A01=Loring M. Danforth
Anastenaria
Another Woman
Author_Loring M. Danforth
Bonfire
Byzantine Empire
Category=JBCC
Category=MX
Censer
Christian state
Christianity
Church of Greece
Conversion to Christianity
Divination
Dormition of the Mother of God
Dowry
Drug rehabilitation
Energy medicine
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Exorcism
Family history (medicine)
Fireplace
Firewalking
Folk art
Gastarbeiter
Godparent
Grandparent
Health food
Help-seeking
Herbal tea
Hermeneutics
High church
Holy Synod
Holy water
I Wish (manhwa)
Iconography
Incense
Incident (Scientology)
Indication (medicine)
Meal
Memorial service (Orthodox)
Metempsychosis
Mother goddess
Navel
New religious movement
Ordination
Orgy
Paganism
Pentecostalism
Persecution
Physician
Pilgrimage
Procession
Psychotherapy
Rejuvenation (aging)
Relationship between religion and science
Religion
Religious experience
Religious festival
Religious organization
Religious studies
Rite
Social transformation
Somatization
Spirit guide
Spirit possession
Spiritualism
Supplication
Surrealism
Symptom
The Folklore Society
The Physician
Veneration
Votive offering
Wedding
Product details
- ISBN 9780691028538
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 21 Nov 1989
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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"If the Saint calls you, if you have an open road, then you don't feel the fire as if it were your enemy," says one of the participants in the Anastenaria. This compelling work evokes and contrasts two forms of firewalking and religious healing: first, the Anastenaria, a northern Greek ritual in which people who are possessed by Saint Constantine dance dramatically over red-hot coals, and, second, American firewalking, one of the more spectacular activities of New Age psychology. Loring Danforth not only analyzes these rituals in light of the most recent work in medical and symbolic anthropology but also describes in detail the lives of individual firewalkers, involving the reader personally in their experiences: he views ritual therapy as a process of transformation and empowerment through which people are metaphorically moved from a state of illness to a state of health. Danforth shows that the Anastenaria and the songs accompanying it allow people to express and resolve conflict-laden family relationships that may lead to certain kinds of illnesses.
He also demonstrates how women use the ritual to gain a sense of power and control over their lives without actually challenging the ideology of male dominance that pervades Greek culture. Comparing the Anastenaria with American firewalking, Danforth includes a gripping account of his own participation in a firewalk in rural Maine. Finally he examines the place of anthropology in a postmodern world in which the boundaries between cultures are becoming increasingly blurred.
