Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Subcategories

Fasts

8 of 224 entries in Holidays & Festivals. Click any to see everything it connects to.

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Days or periods set aside for fasting, marked on a religious calendar rather than undertaken as an ongoing personal discipline, which is why they sit under the holiday type rather than the dietary practices filed under practice. Ramadan and Yom Kippur are the best known examples, but the type spans many traditions' calendars.

Facts
Overview
What Defines This Grouping
Days and seasons a tradition sets apart for abstention from food, drink or other pleasures as an obligation of its calendar. What is given up, and for how long, differs sharply - a daylight fast kept for a lunar month, a single day from sunset to sunset, a season of restricted diet - and a fast is not always penitential: some are mourning and some are preparation. 2
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 2
Directory
Category
Holidays & Festivals 1
Learn More
The Fasts

This group holds fasts, the days and seasons of abstinence from food, drink or other comforts, kept as acts of penitence, purification, mourning or spiritual discipline. Fasting is a widespread religious practice, from the month of Ramadan in Islam to the fast days of Judaism and Christian Lent.

The browser will find the fasts the atlas gathers. The entries describe each fast's occasion, rules and meaning, noting the tradition that keeps it.

Sources
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. FastingView the Source
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