Altars: Bringing Sacred Shrines into Your Everyday Life by Denise Linn  (6)
|
A Book of Women's Altars: How to Create Sacred Spaces for Art, Worship, Solace, Celebration by Nancy Brady Cunningham  (3)
$14.96
|
Altars Made Easy: A Complete Guide To Creating Your Own Sacred Space by Peg Streep (11)
|
Living Shrines: Home Altars of New Mexico by Marie Romero Cash (1)
$18.21
|
Altars and Icons: Sacred Spaces in Everyday Life by Jean McMann  (8)
|
This item is not eligible for Amazon Prime, but millions of other items are. Join Amazon Prime today. Already a member? Sign in.
|
|||||||||
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
For at least 1000 years, women have created home altars dedicated to their personal deities. Turner, who earned a Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Texas, has spent more than 20 years exploring this rich, cross-cultural tradition. She weaves scholarship in feminist religious studies, many interviews with women altar-makers and an obvious appreciation for this individual art form into an informative (if, at times, repetitive) and occasionally inspirational reading experience. Turner is motivated by a feminist need to discover a woman's spiritual tradition that has been neglected or dismissed by male scholars. She emphasizes how, by creating private, domestic altars, women have claimed space from public and patriarchal practices for their own individual relationships with the Divine. After a brief historical survey of the tradition of women's altars, Turner devotes the major part of her study to analyzing contemporary altars made in what she terms "folk religious practices" (those running counter to institutionalized religions). She also includes altars made by women without institutionalized affiliation, such as pagans, Wiccans and goddess worshipers. In addition, she provides a brief biography of each altar-maker in a particularly valuable appendix. For all the merit of Turner's thorough textual analysis, many readers will feel that the book's value resides in its 110 illustrations, 80 in color, since it is through these that we are allowed to enter the private space of the home altars. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
In the most basic sense, an altar is a home for sacred images, a place for venerating and inviting the comfort, help, and companionship of the gods. But the amazing, dazzling, decorative, poignant, picturesque, inspiring, glowing, passionate altars in this book are not those of churches and temples, designed for the official worship of an omniscient god ceremoniously tended by a priest, rabbi, or minister. Instead, these places are the expression of the most intimate beliefs and fears, memories and dreams of women who are making new spiritual traditions from ancient ones--pagan, goddess, Celtic, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox. No one knows more about this remarkable efflorescence than Kay Turner, who has been exploring the subject for over twenty years since accidentally encountering the extraordinary altar of a Quiche Maya woman--described by its maker as a "beautiful necessity"--in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Since then she has gathered abundant evidence of how this phenomenon grips women in the most diverse locations, from the studios of artists in New York, Detroit, and San Francisco to the kitchens of Mexican-American homes in Texas, from Mama Lola celebrating Afro-Caribbean gods in Brooklyn to a Wiccan priestess in California worshiping the goddess Aphrodite. The statues, flowers, pictures, photographs, drawings, amulets, pieces of shell, and bits of earth that are collaged together and reproduced here in color represent their makers' histories, beliefs, and desires. Turner draws out the personal stories that lie behind the altars and explains their appeal and significance for everyone.
See all Editorial Reviews
For at least 1000 years, women have created home altars dedicated to their personal deities. Turner, who earned a Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Texas, has spent more than 20 years exploring this rich, cross-cultural tradition. She weaves scholarship in feminist religious studies, many interviews with women altar-makers and an obvious appreciation for this individual art form into an informative (if, at times, repetitive) and occasionally inspirational reading experience. Turner is motivated by a feminist need to discover a woman's spiritual tradition that has been neglected or dismissed by male scholars. She emphasizes how, by creating private, domestic altars, women have claimed space from public and patriarchal practices for their own individual relationships with the Divine. After a brief historical survey of the tradition of women's altars, Turner devotes the major part of her study to analyzing contemporary altars made in what she terms "folk religious practices" (those running counter to institutionalized religions). She also includes altars made by women without institutionalized affiliation, such as pagans, Wiccans and goddess worshipers. In addition, she provides a brief biography of each altar-maker in a particularly valuable appendix. For all the merit of Turner's thorough textual analysis, many readers will feel that the book's value resides in its 110 illustrations, 80 in color, since it is through these that we are allowed to enter the private space of the home altars. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
In the most basic sense, an altar is a home for sacred images, a place for venerating and inviting the comfort, help, and companionship of the gods. But the amazing, dazzling, decorative, poignant, picturesque, inspiring, glowing, passionate altars in this book are not those of churches and temples, designed for the official worship of an omniscient god ceremoniously tended by a priest, rabbi, or minister. Instead, these places are the expression of the most intimate beliefs and fears, memories and dreams of women who are making new spiritual traditions from ancient ones--pagan, goddess, Celtic, Hindu, Buddhist, Catholic, Greek Orthodox. No one knows more about this remarkable efflorescence than Kay Turner, who has been exploring the subject for over twenty years since accidentally encountering the extraordinary altar of a Quiche Maya woman--described by its maker as a "beautiful necessity"--in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Since then she has gathered abundant evidence of how this phenomenon grips women in the most diverse locations, from the studios of artists in New York, Detroit, and San Francisco to the kitchens of Mexican-American homes in Texas, from Mama Lola celebrating Afro-Caribbean gods in Brooklyn to a Wiccan priestess in California worshiping the goddess Aphrodite. The statues, flowers, pictures, photographs, drawings, amulets, pieces of shell, and bits of earth that are collaged together and reproduced here in color represent their makers' histories, beliefs, and desires. Turner draws out the personal stories that lie behind the altars and explains their appeal and significance for everyone.
See all Editorial Reviews
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Look Inside This Book
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
73% buy the item featured on this page: Beautiful Necessity: The Art and Meaning of Women's Altars (3) |
 |
14% buy Altars: Bringing Sacred Shrines into Your Everyday Life (6) |
 |
13% buy Crafting Personal Shrines: Using Photos, Mementos & Treasures to Create Artful Displays (10)$10.17 |
