Long recognized as a defining feature of religion, prayer, paradoxically, has received only sporadic empirical attention. Recent investigations in the U.S. and the Netherlands have sought to address this gap by exploring the topic of prayer in programmatic fashions, significantly advancing the state of the art in terms of measurement of the practice of private prayer. The present paper first offers one way to integrate and expand the contemporary prayer literature using a conceptual analysis of religion. Second, challenges and possibilities associated with moving from this synthetic definition to neuroimaging work are examined within the framework of social cognitive neuroscience.

In the Netherlands a two-hour spiritual television show called Astro TV is broadcast daily on a commercial channel. I analyse the power and gender relations in and underlying this programme on the basis of my anthropological observations with reference to the theories of Bourdieu, Wood, Woodhead and others. In the show clients can call in and have a short consultation with a “spiritual specialist”, usually a psychic. On the surface such shows are very much like the presentations that psychics held at paranormal fairs in the 1990s. Both in the television show and in real consultations the psychics do dominate somewhat because of their claim to channel special signs or messages from “beyond” –they act like magicians. However, clients can reject the message or debate its meaning. Backstage a large and obscure pool of psychics, alternative healers and counsellors, publishers and businesspeople use divination programmes and other mass media presentations to supply a large public with holistic spirituality. On this second level real power is exerted more or less anonymously and commercially. Nevertheless, the divination practice appears to offer psychological support to the mainly working-class women who participate in it. Besides, both clients and psychics enjoy such practices, for instance as entertainment. Although religious symbolism is frequently used in such divinations, they should not be seen as a form of religion (because they lack worship), but as secular spirituality.

Religion was a recurrent theme in Georg Simmel’s thought. Despite this fact, and despite the current rediscovery of Simmel’s ideas, his insights into religion remain relatively neglected. The task of integrating Simmel’s legacy into the current study of religion remains a continuing challenge. This paper, based on an on-going study of Simmel’s work (involving a close reading of his writings in the original version), reflects on his conceptualisation of the relationship between religion understood as an objective, social and historical phenomenon and subjective religiosity. In Simmel’s view, the religious perspective –a “particular spiritual quality”or “attitude of the soul”, a way of looking at the world as a whole –constitutes a kind of pre-stage of religion. This particular perspective of a religion-like (religioid) character makes up an individual foundation for religion, but it can also express itself in other cultural pursuits, like science or art. It only becomes religion after it assumes a specific form in human interaction. Simmel claims that many human relations have a religious character; faith, which is regarded as the substance of religion, is first a relationship between individuals. Out of the subjective faith-process there develops an object for that faith: the idea of God, who is “the absolute object of human faith”. For Simmel, the idea of God (conceived of as the unity of existence, the coincidentia oppositorum) is constitutive for religion.

The Issue of Sex Relations in Australian Myths – the “Matryoshka Principle”

This paper discusses the ambiguity of sex identity within Aboriginal mythology. Male/female relations are the main point of the well-known Wawilag Sisters myth from Arnhem Land, based on a series of equivalent mythical unions: the penis in the vagina (male in female) ≡the serpent in the hut (male in female) ≡Wawilag sisters pregnancy (male in female) ≡Wawilag sisters devoured by the serpent (female in male) ≡subincised penis (female in male). The effect of such equivalencies may be compared to a “matryoshka”doll: the male (child) is in the female (sisters) which is in the male (serpent), which in a way also renders the male symbols female (this is why the serpent is called “pregnant”). The basis of such a construction may be understood as the creation of a series of transformations male>female>male>female etc., which eventually leads to realisation of the exchange of female with male blood; their equipoise is necessary for initiation ceremonies.

Ritual Trance from the Perspective of Evolutionary Psychology

To begin with, a hypothesis is made regarding the possibility of treating imitation as a key mechanism in the induction of trance states. The author argues that this thesis can be justified convincingly on the basis of empirical material collected by researchers of shamanism. The theories of religion formulated by evolutionary psychologists place emphasis on the origins of religious concepts. However, they leave aside the question of ritual, and also do not permit a more thorough study of the mechanisms generating a ritual trance state. In order to analyse the cognitive aspects of trance, it is therefore necessary to construct a different theoretical model.

In religious studies, prayer has been extensively researched. Psychological studies use survey methods, so low-educated respondents often cannot comprehend the items. A projective method is presented, based on the Thematic Apperception Test by A. Murray and Ch. Morgan. Data collected in semi-structured interviews are used for qualitative research and for statistical analysis. Quantitative analysis of the references to prayer in narratives has yielded certain results, confirming the usefulness of the test. Qualitative analysis has revealed specificity of the petition and intercession prayer and has called attention to association of location to specific types of prayer.

Unity and Multiplicity

Philosophical discourse in Islam revolves around God, and God’s manifestation in the world. This article attempts to describe the philosophical concept, and especially the Sufi concept, of God. For Muslim philosophers the question “how does unity give rise to multiplicity?”had a crucial meaning. In Islam God is One, and everything else is two or more. The Oneness of being remains inaccessible to people. However, Sufi s tried to give an answer to the question “What is Reality? What is the ‘face of God’, and what does this notion really mean?”And also “what veils separate Him from His creation?”Sufi s tried to find the answer to all these questions not in the calm of a library but in deep religious experience. Because God in His mercy revealed the Laws in order that people would be able to make choices which lead directly to their felicity in the next stage of their experience. This was a difficult and dangerous process, and it required from neophytes a love of God. In their searches, the Sufi s try to answer the question of what one sees when one throws off the inhibiting shackles of the mind and senses, what does one feel when one crosses the border of the phenomenal world? What kind of world does one observe when one wakes up from a dream which is life? What does one see in the state of illumination?