants, and fungi—as well as spirits and gods. This approach is reflected in the wide variety of the Center’s research projects and initiatives, spanning academic disciplines, religious and spiritual traditions, and topics that push past the boundaries of our existing anthropologies, ontologies, and epistemologies. To us, thought is inseparable from ritual and the human body; it is a participatory consciousness that makes subtle connections more potent, highlighting connections between things, events, places, emotions, and living entities. Religion, we argue, should not be a function of social norms, but a way to escape the ordinary world into eternal, unadjusted transcendence. 14 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 RESEARCH PROJECTS HIGHLIGHTS In contemporary American culture, the predominant assumption is that the transforma- tion in the classroom is the transformation of a disembodied intellectual subject. When we look at the typical university or school classroom and the ideas that undergird their practices, we see this assumption manifest often. In this vein, pedagogical practices have evolved mainly to quiet the body and train a mind that resides in a head for whom the body is an instrument. Yet, students and faculty hunger to integrate the body constructively into the classroom. There is a desire for teaching and learning that activates the imagination by exploring forms of embodied experience that do not fit the dominant model. Many are beginning to doubt whether one of the primary goals of the academic study of religion—to develop informed understandings of differing belief systems and worldviews—may be possible if such knowledge is only understood as the process and property of a disembodied subject. This project, in collaboration with Religion and Public Life Education Fellow Sarabinh Levy-Brightman, has two aims: to publish an edited volume, Embodied Pedagogies in Religion (Routledge), and to organize a symposium for religious studies instructors to discuss how they engage the embodied dimension of teaching and learning and how their curricula manifest this. We hope to offer faculty and graduate students experiential workshops designed to model embodied teaching and learning and discuss embodied pedagogy in public, private, religious, and secular institutions. Too often the private insights borne of tran- scendent (putatively “mystical”) experience are elevated over the demands of public justifiability. This project seeks to develop an epistemological framework for holding knowledge claims origi- nating in transcendent experience accountable to the demands of discursive rationality. The profound impacts of transcendent experi- ences on society are indisputable. Joan of Arc, Najmuddin Kubra, Dōgen, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are just a few examples of mystics whose transcendent experiences redounded to society’s positive transformation. The trouble, however, is in the way these and countless other mystics across the world’s religious traditions claim their transcendent experiences are ineffa- ble, so thus are immune to discursive scrutiny. The goal of this project is to demonstrate how ineffability is not simply an unanalyzable char- acteristic of mystical experience, but an artifact of the peculiar grammatical rules that govern the use of concepts in particular religious contexts. This project explores the role of religion in Warhammer 40,000 (aka Warhammer 40K), first produced by Games Workshop in 1978 and now the highest selling miniature wargame in the world. This project focuses on how players understand and interact with the various gods and religions in the game’s lore. This game environment includes miniature wargaming, hobby modeling, video gaming, engaging with lore and instructional content in a variety of mediums, and interacting with other players (both on and offline). The project aims to develop new knowledge and understanding in these relationships. Religion is being role played and engaged, and the players’ own belief systems challenged by the clear satanic, Catholic, cultic, or atheistic overtones within the lore. The field of religion and gaming has to date largely focused on video gaming, despite the growing popularity and complexity of miniature and tabletop games. Point Researcher: Sravana Borkataky-Varma TRANSCENDENT EXPERIENCES IN SOCIETY’S TRANSFORMATION BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD EMBODIED PEDAGOGIES IN RELIGION: TRANSFORMING THE CLASSROOM Point Researcher: Russell Powell Point Researcher: Tara Smith Photo: iStock. Photo: Unsplash. Photo courtesy of Tara Smith. 15Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 RESEARCH PROJECTS HIGHLIGHTS This research project is broadly focused on the thought and experience of Friedrich Nietzsche, and how his legacy shapes contemporary efforts to understand religion and humanity in new ways. Though Nietzsche is often characterized as an atheistic critic of religion, it is more accurate to read his works as a thoroughgoing effort to reinvent religion in response to the particular challenges facing human life in the modern West. The project focuses especially on Nietzsche’s Dionysianism, which he offers as both an alternative and antidote to traditional philosophical and religious forms of human life and being. Nietzsche’s Dionysianism can offer resources for imagining new forms of human existence. This can be explored specifically with respect to the problem of Nietzsche’s madness, which he himself linked to Dionysus, and which might be interpreted as an important consequence of his dealings with Dionysian divinity. For Nietzsche, Dionysian divinity portends a profoundly transformed experience of reality, especially with respect to the self, to language, and to the body. Investigating Nietzsche’s Dionysianism is therefore significant to theories of subjectivity and consciousness, humanity’s relationship to the natural world, connections between aesthetics and spirituality, and efforts to reimagine the human body itself. This line of research has important consequences for various contemporary scholarly conversations in the philosophy of religion, but also for efforts both inside and outside the academy to imagine transformations in the ways that human beings experience embodiment, divinity, and life itself. NIETZSCHE’S DIONYSIANISM AND THE RE-IMAGINING OF HUMAN EXISTENCE INDIGENOUS BELIEF SYSTEMS IN CENTRAL ASIA This research project focuses on the intersection of modern biomedicine, traditional healing ritu- als, and Indigenous medical practices in Central Asia, and situates the region’s diverse forms of knowledge and practices related to health and healing within Zoroastrian and Islamic healing systems. This contextualization provides historical and religious context for understanding Central Asia’s Indigenous understanding of divine interven- tion, the incorporation of magic and divination, and the healing properties of natural elements. The research is anchored in understanding the healer as someone endowed by non-human powers to mediate between human and spiritual forces. Through examination of experiences where ordinary humans can attain supernatural, clairvoyant and healing powers, the project offers an analytical portrait of the perception and integration of these spiritual experiences in local healthcare and the formation of the collective belief in transcendence. The project challenges the usage of the terms “shaman,” “shamanic,” and “Shamanism” to describe traditional healing practices in Central Asia. It is argued that these terms, commonly used in reference to traditional healing practices, do not accurately convey the deeply rooted perceptions and concepts of spiritual healing and health practice in the region. THE EMERGENCE OF ESCHATOLOGICAL YEARNINGS While calls to the transcendent have been ever-present in human history, five centuries after the death of the prophet Muh ˙ ammad (d. 632), why were there urgent yearnings for an eschatological savior among several Islamicate communities? How did such transcendent thought—frequently conflating socio-political, religious and salvific authority with regnal sovereignty—transform respective societies? This research examines the socio-political factors which precipitated theological transformations and how factionalism among the Nizaris may have catalyzed doctrinal change. It examines the Nizari syntheses and reformulations of earlier (tenth-eleventh century) Ismaili thought infused with Neoplatonic cosmology along with later theological developments. Point Researcher: Barakatullo Ashurov Point Researcher: Nicholas Low Point Researcher: Shiraz Hajiani Photo: iStock. Generative AI image by Dali. Generative AI image by Dali. 16 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 In part as a result of discussions with others affiliated with the Center for the Study of World Religions, over the past several years I have become increasingly interested in not only the way the body is engaged in Yoruba religious practice but specifically the way Yoruba traditions