Portal:Religion
The Religion Portal
Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements—although there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from the divine, sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings. (Full article...)
Vital article
Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world for the purpose of healing, divination, or to aid human beings in some other way. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that Gamaliel's principle has been used to support religious pluralism and reforms within religious groups?
- ... that the Grave with the Hands commemorates a married couple, divided by society and religion, with hands clasped over a cemetery wall after death?
- ... that Freedom of Religion South Africa filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to keep child spanking legal?
- ... that religious studies scholar C. Jouco Bleeker believed that religions are like acorns?
- ... that Catherine de Parthenay, a 16th-century Huguenot leader, was a member of "a highly successful network of information" during the French Wars of Religion?
- ... that the nonconformist minister Ichabod Chauncey was banished from England under the Religion Act 1592 and spent two years in exile in Holland where he published a defence of his actions?
The badnjak (Serbian Cyrillic: бадњак, pronounced [bǎdɲaːk]), also called veseljak (весељак, pronounced [ʋɛˈsɛ̌ʎaːk], literally "the one who brings joy" in Serbian), is a tree branch or entire tree that is central to Serbian Christmas celebrations. It is placed on a fire on Christmas Eve and its branches are later brought home by worshipers. The tree from which the badnjak is cut, preferably a young, straight and undamaged Oak, is ceremonially felled early on the morning of Christmas Eve. The felling, preparation, bringing in, and laying on the fire, are surrounded by elaborate rituals, with many regional variations. The burning of the log is accompanied by prayers that the coming year brings food, happiness, love, luck, and riches. The log burns on throughout Christmas Day, when the first visitor strikes it with a poker or a branch to make sparks fly, while wishing that the family's happiness and prosperity be as abundant as the sparks. As most Serbs today live in towns and cities, the badnjak is often symbolically represented by a cluster of oak twigs with brown leaves attached, with which the home is decorated on Christmas Eve. (Full article...)