Invention of Tradition and Syncretism in Contemporary Religions

This book explores manifestations of creativity in the religious domain. Specifically, the contributions focus on the nexus of the sacred and the creative, and the mechanisms of syncretism and (re)invention of tradition by which this manifestations occur.

This book explores manifestations of creativity in the religious domain. Specifically, the contributions focus on the nexus of the sacred and the creative, and the mechanisms of syncretism and (re)invention of tradition by which this manifestations occur. The text is divided into two sections. In the first, empirical cases of spirituality characterized by syncretistic processes are highlighted; in the second, examples which can be traced back to forms of the (re)invention of tradition are examined.  The authors document possible forms of adaptations and religious enculturation. In the second, the authors demonstrate that spiritual traditions, whether ancient or historically fictitious, are suitable for reframing in the context of critical interpretative frameworks related to cultural expectations which challenge them and call their continuity into question. 

1. Changing the Sacred: Creative Paths of Religious Experience.- 2. The itako of Tohoku: between tradition and change.- 3. Invisibility or marginality? Assessing religious diversification among women shamans in Eastern Siberia.- 4. Evolution of tradition in the Ramanandi order among hagiographies, Jagadguru and Mäh.- 5. Re-membering the Goddess: the Avalon sacred path in Italy between tradition and innovation.- 6. Creative modalities of adaptation of a Hindu bodily form of rituality to Christian spirituality.- 7. The Syncretistic Religious landscape of contemporary Greece and Portugal: a comparative approach on creativity through spiritual synthesis.- 8. The new furnace: science, technology, innovation and religious life.- 9. Ritual creativity and ritual failure in popular Spanish Catholicism: a case study on reformism and miracles in La Mancha.- 10. Conclusion.