can change and divinize the body. Traditional Yoruba religious and philosophical thought is inseparable from both ritual and deep engagement with the human body, even in Ifá divination, arguably the most widely practiced and celebrated Indigenous African intellectual system. This is in large part because Yoruba tradition categorically resists the Cartesian dualism between body and mind or the Gnostic separation of matter and spirit that is found in many other traditions, particularly in the modern world. The best example of the integrated nature of the transcendent and immanent in traditional Yoruba thought and practice is the concept of orí which literally means “head” but also refers to a type of destiny, spirit double, or celestial self or companion. Orí is understood to exist on two planes: the orí inú (“inner” or “transcendent” head), which is chosen in heaven before entrance into the world, and the orí òde (“outer” or “immanent” head which one can see and touch). While this might seem to reinforce some type of body/spirit dichotomy, the two are ontologically linked, and consequently, rituals performed on the orí òde have an effect on the orí inú. In fact, for many practitioners, several body parts are òrìs ˙ à—or divinities—themselves and can receive prayers and ritual offerings to affect material changes in our lives. For some, the shadow is another type of soul; one’s big toe can be an òrìs ˙ à, and even breath (è ˙ mí) comes directly from God and is immortal. The rituals associated with the numerous òrìs ˙ à traditions in the Yoruba cosmology all do more than merely help practitioners understand something about themselves or the cosmos, although they certainly do that. Rather they allow practitioners to experience the às ˙ e ˙ (agential power, energy, nature, or authority) of the òrìs ˙ à which over time has a strong and formative effect on every dimension of the person’s being. For example, the tradition of the òrìs ˙ à S ˙ àngó is famous for its rich drumming and dancing—in- cluding and especially in the Atlantic religious diaspora, and its particular drums, rhythms, and body movements all produce, channel, and evoke a type of rapid and boisterous energy linked with S ˙ àngó’s nature as thunder and lightning. The tradition of S ˙ àngó’s wife O ˙ ya—òrìs ˙ à of tornadoes and storm winds— similarly carries and transmits the às ˙ e ˙ of swirling winds and unpredictable change. The foods associated with each òrìs ˙ à also carry a particular type of às ˙ e ˙ to the practitioner or the intended recipient of an offering, such as the cool liquid that comes out of a snail shell and the snail’s slow, deliberate movement all contain the às ˙ e ˙ of Òrìs ˙ àńlá, the oldest and calmest of the òrìs ˙ à. Even the color of clothes has its own às ˙ e ˙ which can have useful ritual purposes of invoking fear or danger, as is often the case with red cloth in ààlè (a type of charm used to ward off thieves and intruders) or peace and serenity in white cloth which is again associated with Òrìs ˙ àńlá and a number of other “cool” òrìs ˙ à. As a result, practi- tioners often wear or avoid certain colors as a way of interacting with the appropriate type of às ˙ e ˙ . Initiation can often be understood as the apex of all ritual processes because of its intensity and complexity, and during such cer- emonies initiate’s bodies are acted upon in all the subtle methods mentioned above and even some that are much more direct. For example, it is quite common to have special “medicine” composed of às ˙ e ˙ -charged material literally inserted into a person’s orí/head to “seat” the òrìs ˙ à there and cement that às ˙ e ˙ as a part of her destiny going forward. Initiate’s bodies are also frequent- ly modified in any number of other ways from being painted, hair being shaved, or put through some form of a trial. However, one could make a case for another type of ritual representing the apex of the practice of many—but not all—òrìs ˙ à traditions: spirit manifestation or “possession.” While conceptual accounts of precisely how this process works vary a bit amongst practitioners, all are in agreement that an òrìs ˙ à literally becomes embodied in the practitioner, creating a type of temporary ontological unification that becomes more seamless and smooth over the course of the practitioner’s lifetime. Observing the many ritual processes and speaking to practitioners has led me to realize that much like how married couples frequently start to look like each other, expert practitioners come to embody their òrìs ˙ à in every sense of the word. “Observing the many ritual processes and speaking to practitioners has led me to realize that much like how married couples frequently start to look like each other, expert practitioners come to embody their òrìṡà in every sense of the word.” RESEARCH REFLECTIONS The Body in Yoruba Tradition Ayodeji Ogunnaike, Visiting Scholar Tijani Adeleke, the Ajage ˙ mo ˙ (high priest of O ˙ batala) in E ˙ de ˙ , Nigeria. Photo: Ayodeji Ogunnaike. 17Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 “Magic is a way to sense and to make sense of the world. Magic is a non-scientific, though epistemologically sound, aspect of human consciousness that experiences subtle connections in the world, between things, and through people.” There is a Mediterranean pinewood that Viola and I call our pineta, our pinewood. Viola is a magic practitioner, one of my closest Southern Italian interlocutors. This pinewood is not a public place. Signs promise dire consequences for crossing the surrounding fence, yet our pineta is a refuge: peaceful, grounding, balancing. Some of my most memorable moments and insightful breakthroughs as an ethnographer and as a human being happened there, often linked to Viola’s generous tarot readings. Sitting in an old wooden playhouse for children, she asks questions and delivers advice from the cards. Asking better questions, she says, moves the reader and the questioner closer to the answers. Sometimes, the answers arise through body rather than mind. She is right. Inebriated by the smells of pines and rosemary, juniper and myrtle, with Viola and her tarot cards, life is undeniably sweeter, the future not so scary. Tarot cards are divinatory and meditation tools; they foster self-awareness. They are a part of practices that many people call magic, as do my ethnographic interlocutors from Southern Italy and Arizona. Allegedly originating in northern Italy during the fifteenth century, tarot cards emerged as a card game, though some interpreters and practitioners trace them to ancient Egypt. Decks have seventy-eight cards: twenty-two major arcana, from The Fool (0) to The World (21), and fifty-six minor arcana, divided into four suits. Major Arcana images describe the Fool’s journey toward full self-awareness, realizing The World. Major Arcana cards refer to external, powerful, eventful forces. Minor Arcana, instead, deal with more mundane energies. Drawing cards from the shuffled deck and positioning them in particular patterns (spreads), the reader assesses the querent and creates a (healing) narrative. The more I engage my ethnographic field sites among practitioners of alternative spiritualities in Southern Italy and in Arizona, the less I understand magic to be practices or traditions. Magic is a way to sense and to make sense of the world. Magic is a non-scientific, though epistemologically sound, aspect of human consciousness that experiences subtle connec- tions in the world, between things, and through people. Participating in magic makes the subtle connections more apparent and more potent. Everyone can experience magic, regardless of their beliefs or spirituality or religious affiliations. Magic is a universal form of knowledge. It is as well-attested in the West as it is elsewhere despite the neglect by the modern Western mainstream. Magic is a way of knowing; it is not a faulty way of thinking. Magic is ethically responsible; it is not psychological manipulation. Have you ever experienced magic connections? Do you ever feel connec- tions with a particular animal, tree, or plant? Have you ever sensed, without evidence, that an argument had just concluded prior to you entering a room? Do you ever undergo synchro- nicities or meaningful coincidences? These magic experiences are based on what anthropologist Susan Greenwood calls “participatory consciousness,” an embodied form of analogical thought that highlights connections between things, events, places, emotions, and human and non-human persons and bodies, even random connections. Magic is an ordinary part of everyday life, whether or not people acknowledge it. Conscious cultivation of participation is the core of diverse traditions and practices called “magic.” Approaching the observation, study, and prac- tices of Tarot reading, which is ubiquitous in my fieldwork, I pay attention to lived dimensions using a participatory lens. Tarot is divination that experiments with the future in the present. Tarot cards and their readings challenge participants’ linear understanding and experience of