This article surveys the beliefs concerning the supernatural characteristics and powers of sacred trees in Israel; it is based on a field study as well as a survey of the literature and includes 118 interviews with Muslims and Druze. Both the Muslims and Druze in this study attribute supernatural dimensions to sacred trees which are directly related to ancient, deep-rooted pagan traditions. The...

A growing body of research is beginning to identify characteristics that influence or are related to helping professionals’ integration of clients’ religion and spirituality (RS) in mental health treatment. This article presents Namaste Theory, a new theory for understanding the role of mental health practitioners’ RS in clinical practice. Using Glaser’s (2008) formal quantitative grounded theo...

Sacred forests represent an important long-held tradition of conserving specific land areas that have cultural, and often religious, significance. India, with its diversity of cultures and traditions, has over 100 000 sacred forests. Many of these groves are forest fragments in agricultural landscapes. In most cases, community members are at least aware of these fragments, if not actively invol...

The GRAS gene family is one of the most important plant-specific gene families, which encodes transcriptional regulators and plays an essential role in plant development and physiological processes. The GRAS gene family has been well characterized in many higher plants such as Arabidopsis, rice, Chinese cabbage, tomato and tobacco. In this study, we identified 38 GRAS genes in sacred lotus (Nel...

Before any attempt to map the terrain of conceptualism in contemporary African art, a clarification of what we mean by'conceptualism'or'conceptual art' would be helpful. Conceptual art emerged in the last century from a long series of often unconnected and not altogether intentional acts and interventions in which artists elected or rejected certain forms or strategies in art making and in the ...

Nature displays profound preference for certain specific ratios to design her life-forms. These are geometric relationships that are transcendent and originated from Sacred Geometry. The view that geometry had a ritual origin is a part of a wider view that civilisation itself had a ritual origin, and therefore the history of utilisation of Sacred Geometry by man goes back to many centuries ago....

We analyze recent proposals from social scientists suggesting that when sacred values are involved in conflicts, progress towards negotiation can be made if the contending parties make symbolic gestures acknowledging the sacred values of their rivals. We incorporate this possibility in a model in which the allocation of a sacred good can be resolved either by direct conflict or by negotiations ...

421 a Associate Professor, Department of Orthodontics, Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital, Hallym University. b Assistant Professor, Department of Preventive Dentistry, School of Dentistry, Seoul National University. c Professor, e Assistant Professor, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital, Hallym University. d Chairman, Department of Orthodontics, Chong-A Denta...

A sacred relationship exists between tobacco and American Indian ceremonial activities and beliefs. This ancient connection continues to play an important role in American Indian communities including the Anishinabe (Ojibwe). Six Ojibwe traditional healers and spiritual leaders described the sacred use of tobacco during interviews. The research provides information on key-informant smoking beha...

Increasingly across the world, political conflict is as a moral clash between different sets of sacred values, which a moral community treats as possessing transcendental significance that precludes comparisons or tradeoffs with instrumental values of realpolitik or the marketplace. In experiments with Israeli settlers, Palestinian refugees and Hamas students we found that violent opposition to...