<p>Västerländsk litteratur som behandlar asiatiska religioner använder ofta västerländska begrepp för att beskriva religiösa objekt och företeelser. Emellertid överensstämmer inte alltid översättningen med den inhemska innebörden av begreppet. Ett exempel på detta är det japanska konceptet kami, som felaktigt översätts med västerländska begrepp som ”gudomar” och ”andar”. Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera kamibegreppets semantiska spektrum i en specifik inhemsk religiös textsamling. Boken som valdes för detta ändamål är Sir Ernest Satows översättning av ritualtexter från Yeñgishiki ’Ceremoniella lagen’ som härstammar från 800-talet. Ett vidare syfte med uppsatsen är att påvisa att kamikonceptet innehåller mer än vad som inryms i de västerländska begreppen ”gudomar” och ”andar”. Slutsatsen är att kamikonceptet inte kan tolkas som ”gudomar” eller ”andar” då det innefattar allt som inger vördnad och inspiration hos människan. Detta gör att begreppet kami inte kan översättas till västerländska termer.</p>

Västerländsk litteratur som behandlar asiatiska religioner använder ofta västerländska begrepp för att beskriva religiösa objekt och företeelser. Emellertid överensstämmer inte alltid översättningen med den inhemska innebörden av begreppet. Ett exempel på detta är det japanska konceptet kami, som felaktigt översätts med västerländska begrepp som ”gudomar” och ”andar”. Syftet med denna uppsats är att analysera kamibegreppets semantiska spektrum i en specifik inhemsk religiös textsamling. Boken som valdes för detta ändamål är Sir Ernest Satows översättning av ritualtexter från Yeñgishiki ’Ceremoniella lagen’ som härstammar från 800-talet. Ett vidare syfte med uppsatsen är att påvisa att kamikonceptet innehåller mer än vad som inryms i de västerländska begreppen ”gudomar” och ”andar”. Slutsatsen är att kamikonceptet inte kan tolkas som ”gudomar” eller ”andar” då det innefattar allt som inger vördnad och inspiration hos människan. Detta gör att begreppet kami inte kan översättas till västerländska termer.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1995. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 247-256).

This thesis comprises an exploration of the plant commonly known as plantain, or Plantago major, through participant observation of an apprenticeship in traditional western herbalism in the Ottawa region of Ontario, Canada. The first section delves into ideas and manifestations of “weediness” and “invasion”, while offering medicinal/ herbalist views of such plants as a kind of counterpoint. This touches on learning to garden, soil, lawns, plantations, invasive species, protests, and extrajudicial police killings among other topics. The following section, “horror in the hedge”, takes us first on an “herb walk” in Ottawa’s Experimental farm before moving on to a discussion of medicinal understory plants and Plantain alongside hedgerows, witch trials, plagues of Covid-19 and vibration in healing. From here the final section discusses medicine, delving first into the darker side of things as they manifest in the realm of medicinal mushrooms, again touching on the over-harvesting of medicinals, and the discoveries of supposed messiahs. Following is an exploration of how herbalists see continuity between the terrain of the human body and the land, returning again to the “herb walk” as a pedagogic mode utilized by herbalists. Finally, this work is summed up by an exploration of herbal formulation and medicine making, of the Anglo-Saxon Nine Herb’s Charm and the potent power of the triad. Drawing on Plantain as a kind of talisman, and structured after the Lacnunga’s Nine Herb’s charm, this work is an anthropological invocation of animist traditions emerging from Europe. To these ends, the works of Anna Tsing, Tim Ingold, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guatarri, Donna Haraway, Michael Taussig, Silvia Federici, David Abram, and Victor Turner, among many others, underpin the theoretical framework of this project.

The artistic research, Kehrä/ Kehrae is done together with Myrsky Rönkä, with significant ropes, places and spaces, creatures and histories. This paper is subtitled entwining possible worlds. It implies alternative possibilities for prevailing modern western ways to live and die and circus. There are three big questions in the air: What is the meaning of circus? What does it mean to be alive? And how could circus care (the existence of life within the earth)? The starting point was a concern about the troubling state of life and the world how it is today and how the modern western circus felt paradoxical and incapable of responding to the current times in sustainable ways. The initial question was, how to combine circus and other aspects of life into one sustainable, or regenerative and renewable practice. In order to seek other, latent realities this research goes beyond modern western circus history, beyond modern western worldview, and beyond “ordinary” circus practice.  The guiding idea is: life is circus, circus is life. Therefore the practice in this research is a collection of “whatever we were doing”. To mention some with great importance: whirling, meditation, becoming-with rope, making and mapping space with ropes and strings, dwelling with nature, and sauna. The other idea is to go through liminality and evoke communitas, with circus practice, bodies, ropes, and others.  This means abandoning accustomed ways to train and think about circus and life. Because of its nature, this work is also opening up what could spiritual (circus) practice mean as an alternative to a mechanistic way of thinking and making. The ontology of this research is animistic and relational, which suggests care, respect, reciprocity, and response-ability in all of our relations and takes into account the circulative nature of time and life. Animistic ontology takes materiality and skill towards the idea of becoming-with, when becoming into who and what happens in relational material-semiotic worlding. During the process, some specific features, or dwelling places for circus, emerged. Those are circus and play, circus and liminality, circus and shamanism, circus and others. In these dwelling places lies the deep powers of circus to be inversive and subversive, simultaneously transformative and sustaining: the mythical power of circus. Through the final artistic outcome Kehrä/ Kehrae, this paper is entwining the strings of the research together as a temporary gathering to be unraveled and intertwined into one again.