time and temporality. The past, present, and future in Tarot are perceived as separate but contiguous. The future can inform the past, just as the past influences the future. Usually, history is imagined as a line. Causes have clear effects, and causes precede effects in time. Linear historicity, though, is not the only historicity available to people, and it is not the only temporal mode that matters in people’s lives. Tarot encourages the consideration, acknowledgement, and experience of non-linear historicity; this is what I call “expanded present” in my forthcoming book, The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy. The expanded present embodies time and space. Coeval past, present, and future flow through linear time(s) and cyclical times: past, present, and future happen at the same time. Perceivers experience the expanded present when they embrace and expand their awareness of different dimensions, rhizomes, presences, and connec- tions that are all embedded in the past-pres- ent-future coevality of the here and now. Interlocutors in my field sites, and especially Vi- ola, articulate the Tarot’s healing and generative gifts arising when they tune into the coevality of time through the cards’ magic. In the participa- tory dimension of practice, tarot querants and readers describe experiencing life from the point of view of empowered, whole persons. These are the entities we truly are, who we are meant to be but have not yet become. Magic and Time: Lessons from the Tarot Giovanna Parmigiani, Research Associate Pine forest in Puglia. Photo: Giovanna Parmigiani. 18 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 In the twentieth century, certain Christian theologians argued that religion cannot be true, for that would imply that it is coherent with other forms of truth, such as scientific or historical truth. Ancient and medieval Christian thinkers believed that the truth of religion and the truth of science were not only compatible but ultimately identical. The God of the Bible was also the primordial cosmic cause, and nature confirmed the supernatural. One overarching Christian truth encompassed all singular truths. When Christian thinkers acknowledged the presence of other religions around the globe, the paradigm shifted. If Christianity is but one among many religions, then its universal and objective validity is not tenable. Religious coexistence defies claims that any certain religion is ultimately true. The categories of religion are incommensurate with truth claims—and in this sense, religion is not true but false. Yet, contemporary religious studies seem to seek truth in religion once again, but this time Buddhism rather than Christianity is asserted to be true. A New York Times bestseller by Robert Wright bears the title: Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (2017). Buddhism is true, Wright concludes, because it is coherent with cognitive science and psychology. Buddhism reconciles human perception with the reality of the materi- al world described by science. Religious scholar Evan Thompson calls this “Buddhist exceptional- ism,” in which Buddhists have newfound license to practice religious apologetics again. They assert that there is truth in Buddhism. Why is it, asks Thompson, that we would be offended to see a book titled: Why Christianity is True, but we willingly accept a title claiming Buddhism to be true? Many religious scholars and academic institutions are not concerned about these truth claims; some even feed off the trend. Universities establish mindfulness and yoga centers, drawing upon popular literature on the health benefits and scientifically proven effects of these and other Buddhist meditation techniques. Everything happens so quickly that the very question of whether these practices and their neo-apologetic advertising are compatible with the scholarly rigor of religious studies becomes taboo. As long as the spiritual quest of the younger generation of student-seekers—who are overenthusiastic that they can finally practice and preach what they study—economically supports the new way of approaching religion, there is no reason to call it into question. A few adventurous scholars challenge univer- sities’ economic interests and willingness to cater to the Buddhist trend. Buddhologist and philosopher Glenn Wallis sets out the most critical response. Wallis has long critiqued established normality. He was a founding guitar player in the band Ruin, pioneers in Philadelphia (Philly) Punk, one of the most trailblazing and radical musical movements in the history of US punk and hardcore music. In his book, A Critique of Western Buddhism: Ruins of the Buddhist Real, Wallis dissects this neo-apologetic Buddhism and its claim to truth; and while dissecting this Buddhism, he uncovers dynamics of capitalist self-legitimation. The West has found in Buddhism a new way to justify its thirst for comfort, bodily well-being, and embrace of apparent reality. This Buddhism defends the West’s dread in the face of anything non-consumable and non-profitable. Rather than criticizing normality, it reestablishes normality. I translate Wallis’s criticism into a Buddhist-Chris- tian comparative study that does the opposite of these neo-apologists: returning the radical and critical to religions. What religions have in view is not well-being, personal growth, and forms of world-immanent truth, but rather opposition to the world. Buddhism is not the long-sought alternative to Christianity; it is a close correspon- dent to Christianity, that springs from the same intuitions and posits similar solutions about the world and human existence. Monastics like the Christian Desert Father Evagrius Ponticus and the Buddhist teacher Vasubandhu do not seek to make us comfortable with the world or to embrace its immanent truth; they propose ways out of our established normality. In the words of an old Buddhist text, the Path of Discrimination (Pat ˙ isambhidāmagga, II, 166-7): “They transcend (atikkamanti) the world; they cut away (samucchindanti) the world; they vomit forth (vamanti) the world;” or, in the harsh language of Anthony the Great: They “hate the world and all that is in it” (Apophthegmata Patrum, Abba Antonios 33). Such Buddhist and Christian proposals are irrelevant and even contrary to truth claims inside normality. Religion, I would argue, ought not to be a functional aspect of social norms but a method to escape the ordinary world. Outside the ordinary is an eternally unadjusted transcendence. Aversion to such transcendence conceals a desire to convert religion to the logic of non-religion and to impose capitalist this-worldliness as the unique truth. But religion must resist this desire; otherwise, it would truly be false. “What religions have in view is not well-being, personal growth, and forms of world-immanent truth, but opposition to the world. Buddhism is not the long- sought alternative to Christianity; it is a close correspondent to Christianity that springs from the same intuitions and posits similar solutions about the world and human existence.” RESEARCH REFLECTIONS Is Religion True? Christians, Buddhists, and the Difficult Quest for Truth Fabien Muller, Postdoctoral Fellow, Philosophy of Religion Temptation of Saint Anthony, Hieronymus Bosch. 19Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 In 2023, the Society of Biblical Literature released a print edition of the newest scholarly translation of the Bible: the “updated edition” of the New Revised Standard Version, or NRSVue. This new version introduced minor alterations to the NRSV, which was itself a revision of the Revised Standard Version first published in 1952. New translations and critical editions of the Bible are nothing new in biblical studies; the field is grounded in new discoveries and developments in textual criticism. The unending series of new texts and translations of the Bible are a testament to the endless ingenuity of modern biblical studies. They are also, however, a constant reminder of the vulnerability of the modern Bible. By “vulnerability,” I mean the way the persistent revisability of the Bible exposes this venerable book to the possibility of unseen manipulation and mischief. New versions remind readers that the authoritative and timeless Bible is also vulnerable. When the RSV was released, some readers sensed an anti-Christian agenda. A 1960 Air Force Reserve Manual warned of “Communist” infiltration of “our church- es” and held up the RSV as one such example of this covert attack. The Cold War era was rife with conspiracy theories about godless Communist plots against the Christian U.S.; it is little surprise the Bible was one more site of ideological vulnerability. Biblical vulnerability has not always been understood as part of a Communist plot. It inspired varied conspiratorial thinking among a U.S. public that, regardless of religious affiliation, understands the Bible as a deeply meaningful U.S. symbol. