This page groups practices by how settled their scholarly classification is. Wikipedia notes that "starting about 1920, 'cult' acquired an additional six or more positive and negative definitions," a term whose meaning has shifted considerably. Browsing this way lets a visitor see which practices scholars describe consistently and which remain genuinely contested.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingDisciplines that withhold something the body wants - food, sleep, comfort, sexual activity, company - undertaken for a religious end. The ends differ: Jain sallekhana, Christian and Buddhist monastic renunciation and Islamic itikaf are not one impulse, and the older reading of asceticism as world-denial has been displaced by treatments that read it as the making of a self. 2 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryA standard analytic category in the study of religion 2 Learn More
The Ascetic Practices
This group gathers ascetic practices: disciplines of self-denial and renunciation undertaken for spiritual ends: fasting, celibacy, solitude, poverty, and the mortification of the body. Asceticism appears across the religious world as a means of purification, detachment and the pursuit of holiness.
The browser will find ascetic practices from various traditions. The entries describe each practice's form and rationale, noting the tradition that prescribes it and the goal it serves.
Scholarly Standing
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. Asceticism
Vincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1995View the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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