Articles de revues sur le sujet « Devil worship »

Satanism is a religious trend that involves the worship of a demonic being. This may be Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Asmodia, Seth, and others. And often the first three demons are considered to be one person in three hypostases. There are many classifications of satanism. Here we offer you ours, because we believe that it exactly reveals the essence of Satan's directions. Therefore, Satanists are divided into orthodox devil-worshipers, Luciferian (Promethean), reformed devil-worshipers (Lavean type).

The article took up the problem of evil in magic in the teaching of the Church Fathers. The ancient priests were convinced that magic was the work of the devil himself. Even the pagan world believed that every mage must have had his own demon, who was the source of their strength. Thus a mage remains at a constant relationship with the devil on whom he is dependent. It can be even said that magic leads inevitably to the worship of the devil. Those who practice magic or seek advice from fortune-tellers and astrologers, put themselves at the devil’s dis­posal, since they make their life decisions dependent on the results of divination or star system. The most serious form of enslavement is demonic possession. Few of the Church Fathers links possession with magic practice, whereas all agree that magic seriously weakens confidence in Divine Providence and leads to a spiritual split, which results in simultaneous participation in the Christian practices and the use of magic services.

Western bookstores today are full of small boxes that advertise “Voodoo Revenge Kit” on the front. Their short descriptions encourage anyone who wishes to harm a cheating lover and curse a difficult boss to buy this product. Companies now sell t-shirts, mugs, buttons and key chains with “voodoo dolls,” and bound figures with needles through the heart. Novels, newspapers, and movies have, for over a century, produced representations of human sacrifice, cannibalism and devil worship as rituals central to the practice Obeah, Vodou and Santeria. U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson even remarked that the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, was God's retribution on Haitians for practicing voodoo and making a “pact with the devil.” Remarkably, few people recognize that these depictions are, to a large degree, linked to slavery and racism, which continue to leave their stain on the past and present laws of American and Caribbean nations.

Since at least 2005, drug traffickers in the cities and favelas of the state of Rio de Janeiro have been carrying out systematic and violent assaults on Afro-Brazilian religious communities. Motivated by their conversion to sects of Evangelical Christianity that regard Afro-Brazilian religions as devil worship, the traffickers have forcibly expelled devotees of these faiths from their homes and temples, destroyed shrines and places of worship, and threatened to kill priests if they continue to practice their religion. Scholars have often described this religious landscape as a “conflict” and a “spiritual war.” However, I argue that Evangelized drug traffickers and Afro-Brazilian religions are not engaged in a two-sided struggle; rather, the former is unilaterally committing gross violations of the latter’s human rights, which contravene international norms prohibiting crimes against humanity and genocide.

Abstract The articles in this volume offer interventions in the history of encounters between new worlds and the intellectual traditions inherited from and informed by classical antiquity, in the period roughly spanning 1450-1850. Ranging in scope from medical treatments to devil-worship, from cosmography to climate theory, from rhetorical colloquies to the interpretation of widow-burning, they show how early modern scholars, artisans, and travelers drew on multiple cultural traditions within Europe, as well as on indigenous knowledge networks in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, in their attempts to incorporate new information into their existing world-view.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Anhand spätmittelalterlicher Pastoralhandbücher und Beispielpredigten werden drei zentrale Anweisungen identifiziert, die der Klerus den Laien hinsichtlich des korrekten Verhaltens während der Meßfeier gab. Erstens sollten die Gläubigen sich ruhig verhalten und in demütiger Haltung der Messe folgen, um der Ablenkung durch den Teufel zu wiederstehen. Zweitens sollten die Laien sich bewußt werden, daß die Meßfeier das Leiden Christi symbolisiert. Ziel des Klerus war es, das Verständnis der Laien für das Ritual, die Kirchenausstattung und die Meßgewänder, die auf die Grundlagen des Glaubens verweisen, zu vertiefen und damit den Glauben zu stärken. Drittens sollten Laien aktiv an der Messe teilnehmen, u.|a. sollten sie die Grundgebete sprechen sowie den einzelnen Stadien der Liturgie folgen. Obwohl die Reformatoren Theologie und Praxis des Gottesdienstes grundlegend veränderten, teilten sie doch viele der Werte der spätmittelalterlichen Kleriker. Insbesondere förderten sie das Glaubenswissen und die aktive Teilnahme des Kirchenvolkes am Gottesdienst.

The religion of the Yezidi Kurds, which has often been inaccurately characterized as “devil-worship,” has been claimed by Kurdish nationalists since the 1930s as the “original” religion of the Kurdish people. It has likewise been asserted that the Yezidi faith is a form of Zoroastrianism, the official religion of Iran in pre-Islamic times. These notions have won official support from most Kurdish political organizations and have broadly penetrated Kurdish society. The identification of Yezidism with Zoroastrianism is historically inaccurate, however, and should be seen as a product of modern nation-building ideology. Sentimental attachment to Yezidism and/or Zoroastrianism among Kurds today is best understood in most cases as a political rejection of Islam and its perceived Arab connections, rather than in terms of genuine devotional commitment.