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s ignited the hope for, and fear of, new revelations about Jesus and Christian origins. When no bombshell discovery emerged from the desert, disappointment (or relief ) turned to conspiracy: what were Israeli archaeologists at Hebrew University hiding? What shocking new truth was being suppressed by Roman Catholic overseers of the Scrollery? Every new headline-generating manuscript discovery, from the Secret Gospel of Mark to the Gospel of Judas to the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, has revived anxiety and anticipation. Would the totemic truth of the Bible at last succumb to some new text (real or forged)? Would the vulnerable Bible at last topple? Since the 1960s, these fantasies and fears have inspired a little-noticed genre of novel that I explore in my newest book, Gospel Thrillers: Con- spiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible. In these novels, a (fictional) new gospel has been discov- ered that strikes at the heart of the vulnerable Bible. These Gospels of John, Matthias, Mary, Judas, and even Jesus reveal that the Christian messiah was a charlatan or power-mad; he was a Jewish revolutionary or a preacher of universalist peace; he was an opponent of organized religion or even, in one novel, a woman. This new gos- pel’s secrets are dangerous; conspirators scramble in the shadows to suppress the truth that the protagonists have stumbled into. These dozens of novels, appearing year after year, exaggerate fears and hopes circulating the vulnerable Bible. Some themes are familiar from popular “Secrets of the Bible”-style documentaries: hidden truths, religious conspiracies, political alliances, and shocking secrets that could change the world. (Many of these themes appeared also in the mega-popular novel, The Da Vinci Code, and its movie adaptation, apart from the key element of a newly discovered first-century text.) The novels, which I call “gospel thrillers,” amplify the stakes in biblical discovery by introducing all the formulaic tools of thrillers: assassins (sometimes sent from the Vatican), conspiracies, double-crosses, and an international race against time for the truth. These novels also draw attention to the experts responsible for securing biblical knowledge: academics (ranging from harmless to adventurous to devious), “native” informants in the Middle East, anachronistic monks at Mount Athos, scheming cardinals at the Vatican Apostolic Archive. From the archae- ological “discovery” to the moment of shocking revelation, these novels question the motives and agendas of those knowledge brokers responsible for producing “the Bible,” whose motives are rarely under consideration in the semi-scientific and objective world of modern biblical studies. Gospel thrillers traffic in hyperbole and distortion: I have yet to meet an archaeologist who is also a Vatican assassin or a paleographer attempting to extort the church for millions (at least as far as I know). But behind these outlandish conspiratorial plotlines lies a real undercurrent of anxiety about biblical vulnerability. In many ways, these outrageous stories make more palatable the real truth about the modern Bible: precisely because it is not one stable “thing,” but an amalgam and reconstruction undergoing endless revision and reinterpretation, it will always remain anxiously, but perhaps productively, vulnerable. “In many ways, these outrageous stories make more palatable the real truth about the modern Bible.” The Vulnerable Bible in Fact and Fiction Andrew Jacobs, Senior Fellow Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible ANDREW S. JACOBS GOSPEL THRILLERS 20 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 love in mine, Sarah Schorr, 2021. From the series, The Color of Water. Water Worlds Charles M. Stang, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions A version of this paper was delivered at the “Materiality at the Intersection of Ecology and Religious Studies,” conference at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, Italy, May 2024. SELECT CONFERENCE TALK I find myself increasingly thinking and experiencing the world in terms of the elements of classical antiquity—earth, water, fire, air, and sometimes aether, the fifth element. This approach is usually associated with the so-called Pre-Socratic philosophers, especially Thales, who is often credited as the first among them. I recently gave a talk on the metaphysics of water at a conference at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, an especially apt place to debut such a project, for Venice is a city built of and on water. I am embarking on this voyage in collaboration with Sarah Schorr, an American photographic artist, researcher, and educator based in Aarhus, Denmark, whose work can be understood as a series of med- itations on light, water, and embodied contemplation. Over the next year, she will be an artist-in-residence at the Center, and her piece, “love in mine” from her 2021 investigation The Color of Water, accompanies this essay. What follows is my own meditation on water worlds, drawing on Thales and the contemporary Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia, whose book The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, was an inspiration for the Center’s plant consciousness reading group, which in turn led to our new Thinking with Plants and Fungi initiative. 21Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 “Thales and those who follow him: there is one world.” – Aëtius1 Like all of us, I swam before I ever spoke, crawled, walked, or wrote. Like all of us, I am made mostly of water, not dust, as Genesis 3:19 would have us believe. And it is to water that I hope to return. Our flesh—our skin, muscles, and organs—are between 60-80 percent water; even our bones are about a third water.2 However, when the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus declared that everything is water, he wasn’t talking about water in the way we presume to measure it. Thales is often cited as the first of the so- called Pre-Socratics. The views of these early philosophers are preserved in fragments of their writings, and testimonies about them—both of which are preserved by later authors, such as Aristotle. Aristotle says that these earliest philosophers believed that all things come from a single elemental principle or archê, that Thales was the first of them, the founder or archêgos, and that he thought that that principle was water.3 Everything is water, or as a later author put it, “the beginning of everything and its end is water.”4 Every single thing that exists in the world, from stones to stars, is in fact water, albeit in a different state. Earth and everything on it (and in it) are water, and it rests on water. What we experience as the diversity of beings in the world is the result of water taking on different forms and qualities, much as we observe in everyday life with water in its frozen, liquid, and gaseous states. Except that if water is the archê or first principle of all things, then this “archaic” water is not everyday water. Everyday water might be the closest thing we have in the phenomenal world to the watery substrate of everything that exists, but it is not that substrate itself. In other words, there is water, and then there is water. Thales is also famous for claiming that “all things are full of gods” and, curiously, that magnets have souls.5 These thoughts may not be as strange as they first appear. He is said to have observed that a magnet can move iron. And because a soul is something that moves, and thus can move something else, a magnet must have a soul. But Thales probably did not think that magnets were unique in this regard; it is more likely that he thought, based on observation, that if something as seemingly inert as a stone has a soul, then everything must have one. And this is very likely what he meant by “all things are full of gods”: everything has a soul, a psychê. This is the view that we have come today to call “panpsychism”—meaning “everything is ensouled”—a view that has gained renewed currency in philosophical circles in recent decades. Our English word “soul” comes from the German Seele, a word of uncertain origin, but suspected to have meant “coming from or belonging to the sea.”6 The Greek word psychê is also uncertain but is often said to mean, at its root, “breath.” If so, then for Thales everything breathes, or rather, everything is breath breathing. But if everything is water, then this divine breath, this soul “animating” everything, is none other than water, the archê or first principle of all that exists. In short, Thales might well be saying that everything is water, everything is psychê, everything is breath. Beings are not so much immersed in a medium as if they were distinct objects moving through it; rather, they are the medium; we are water surging and swelling into ephemeral forms, and these pulses and fluctuations are that very archaic water breathing, inhaling and exhaling into phenomenal existence. “Some people think that soul is mixed in with the whole, which is perhaps also the reason why Thales thought that all