Rituals of Resistance – Spring Issue 2018

Somehow we know that only living beings can be responsible and experience freedom.  What is it about living beings, and about human beings in particular, such that this is the case?  And what does that imply to the way we organize our human enterprises?

– Reflection, Responsibility and Freedom: we are not robots.
Humberto Maturana Romesin and Pille Bunnell, 2001

Rituals of Resistance

• Creation
• Action
• Reflection

From a spiritual perspective, what was effective? Empowering? What and how did you approach the ritual? If a public event, how did you keep safe space? Any and all Traditions and all positive actions are welcomed.

Throughout the world, resistance to tyranny has become an increasingly urgent part of modern life. Tyranny comes in many forms from overt military or theocratic dictatorships, the rise of fascism in democratic states, the invasion of everyday life by technologies that invade our privacy, corporate claims ownership over our information and, even, the very DNA that makes up our very identity as individual humans.  The restriction of artistic and scholarship by moneyed and political interests.  The attack on the rights of protest by government interests.

Some topics to consider are the “nut & bolts” of ritual creation and how they may differ from individuals and groups. How does ritual creation differ from other forms of expression – both spiritual or artistic? What is the role of media, the visual arts and music? What role do folk customs and and myth play within ritual creation? Do purpose and intent play a large or smaller role in ritual outcomes?

It is clear that ritual is very ancient, as archeology has shown us, utilized by peoples of of all continents. Ritual is also important in the development theatre in the ancient pan-Mediterranean and throughout the middle ages through miracle plays and mummers. In the 20th century, the tradition of mummers’ plays and Commedia Dell’Arte was re-imagined during the Cold War and Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe by small theater troupes to resist a totalitarian regimes.  Papers exploring the themes of re-creationist, surviving traditions and the known experience of ancient peoples’ are all welcomed.

Send Query and Abstracts to the Editors at “Spring 2018, Submission”

Submission guidelines 

Want to Submit an announcement, Paper query, or Subscribe to ​ Coreopsis Journal ?

Published 2X yearly, never for profit. Peer Reviewed.

Rituals for Living, Rituals for Dying – Autumn Issue 2018

 To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness. Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness.

Note: For the next several issues of Coreopsis, we will publish rituals of resistance. From a spiritual perspective, what was effective? Empowering? What and how did you approach the ritual? If a public event, how did you keep safe space? Any and all Traditions and all positive actions are welcomed. If you wish to submit for peer review, please tell us. Message me for the Addy for the submission guidelines. Please share this announcement.

How we care for the dying people in our midst, and how we die when it is our turn: these together are the proving ground, the cradle and the grave both, for every conviction we have about justice and mercy, about the meaning of life, about what love should look like and what it should do. They are the sum of every political instinct we have, every dream of community we’ve nursed along and every faith we’ve been willing to have in a better day. They are where every fascination about the Other World and the Big Story live, and they are where the midnight fear of Nothing comes to call. They are where our immense technical medical wizardry and mastery is visited upon you and those you love, and where the mythic poverty of our time comes to show itself. They are surely where our love of life earns its keep, or shatters. Mostly, though, they are the place where our ability to be a people is forged, or fails. They are where our village is made or broken. They are where we are most ourselves, and most alone. Together they are The Big Tent of our time.

– Stephen Jenkinson, orphanwisdom.com

What place do myth, ritual and art have in teaching us how to die? In reclaiming the sacred – and normalizing the mundane – reality of mortality in a death-phobic,
medicalized culture? What is the role of the artist, the ritualist, the storyteller, in helping us come into a healthier relationship with the inevitability of our own death, so that we can live more fully?

Paper topics under consideration, but not limited to:

Underworld/afterlife mythologies as guides for fuller living
   • Ancient mystery school rites as death rehearsal rituals (and modern re-creations)
   • Near Death Experiences and their impact on fear of death
   • Cultural festivals of celebration and normalization (i.e. Dia de los Muertos)
   • Emerging figures, religious and secular, in the death-positive movement (Santa Muerte, Caitlin Doughtery, for example)
   • Hospice work as spiritual practice
   • Alternative funeral and burial options that serve spiritual as well as ecological purposes
  

Rituals for the dead: sitting shiva, funerary practices modern and ancient
   • The academic discipline of Thanatology
   • Death- and grief-work with children
   • Death deities and their stories

The theme of death and the afterlife in artifacts of popular culture and mythopoetics
   • Example: ghostly apparitions in mythopoetics and the horror genres, Goth-inspired fashion, literature, and culture
   • In music: metal, prog, the ballad tradition, ancient and classical music
   • Popular literary works, such as The Dresden Files, The Parasol Protectorate, or the Anita Blake Series and broadcast media series such as “The Secret of Crickley Hall”, “Game of Thrones”, “Penny Dreadful”, and “True Blood” that utilize undead and ghostly apparitions as a trope to further the plot. )

Send Query and Abstracts to the Editors at “Autumn 2018, Submission”

Submission guidelines 

Want to Submit an announcement, Paper query, or Subscribe to ​ Coreopsis Journal ?

Published 2X yearly, never for profit. Peer Reviewed.