Invention of Tradition and Syncretism in Contemporary Religions Sacred Creativity

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. 

Chapter 1. Changing the Sacred: Creative Paths of Religious Experience

Chapter 2.  The itako of Tohoku: between tradition and change

Chapter 3.  Invisibility or marginality? Assessing religious diversification among women shamans in Eastern Siberia

Chapter 4.  Evolution of tradition in the Ramanandi order among hagiographies, Jagadguru and Ma?h

 Chapter 5.  Re-membering the Goddess: the Avalon sacred path in Italy between tradition and innovation

Chapter 6.  Creative modalities of adaptation of a Hindu bodily form of rituality to Christian spirituality

Chapter 7.  The Syncretistic Religious landscape of contemporary Greece and Portugal: a comparative approach on creativity through spiritual synthesis.

 Chapter 8.  The new furnace: science, technology, innovation and religious life

Chapter 9.  Ritual creativity and ritual failure in popular Spanish Catholicism: a case study on reformism and miracles in La Mancha

Chapter 10.  Conclusion