things are full of gods.” – Aristotle7 In 2017, the Italian philosopher Emanuele Coc- cia published, La vie des plantes: Une métaphy- sique du mélange, translated into English in 2019 as The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture.8 Coccia is interested in plants in so far as they are world-makers. For him, a “world” is the space in which life emerges and is sustained. Our world is not the universe, nor is it exactly the planet on which we live. Rather, the world is our planet’s habitable climate. Plants made our world in the sense that they transformed the earth’s climate and made possible a commonwealth of breath, in which plants and animals are citizens.9 What plants breathe out, we animals breathe in, and vice versa. To breathe is to be immersed in air, a medium of exchange in which, when we inhale, we contain in us, in our lungs, the very same air that contains us; and when we exhale, what we contain in us becomes what contains us. This is the “metaphysics of mixture” of the book’s subtitle, the climatic condition by which plants make possible life, and thus a world. Coccia insists on saying that we are immersed in air, that “to breathe means to be immersed.”10 In other words, we need to think of air as if it were water: “The structure of universal circulation is fluid, the place where everything comes into contact with everything else and comes to mix with it without losing its form and its substance.”11 When we realize that air is liquid, that we are immersed in it as in water, 1. All references are from Early Greek Philosophy: Beginnings and Early Ionian Thinkers. Part I, edited and translated by André Laks and Glenn W. Most (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), D5, pp. 232-233. 2. H.H. Mitchell, T.S.Hamilton, F.R. Steggerda, and H.W.Bean, “The chemical composition of the adult human body and its bearing on the biochemistry of growth,” Journal of Biological Chemistry 158:3 (1945): 625-637. 3. Early Greek Philosophy, D3, pp. 230-233; R9, pp. 244-245. 4. Early Greek Philosophy, D4, pp. 232-233. 5. Ibid., D10 and D11, pp. 236-237. 6. https://www.etymonline.com/word/soul; the German Seele might be from Proto-German *saiwaz, meaning “sea.” 7. Early Greek Philosophy, R34, pp. 262-263; cf. D10, pp. 236-237. 8. Emanuele Coccia, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, translated by Dylan J. Montanari (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2019). 9. This aligns interestingly with David Abram’s 2019 lecture at the CSWR entitled, “The Commonwealth of Breath: Climate and Consciousness in a More- than-Human World.” https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=t4JvdXjUwfc. David Abram was Senior Visiting Scholar in Ecology and Natural Philosophy at the CSWR in 2022-23. 10. The Life of Plants, 10-11. 11. Ibid., 27. 12. Ibid., 30. 22 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 then we will also come to understand and experience that to be in a commonwealth of breath is to be in a communion of touch: we are all swimming in, and breathing in and out the same fluid substrate. Coccia writes, “One must first recognize that, from the point of view of what is alive and regardless of its objective nature, matter, which makes us the inhabited world, is ontologically unitary and homogenous despite the difference between its elements and despite physical discontinuity; and this unity consists in its fluid nature.”12 This is why, he argues, “the paradigm of any liv- ing being” is the fish. Yes, “fish” is the name for a particular group of animals who have evolved to live in, and to breathe, water. But to be a fish also teaches us what it means to be alive, what it means to be any plant or any animal. To live is to swim in and to breathe the same medium—the medium of mixture. In other words, Coccia wants to dissolve the difference between air and water, by having us understand and experience air as fluid, and ourselves as fish in it. If the fish is the paradigm of any living being, then “the sea … [becomes] a metaphor for the world itself ”: “The being in the world of each living being should thus be understood starting from the fish’s experience of the world. This being in the world, which in consequence is ours, too, is always a being in the sea of the world; it is a form of immersion”;13 “… we would have to describe the world as something composed not of objects but of fluxes that penetrate us and that we ourselves penetrate, of waves of variable intensity and in permanent movement.”14 “Thales said that … from water … come the motions of the stars” –Hippolytus15 A later philosopher tells us that what really distinguished the philosophy of Thales—why he possessed wisdom and the other early philoso- phers only the name “wisdom”—was his practice of “seeing” (theôria). He took the time to see; he cultivated the practice of watching, of observing. What did he watch, and what did he see? I have spoken about the views for which Thales is most famous—that everything is water, that everything is full of gods, and that magnets have souls. But I wish to share now the story for which he is most famous, one you have probably heard: the philosopher took a walk at night and was so busy watching the stars that he fell into a well. A woman nearby made fun of him, “saying that he was eager to know what was in the sky but did not see what was in front of him and at his feet.”16 This story is usually marshaled to warn against the dangers of an impractical and otherworldly philosophy—philosophy of this sort is deemed “useless.”17 What interests me in this story, however, is that it captures Thales practicing the art of seeing, but with eyes fixed not downward to the water at his feet, the principle or archê of everything, but upward to the stars. Why would someone whose philosophy was defined by his views on water be remembered as one who could not take his eyes off the sky? What is the relationship of water to the sky, and to the stars in particular? Apart from his views on water and souls, Thales is also remembered as an astronomer—perhaps the first—and as an innovator in geometry so as better to observe the stars. He watched and measured the movements of the moon and the stars, especially our very own star, the sun. He was famous for having predicted a solar eclipse, having identified that the moon is illuminated by the light of the sun, and perhaps even having written treatises on the equinox and the solstice. Apart from such solar phenomena, it is reported that “he was of the opinion that everything else was impossible to know.”18 In other words, in this world of liquid flux, where everything is water, we can only know our star, the sun. But he is also credited with the famous saying, “Know yourself ” (gnôthi sauton), along with the admission that it is a “difficult” imperative.19 And so perhaps to know oneself one must come to know the sun, and the other stars, and that is difficult, but not impossible. And yet the story of Thales falling into the well has him gazing upward and falling into water. Is the joke on him or on us? Rather than a warning against the pursuit of a useless philosophy, might we understand Thales’ stunt as drawing our attention back to the relationship between sky and water, between the sun and stars and soul, between what is furthest and what is nearest, between celestial heights and earthly depths? One of the last and most poetic chapters in Coccia’s The Life of Plants is entitled “The Deepest Are the Stars.” Plants have a “cosmic function”: they transform light into life; they change the light of stars into a seething mass of earthly bodies (plant, fungal, and animal) whose endless composition and decomposition piles up sunlight as “the skin of the earth.”20 Soil is solar. The ground on which we walk is not so much firm, as it is firmament, because the Earth “is only a condensed portion of the sky.”21 Plants have not forgotten this fact. While they live at the surface of soil and sun, they stretch in both directions: with stem and leaf they look to the sun, they reach for the stars; with root (Latin radix) they dig deeper into the soil in search of water. We, however, have forgotten the stars, mistakenly thinking that in doing so, we will somehow better remember the Earth. A more radical metaphysics (from Latin radix) must become more solar, more astral. He calls for “a new form of heliocentrism … an extremization of astrology.”22 Philosophy must once again learn to look toward the sky. But “the sky is not what is above,” or not only. Thales, the first philosopher and astronomer, whose wisdom was earned by seeing, understood this all too well. If Coccia is right that “being in the world … is a form of immersion,” then what better way to show that than falling into a world of water while stargazing, like a leaf stretching upward to the sky and a root reaching down to the depths. If the sky is not what is above, then the deepest are the stars. Plants are rooted, but we walk. For walkers, to plant our feet is to fall. 13. Ibid., 31. 14. Ibid., 33. 15. Early Greek Philosophy, D4, pp. 232-233. 