The pastoral epistle of Jude is shrouded with rich theological significance, in spite of its shortness. Theological themes like order of salvation, faith, mission, worship, judgment, great controversy, second coming, and the end of the world, and others are interwoven in the fabric of Jude. It means that Jude starts with protology and ends with climactic and cosmic victorious eschatology, particularly the resurrection of the righteous. The sudden appearance of Michael, the Archangel heightens the conflict in Jude. Scholars from the different camps admit Jude 9 where Michael appears in contending the devil over the body of Moses, is the most perplexing text in the entire epistle. Jesus Christ eschatological name is: Michael. The name is so significant particularly in the conflict of Moses’ resurrection to glory. Satan by all means struggled to prevent him to be resurrected and taken from his territory, for he claimed Moses belonged to his kingdom because he was a sinner. In epistle of Jude the great controversy does not end of the temporal life, the physical death but even extended until the day of resurrection. Whenever, Michael is referred to in the Bible, are all in the contexts of intense violence, war, death, hopelessness and resurrection and triumph. Michael is the heavenly warrior who defends victoriously for His people who will end the great controversy in grandest victory, is indeed the highlight of Jude’s eschatology. Keywords: Michael; devil; Moses; contending; conflict; struggle; apostasy; the great controversy

By the time of the outbreak of the Civil Wars, may educated British Protestants considered Roman Catholicism to be an anti-religion; indeed, the Cambridge divine William Fulke went so far as to equate it with devil worship. Wealthy and powerful English Catholics attracted extreme hostility in moments of political crisis throughout the early modern period, but in 1642, fear of Roman Catholicism was even used to legitimate the terrible act of rebellion. Keith Lindley has emphasized the civil war neutrality of English Catholics, while many current historians, nervous of displays of religious prejudice, have portrayed the anti-Catholic fears of parliamentarians as cynical propaganda. Michael Finlayson has condemned anti-Catholicism as ‘irrational paranoia’, to be compared with anti-Semitism, which might, had it not been for the growth of liberal traditions in nineteenth-century England, have led to some sort of ‘Final Solution’.

The study evaluated Christologies among the Christians of Ndia, Kirinyaga West sub-county, Kenya. The objectives of the study were: to explore ontological Christologies; to investigate popular soteriological Christologies; to establish social, political and economic functional Christologies among Ndia Christians and; to examine the question of Christodicy in Ndia Christianity. 232 Christians were randomly selected to participate in the study. Questionnaires were issued to the participants. A 95.45% response rate was realized. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics. The data showed that ontological Christologies among the Ndia Christians ignored the humanity of Jesus and elevated him to the position of the traditional Gikuyu deity, Ngai, while soteriological Christologies were well balanced. Functional Christologies and the question of Christodicy were too spiritualized and Satan was given too prominent a position such that devil worship could result from glorification of Satan as a very powerful being who is able to oppose and cause Jesus to fail in his duties. The study recommends that churches in Ndia should teach sound doctrinal positions emphasizing on the humanity of Jesus, encourage people to appreciate the relationship between work and wealth and medicine and healing, avoid giving Satan a prominent position and to reinterpret the Gikuyu deity,Ngai, to take the place of God-the-Father as opposed to the place of God-the-Son for construction of a “wholesome” Gikuyu theology. The study will be useful to social workers, scholars, churches and government agencies working with the Ndia.

Grundtvig and Liturgical ExegesisBy Christian ThodbergLiturgical exegesis is defined as the way in which the Church re-actualised the words and deeds of Jesus in the service of worship in trying to answer the need of the congregation for being simultaneous with the biblical events. In the Western Church this liturgical exegesis received an emphatic exposition in connection with the old series of pericopes in the roman mass and in most of protestant churches as well.Many modem preachers do not like the old lectionary because it is crammed with the stories of Jesus’ miracles which - as they say - have no relevance to churchgoers of today. Grundtvig, however, always met those stories with pleasure, because in his opinion, they dealt with Jesus’ strong deeds in the worship today in baptism and communion. And essentially the biblical readings are worked out on the Sundays before and after the old baptismal terms, either at Easter time, or on the sixth of January, or at Whitsun. Thus baptism is defined in three ways by the three old baptismal terms: on January sixth as a birth with Christ, at Easter as death and resurrection with Christ and at Pentecost as the reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit.The Western system of gospel readings in general survived the Reformation, but in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the account of Christ’s acts of power came under critical scrutiny. They were understood as magical elements, which obscured the character of the bible as the teaching of Christianity. Parallel with this, in the context of the liturgy, the renunciation and the naming of the Devil and the word Hell was removed from the Apostles’ Creed in the baptismal rite and the Annunciation, the Resurrection and the Ascension were understood as images.As an old-fashioned believer, Grundtvig protested against all this. Christianity depended on Christ’s works of power. But despite his faith that the bible was literally God’s word, his problem was this: When and how did God’s word and Christ’s deeds of power touch him personally? Theologically, the question about the presence of God was a problem for Grundtvig throughout his life. In simple terms: Where does God speak to mel Grundtvig’s problem was solved by his famous »unparalleled discovery«, which became the hermeneutic key to his sermons. The thesis of liturgical history scholarship is that liturgical exegesis has its place already in the New Testament, and that the secondary epistles of St. Paul in connection (Ephesians, Colossians) can be rehabilitated, since they give us the key to the understanding of Jesus’ miracles in relations to baptism. In the end it points to Grundtvig’s persistent attempt to find the place where God speaks to him, where he intuitively rediscovers the early church’s understanding of the connection between Jesus’ works of power and baptism, and which thus becomes a contemporary challenge to New Testament scholarship and preaching today.

Perceiving the lack of control over the natural and social spheres is psychologically averse. The resulting depression has an effect upon the human animal’s inclusive fitness. In moments of despair and depression, sexual intercourse may be impossible. In order to restore a modicum of control, and thus libido, the human animal turns to religion. Religion provides compensatory, and thus adaptive illusions of control. It does this by first turning to the intentional stance and the presence of gods who may be socially manipulated to achieve a desired outcome. This is the nature of worship. Alternatively, religion employs the design stance and the presence of devils that may be mechanically compelled to withdraw. This is the nature of exorcism. Where the latter reflects the “illusion of control,” the former reflects the “illusion of qualified control.” Both cognitive stances are in the service of promoting illusions of power amidst truly random circumstances.

