Cultivating The Muse

Cultivating the Muse looks beyond the secure and benign images traditionally associated with inspiration in classical literature and scholarship. In contrast to the shapeless collectivity of the Muses in ancient accounts, this collection aspires to redeem their shape in other more vitalforms, closer or more distant incarnations of the ever-elusive maiden. Protagonists -- or victims -- in a complex game of cultural exploration, the alternative Muses and muse-like figures of this book are manipulated, abused, or effaced, but at the same time they also advocate or resist their fatesand explore their own powers of persuasion. Inspiration is here not so much explored in its traditional cultic dimensions, but rather invoked for its capacity to trigger fervent debates about power, desire, knowledge, identity, and gender in the societies of ancient Greece and Rome.

The overwhelming majority of tea practitioners in contemporary Japan are women, but there has been little discussion on their historical role in tea culture (chanoyu). In Cultivating Femininity, Rebecca Corbett writes women back into this history and shows how tea practice for women was understood, articulated, and promoted in the Edo (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods. Viewing chanoyu from the lens of feminist and gender theory, she sheds new light on tea’s undeniable influence on the formation of modern understandings of femininity in Japan. Corbett overturns the iemoto tea school’s carefully constructed orthodox narrative by employing underused primary sources and closely examining existing tea histories. She incorporates Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of social and cultural capital and Norbert Elias’s “civilizing process” to explore the economic and social incentives for women taking part in chanoyu. Although the iemoto system sought to increase its control over every aspect of tea, including book production, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular texts aimed specifically at women evidence the spread of tea culture beyond parameters set by the schools. The expansion of chanoyu to new social groups cascaded from commoner men to elite then commoner women. Shifting the focus away from male tea masters complicates the history of tea in Japan and shows how women of different social backgrounds worked within and without traditionally accepted paradigms of tea practice. The direct socioeconomic impact of the spread of tea is ultimately revealed in subsequent advances in women’s labor opportunities and an increase in female social mobility. Through their participation in chanoyu, commoner women were able to blur and lessen the status gap between themselves and women of aristocratic and samurai status. Cultivating Femininity offers a new perspective on the prevalence of tea practice among women in modern Japan. It presents a fresh, much-needed approach, one that will be appreciated by students and scholars of Japanese history, gender, and culture, as well as by tea practitioners. An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. The open-access version of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require permission from the publisher.

The gods of mythology and polytheistic religions live in a world that exists as an interwoven parallel to the human one, with each having effects on the other. The god world was created by human imagination and belief, but its existence is being threatened by the decline of polytheistic worship and the disbelief of humans. A young woman named Kate Deaganippe must decide if saving them is worth the cost, since the gods prey on specially bred humans as the source of their longevity and power. Kate allies herself with a fledgling god named Amadee, who has come to Earth to help her fight to save their intertwined worlds from ultimate destruction.

Crystal Muse explores how you can transform life’s challenges into opportunities for growth by being equipped with the right crystals and mindset. Learn how you can connect with crystals and empower your life by using this guide to set such transformational intentions as: —Attracting love through learning to love yourself —Relieving anxiety by surrendering to meditation —Becoming a magnet for prosperity —Crystallizing a breakthrough —Consciously conceiving a new life —Cutting your unhealthy energy cords —Getting rid of insomnia to sleep with your mind fully at rest —Cultivating the connection with your creative spirit —Aligning with the energy of the moon —Grounding yourself with the energy of the earth; and —Finding the temple within These practices are a collection of over 25 years of rigorous research, world travel, and spiritual quests by holistic healer and crystal expert, Heather Askinosie. For over two decades, Heather and her business partner, Timmi Jandro, have been offering insights into crystals through their crystal healing business, Energy Muse. Throughout Crystal Muse, Heather and Timmi share their personal stories on the path toward alternative practice, and explain how these remedies can work for the reader’s life too.

At the heart of 21st century discourses are questions of whose lives may matter more than others. While the debates themselves are not new, the #hashtags they are linked to and the media through which concerns around moralities of living together are expressed allow for debates to reach large numbers of people in accelerated, individualised and accessible ways. The new media have been powerful in (re)igniting debates and (re)activating demands for social change. Yet, the focus of ubiquitous #hashtags on binary positions may render it easy to neglect their nuances and facets. In recognition of grey-zones, contradictions and ambiguities, this ethnography focuses on a suburb of Cape Town, Observatory, and its recently revived Neighbourhood Watch as an urban renewal project and attempt to decrease notions of vulnerability to crime and violence. In Observatory – considered to be liberal and bohemian by its inhabitants – the framing of topics within the Neighbourhood Watch group often take on an abstract, intellectualised form. Nevertheless, the group with its rather clashing ideals is grounded in and fuelled by recycled crime stories as well as snapshots of suspected criminals that continue to reappear via various social media channels. Individual experiences, stories and inner conflicts of local Neighbourhood Watch members are at the centre of this exploratory engagement with how fear becomes embodied, everyday practice and the ways in which desires for relationality and spatial exclusivity become entangled in a place where every life matters only in principle.

Cultivating Spirituality is a seminal anthology of Shin Buddhist thought, one that reflects this tradition's encounter with modernity. Shin (or Jodō Shinshū) is a popular form of Pure Land Buddhism, the most widely practiced form of Buddhism in Japan, but is only now becoming well known in the West. The lives of the four thinkers included in the book spanned the years 1863–1982, from the Meiji opening to the West to Japan's establishment as an industrialized democracy and world economic power. Kiyozawa Manshi, Soga Ryōjin, Kaneko Daiei, and Yasuda Rijin, all associated with Kyoto's Ōtani University, dealt with the spiritual concerns of a society undergoing great change. Their philosophical orientation known as "Seishinshugi" ("cultivating spirituality") provides a set of principles that prioritized personal, subjective experience as the basis for religious understanding. In addition to providing access to work generally unavailable in English, this volume also includes both a contextualizing introduction and introductions to each figure included.

Like Virgil, who depicted a farmer's scythe suddenly recast as a sword, the poets discussed here imagine states of peace and war to be fundamentally and materially linked. In distinct ways, they dismantle the dream of the golden age renewed, proposing instead that peace must be sustained by constant labor.