16. Ibid., P12, pp. 218-221. 17. Ibid., P13, pp. 220-221; P15, pp. 220-223. 18. Early Greek Philosophy, R6, pp. 242-243. 19. Ibid., P17c&d, pp. 226-227. 20. The Life of Plants, 87. 21. Ibid., 95. 22. Ibid., 92. “When we realize that air is liquid, that we are immersed in it as in water, then we will also come to understand and experience that to be in a commonwealth of breath is to be in a communion of touch: we are all swimming in, and breathing in and out, the same fluid substrate.” 23Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 BOOKS Charles Stang & Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm, Theosophy and the Study of Religion (Aries Book Series, Brill, 2024). Andrew Jacobs, Gospel Thrillers: Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible (Cambridge University Press, 2023). David Kim & Duncan Wright, Socio-Anthropological Approaches to Religion: Environmental Hope (Lexington Books, 2024). JOURNAL PAPERS David Kim, “White Heaven Palace and Huh Kyung Young: Political Peacemaker of a New Religion in Contemporary Korea,” January 2024, International Journal of Religion, 5(1), 356-367. Fabien Muller, “The Neoplatonism of Evagrius Ponticus,” May 2023, Revue Philosophique de Louvain, RPL 120(2), 183–206. Francesco Piraino, “Spirituality and Comics in Hugo Pratt, Alan Moore, and David B., Esotericism as ‘Unsettled Knowledge’,” December 2023, Mediascapes, 22(2), 52–77. Giovanna G. Parmigiani, “Separation, but not Division”: A Southern Italian Perspective on “Lived Conspirituality,” September 2023, Anthropo- logica, 65(1),1-23. Jeffrey A. Breau, & Paul Gillis-Smith, “Psychometric brahman, psychedelic science: Walter Stace, transnational Vedanta, and the Mystical Experience Questionnaire,” November 2023, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 48(5), 788–806. Shaul Magid, “Beyond Zionism and Anti-Zionism: A Future of the American Jewish Left and the Negation of the ‘Negation of the Diaspora’,” July 2024, Critical Research on Religion, 0(0). Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm, “Metamodernism as the Pedagogy of Revolution,” January 2024, Religion and Theology, 30(5), 1-8. Amy Yu Fu, “Wanwuyiti and Finding God in All Things: A Comparative Study between Neo-Confucian Self-Cultivation and Ignatian Spirituality,” April 2024, Religions, 15(5), 521. Nicholas Low, “‘You Must Be Joking!’: Theory, Religion, and The Do- mestication of the Ludic,” June 2024, The Philosophy of Humor Yearbook, 5(1),121-146. ESSAYS AND REFLECTIONS Nicholas Low, “Dreaming of Superhumans: New Reactionary Nietzschean Fantasies,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2024. Rachael Peterson, “Do plants have minds?” Aeon, June 2024. Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm, “Prospects of the Metamodern,” Muftah Magazine, May 2024. Charles Stang, “The Smoldering Superhuman,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring/Summer 2024. CONFERENCE TALKS Ayodeji Ogunnaike, “Revisiting the Theological Inspiration for the Malê Rebellion,” Ties That Bind: Black Atlantic Muslims and African Islamic Intellectual Heritage Across Time and Space. New York University, New York, NY, April 2024. Sravana Borkataky-Varma, Swarthmore College, “Kundalini Yoga: What happens to the body/ies?” Performing Healing: Yoga and the Body Politic. Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, March 2024. Tara Smith, “The Religion of Venus: A Science Fictional Argument for A New Religion on Mars,” Science Fiction Research Association Conference. Tartu, Estonia, May 2024. Russell Powell, “Apocalypticism, Environmental Politics, and Chris- tian-Muslim Dialogue,” Faith and the Environment: Muslims and Chris- tians Responding to, or Impacted by, Environmental Issues. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, March 2024. Eve Sada, “Syriac Sacred Chant in the Assyrian Church: A Continuation of an Early Chant Tradition Preserved by the Assyrian Communities in the Middle East and Diaspora,” International Conference on Syriac Christiani- ty. University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, July 2023. AWARDS Fabien Muller, Postdoctoral Fellow, was awarded the Cardinal Mercier Prize 2024 for his book, Kenologische Versuche: Der Johannesprolog zwischen Nāgārjuna, Vasubandhu und Meister Eckhart, (Aschendorff Verlag, 2022). SAMPLE BOOKS IN PROGRESS Adam Bremer-McCollum, The Pearlsong, Texts and Translations of Transcen- dence and Transformation Series. Alicia Mayer, Signum Magnum apparuit in coelo. The Virgin Mary and the Comets in the XVIIth century. Giovanna Parmigiani, The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy. SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO RELIGION Edited by DAVID W. KIM and DUNCAN WRIGHT Environmental Hope SO C IO -A N TH RO PO LO G IC A L A PPRO A C H ES TO RELIG IO N KIM and W RIG H T Cover image by Duncan Wright Religion • Spirituality “A fascinating and enlightening contribution to the literature, Socio-Anthropological Approaches to Religion opens up a whole new awareness of the variety of ways in which the concept of hope can be utilized as a productive tool in describing and explaining a wide range of social, religious, and political situations. The contributors, mostly scholars in Australian universities, employ qualitative, quantitative, and hermeneutic methods to expose new insights and a sensitivity to how hope—and hopelessness—has operated and continues to operate at individual, communal, societal, and global levels.” —Eileen Barker, London School of Economics “Basic hope is a neglected factor in social study. This collection has addressed this neglect by using studies in religion as a discipline that can combine treatment of hope as a socio- economic datum and as existential confidence. The approaches in this volume allow us to discern how forces of negativity, distrust, and bigotry can be overcome by positive visions of goodwill that improve mutual understanding and mitigate social rupture.” —Garry Trompf, University of Sydney Socio-Anthropological Approaches to Religion: Environmental Hope interprets the fundamental functions of spirituality through the theories and practices of hope and understanding the futuristic aspiration of new religious movements. This book portrays a neutral notion of hope that can be either religious or humanistic in the face of the suffering or despair of present reality. The concept of hope is demonstrated in each chapter under the global circumstance of health risk. Part I represents the various theories of hope in Christian history, ecology and climate, the Sabbath and surveillance, and the triune God. The insecure situation that creates the expectation of hope is demonstrated in Part II, where the case studies of terrorist attacks, immigration, volunteering behavior, religious education, and medieval Islamic tradition indicate social unbalance. The last section illustrates the cultural anthropology of hope through the activities of different native new religious movements. This book examines hope as a crucial element of human internal healing beyond medical technology. Contributors: Katherine Aigner, Duzan D. Avila Castellanos, Alexa Blonner, Neville Buch, Amy J. Erickson, Anna Halafoff, William Hoverd, Brendan Long, Angela Marquis, Oladosu Olusegun Adebolu, Halim Rane, and Yining Wang DAVID W. KIM is honorary lecturer at the Australian National University, Canberra, visiting scholar at Harvard University, USA, and associate professor at Kookmin University, South Korea. DUNCAN WRIGHT is associate professor at the Australian National University. LEXINGTON BOOKS An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield 800-462-6420 • www.rowman.com SELECT PUBLICATIONS, PRESENTATIONS, & BOOKS Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible ANDREW S. JACOBSGOSPELTHRILLERS 24 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 If one thinks of a Platonic philosopher, and especially of Plotinus, what comes to mind, I imagine, is a spiritual guide, a sort of Virgil lead- ing pilgrims beyond pseudo-realities and right up to the threshold of the ultimate Truths. While this is certainly correct about Platonists, I would like to take a different perspective. I would like to explore the possibility that, besides pointing us to the luminous regions that shine beyond the cave, Platonism can also help us to understand how to inhabit the deep marshlands of embodied life. In exploring this territory, I will take Plotinus as my guide—an unexpected choice, perhaps, for Plotinus is certainly not known for haunting the marshlands. In fact, Plotinus is the philosopher, Porphyry tells us, who did not even want his portrait to be made so great was his contempt for the physical form. Yet, the Enneads delve deeply into the dramas and conflicts of embodied existence. Plotinus’s philosophical inquiries are very much rooted in the lived experience of inhabiting matter––of being the subjects of apparently opposite activities such as digestion and intellection––and in the fact that every day we witness bodies age, die, and decay, and yet we cannot