In Treading on Sacred Grounds: Places of Worship, Local Planning and Religious Freedom in Australia, Noel Villaroman analyses the engagement of religious groups with local councils in Australia in their applications to build places of worship. Such applications often encounter opposition from local residents who are reluctant to share their neighbourhood or street with the newly arrived and less known ‘other.’ The local councils, being the planning authority that grants or refuses such applications, are caught in the middle of these disputes. Using the lens of international human rights law, the book probes the local councils’ actions and their repercussions to religious freedom. The book has concrete legal and social implications that it is bound to impact not only legal scholarship but also, crucially, policy makers.

"The sacred landscape of imperial China was dotted with Buddhist monasteries, Daoist temples, shrines to local deities, and the altars of the mandarinate. Prominent among the official shrines were the temples in every capital throughout the empire devoted to the veneration of Confucius. Twice a year members of the educated elite and officials in each area gathered to offer sacrifices to Confucius, his disciples, and the major scholars of the Confucian tradition. The worship of Confucius is one of the least understood aspects of Confucianism, even though the temple and the cult were highly visible signs of Confucianism’s existence in imperial China. To many modern observers of traditional China, the temple cult is difficult to reconcile with the image of Confucianism as an ethical, humanistic, rational philosophy. The nine essays in this book are an attempt to recover the meaning and significance of the religious side of Confucianism. Among other subjects, the authors analyze the social, cultural, and political meaning attached to the cult; its history; the legends, images, and rituals associated with the worship of Confucius; the power of the descendants of Confucius, the main temple in the birthplace of Confucius; and the contemporary fate of temples to Confucius."

Sacred Ground: Path to Recovery reveals the secrets of self-healing and managing chronic pain. Grand Master Yau explains that emotional and physical rejuvenation takes only minutes a day. The practices cultivate a calm mind and nervous system and develop internal strength, vitality, and grounded ease. William C. Gough, co-founder of The Foundation of Mind Being Research says it this way: Grand Master Greg Yau has developed a methodology for promoting health and body strength based upon the ancient techniques that give foundation to Shaolin Gong Fu. It uses the physical body as the foundation for connecting to the Universal Energy of the Absolute. This process for strengthening the body can provide a pathway for a person to reach enlightenment and represents the spiritual aspects of these ancient practices. The process involves working with not only the anatomy of the physical body, but with ones mind and energy body i.e. the subtle energy flows of the acupuncture and meridian systems.

Because of his dark skin and questionable origins, the young Cathan Dussault was taunted and ridiculed. Survivability in an insensitive world demands flexibility, and children are remarkably flexible. However, there are limits to a child's ability to manage his environment, particularly when negative inputs are overwhelming. Cathan came home from school one day anticipating a joyful reunion with his small sister. It was raining, and a daunting, muddy hill persuaded the bus driver to drop him off at a distance from the house. His uncle was not aware of the boys arrival, and the boy witnessed, through a keyhole, his uncle molesting his sister, who was too young to be quite aware of what was going on. When Cathan told their father, a violent scene ensued, but for reasons obscure to the boy, the uncle was not ejected from the house. Cathan and his sister must live in that house with innocence-shattering knowledge and under on-going pressure of reprisal by the uncle. The psychological hell that Cathan underwent worked upon his mind until it sought help from a bizarre source. He fell ill for a protracted time, and while in a near comatose state, he had a vision so real that years afterward he came to believe he had suffered an out-of-body experience. Though marginally aware of his mother's physical presence during his sickness, a part of him traveled to another plane. Within that otherworldly dimension, he was adopted by Indians that had inhabited the nearby sacred grounds long before. Through rituals, they gave the boy a new identity, and through physical trials, they taught him the meaning of fearlessness. When he awoke, physically ravaged by the illness, but empowered by the forgotten mystical experience, he found the inner strength to survive the hell of living in the same house with his uncle. He graduated from high school and left to seek his future. The conscious Cathan Dussault avoided memories of the ugly incident witnessed through the keyhole, but within him dwelled a personality not so forgiving. Recurring dreams inserted an uneasiness into Cathan's psyche, and he grew to believe that he was battling insanity. He did not realize that another part of him was exacting revenge against innocent proxies for his uncle's aberrant behavior. The angst of his other's deeds was seeping through well-constructed emotional barriers, trying to alert the moral Cathan Dussault to the wrongful behavior of his suppressed personality. Beyond the ken of the conscious Cathan Dussault, arcane forces were at play, guiding the actions of his secret persona. Could Cathan be held accountable for crimes he was unaware of? A half-breed Cherokee detective of the Bannock County Sheriff Department believed so. By accident, he linked the murders of several people with Cathan Dussault. Aaron Walker was dedicated to righting wrong, no matter how small or great the infraction. However, Aaron Walker shared an Indian ancestry, and he was unaware that arcane forces worked upon him as well. Are there forces outside human awareness controlling the actions of men? Are there clearly defined rules of human conduct inscribed upon some ethereal text that are sacrosanct, and their violations enforced by supernatural judge and jury? Though ignorant of his crimes, is Cathan Dussault guilty? If you dare to judge, read the book and don your black robe.

