This paper explores my process of orienting myself within spaces and inhabiting them. It focuses on how I use my own body as an instrument for developing a relationship between the two. A ritual is a social conditioning of the body and Authentic Movement is discovering body’s own route. This paper reviews my process of situating myself within a space by using both of them as the language of my body. It also discusses the development of some of my recent work through understanding the language of my own body.

This thesis is a study of the contemporary forms of trance-possession rituals performed in Thai Buddhism. It explores the way in which the trance-possession rituals are conceptualised by Thai Buddhist people as having therapeutic potentiality, through the examination of the ritual efficacy that is established through participants’ lived experience. My main research question focuses on how trance-possession rituals operate within a contemporary Thai cultural context and what are the contributory factors to participants’ expressing a sense of efficacy in the ritual. This thesis proposes that applied drama can be used as a ‘lens’ to examine the participants’ embodied experiences, particularly in relation to the ritual’s potential efficacy. In addition, the thesis also draws on discourses from anthropology, to enable a clearer understanding of the Thai socio-cultural aspects. I proceed to examine the efficacy of trance-possession ritual by focusing on the Parn Yak chanting ritual and rituals in sak yant, the spiritual tattoo tradition, as the two examples. Through the interdisciplinary study as mentioned above, these rituals are investigated and interpreted through several aspects. This study uses interviews with monks, participants and people involved with rituals as well as documentary and archival research. As part of my research, I also critically reflect upon my ethnographic experiences, between 2006-2012, of a variety of these rituals that are performed in temples around central Thailand. My attendance at the Parn Yak rituals in and around Bangkok involved both complete participation as well as observation. For the rituals of sak yant tattooing, I observed a tattoo master’s practices at Wat Bang Phra temple in Nakhon Pathom province. This thesis intends to offer an alternative approach to examine participants’ experiences of efficacy during and after the rituals. The research examines the therapeutic transformation of participants through the embodied process during rituals, and suggests that participants’ embodiment during lived experience in ritual together with their historical and sociocultural context influence the ways that they articulate their sense of efficacy in the ritual. The thesis offers insights and ideas for further exploration of Thai Buddhist rituals as culturally therapeutic performances.

The paranormal industry in Edinburgh has become a thriving niche within the country's tourist market. While ghost walks have been explored in anthropology from the perspective of spectacle, this thesis investigates and analyses the cultural framework which has furthered the success of the industry. Namely, the ways in which the paranormal industry have appropriated the beliefs and practices of an overarching ghost culture: a community of believers, investigators, mediums, and all those who actively attempt to engage with the paranormal. The increased visibility of the paranormal within popular culture has spurred a wide interest in the unknown and unexplained. Ghost hunting television shows and the prevalence of ghost stories has inspired the desire for unique experiences, and for audiences to contextualise the supernatural within their own lives. The paranormal industry has grown to accommodate this intense, active enthusiasm for all things spectral, and belief has become a commodity. This burgeoning fascination in ghosts has become an important aspect of how Scotland is sold as a destination. While commercial paranormal industries exist in other cities around the world, the historical perception of Scotland as other has created a precedent for the connection between Scottish national identity and the spectral. This thesis further investigates the ways in which the tourist industry continues to solidify the connection between Scottish heritage and the paranormal.

Rituals can be described as ceremonial acts, that have typical rules and own significance. They have their place not only for substance abusers within therapeutic communities, but in a daily life also. Usually, rituals are bonded to traditions of a specific community and they provide a possibility for an individual to identify with this community. They provide also strong emotional experience and they concern spiritual parts of the individual as well. The main objective of this study is to provide a possible view of clients of each stages of final ritual in specific therapeutic community and to find out how it is perceived and valued in a case of a given attitude on their process of own treatment. The elaborated work is focused on emotions which are experienced by clients, whether and in a case how they sense the person, to whom is the ritual addressed, and how they sense therapists and objects which are used during the ritual. In the elaborated work is used a qualitative approach. Data were collected by individual semi-structured interviews. The sample was chosen by a method of intended choice via an institution, it is consisted of therapeutic community White Light I clients, which were present in the community at that time and simultaneously participated on the leaving ritual in this community....

