Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic SpiritualitySUNY Press, 2000 M02 17 - 349 pages The third book in Morris Berman's much acclaimed trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness, Wandering God continues his earlier work which garnered such praise as "solid lessons in the history of ideas" (KIRKUS Reviews), "filled with piquant details" (Common Boundary), and "an informative synthesis and a remarkably friendly, good-natured jeremiad" (The Village Voice). Here, in a remarkable discussion of our hunter-gatherer ancestry and the "paradoxical" mode of perception that it involved, Berman shows how a sense of alertness, or secular/sacred immediacy, subsequently got buried by the rise of sedentary civilization, religion, and vertical power relationships. In an integrated tour de force, Wandering God explores the meaning of Paleolithic art, the origins of social inequality, the nature of cross-cultural child rearing, the relationship between women and agriculture, and the world view of present-day nomadic peoples, as well as the emergence of "paradoxical" consciousness in the philosophical writings of the twentieth century. |
Contents
The Experience of Paradox | 1 |
The Writing on the Wall | 19 |
Politics and Power | 49 |
As the Soul Is Bent The PsychoReligious Roots of Social Inequality | 85 |
Agriculture Religion and the Great Mother | 117 |
The Zone of Flux | 153 |
Wandering God The Recovery of Paradox in the Twentieth Century | 191 |
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Common terms and phrases
agricultural civilization American Amorites ancient animal anthropologist archaeological argues Axial Axial Age band society behavior believe brain Bruce Chatwin Bushmen Cambridge caregiving cave chapter child rearing Clastres complex consciousness context crucial culture discussion dyadic economy ecstatic egalitarian Eliade emergence evidence Evolution example existence experience female Figure foraging Gimbutas goddess Hadza HG societies hierarchy human Hunter-Gatherers Hunters hunting Inanna individual infant Jung Khazanov kind Kung Lascaux later Lewis Binford live Marija Gimbutas Mbuti Mesopotamia Minoan mother Mousterian mystery cults myth Neolithic nomadic notion paradigm paradox pastoral pattern philosophical Pierre Clastres political population Prehistoric problem psychological religion religious ritual Robert role sacred says sedentary sedentism sense shamanic shift social inequality storage symbolic Testart things tion trans transcendent tribe truth unitive trance University Press Upper Paleolithic vertical Wittgenstein women Woodburn writes York Zoroaster Zoroastrianism