In India, we find the worship of great mother in varying forms. The Female figures from Indus civilization indicate the fertility cult. , the early records of terracotta sculpture are the evidences. Since IInd century A.D. Devi Durga, Lakshmi and Matraka are remain popular and worshipped. The goddess on a lion depicted first time in Kushan Period. Some of the goddess is the anthromorphic personification of nature. The Yakshis are the nature goddess. In Folk societies, socialization, education, recreation and communication of new ideas moral values and knowledge are inculcated by the women. They are the active bearer of oral tradition in India.

Probing the nature of social mobilization of minorities germinating from the COVID-19 crisis is the focal point of this paper. While medico-scientific discourses to fight the Pandemic gained ground in Global North, the Global South is still grappling with pseudo-knowledge/occult science narratives. The BJP displayed spectacular political opportunism during this Pandemic by prescribing traditional health practices to gain a hegemonic sway over the masses who became objects in this pedagogical discourse, often coupled with islamophobic propaganda birthed conspiracy theories binarily structured on ‘Otherness’. The purpose of this paper is to reveal findings of a self-conducted survey of the social activities of a former squatter colony based in Kolkata to examine subaltern consciousness/agency demonstrated through gaps and fissures of negotiation with power structures. Often alternate translational spaces showed possibilities of articulation from such indeterminacy and dissent. This paper’s crux is built on such collective activities like propitiating Corona Devi through religious rituals that draw precedent from similar subaltern community movements during the British Raj to counter epidemics by the worship of ‘Sitaladevi/Salabai’. The paper traces historical contingency in subaltern resistance within the domain of conflicting relations between tradition and rationality.

If performance rituals are memories in action, what happens to them when a people no longer need to remember – or it is deemed politically undesirable for them to do so? In the following article, Syed Jamil Ahmed explores the annual performance in the Sikkimese monastery of Pemayangtse, in the shadow of Kanchenjunga, of the ritual of Pang Lhabsol (‘Worship of the Witness Deity’), and specifically of the Pangtoed 'Cham, performed on the final, eighth day in homage and gratitude to the mountain. He examines the complex web of political changes over many centuries which have affected the purpose and enactment of the ritual, and finally offers a detailed account of a single day's performance, in 1999, when the ritual was losing some of its dignity and many of its former trappings. Syed Jamil Ahmed is a director and designer based in Bangladesh, where he is Associate Professor at the Department of Theatre and Music in the University of Dhaka. In 2001–2 he was a visiting faculty member at King Alfred's College, Winchester. He wrote on ‘Decoding Myths in the Nepalese Festival of Indra Jatra’ in NTQ74, and on ‘The Ritual of Devol Medua: Problematizing Dharma in the Ethnic Conflicts of Sri Lanka’ in NTQ76. His full-length publications – Acinpakhi Infinity: Indigenous Theatre in Bangladesh (Dhaka University Press, 2000) and In Praise of Niranjan: Islam, Theatre, and Bangladesh (Dhaka: Pathak Samabesh, 2001) – catalogue the wide variety of indigenous theatre forms in Bangladesh.

AbstractAs the patron saint of the Indian agate bead industry, Baba Ghor is very important in any reconstruction of its history. The facts about him are quite scanty; we can only hypothetically reassemble them and understand his myth. Abbas, or Habash, a scion of the Malwa Ghors, died in a skirmish near Ratanpur in the early 15th century, probably fighting Ahmed Shah of Gujarat. He was buried on the hill which had long been sacred and was once graced with a fine temple of Makkhan Devi, the Mother Goddess. Her temple was likely destroyed by Ahmed's troops, not those of the Malwa Ghors. Ghor's grave became a place of pilgrimage, first serving the waxing Muslim strength in the area by providing an approved focus of worship. In time it became even more important to the Siddis, who appropriated Ghor as one of their own. He gave the Ratanpur Siddis respectability: in turn they serve his memory. The legends of Baba Ghor and the Ratanpur Rakshisha are not mere fantasy, for they serve the truth as symbols. Ghor represents the coming of Islam, the loss of the old gods, the destruction of the temples, and the forgetting of the old ways. A new dispensation came to Ratanpur and the agate bead industry, and as a result the age-old commerce changed its focus as Cambay replaced Limodra as the lapidary center. Ghor is alive for the Siddis and other Muslims in whose hands the industry is still concentrated. In a very real sense Ghor did encounter the Ratanpur Rakshisha. The Indian agate bead industry has never been the same since, nor can it be understood without taking their battle into account.

This research aimed to study For a clarifying and Exposing the danger of denying Divine Decree and the miss understanding and invalid thought on this matter, to the limit that some of the riches (kufr) disbelieving in Islam, and explaining the effect of denying fate on religion in aspects of belief, behavior, and acts of worship, As well as exposing the beliefs and ideology of the People of the Sunnah and Group in this matter. is being the method used the descriptive, inductive, critical approach. So that describes the research and shows Dangers of Denying Divine Decree, And trying to guide those who have been afflicted with him, He returned to his senses and his beautiful response with faith By Decree On the approach of the Sunnis and the community. Through my research, I reached the most important results: denying Divine Decree is a slander in Allah’s lordship, his name and attributes and his right to be worship. Negating the decree by most of the people is contradiction because they say: ”Allah didn’t create the evil thing, and they say Allah created the devil and he is the key to all evil”. negating the divine decree contributes to deviating from (sound) behavior and obedience. Negating divine decree obstruction Islamic law order and prohibition. Denying decree will result in lack of belief in a pillar from the 6 pillars of faith, and denying one of the pillars of faith is a major disbelieve that takes the person out of the fold of Islam.