First of all, my research is not only my research but our research. It has been made together with my long-time art companion Marjut Hernesniemi. The starting point for our research was our experience of the western modern circus, what it does, and how it cares for the cosmos. From our experience, the western modern circus is based on techniques, risk, danger, and spectacle. Human is in the center of it, often presented as superhuman controlling and manipulating everything. By looking at the current situation in the world, human domination has caused us problems in a form of climate change and other ecological crises such as mass extinction. However, there are different ways of relating to the world. In this research we have looked beyond the western modern circus, to the roots of circus in China and Japan, and to the archaic rituals, to find other ways of relating to the world through circus and trying to bring them to the present day. This research was set out with the question of trying to combine circus and other aspects of life as one sustainable or regenerative practice. The theoretical framework of the research has been ritual. The thought behind that has been the efficacy of the ritual in contrast to entertainment. That is circus can make a difference. From an animistic perspective, the purpose of the ritual is to sustain and renew, preserve or bring back the balance between the psyche, body, social, cosmic, and circle of life. With this in mind, we have made use of the anti-structure of liminality as a playground while working in the studio. In this playground, we have not been bound by the custom, convention, or ceremonials of the western modern circus. Instead, we’ve had the possibility to play. Use the definition of western modern circus as a launching pad and try to run as far as possible, but still have the connection point as the one that we left from. The rules of the play were simple, such as we don’t climb the rope, you are not allowed to hurt the rope, instead of objects, materials of becoming, instead of human exceptionalism, appreciation of the other, what if there was no human on stage. All these rules created different possibilities.  While in liminality we have been bound by another thing that can appear in a liminal phase, communitas. Communitas as an unstructured communion of equal individuals working towards a collective task with full attention. In our communitas, the task has been a sustainable circus. Moreover, in our communitas, ropes and nature were included as equals. Together we have been imagining and making different kinds of possible futures. These relations between us, nature, and the ropes have been intimate relations. During the process of making, humans have been ”affected” as much as the significant other.  Our task was to combine circus and other aspects of life as one sustainable or regenerative practice. As performances in circus consist of ritualized gestures that show the relationship between us and the cosmos, we need to rethink what we are presenting. To find a more sustainable and regenerative future, we need collective survival skills instead of individual ones. These survival skills should include all life in its diversity. For change to happen liminality, communitas and play are all needed. Liminality to open up a playground outside of the structured society. Play to come up with solutions to challenges. Communitas to form a special bond between the players, speak for the weak, and not forget that we work for the same cause.  Circus can transform, however it requires that the artists are willing to go through the liminal space themselves and take circus with them.

In this project, the intersection between animism and smart things is being explored, with a special focus on gaming chairs. Integrated sensors and actuators become an opportunity to create interactivity and autonomous behaviour which creates illusions of life. Gaming chairs are interesting to explore because it’s a piece of furniture that is often and well used, for longer periods at a time, allowing a space to create a personal relationship between the human user and the chair. With the goal to develop design beyond the current norms of interactions and relationships between the user and belongings in their home this project uses Research Through Design, Speculative Design, Animism and Posthumanism. By transferring insights of visual expressions, capabilities of beloved belongings, familiar interactions and behaviours to a non-living entity combined with technology and smart things as a contributor for animistic expression - this project proposes that it is possible to create an illusion of life and for humans to develop a relationship to a non-human entity. The actuators applied on the conceptual gaming chair affected the participants testing it - the participants seemed to care for the chair and perceived it to be an extension of themselves.

