Lightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica

Pre-Columbian, Colonial, and Contemporary Perspectives

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7535003
AutoresJohn E Staller (autor de correspondencia), Brian Stro, BRIAN STROSS
Año2013
Páginas278
Fecha de publicación2013-03-05
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaLightning in the Andes and Mesoamerica (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199967759.001.0001
OpenAlexW1551208568
Open LibraryOL25377003M
ISBN9780199967759
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7

Lightning has evoked a numinous response as well as powerful timeless references and symbols among ancient religions throughout the world. Thunder and lightning have also taken on various symbolic manifestations, some representing primary deities, as in the case of Zeus and Jupiter in the Greco/Roman tradition, and Thor in Norse myth. Similarly, lightning veneration played an important role to the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica and Andean South America. Lightning veneration and the religious cults and their associated rituals represent to varying degrees a worship of nature and the forces that shape the natural world. The inter-relatedness of the cultural and natural environment is related to what may be called a widespread cultural perception of the natural world as sacred, a kind of mythic landscape. Comparative analysis of the Andes and Mesoamerica has been a recurring theme recently in part because two of the areas of "high civilization" in the Americas have much in common despite substantial ecological differences, and in part because there is some evidence, of varying quality, that some people had migrated from one area to the other. This book explores the symbolic elements surrounding lightning in their associated Pre-Columbian religious ideologies. Moreover, it extends its examination to contemporary culture to reveal how cultural perceptions of the sacred, their symbolic representations and ritual practices, and architectural representations in the landscape were conjoined in the ancient past

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Civilization · Ethnology · Geography · Lightning (connector · Mesoamerica · Mesopotamia · Natural (archaeology · Sociology · Thunder · Veneration · Worship · Anthropology · Archaeology and Natural History · History · Latin American history and culture · Philosophy · Antiquities · Folklore · Indian cosmology · Indians · Latin America · Lightning · Religion · Religious aspects · rites and ceremonies