Negotiations between continuity and discontinuity have characterized Srividya traditions for centuries; these are primarily studied through texts or the juxtaposition of textual prescriptions with observed practices, leaving the process of how Srividya practitioners negotiate esoteric and orthodox tendencies unexplored. Building on extensive fieldwork among practitioners of a contemporary South Indian Srividya tradition, I present the dynamics animating such transformations. Focusing on kalavahana, one of the tradition's central rituals aimed at identifying with Devi, I trace the underlying forces that gradually replace its most esoteric aspects (centred around the body and pleasure) with conventional worship (external or meditative practices), refashioning the tradition as part of mainstream Saktism. While some practitioners conform to the new canon, others, for whom the changes diminish ritual efficacy, secretly continue embodied practices. Through a Foucauldian archaeologico-genealogical analysis, I investigate which regimes of truth and ontological coordinates allow the ritual to change, and which diminish its efficacy. While at first negotiations between continuity and discontinuity appear driven by socio-political motives, ultimately they are governed and legitimized by fundamentally diverging modes of being. A pre-objectified worldview demands embodied experiences (including unconventional practices invoking pleasure) while a dualistic framework endorses representational practices (such as meditation and idol-worship).

Abstrak: Islam sebagai agama sempurna bukan saja menjelaskan dimensi ideologis dan ritual agama saja, tetapi juga memberikan pencerahan kepada manusia tentang lingkungan. Dalam perspektif Islam, manusia diharapkan mampu membina relasi yang harmonis bukan saja dengan Allah sebagai pencipta, dengan manusia lainnya, tetapi juga dengan alam. Artikel ini merupakan kajian kepustakaan yang mengkaji pandangan Islam tentang konsep pendidikan kesehatan lingkungan hidup. Ditemukan bahwa meskipun dunia Barat modern telah mencanangkan urgensi pendidikan lingkungan hidup, agama Islam sejak lama memberikan gambaran detil tentang urgensi pendidikan lingkungan hidup untuk kemaslahatan manusia. Islam menegaskan perihal kewajiban setiap Muslim untuk memanfaatkan, memelihara dan melindungi alam secara arif, dan upaya ke arah tersebut merupakan bagian dari sikap tunduk dan ibadah kepada Allah Swt. <br /><br />Abstract: The Construction of Environmental Health Education in Islamic Perspective. Islam as a way of life not only explains the ideological dimension and religious rituals, but also gives enlightening to people about the environment. In Islamic perspective, man is expected to foster a harmonious relationship not only with God as the creator, with other human beings, but also with nature. This article is a library research that examines Islam’s opinion about the educational concept of environmental health. It was found that although the modern Western world has proclaimed the urgency of environmental education, Islam for a long time gives a detailed description about the urgency of environmental education for the benefit of mankind. Islam asserts the obligation for every Muslim to utilize, maintain and protect nature in a wise, and the direction effort is part of subservience and worship to Allah. <br /><br />Kata Kunci: Islam, al-Qur’an, hadis, pendidikan, kesehatan, lingkungan hidup

