Divination is a trope Cormac McCarthy employs time and again in his work. Augury, haruspicy, cartomancy, voodoo, sortition and oneiromancy all take their places in the texts, overtly or otherwise, as well as divination by bloodshed (a practice so ubiquitous as to have no formal name). But mantic practices which aim at an understanding of the divine mind prove problematic in a universe that often appears godless—or worse. My thesis uses divination as the starting point for a close reading of each of McCarthy’s novels. Research into Babylonian, Greek, Roman and African soothsaying practices is included, as well as the insights of a number of McCarthy scholars. But the work of extra-­‐literary scholars—philologists, Jungian psychologists, cultural anthropologists and religious historians whose works explore the origins of human violence and the spiritual impulse—is also invoked to shed light on McCarthy’s evolving perspective.

The Onmyōji series has had an incredible impact on Japanese fiction. It has created an entire genre of material called onmyōjimono and sold 5 million copies counting only the novel series. Despite this, it has been woefully understudied by both Japanese and English speaking scholars. The Japanese scholars that do acknowledge it use it as a springboard to launch a survey of Abe no Seimei in written and performed media throughout history, and the English speaking scholars have limited their analyses to the form that oni take in the narrative. My research has revealed that Yumemakura Baku utilizes a complex set of mechanisms to combine disparate narratives into a cohesive whole, integrating elements of genre and modern literary aesthetics to make old narratives agreeable to modern tastes. In the process he creates a dark and threatening world through which the Heian courtiers must navigate. Abe no Seimei acts as their guide and mediator. Despite holding an official rank within the court he is as otherworldly as the world, filled with supernatural beasts and formless creatures, in which they live. Using the mechanism of Abe no Seimei, Yumemakura Baku reveals to the reader their own tendencies toward prejudice, while constructing a vast world through centuries of written material.

For over five centuries, the Muiscas have faced direct colonial aggression against their traditional belief systems and sacred practices that have been historically demonized and driven to the brink of extinction. Despite such circumstances, however, the Muisca community has thrived to the present day, and since the turn of the twentieth century has begun to undergo a process of re-identification as an indigenous community in an attempt to revitalize their ethnic identity and practices. These efforts of re-indigenization have challenged their historically coerced identities, actively engaging in returning to traditional practices and beliefs, demand cultural and spiritual liberties, and regain their proper rights to sacred lands, which have also been devastated for centuries. Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Colombia, this thesis examines how rituals in sacred places are of central importance to this community within the re-indigenization process that is currently underway in the Muisca community.

Popular literature on Tibetan Buddhism often overemphasizes the psychological dimension of the religion's beliefs and practices. This misrepresentative portrayal is largely traceable to the writings of the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. By employing distinctly psychological terminology and interpretive strategies in his analyses of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and mandala symbolism, Jung helped to establish precedents that were adopted in subsequent analyses of the religion. Imposing a psychological lens on Tibetan Buddhism obscures other essential elements of the tradition, such as cosmology, physiology, and ritualism, thereby silencing the voices of Tibetans in analyses of their own practices. Jung's imposition of his own voice in place of that of Tibetans has commonly been criticized as an act of intellectually imperializing Orientalism that furthers Jung's personal aims of solidifying his system of analytical psychology. This thesis supports and demonstrates the validity of that critique through close analyses of Jung's commentaries on Tibetan Buddhism. However, Jung’s psychoanalytic perspective and qualifying comments found elsewhere in his corpus ultimately contextualize his commentaries and reveal that his writings on Tibetan Buddhism should not be treated as shedding light on the religion. Rather, they offer an additional lens for understanding analytical psychology. Furthermore, Jung's perspective as a psychoanalyst demonstrates the inherent instability of Orientalist epistemology that attempts to make sense of Eastern cultures on Western terms. Derridean deconstruction of Jung's commentaries reveals that the laws of psychoanalysis subvert those of Orientalism, thus allowing us to undermine the Orientalist episteme in which Jung writes and creates the possibility for appropriating foreign cultural content differently

God never died as scholars of secularization theory from the 1960s and 1970s proposed that he eventually would, but He rather reappeared within the context of Pop music. This work analyzes the lives and music of Yusuf Islam a.k.a. Cat Stevens, Kanye West, Bob Dylan, and George Harrison in order to see how their inner quest for peace brought upon by religious conversion affected their supreme message. Once the artists realized the phenomenal peace found in experiencing personal relationships with the Divine, their music changed so as to inspire others to seek the same greater freedoms from which they benefited upon turning within. These four elite members of secular society did not privatize their faiths, and by sharing their new found beliefs with the world, they turned the minds of millions Godwards.