German text / Die vorliegende wissenschaftliche Arbeit befasst sich mit den amaZioni, die den größten Teil der südafrikanischen AIC-Bewegung („African Independent/Indigenous/Initiated Churches“) ausmachen. Für die meisten Theologen stellen die amaZioni eine synkretistische christliche Kirchenbewegung dar, die in ihren Ritualen und Gottesdienstformen starke Einflüsse von traditionellen afrikanischen Religionen (ATR) aufweist. Nicht desto trotz öffnen sich viele der amaZioni-Kirchen gegenüber biblischer Lehre durch Missionare. Um eine solide Grundlage für die Missionsarbeit zu schaffen, befasst sich die vorgeschlagene Arbeit damit, wichtige Bedürfnisse der amaZioni zu erforschen, so dass diese als Anknüpfungspunkte für die weitere Evangeliumsverkündigung genutzt werden können. / The proposed research examines the needs of the amaZioni, who are part of the South African AIC-movement. The amaZioni, as one of the largest religious groups in South Africa, are viewed by most theologicans as syncretistic christian churches. It is obvious that their common believe system as well as their rituals show a strong influence of african traditional religions (ATR). But nevertheless, many of the members of the Zion-churches are opening up for bible teaching provided by missionaries. In order to establish a solid base for the future mission work the proposed research focuses on finding out the amaZioni's needs, so that this needs can be used as reference points in the endeavour of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the missionaries. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

German text / Die vorliegende wissenschaftliche Arbeit befasst sich mit den amaZioni, die den größten Teil der südafrikanischen AIC-Bewegung („African Independent/Indigenous/Initiated Churches“) ausmachen. Für die meisten Theologen stellen die amaZioni eine synkretistische christliche Kirchenbewegung dar, die in ihren Ritualen und Gottesdienstformen starke Einflüsse von traditionellen afrikanischen Religionen (ATR) aufweist. Nicht desto trotz öffnen sich viele der amaZioni-Kirchen gegenüber biblischer Lehre durch Missionare. Um eine solide Grundlage für die Missionsarbeit zu schaffen, befasst sich die vorgeschlagene Arbeit damit, wichtige Bedürfnisse der amaZioni zu erforschen, so dass diese als Anknüpfungspunkte für die weitere Evangeliumsverkündigung genutzt werden können. / The proposed research examines the needs of the amaZioni, who are part of the South African AIC-movement. The amaZioni, as one of the largest religious groups in South Africa, are viewed by most theologicans as syncretistic christian churches. It is obvious that their common believe system as well as their rituals show a strong influence of african traditional religions (ATR). But nevertheless, many of the members of the Zion-churches are opening up for bible teaching provided by missionaries. In order to establish a solid base for the future mission work the proposed research focuses on finding out the amaZioni's needs, so that this needs can be used as reference points in the endeavour of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the missionaries. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

La marionnette, petite Marie d’après son étymologie, figure réduite à l’image de l’homme, être diminutif ou condensé, actrice « dramatico-végétale » selon l’écrivain Carlo Collodi, amuse, effraie ou fascine depuis toujours l’être humain. Nous en trouvons des traces dès l’Antiquité en occident. Telle l’automate Olympia dans L’Homme au sable d’Ernst Hoffmann, qui inspira à Freud le concept d’ « Inquiétante étrangeté », la marionnette fait douter le spectateur : celui-ci ressent une étrange impression à la vue d’un objet sans vie qui paraît animé, un malaise comparable à celui qu’il éprouve en voyant une personne se comporter en « Homme-machine » (La Mettrie).Ce travail propose d’explorer l’existence paradoxale des figures inanimées dans le but d’expliquer comment celles-ci semblent prendre vie, mourir ou ressusciter à l’envi. A quel projet artisanal ou fantasme démiurgique répond la fabrication des créatures artificielles ? Comment l’esprit vient aux objets ? Quelles parts occupent le mouvement impulsé par le manipulateur et les croyances et projections du spectateur dans ce mystérieux phénomène d’animation ? Ce travail qui s’inscrit dans le domaine des études théâtrales traverse d’autres champs disciplinaires, notamment la littérature, la psychanalyse, la philosophie, l’anthropologie et l’histoire. / The puppet, or marionnete, - little Marie etymologically –, a human model, in reduction, a diminutive or condensed creature, a « dramatico-vegetable » actor in the eyes of writer Carlo Collodi, has always amused, frightened or fascinated mankind. Traces of puppets are to be found early in western ancient times. In much the same way as the automaton Olympia, in Ernst Hoffmann's The Sand Man, inspired Freud's concept of « disquieting strangeness », (Unheimliche), the puppet creates doubt in the spectator's mind : the latter feels strange when viewing an inanimate object apparently gifted with life, an unease akin to that which one feels if confronted with a human behaving like a ' « Man-machine » (La Mettrie).This work aims at exploring the paradoxical world of inanimate figures in order to explain how those seem to acquire life, lose it or come to life again at will. To what craft project or demiurgic fantasy does the making of artificial creatures answer ? How does the soul come to those objects ? What are the shares of the motions impulsed by the puppet manipulator and the beliefs and projections of the spectators, in that mysterious phenomenon of animation. The present work, although fully belonging to the field of drama studies, crosses others, notably literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy, anthropology and history.