For Socrates the act of communication is grounded in the world of original forms, archetypes, or abstract ideas. These ideas exist independently of the human mind and reflect a reality that is truer than the world of everyday experience. The task of the speaker is to draw the listener closer to the truth of these ideas, and this requires an intimate coupling of the form of speech to the character of the listener. In Phaedrus, Socrates explains, ". . . a would-be speaker must know how many types of soul there are. The number is finite, and they account for a variety of individual characters. When these are determined one must enumerate the various types of speech, a finite number also." The types of soul must then be carefully paired with the types of speech. This theoretical knowledge by itself, however, is not sufficient. A speaker must also know when ". . . he has actually before him a specific example of a type which he has heard described, and that this is what he must say and this is how he must say it if he wants to influence his hearer in this particular way" (Plato 91-92). Thus, the aspiring speaker must sharpen his powers of observation. Exactly how a speaker goes about discerning the various types of souls in his audience is not discussed in Phaedrus, but one assumes it is by mastering the art of face reading, or physiognomy. The science of physiognomy was of particular importance to the ancient Greeks. Nearly all the well-known Greek writers had something to say about the subject. Pythagoras is claimed to be the first Greek to formalize it systematically as a science. Hippocrates wrote voluminously on the subject, as did Aristotle. Socrates not only recommended physiognomy to his students (Tytler) but he is also reported to have demonstrated his facility with the science at least twice: once in predicting the promotion of Alcibiades and once upon first meeting Plato, whom he immediately recognized as a man of considerable philosophical talent (Encyclopedia Britannica). Writing is inferior to speech, Socrates tells Phaedrus, precisely because it cannot see and adapt the message to the reader. Like a painting of an object, writing is merely the image of dissociated speech. What is missing in writing-and what writing seems ever intent on reconstructing-is the human face. Pressing Faces Behind the Typeface Although physiognomy was banned by the Church, as it was associated with paganism and devil worship (practitioners of the science were burnt at the stake), it was revived in the Renaissance and became an obsession with the advent of the printing press. The printing press heralds democracy. But as human rights grew, urban centers developed, and new professions and classes emerged, people were no longer able to divine their own destiny or to predict the behavior and destiny of others. It became imperative to find other more reliable means of identifying the good and the bad, the talented and the unremarkable. Two books were considered indispensable: the Bible and Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy (Juengel). Physiognomy was the science that helped people decipher class and profession. It became the spelling book of character, one that people diligently studied so that they could learn to read not only the marks of character in others but also the signs of talent and potential in their own faces and in the faces of their children. Face reading was egalitarian and leveling (Juengel). The heads of state could be read and debunked in the flourishing art of caricature, and people delighted in decoding the physiognomy of the ordinary faces that crowded the pages of the popular press. The populace applauded the artists that succeeded in revealing the whole spectrum of a character-class, intentions, profession-in the masterly strokes of the pen (Wechsler). Unfortunately, so intense was the interest in face reading that many people were forced to cover their faces when out in public (Zebrowitz). Inside the religious, medical, educational, and criminal justice institutions, authorities scanned faces to identify the virtuous and the vile. People were hanged because of the shape of their jaws ("A physiognomic auto-da-fé,") and sometimes convicted of crimes because of an unfortunate physiognomy, even before any crimes were committed (Lichtenberg. 93). Mass Consumption of the Face Open a magazine. What do you see? I counted over 200 faces in the September 15, 2003 issue of Newsweek, 120 faces in the September 29, 2003 issue of Forbes, 124 faces in the September 15, 2003 issue of Time, and 37 faces in the November, 2003 issue of Handgunner (I included the masked faces). Whereas, in the 19th century, face reading was used by the religious, medical, and criminal justice authorities to identify a person's character, in the modern world face reading becomes face righting. Early in the century, people came to be viewed less as individuals than as masses that were dynamically statistical with fluctuations of opinions and tastes that could be sampled and manipulated. It quickly became apparent to the behemoth advertising industry that was erected with the advent of mass media that product designs and packages could be collated with viewer reactions. The audience is scrutinized, labeled, and targeted. What people are fed are fleshless images of themselves. Horkheimer and Adorno have observed that the media have reduced the individual to the stereotype. Stereotypes package people, typically in unflattering boxes. Mediated faces are used to mirror, to prime, and to manipulate the audience (Kress and van Leeuwen). On television and in print, images of canned faces proliferate. Not all stereotypes are unsavory. Nothing recommends itself nor sells like a beautiful face, but even beautiful faces must be retouched, even recomposed from features extracted from databases of perfect facial features. So important is the image of the face that media icons routinely visit the plastic surgeon. Michael Jackson is the most extreme example of what has been derogatorily termed a "scalpel slave." Plastic surgery is not exclusive to celebrities; countless millions of ordinary Americans feel compelled to undergo various cosmetic surgeries. The 20th-century consumption of the face has ended by consuming the face. Facing the Face Interface Text has made a comeback in hypertext. Empowered by the hyperlink, readers have become writers as they assemble texts with the clicks of a mouse (Landow). Electronic texts are pushed as well as pulled. Businesses have learned to track and to query users, building individual profiles that are then used to assemble personalized pages and email messages. Socrates' objection that writing is unable to perceive the reader no longer holds. The virtual text is watching you. And it is watching you with virtual eyes. There is a growing interest in developing face interfaces that are capable of perceiving and talking. The technical requirements are enormous. Face interfaces must learn to make eye contact, follow speaking faces with their eyes, mirror emotion, lip synch, and periodically nod, raise eyebrows, and tilt the head (Massaro). Face interfaces are also learning to write faces, to map rhetorical forms to the character of their interlocutors in ways Socrates could not have imagined. Socrates did not teach his students to consider the rhetorical effects of their faces: the speaker's face was thought to be fixed, a true reflection of the inner soul. Virtual faces are not so constrained. Smart faces are being developed that are capable of rendering their own appearances from within a statistical model of the users' impressions of faces. The goal is for these virtual faces to learn to design, through their interactions with users, facial appearances that are calibrated to elicit very specific impressions and reactions in others (Brahnam). Some people will disapprove of virtual faces. Just as the media use faces to manipulate the viewer and perpetuate facial stereotypes, smart faces run the risk of doing the same. Some may also worry that virtual faces will be attributed more intelligence and social capacity then they actually possess. Do we really want our children growing up talking to virtual faces? Can they satisfy our need for human contact? What does it mean to converse with a virtual face? What kind of conversation is that? For the present at least, virtual faces are more like the orators and bards of old. They merely repeat the speeches of others. Their own speech is nearly incomprehensible, and their grammatical hiccups annoyingly disrupt the suspension of disbelief. On their own, without the human in the loop, no one believes them. Thus, the virtual face appears on the screen, silently nodding and smiling. Not yet a proper student of classical rhetoric, it is much like the virtual guide at artificial-life.com that recently greeted her visitors wearing the following placard: A virtual guide that greeted visitors at artificial-life.com. Access date: October 2003. Works Cited Brahnam, Sheryl. "Agents as Artists: Automating Socially Intelligent Embodiment," Proceedings of the First International Workshop on the Philosophy & Design of Socially Adept Technologies, in conjunction with CHI 2002. Minneapolis, MN, 2002: 15-18. Encyclopedia Britannica. "Physiognomy." LoveToKnow Free Online Encyclopedia, 1911. Available: http://21.1911encyclopedia.org Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Seabury, 1944. Juengel, Scott Jordan. "About Face: Physiognomics, Revolution, and the Radical Act of Looking." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Iowa, 1997. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge, 1996. Landow, P. George. Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Baltimore: John Hopkins U P, 1997. Lavater, Johann Caspar. Essays on Physiognomy: For the Promotion of the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind. Trans. Thomas Holcroft. London: printed by C. Whittingham for H. D. Symonds, 1804. Lichtenberg. Quoted in Frey, Siegfried. "Lavater, Lichtenberg, and the Suggestive Power of the Human Face." The Faces of Physiognomy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Johann Caspar Lavater. Ed. Ellis Shookman. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1993. 64-103. Massaro, D. M. Perceiving Talking Faces: From Speech Perception to a Behavioral Principle. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1997. Plato. Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters. Trans. Walter Hamilton. London: Penguin, 1973. Tytler, Graeme. Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces and Fortunes. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton U P, 1982. Wechsler, Judith. A Human Comedy: Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris. London: U of Chicago P, 1982. Zebrowitz, Leslie A. Reading Faces: Window to the Soul? Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1998. Web Links http://vhost.oddcast.com/vhost_minisite/ http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/facedemo/ http://www.faceinterfaces.com http://www.artificial-life.com Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brahnam, Sheryl. "Type/Face" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/04-brahnam.php>. APA Style Brahnam, S. (2004, Jan 12). Type/Face. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0401/04-brahnam.php>