Between 1847 and 1874 approximately 142,000 Chinese indentured laborers, commonly known as coolies, migrated to Cuba to work primarily on sugar plantations following the demise of African slavery. Comprised of 99.97% males and contracted to work for eight years or more, many of those coolies that survived the harsh conditions in Cuba formed consensual unions with freed and enslaved women of color. These intimate connections between Chinese indentures and Cubans of African descent developed not only because they shared the same living and working spaces, but also because they occupied similar sociocultural, political, and economic spheres in colonial society. This ethnography investigates the rise of a discernible Afro-Chinese religiosity that emerged from the coming together of these two diasporic groups. The Lukumi religion, often described as being a syncretism between African and European elements, contains impressive articulations of Chinese and Afro-Chinese influences, particularly in the realm of material culture. On the basis of qualitative research that I conducted among Chinese and Afro-Chinese Lukumi practitioners in Cuba, this dissertation documents the development of syncretism and discursive religious practice between African and Chinese diasporas. I conceptualize a framework of interdiasporic cross-fertilization and, in so doing, disassemble Cuba’s racial and religious categories, which support a notion of “Cubanidad” that renders Chinese subjectivity invisible. I argue that Afro-Chinese religiosity became a space for a positive association that I call “Sinalidad”. I also argue that this religiosity has been elaborated upon largely because of transformations in Cuba’s social and economic landscape that began during Cuba’s Special Period. Thus, the dissertation uses religious practice as a lens through which I shed light upon another dimension of identity making, transnationalism and the political economy of tourism on the island.

The term entheogen refers to drugs—including the artificial substances and active principles drawn from them—which are known to produce ecstasy and have been used traditionally in certain religious and shamanic contexts. The entheogenic experiences provoked by entheogens are described by users in myriad ways, including in spiritual, religious, philosophical, and secular contexts. Entheogenic experiences have shown that they can create opportunities for individuals to generate meaning, including novel philosophical insights, which users claim to gain by way of experience. As such, entheogenic experiences exhibit the ability to influence a change in a user’s fundamental philosophical commitments, or live options, including their ethical dispositions. Given that these new live options are rooted in experience, their veracity gains further credence for users than those commitments they have come to hold by way of abstraction. By philosophically investigating the phenomenology of entheogenic experiences, this work argues that entheogens have ethical import

This thesis investigates the nature of environmental racism, a by-product of “slow violence” under capitalism, from the perspective of Jain philosophy. By observing slow violence through the lens of Jain doctrine and ethics, I investigate whether the central tenets of ahimsa and karma are philosophically anti-capitalist, and if there are facets within Jain ethics supporting slow violence. By analyzing the ascetic and lay ethical models, I conclude that the maximization of profit and private acquisition of lands/resources are capitalist attributes that cannot thrive efficiently under a proper Jain ethical model centered on ahimsa (non-harm, non-violence) and world-denying/world-renouncing practices. Conversely, karma and Jain cosmology has the potential to support slow violence when considering their philosophical and fatalistic implications. Furthermore, by connecting the theory of slow violence with the theory of microaggressions, I assert that, while resolving microaggressions, Jainism’s highly individualistic ethical system can hinder confronting slow violence.

Southern Appalachian attitudes about the religion of Islam and Muslim adherents are influenced largely by mass media's representations. With more than 80% of Appalachia’s population following Protestant Christianity, exposure to Islam in daily life is limited. Media outlets offer the greatest exposure to information about the religion and its adherents. This thesis examined the region's media representation of Islam and Muslims to determine what images are most often portrayed. Research following a twoyear span of reporting in Southern Appalachia studied substance, word frequency, imagery, and editing used in articles that focused on Islam and Muslims. Through the use of content analysis examining rural and metropolitan news circulated in the area, the study found significant use of negative words and phrases in reporting about Islam and Muslims. Newsroom editing of articles also had a considerable damaging effect on how reports represented Islam and Muslims.

Current scholarly work on E.L. Doctorow’s (1931-2015) novel The Book of Daniel: A Novel (1971) often ignores the narrator Daniel Isaacson’s implicit critique of Rousseau’s civil religion. This paper will show the importance of civil religion within the novel despite its being overlooked by most scholars. In The Book of Daniel, Daniel frequently examines instances of American civil religion and even goes as far as to describe it as inevitable and intrusive on freedom. Daniel implies throughout the novel that the American government models their civil religion on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712-1778) conception as described in his treatise The Social Contract (1762). Daniel suggests that Rousseau’s approach to civil religion creates a false dilemma between the ideals of civil religious soldier and enemy. Daniel’s critique shows a limitation within Rousseau’s and possibly America’s understanding of civil religion. Despite there being evidence supporting his critique, Daniel’s extreme intersectional approach to identity makes his critique impossible to implement within societal, political, or legal realms since it allows people to be both soldier and enemy at the same time.