help but feel immortal. For Plotinus these conflicts, I believe, are only apparently dichotomous. For at the very core of his metaphysics and philosophical anthropology lies the idea of a dynamic continuity between different levels of life and being. Plotinus described the relationship between the soul and the body in terms of the “togetherness of the two” (τὸ συναμφότερον). In such a relationship, the soul uses its lowest power, i.e., the vegetative power—which we have in The Use of the Plotinian Soul Today Anna Corrias, Professor of the History of Philosophy, Ralston College A version of this essay was presented as a conference paper at the CSWR’s “Platonism as a Living Tradition” conference in May 2024, which gathered 15 scholars from the US and Europe who engage with Platonism not merely as an academic discipline but as a vibrant, living tradition that continues to shape philosophical and spiritual landscapes. “What Platonism needs to be a living tradition is to produce once again Platonic theology,” CSWR Director Charles Stang observed in his opening remarks. “Can we become Platonic theologians once again? I hope so. I think the world needs it.” 1. Plotinus, Enneads, III.8.4, 1-11. SELECT CONFERENCE TALK common with plants and which is responsible for growth, nutrition, and reproduction—to keep the body alive and functioning. The vegetative power is a fully-fledged psychological power; it is immaterial, though unconscious. It is a form of non-cognitive knowledge, a sort of “knowing without thinking,” which takes care of the body through a natural ingenuity devoid of any form of conscious deliberation. Through it, the soul “takes care of what is soulless,” to quote Plato’s Phaedrus 246b, by carrying out the hidden and silent processes that are apparently mechanical and that pass completely unnoticed to consciousness, such as instinctual adaptation, hair growth cycles, the menstrual cycle, blood cell formation, etc. For Plotinus, these activities are in all respects acts of the soul, not of the body. More precisely, they are acts of the “natural intelligence” of the vegetative power of the soul. In fact, as we learn in Enneads III.8, vegetative life is a form of contemplation, albeit rudi- mentary, blurred, and silent. Plotinus imagines that Nature herself, if asked by an imaginary onlooker, would reply that one should not to ask, but should understand in silence, since she, Nature, is not in the habit of speaking and only contemplates in silence. What she contemplates comes naturally and effortlessly into being.1 For Plotinus, every element of Nature, the flowers blooming in spring, the tiny worm digging a tunnel in someone’s garden, our stomach digesting breakfast, are contemplative activities whose explanatory principle is the soul, not the body. Yet, they exist in the “togetherness” of soul and body—whether the body is our individual body or the body of the universe. 25Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 we are left with an unbridgeable gap in our understanding of human nature. This is evident in many debates about the relationship between mind and body. For example, the ongoing debate on gender identity is often characterized by a sharp division between those who argue that one’s gender can be reduced to material forms (i.e., one’s reproductive organs) and those who contend that it is defined by one’s mind. For the former, gender seems as tangible, three-dimen- sional, and unequivocal as matter, for the latter it seems as immaterial and ideational as thought. The language used in common parlance seems to support this narrative, as evidenced by the prevalence of expressions such as “body-mind mismatch” and slogans such as “gender originates between the ears, not between the legs.” These debates would benefit from a “Plotinian turn”; we should approach human nature by delving into the non-deliberative, non-ideation- al, and unconscious form of subjectivity that is intimately connected to the body, forming the psycho-physiological make-up of an individual. This subjectivity is not a free-floating rational truth, nor is it reducible to anatomical structures. I do not know exactly what this subjectivity is, nor do I seek to define it. But I do believe that the soul, as described by Plotinus, offers a description of human nature as a dynamic continuity that escapes division and separation. Within this framework, answers to the question of human nature are better found in the space where the immaterial and the material work together. Plotinus identified this space with the “togetherness” of the vegetative power of the soul and the body. As a Platonist, I want to hold open the idea of this space, even if I do not know how to name or identify it. For to admit its existence is to accept the possibility of the continuity of life rather than its discontinuity or brokenness. Embracing the possibility of continuity would allow a different approach not only to the question of gender but also to some complex health conditions that resist dichotomous interpretations. One example is the well-known medical mystery of autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system attacks the body instead of protecting it. Understood in Platonic terms, these diseases seem a sort of reversal of the image of the soul as the compassionate mother taking care of what is soulless. After all, the immune system is an embodied form of knowledge; a knowledge that is non-discursive, non-ideational, and unconscious. It has a clear sense of identity and otherness and is extremely precise in executing its primary function of recognition. It is no surprise that these disorders are often misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Although recent studies have shown that they often result from experiences of adversity and suffering, most therapies focus narrowly on the body, and the few effective treatments often treat the symptoms rather than the root cause, which remains unknown. I believe that this unknow- ability is due to the fact that immune responses are a form of knowledge that operates outside of the mind, deep within the folds of matter. The very notion of this embodied, unconscious knowledge escapes us today. Again, I am not suggesting that doctors abandon the range of medical concepts currently in use and return to the elusive notion of the vegetative power of the soul, for this would be of no use in medical theory or practice. My point is that the idea of this power, and of the soul in general, allows us to suspend, perhaps even for a moment, the polarized view of the mind and the body. It allows us to consider, perhaps even to merely imagine, a dimension that is neither purely mental nor purely corporeal but is the Plotinian “togetherness of the two.” I believe that it is exceptionally urgent that we pause to consider the idea and meaning of a subjectivity that is unconsciously intentional, immaterial, and yet closer to the body than to the mind, all the while avoiding its objective and definitive determination. We should be open to the possibility of this ontological space and refrain from forming any proposition of certainty about it. To undertake this interpretative exercise is not an easy task, for we must be prepared to embrace the mysterious, the unknown, and, like Plotinus’s Nature, the silent. We must be prepared to include them in our perception of our identity, without rushing to see this perception trans- formed into understanding. “In this [Plotinian] view, psychological life cannot be reduced to thinking, or feeling, or any other act of consciousness, for it involves unconscious activities that take place deep inside the body, in the liminal space where immateriality and materiality become mysteriously connected.” In this view, psychological life cannot be reduced to thinking, or feeling, or any other act of consciousness, for it involves unconscious activities that take place deep inside the body, in the liminal space where immateriality and materiality become mysteriously connected. Perhaps because of our disdain for mysteries, we have now lost the idea of this space. As a result, Bust of Plotinus. Photo illustration by Chris Lisée. 