The purpose of the present thesis is to investigate and interpret the position and meaning of the remnant of oblation (ucchiṣṭa, śeṣa, or vāstu) in the system of classical Vedic mythology and ritual. The inquiries begin by a brief survey of used primary sources, secondary literature and methodology. Afterwards, the terminology used for the leftover is examined together with its mythical connotations found in Brāhmaṇas. The pivot of the thesis is its central part which treats the manipulation of the phenomenon of the leftover in the Vedic ritual literature describing the system of solemn (śrauta) rituals, non-sanguinary oblations (iṣṭi) and ancestor worship (piṇḍapitṛyajña). The last chapter is dedicated to the interpretation of the phenomenon. Following the analysis of primary sources, the thesis claims that the remnant of the offering is not a ritual waste but a creative element of the ritual action. It is interpreted as one of the framing ritual acts which surround the central ritual performance and which are understood as associated with the household, its fertility and continuity. The domestic sphere is also a theme of the myths in which is found the phenomenon of the remnant. Based on the discussion on the mythology and ritual manipulation of the phenomenon, the leftover of the offering is...

This paper describes and compares funerals of three presidents, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Klement Gottwald and Václav Havel. They were all iconic characters of their time and their funerals reflect presidents'unique position. In the speeches of politicians and in the newspapers, the deceased presidents turned into supernatural beings, heroes, who gave their lives for their country. As a response to this "sacrifice", oaths of loyalty to their legacy were sworn and people committed to follow the path the presidents established. Theories of Maurice Bloch and Edmund Leach permit to show how the death of the head of the state, potentially destructive event, is transformed by the ritual and helps further strengthen the unity of society.

CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE PROTESTANT THEOLOGICAL FACULTY Homiletical and Liturgical Aspects of Funeral Services Diploma Thesis Author: Jana Hofmanová Study programme: Theology Study subprogramme: Protestant Theology Supervisor: prof. ThDr. Pavel Filipi Department of Practical Theology Summary Homiletical and Liturgical Aspects of Funeral Services This dissertation introduces fundamental context which influences shape of funeral services liturgy and preaching (particularly in Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren). First part introduces theological, traditional and modern context. This is followed by study on possible connections between ritual and liturgy and also possible contribution of modern ritual studies to the theology of liturgy is presented. Another part of this dissertation discuses opportunity of preaching gospel in the specific situation of funeral services. The concern of these chapters focuses especially on interconnection of liturgy and sermon and on semiotics. The situation of funeral is understood as a situation which deserves pastoral care and keeping a company to the mourning. On the other hand possibility to care is understood as opportunity to confess ones faith as a witness of Resurrected Christ. After marking out all these bases, there are liturgical and homiletical aspects of...

In my thesis I focused on the matter of the relationship of Americans during the decades after World War II to their own identity, as well as to the myths of the West or consumer society. I wanted to compare these aspects on plays by Sam Shepard and David Mamet, two playwrights concerned with similar issues in 1960s and 1970s. In the theoretical part of the thesis I concentrated on the development of the American theater off Broadway. I described three significant theater groups of the era and the differences in their approach. I based the comparison of the plays on Richard Schechner's performance theory and J. L. Austin's theory of the so-called "performatives." Later I discussed the matters of rituals and myths in the postmodern society where I based my theory especially on Victor Turner's and Marie Maclean's work. The two main chapters are dealing with comparing two plays by each author with regard to the way Shepard and Mamet work with rituals and modern myths. Those are considered commonplace, insufficient, almost misleading in a modern society, and the plays' characters thus cannot cope with the society. They end up being on its outer edge and do not seem to be able to find the way back. As a result of the comparison of the plays based on the theoretical part I concluded that even though from the...