IntroductionWhat can we learn about anomaly from the strangeness of a puppet, a lifeless object, that can both bleed and die? How does the filming process of a puppet’s death engage across media and produce a new media genre that is not easily classified within traditional conventions? Why do these fighting and bleeding puppets’ scenes consistently attract audiences? This study examines how Pili puppetry (1984-present), a popular TV series depicting martial arts-based narratives and fight sequences, interacts with digital technologies and constructs a new media genre. The transmedia constitution of a virtual world not only challenges the stereotype of puppetry’s target audience but also expands the audience’s bodily imagination and desires through the visual component of death scenes. Hence, the show does not merely represent or signify an anomaly, but even creates anomalous desires and imaginary bodies.Cultural commodification and advancing technologies have motivated the convergence and displacement of traditional boundaries, genres, and media, changing the very fabric of textuality itself. By exploring how new media affect the audience’s visual reception of fighting and death, this article sheds light on understanding the metamorphoses of Taiwanese puppetry and articulates a theoretical argument regarding the show’s artistic practice to explain how its form transverses traditional boundaries. This critical exploration focusses on how the form represents bleeding puppets, and in doing so, explicates the politics of transmedia performing and viewing. Pili is an example of an anomalous media form that proliferates anomalous media viewing experiences and desires in turn.Beyond a Media Genre: Taiwanese Pili PuppetryConverging the craft technique of puppeteering and digital technology of filmmaking and animation, Pili puppetry creates a new media genre that exceeds any conventional idea of a puppet show or digital puppet, as it is something in-between. Glove puppetry is a popular traditional theatre in Taiwan, often known as “theatre in the palm” because a traditional puppet was roughly the same size as an adult’s palm. The size enabled the puppeteer to easily manipulate a puppet in one hand and be close to the audience. Traditionally, puppet shows occurred to celebrate the local deities’ birthday. Despite its popularity, the form was limited by available technology. For instance, although stories with vigorous battles were particularly popular, bleeding scenes in such an auspicious occasion were inappropriate and rare. As a live theatrical event featuring immediate interaction between the performer and the spectator, realistic bleeding scenes were rare because it is hard to immediately clean the stage during the performance. Distinct from the traditional puppet show, digital puppetry features semi-animated puppets in a virtual world. Digital puppetry is not a new concept by any means in the Western film industry. Animating a 3D puppet is closely associated with motion capture technologies and animation that are manipulated in a digitalised virtual setting (Ferguson). Commonly, the target audience of the Western digital puppetry is children, so educators sometimes use digital puppetry as a pedagogical tool (Potter; Wohlwend). With these young target audience in mind, the producers often avoid violent and bleeding scenes.Pili puppetry differs from digital puppetry in several ways. For instance, instead of targeting a young audience, Pili puppetry consistently extends the traditional martial-arts performance to include bloody fight sequences that enrich the expressiveness of traditional puppetry as a performing art. Moreover, Pili puppetry does not apply the motion capture technologies to manipulate the puppet’s movement, thus retaining the puppeteers’ puppeteering craft (clips of Pili puppetry can be seen on Pili’s official YouTube page). Hence, Pili is a unique hybrid form, creating its own anomalous space in puppetry. Among over a thousand characters across the series, the realistic “human-like” puppet is one of Pili’s most popular selling points. The new media considerably intervene in the puppet design, as close-up shots and high-resolution images can accurately project details of a puppet’s face and body movements on the screen. Consequently, Pili’s puppet modelling becomes increasingly intricate and attractive and arguably makes its virtual figures more epic yet also more “human” (Chen). Figure 1: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Killing Blade (1993). His facial expressions were relatively flat and rigid then. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.Figure 2: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Nine Thrones (2003). The puppet’s facial design and costume became more delicate and complex. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.Figure 3: Su Huan-Jen in the TV series Pili Fantasy: War of Dragons (2019). His facial lines softened due to more precise design technologies. The new lightweight chiffon yarn costumes made him look more elegant. The multiple-layer costumes also created more space for puppeteers to hide behind the puppet and enact more complicated manipulations. Reproduced with permission of Pili International Multimedia Company.The design of the most well-known Pili swordsman, Su Huan-Jen, demonstrates how the Pili puppet modelling became more refined and intricate in the past 20 years. In 1993, the standard design was a TV puppet with the size and body proportion slightly enlarged from the traditional puppet. Su Huan-Jen’s costumes were made from heavy fabrics, and his facial expressions were relatively flat and rigid (fig. 1). Pili produced its first puppetry film Legend of the Sacred Stone in 2000; considering the visual quality of a big screen, Pili refined the puppet design including replacing wooden eyeballs and plastic hair with real hair and glass eyeballs (Chen). The filmmaking experience inspired Pili to dramatically improve the facial design for all puppets. In 2003, Su’s modelling in Pili Nine Thrones (TV series) became noticeably much more delicate. The puppet’s size was considerably enlarged by almost three times, so a puppeteer had to use two hands to manipulate a puppet. The complex costumes and props made more space for puppeteers to hide behind the puppet and enrich the performance of the fighting movements (fig. 2). In 2019, Su’s new modelling further included new layers of lightweight fabrics, and his makeup and props became more delicate and complex (fig. 3). Such a refined aesthetic design also lends to Pili’s novelty among puppetry performances.Through the transformation of Pili in the context of puppetry history, we see how the handicraft-like puppet