26 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 Barakatullo Ashurov Adam Bremer-McCollum Keith Edward Cantú RESEARCHERS Research Associate, Texts and Translations of Transcendence and Transformation Adam Bremer-McCollum completed his PhD in 2009 at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (Cincinnati), where he studied Semitic languages and Greek and Latin. His academic research experience includes five years as a cataloger of Syriac and Arabic manuscripts (Hill Museum & Manuscript Library) and time on a research project at the University of Vienna on Syriac, Greek, Arabic, Armenian, and Georgian logic and philosophy texts from the ninth century. For four years he taught languages and texts of late antiquity at the University of Notre Dame. More recently, he has taught vari- ous Aramaic languages, Gǝʕǝz, and Greek for Stanford and translated various Syriac texts. His research focuses on grammar, lexicography, and editing and translating texts in regional and transregional languag- es of antiquity from the Caucasus and the eastern Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. He has over two decades of experience studying, teaching, translating, and editing texts in Syriac and other Aramaic languages, Arabic, Hebrew, Gǝʕǝz, Coptic, old Georgian, old Armenian, and old Turkic/Uyghur. Research Associate, Transcendence and Transformation Barakatullo Ashurov’s research focuses on Central Asia’s religious and sociocultural history. Before joining the CSWR, Barakatullo was a visiting assistant professor at Boston College and a lecturer at Harvard Divinity School. Barakat- ullo earned his doctorate in the study of religions from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Postdoctoral Fellow, Transcendence and Transformation Database Keith Edward Cantú is a historian of religions whose interdisciplinary research especially focuses on South Asian yoga, tantra, and the interface between Sanskrit and Indic vernacular languages like Bengali, Tamil, and Hindi. His research also focuses on modern occult movements such as Thelema and the Theosophical Society in Europe and North America. Keith received his doctoral degree in religious studies in 2021 from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has two master’s degrees from the University of Washington. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor in religious studies at St. Lawrence University in New York. He was previously a research fellow at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Er- langen-Nürnberg in the Center for Advanced Studies in the Human- ities and Social Sciences, and an Assistant Professor (postdoc) at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. His first monograph, Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami and Śivarājayoga, was published this year by Oxford University Press. Keith is also a musician who sings and performs the Bāul songs of the nineteenth -century Bengali humanist poet Lalon Fakir and co-teaches a course on tantric meditation and its connection with this music at the Esalen Institute. Sravana Borkataky-Varma Research Associate, Transcendence and Transformation Sravana Borkataky-Varma is a historian, educator, and social entrepreneur. As a historian, she studies Indian religions, focusing on esoteric rituals, gender, and bodies, particularly in Hindu Śākta Tantra traditions (Goddess Tantra). As an educator, she is the Instructional Assistant Professor at the University of Houston. In the past, she has taught at Harvard Divinity School, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, the University of Montana, and Rice University. Sravana has co-edited two volumes: Living Folk Religions and Religious Responses to Pandemics and Crises: Isolation, Survival, and #Covidchaos. A co-written book, The Serpent’s Tale: Kun ˙ d ˙ alinī and the History of an Experience, and a third co-edited volume, Embodied Pedagogy in Re- ligion: Transforming the Classroom, are under contract. She is working on her monograph, Divinized Divas: Superwomen, Wives, Hijr ˙ ās in Hindu Śākta Tantra. Details of her other published works can be found on her website, sravanaspeaks.com. As a social entrepreneur, she is the co-founder of a nonprofit, Lumen Tree Portal. Sravana invests in building communities with individuals from various faith back- grounds who believe in kindness, compassion, and fulfillment. She is a trustee of the Esalen Institute and serves as an advisory board member for Compassionate Houston. 27Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 Matthew Dillon Q&A with Adam Bremer-McCollum, Research Associate, Texts and Translations of Transcendence and Transformation Adam Bremer-McCollum is spearheading an open- access book series translating ancient texts on the transcendent and transformative. What do you most enjoy about translating texts? I mean, I love grammar and lexicon as much as the next person, but it’s really about the literature in all sorts of ways: formal and informal, verse and prose, all of it. What are the texts like and how do we get to experience them? How are you bringing this sense of experience into the project? One way that I’m trying to do this in my own translations—and we have encouraged other people to do this as well—is to be a little bit experimental in the translation. Anyone who’s studied any so-called “ancient language” knows that with a lot of translations—and also with the grammars where students and scholars are taught to understand these languages—there’s a real deadness to the English. You’re taught that this word means these three things. And for better or worse, students hang on to those three things and just translate that way, and this carries over into scholarship, too. There are so many translations into English that make a really exciting text kind of dull. If you compare how translators translate, say, a modern book published in the past 25 years, you know, from French or Spanish or German or Russian into English, there’s a lot more freedom that translators are exercising compared to a lot of translators for ancient language texts. Hopefully, this will be a playground, an open arena to a certain extent, for translators to stretch things a little. And how do you hope readers will experience these texts? One sort of guiding tenet of the series is that language is fun and interesting. It’s a little bit boring if we just look at the world and think about it with one script, with one language, with one particular phonology. The world, of course, is a rich place in all manner of ways and languages is just one of those. And so, these texts, hopefully visually, conceptually, in all sorts of ways, will honor that idea. I hope the texts and translations will present opportunities for people who can read them out loud, not just on the page or screen. We want these texts to be experienced, not just in a normal two-dimensional way, but with as much of the body as possible. Lead Research Associate, Transcendence and Transformation Database Matthew J. Dillon is a research associate in the Transcendence and Transformation initiative. He earned his PhD from Rice Universi- ty (2017) with specializations in Christian studies and history of religions in America. His research kaleidoscopically blends three spe- cializations: Gnostic studies, depth psychology, and religion in culture. To that end, Matt has published articles and chapters on conspir- ituality, neo-Gnostic churches, Gnosticism in the works of the writer Grant Morrison, Gnosticism and attachment theory, and a survey of theoretical approaches to Gnosticism. His first book, The Kingdom is Within You: The Lost Gospels and Post-Christianity in America, is under contract with the University Press of Virginia. Matt is now the director and principal architect behind the Transcendence and Transformation Database (TTD). The TTD will compile and code reports of mystical events, practices, and fruits from across the globe, and from prehistory to the present. He is also the host of the CSWR’s first pod- cast, Pop Apocalypse, which explores the mythic and the mystical, the paranormal and the psychedelic in popular culture. Amy Yu Fu Visiting Scholar Amy Yu Fu received an MA in applied linguistics and a PhD in science of religion from Zhejiang University’s Department of Philosophy (China) in 2016, with a specialization in comparative religion/theology. Her research focuses on the cultural and religious interaction between China and Europe in the late Ming and early Qing periods. In 2019, she finished a book, Dao De Jing: A Process Perspective. Her writings, which can be found in the Journal of Ecumen- ical Studies and Studies in World Christianity, discuss interreligious dialogues between Christianity and Asian cultures. At the CSWR, she is embarking on a new book project, Culture Adaptation from a Comparative Perspective: The Jesuit Missionaries Matteo Ricci and Roberto de Nobili’s Journey in Asia. 28 Center for the Study of World Religions | 2023–2024 RESEARCHERS Hai JinAndrew Jacobs Visiting Scholar Hai Jin is currently an Entrusted Researcher at Koyasan University, Wakayama, Japan, and held a full- time visiting scholar appointment at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University (2021-2023). Jin conducts his academic research on “The Revival of Tang Dynasty Esoteric Bud- dhism in China.” Jin has been appointed to guest professorships in several universities in China and has held senior shipping finance and management positions in several internationally recognized companies worldwide. He graduated from The People’s University of China (RENMIN University of China) with a BA in economics. Jin has also studied at Shanghai Fudan University, Columbia Law School, New York University Stern School of Business, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Manchester Business School, and the Norwegian School of Management. Jin obtained his first PhD in law in 2014 and and his second PhD in Buddhist Studies in 2023. H