A pathbreaking call to halt the intertwined crises of cultural heritage attacks and mass atrocities and mobilize international efforts to protect people and cultures. Intentional destruction of cultural heritage has a long history. Contemporary examples include the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, mosques in Xinjiang, mausoleums in Timbuktu, and Greco-Roman remains in Syria. Cultural heritage destruction invariably accompanies assaults on civilians, making heritage attacks impossible to disentangle from the mass atrocities of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Both seek to eliminate people and the heritage with which they identify. Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities assembles essays by thirty-eight experts from the heritage, social science, humanitarian, legal, and military communities. Focusing on immovable cultural heritage vulnerable to attack, the volume's guiding framework is the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a United Nations resolution adopted unanimously in 2005 to permit international intervention against crimes of war or genocide. Based on the three pillars of prevent, react, and rebuild, R2P offers today's policymakers a set of existing laws and international norms that can and—as this book argues—must be extended to the protection of cultural heritage. Contributions consider the global value of cultural heritage and document recent attacks on people and sites in China, Guatemala, Iraq, Mali, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen. Comprehensive sections on vulnerable populations as well as the role of international law and the military offer readers critical insights and point toward research, policy, and action agendas to protect both people and cultural heritage. A concise abstract of each chapter is offered online in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish to facilitate robust, global dissemination of the strategies and tactics offered in this pathbreaking call to action. The free online edition of this publication is available at getty.edu/publications/cultural-heritage-mass-atrocities. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book.

The present is always building on the past, whether we know it or not. Losing his wife, and then his father, Mark Racin makes the best of his life. Raising his son Alex alone, he places him above all else in his life. Selling his first novel allows him to quit his job as a teacher and write full time. He will also be able to spend more time with his son. Moving from Baltimore City to Harfor County, MArk hopes to build a new life for both of them. Buying a home, a new school for Alex, New friends for them both, it would be just what they needed. Then forces from the past work to drive Mark and his son from their new home. Will they be killed,if they stay, or will they be driven out? Can the past reach out to them, and get its revenge?

Surviving high school is a bizarre enough experience for most kids, and for Emma Niles, thats only one of her challenges. Its her senior year, and she has to find a way to put the multiple stresses of her home life behind her. Her parents have just been through a messy divorce, and now her father has remarried. Add on classes and all the other demands on her sanity, and life seems just crazy. Fortunately, Emma knows that no matter how weird her life may seem, she can always count on her friends to see her through it all. But when Bobby Watson, a tall, dark, and mysterious young man, enrolls at their school, everyone is charmed by him. Everyone, that is, but Alexis, Emmas best friend. Alexis, a gifted Native American girl, can see the darkness behind his beautiful face. She knows that Bobby is much more than he appears to beand that his plans represent dangerous times for everyone they know and love. Alexis invites her friends to take part in a sacred fire ceremony so that they can learn more about his true intentions. As they prepare for the ritual, Emma learns of her own powers and family history. By embracing her newly revealed Native American heritage and culture, Emma begins to figure out who she is, whats really happening in her schooland why. Through it all, Emma learns that her true strength is found within and that friendship is the strongest magic of all.

Interpreting Sacred Ground is a rhetorical analysis of Civil War battlefields and parks, and the ways various commemorative traditions—and their ideologies of race, reconciliation, emancipation, and masculinity—compete for dominance. The National Park Service (NPS) is known for its role in the preservation of public sites deemed to have historic, cultural, and natural significance. In Interpreting Sacred Ground, J. Christian Spielvogel studies the NPS’s secondary role as an interpreter or creator of meaning at such sites, specifically Gettysburg National Military Park, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, and Cold Harbor Visitor Center. Spielvogel studies in detail the museums, films, publications, tours, signage, and other media at these sites, and he studies and analyzes how they shape the meanings that visitors are invited to construct. Though the NPS began developing interpretive exhibits in the 1990s that highlighted slavery and emancipation as central facets to understanding the war, Spielvogel argues that the NPS in some instances preserves outmoded narratives of white reconciliation and heroic masculinity, obscuring the race-related causes and consequences of the war as well as the war’s savagery. The challenges the NPS faces in addressing these issues are many, from avoiding unbalanced criticism of either the Union or the Confederacy, to foregrounding race and violence as central issues, preserving clear and accurate renderingsof battlefield movements and strategies, and contending with the various public constituencies with their own interpretive stakes in the battle for public memory. Spielvogel concludes by arguing for the National Park Service’s crucial role as a critical voice in shaping twentieth-first-century Civil War public memory and highlights the issues the agency faces as it strives to maintain historical integrity while contending with antiquated renderings of the past.

Two thousand years ago, there was a great bay and a peaceful land filled with sage, citrus trees, and pine. And there was a tribe called the Topaa. Marimi, a healer in her tribe, is unprepared for what fate holds in store for her. Without her knowledge, her actions place her under the watchful, suspicious gaze of a rival...and Marimi's family is placed under a curse that impacts how their legacy unfolds. From prehistoric California to the days of Spanish explorers, from the time of California colonialism to the swashbuckling cowboy days of early Los Angeles and right up to the present day, Scared Ground tells the story of the female descendants of Marimi. It tells of their loves, their betrayals, their loses, their families, and their ruthless ambitions that would forge a new country.

In a land of subzero temperatures and snow-covered vistas, survival is a challenge. But for the Araktak—an isolated and mysterious Inuit people—this harsh tundra is their heritage. Until now. A large mining company has purchased the land, and the sacred Araktak burial site with it. But more than diamond deposits await them under the dark, icy earth…. Contracted by the mining company, archaeologist Annja Creed is to oversee the proper relocation of the burial site. Her job is to ensure that each ancient relic and all human remains are carefully removed. But the sacred ground harbors a terrible secret. One that a powerful group of men intend to unleash on an unsuspecting world—unless Annja can find a way to stop them.