itself gradually commercialised into an artistic object that the audience would yearn to collect and project their bodily imagination. Anthropologist Teri Silvio notices that, for some fans, Pili puppets are similar to worship icons through which they project their affection and imaginary identity (Silvio, “Pop Culture Icons”). Intermediating with the new media, the change in the refined puppet design also comes from the audience’s expectations. Pili’s senior puppet designer Fan Shih-Ching mentioned that Pili fans are very involved, so their preferences affect the design of puppets. The complexity, particularly the layer of costumes, most clearly differentiates the aesthetics of traditional and Pili puppets. Due to the “idolisation” of some famous Pili characters, Shih-Ching has had to design more and more gaudy costumes. Each resurgence of a well-known Pili swordsman, such as Su Huan-Jen, Yi Ye Shu, and Ye Hsiao-Chai, means he has to remodel the puppet.Pili fans represent their infatuation for puppet characters through cosplay (literally “costume play”), which is when fans dress up and pretend to be a Pili character. Their cosplay, in particular, reflects the bodily practice of imaginary identity. Silvio observes that most cosplayers choose to dress as characters that are the most visually appealing rather than characters that best suit their body type. They even avoid moving too “naturally” and mainly move from pose-to-pose, similar to the frame-to-frame techne of animation. Thus, we can understand this “cosplay more as reanimating the character using the body as a kind of puppet rather than as an embodied performance of some aspect of self-identity” (Silvio 2019, 167). Hence, Pili fans’ cosplay is indicative of an anomalous desire to become the puppet-like human, which helps them transcend their social roles in their everyday life. It turns out that not only fans’ preference drives the (re)modelling of puppets but also fans attempt to model themselves in the image of their beloved puppets. The reversible dialectic between fan-star and flesh-object further provokes an “anomaly” in terms of the relationship between the viewers and the puppets. Precisely because fans have such an intimate relationship with Pili, it is important to consider how the series’ content and form configure fans’ viewing experience.Filming Bleeding PuppetsDespite its intricate aesthetics, Pili is still a series with frequent fighting-to-the-death scenes, which creates, and is the result of, extraordinary transmedia production and viewing experiences. Due to the market demand of producing episodes around 500 minutes long every month, Pili constantly creates new characters to maintain the audience’s attention and retain its novelty. So far, Pili has released thousands of characters. To ensure that new characters supersede the old ones, numerous old characters have to die within the plot.The adoption of new media allows the fighting scenes in Pili to render as more delicate, rather than consisting of loud, intense action movements. Instead, the leading swordsmen’s death inevitably takes place in a pathetic and romantic setting and consummates with a bloody sacrifice. Fighting scenes in early Pili puppetry created in the late 1980s were still based on puppets’ body movements, as the knowledge and technology of animation were still nascent and underdeveloped. At that time, the prestigious swordsman mainly relied on the fast speed of brandishing his sword. Since the early 1990s, as animation technology matured, it has become very common to see Pili use CGI animation to create a damaging sword beam for puppets to kill target enemies far away. The sword beam can fly much faster than the puppets can move, so almost every fighting scene employs CGI to visualise both sword beams and flame. The change in fighting manners provokes different representations of the bleeding and death scenes. Open wounds replace puncture wounds caused by a traditional weapon; bleeding scenes become typical, and a special feature in Pili’s transmedia puppetry.In addition to CGI animation, the use of fake blood in the Pili studio makes the performance even more realistic. Pili puppet master Ting Chen-Ching recalled that exploded puppets in traditional puppetry were commonly made by styrofoam blocks. The white styrofoam chips that sprayed everywhere after the explosion inevitably made the performance seem less realistic. By contrast, in the Pili studio, the scene of a puppet spurting blood after the explosion usually applies the technology of editing several shots. The typical procedure would be a short take that captures a puppet being injured. In its injury location, puppeteers sprinkle red confetti to represent scattered blood clots in the following shot. Sometimes the fake blood was splashed with the red confetti to make it further three-dimensional (Ting). Bloody scenes can also be filmed through multiple layers of arranged performance conducted at the same time by a group of puppeteers. Ting describes the practice of filming a bleeding puppet. Usually, some puppeteers sprinkle fake blood in front of the camera, while other puppeteers blasted the puppets toward various directions behind the blood to make the visual effects match. If the puppeteers need to show how a puppet becomes injured and vomits blood during the fight, they can install tiny pipes in the puppet in advance. During the filming, the puppeteer slowly squeezes the pipe to make the fake blood flow out from the puppet’s mouth. Such a bloody scene sometimes accompanies tears dropping from the puppet’s eyes. In some cases, the puppeteer drops the blood on the puppet’s mouth prior to the filming and then uses a powerful electric fan to blow the blood drops (Ting). Such techniques direct the blood to flow laterally against the wind, which makes the puppet’s death more aesthetically tragic. Because it is not a live performance, the puppeteer can try repeatedly until the camera captures the most ideal blood drop pattern and bleeding speed. Puppeteers have to adjust the camera distance for different bleeding scenes, which creates new modes of viewing, sensing, and representing virtual life and death. One of the most representative examples of Pili’s bleeding scenes is when Su’s best friend, Ching Yang-Zi, fights with alien devils in Legend of the Sacred Stone. (The clip of how Ching Yang-Zi fights and bleeds to death can be seen on YouTube.) Ting described how Pili prepared three different puppets of Ching for the non-fighting, fighting, and bleeding scenes (Ting). The main fighting scene starts from a low-angle medium shot that shows how Ching Yang-Zi got injured and began bleeding from the corner of his mouth. Then, a sharp weapon