Votive Altars: Domestic Signals to Inhabit the Sacred

The sacred and the mundane: domestic activities at a Late Natufian burial site in the Levant

Hilazon Tachtit, a small Natufian cave site in northern Israel, served first and foremost as a ritual location for the burial of the dead. Burials were found in all loci of the 30 m2 occupation. At least twenty-eight individuals were buried at the site—two of them in structures that were too small for human habitation. The ritual nature of the site is supported by some aspects of material cultu...

The astronomy of the age of geometric altars

Fire altars were an important part of ritual throughout the ancient world. Geometric ritual, often a part of the fire altars, was intimately connected with problems of mathematics and astronomy. Manuals of altar design from India explain the basis behind the reconciliation of the lunar and the solar years. This astronomy is based on the use of mean motions. Computation rules from Vedāṅga Jyotis...

Linguistics and the Sacred Language of the Qur'an

The Civil and the Sacred

The Sacred and the Secular

From our perspective, one clear trend is that OBM appears to be undergoing a period of “secularism” wherein some of its more “sacred” interventions are being questioned. Numbered among these “sacred” traditions are the regular use by OBM practitioners of feedback (Alvero, Bucklin, & Austin, 2001; Balcazar, Hopkins, & Suarez, 1986; Kluger & DiNisi, 1996), goal setting (Fellner & Sulzer-Azaroff, ...