De ses œuvres de jeunesse jusqu’aux poèmes de l’exil, Ovide a progressivement construit une langue poétique propre, qui entremêle des stylèmes religieux appartenant à la langue liturgique de l’époque augustéenne, et des stylèmes purement poétiques, tantôt repris à la tradition littéraire, tantôt originaux : il joue ainsi de la frontière qui sépare le carmen religieux et le carmen poétique en faisant s’élever un chant nouveau, total, par lequel il sacralise la poésie, qui est bien alors la musique du monde, la musique créatrice, proprement poïétique, dont le souffle donne son sens, sa forme et sa beauté (forma) au monde. Le discours élégiaque est alors bien plus qu’un simple propos érotique, ou même métapoétique. Si Ovide nous parle d’amour, il nous parle aussi de poésie, mais pas seulement d’une poésie narcissique qui serait sa propre fin et son objet : ce qui se reflète au miroir de la poésie ovidienne, telle qu’elle se met en jeu dans les énoncés de prière, c’est une perspective, une perspective transcendante par laquelle le poète tente de contempler le Verbe divin, la Musique totale qui organise l’univers. Loin de jouer de manière parodique avec le discours sacré, qu’il subvertirait à des fins érotiques et humoristiques, comme l’ont écrit les partisans d’une élégie immanente, Ovide nous semble sublimer par un souffle sacré, et par l’apport de stylèmes religieux, la poésie élégiaque de manière à en faire le chant qui rejoue la création du monde en même temps qu’il la dit. / From his early works to the poems of exile, Ovid progressively constructed a personal poetic language, mixing religious stylemes belonging to the liturgical language of the Augustan age with purely poetic stylemes, some taken from literary tradition, others quite original: he thus plays on the borderline separating the religious carmen from the poetic carmen, giving birth to a new, total song endowing poetry with a sacred status, making it music of the world, the properly poietic music of creation whose breath gives the world its meaning, its form and its beauty (forma). Elegiac discourse is then more than a simple erotic, or even metapoetic statement. If Ovid speaks to us of love, he also speaks to us of poetry, but not just a narcissistic poetry taken as its own end and object. What is reflected in the mirror of Ovidian verse as it takes shape in the utterance of prayer is a perspective – a transcendental perspective through which the poet attempts to contemplate the divine Word, the total Music which organizes the universe. Far from playing on sacred discourse in an ironic mode, subverting it to erotic or humorous ends as partisans of an immanent elegy have written, Ovid seems to us to be sublimating elegiac poetry by instilling it with a sacred breath and importing religious stylemes into it, in such a way as to make of it the Song which replays the creation of the world at the same time as telling it.

For the realization of forest feast, I chose the form of a happening, and consciously find myself on the edge of art and ritual. I see art as both artifacts created a situation for forest receptions, so the process of formation and reflection receptions, concept or screenplay. Different variants of scenarios that stand in zákadě events I describe below in thinking about work. Also, the script for which I have reached the gradual development considerations, is to read the below invitation to the event, enclosed in the picture. A Feast For example, in ancient Greece began and ended the festival of sacrifice to the gods. I decided to accentuate this motive. The victim from receiving food, waiver of thanksgiving everyday dish deepens, it becomes a conscious activity. In the Christian world has in this sense, the greatest significance of the Last Supper, its symbolism are the most important ritual in the Christian Mass. The feast of Christ gradually became a major theme in the history of art to the modernist and contemporary design. However, I wanted to draw your own version of a symbolic feast as it is for me the key theme of the relationship between man and nature, I placed a feast to the natural landscape. That is my role model in the theater of orgies and mysteries Herman Nitsch and installation Woman House Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. My happening also counts with people, which is thought imminent. Already during previous meetings with small domestic fire, we realized that it is an intimate ritual and should be well participants choose to debate with them about the situation, well brighten intention. Some of the invited guests with my thoughts directly disagreed and refused to participate. That's why I later reviewed, it is a community event. Close relationships that are fundamental perception of that experience helps a reality shared apartment, in the city center on Minority 12. Here, daily life is characterized by the features of a small community. One of the reasons why some invitees refused participation is likely that not so common reality. They do not have a clear awareness of the artistic realities and contexts that allow action should be viewed with a certain detachment, as a result of some conceptual activity of the author. Flavor through community acquires a more significant role if Ideally happening repeat (turns into a ritual), but this time actually with cultivars, products directly in preparation for this purpose. So in terms of actual conscious experience of the origin of food and the principle of submission (the victim): That is their commitment to a particular location to maintain the robust earth energy. The issue of my presentation happening is an issue. I think there is a need, the essence lies in the internal happenings and common experiences of the people involved. Therefore I kept an open space, which form when presenting choose. During implementation, however, consistently work documents. Some moments, however, are not transferable camera. Thus documenting the needs of the thesis and its presentation. Ideally, in the future feasts I want to accentuate documentation retreat.