flies across the screen; the following close-up shows that the weapon hits Ching and he begins bleeding immediately. The successive shots move back and forth between his face and the wound in medium shot and close-up. Next, a close-up shows him stepping back with blood dripping on the ground. He then pushes the weapon out of his body to defend enemies; a final close-up follows a medium take and a long take shows the massive hemorrhage. The eruption of fluid plasma creates a natural effect that is difficult to achieve, even with 3D animation. Beyond this impressive technicality, the exceptional production and design emphasise how Pili fully embraces the ethos of transmedia: to play with multiple media forms and thereby create a new form. In the case of Pili, its form is interactive, transcending the boundaries of what we might consider the “living” and the “dead”.Epilogue: Viewing Bleeding Puppets on the ScreenThe simulated, high-quality, realistic-looking puppet designs accompanying the Pili’s featured bloody fighting sequence draw another question: What is the effect of watching human-like puppets die? What does this do to viewer-fans? Violence is prevalent throughout the historical record of human behaviour, especially in art and entertainment because these serve as outlets to fulfill a basic human need to indulge in “taboo fantasies” and escape into “realms of forbidden experience” (Schechter). When discussing the visual representations of violence and the spectacle of the sufferings of others, Susan Sontag notes, “if we consider what emotions would be desirable” (102), viewing the pain of others may not simply evoke sympathy. She argues that “[no] moral charge attaches to the representation of these cruelties. Just the provocation: can you look at this? There is the satisfaction of being able to look at the image without flinching. There is the pleasure of flinching” (41). For viewers, the boldness of watching the bloody scenes can be very inviting. Watching human-like puppets die in the action scenes similarly validates the viewer’s need for pleasure and entertainment. Although different from a human body, the puppets still bears the materiality of being-object. Therefore, watching the puppets bleeding and die as distinctly “human-like’ puppets further prevent viewers’ from feeling guilty or morally involved. The conceptual distance of being aware of the puppet’s materiality acts as a moral buffer; audiences are intimately involved through the particular aesthetic arrangement, yet morally detached. The transmedia filming of puppetry adds another layer of mediation over the human-like “living” puppets that allows such a particular experience. Sontag notices that the media generates an inevitable distance between object and subject, between witness and victim. For Sontag, although images constitute “the imaginary proximity” because it makes the “faraway sufferers” be “seen close-up on the television screen”, it is a mystification to assume that images serve as a direct link between sufferers and viewers. Rather, Sontag insists: the distance makes the viewers feel “we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering. Our sympathy proclaims our innocence as well as our impotence” (102). Echoing Sontag’s argument, Jeffrey Goldstein points out that “distancing” oneself from the mayhem represented in media makes it tolerable. Media creates an “almost real” visuality of violence, so the audience feels relatively safe in their surroundings when exposed to threatening images. Thus, “violent imagery must carry cues to its unreality or it loses appeal” (280). Pili puppets that are human-like, thus not human, more easily enable the audience to seek sensational excitement through viewing puppets’ bloody violence and eventual death on the screen and still feel emotionally secure. Due to the distance granted by the medium, viewers gain a sense of power by excitedly viewing the violence with an accompanying sense of moral exemption. Thus, viewers can easily excuse the limits of their personal responsibility while still being captivated by Pili’s boundary-transgressing aesthetic.The anomalous power of Pili fans’ cosplay differentiates the viewing experience of puppets’ deaths from that of other violent entertainment productions. Cosplayers physically bridge viewing/acting and life/death by dressing up as the puppet characters, bringing them to life, as flesh. Cosplay allows fans to compensate for the helplessness they experience when watching the puppets’ deaths on the screen. They can both “enjoy” the innocent pleasure of watching bleeding puppets and bring their adored dead idols “back to life” through cosplay. The onscreen violence and death thus provide an additional layer of pleasure for such cosplayers. They not only take pleasure in watching the puppets—which are an idealized version of their bodily imagination—die, but also feel empowered to revitalise their loved idols. Therefore, Pili cosplayers’ desires incite a cycle of life, pleasure, and death, in which the company responds to their consumers’ demands in kind. The intertwining of social, economic, and political factors thus collectively thrives upon media violence as entertainment. Pili creates the potential for new cross-media genre configurations that transcend the traditional/digital puppetry binary. On the one hand, the design of swordsman puppets become a simulation of a “living object” responding to the camera distance. On the other hand, the fighting and death scenes heavily rely on the puppeteers’ cooperation with animation and editing. Therefore, Pili puppetry enriches existing discourse on both puppetry and animation as life-giving processes. What is animated by Pili puppetry is not simply the swordsmen characters themselves, but new potentials for media genres and violent entertainment. AcknowledgmentMy hearty gratitude to Amy Gaeta for sharing her insights with me on the early stage of this study.ReferencesChen, Jasmine Yu-Hsing. “Transmuting Tradition: The Transformation of Taiwanese Glove Puppetry in Pili Productions.” Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 51 (2019): 26-46.Ferguson, Jeffrey. “Lessons from Digital Puppetry: Updating a Design Framework for a Perceptual User Interface.” IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology, 2015.Goldstein, Jeffrey. “The Attractions of Violent Entertainment.” Media Psychology 1.3 (1999): 271-282.Potter, Anna. “Funding Contemporary Children’s Television: How Digital Convergence Encourages Retro Reboot.” International Journal on Communications Management 19.2 (2017): 108-112.Schechter, Harold. Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment. 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