Crafting Sacrality from the tensile life of objects: learning about the material life of prayer beads from a Khaksari Sufi Murshid

Abstract

Sufi mystical experiences and practices are populated with objects. Objects exist among masters as well as disciples and followers regardless of the meanings and significations that practices impose on them. The life of these objects begins before they are enacted into sociocultural and religious relationships, as they are crafted or traded before they take on the overwhelming semiosis ascribed to them by religiouscultural codes or social networks. This article presents an apprenticeship ethnographic journey in which I follow an Iranian Sufi master and, along with him, the tensile life of Sufi prayer beads, or tasbihs. I address prayer beads as an object prior to their gaining of any religious meaning in the networks of everyday life. Tracing the material life of prayer beads reveals how the Bobjectness^of the rosary preexists the material practices that give it meaning in the Sufi order. Through the approach of speculative realism I examine what it means to study a religious-object-in-itself. I follow the religiously loaded object and its spiritual emergence by way of object-oriented ontology to forgo the meanings and relationships that shadow the objects.

The Role of the Teacher in Implementing the Attitude of Religious Tolerance in Class Iv Elementary School

“…This is in accordance with Suyadi's opinion in Febriani [14] yang menjelaskan di dalam kemampuan membuka dan which explains that the ability to open and close lessons is not only reading prayers but also discussing topics of discussion that will be carried out and have been carried out in lessons during the learning process. The teacher must open the lesson by not inclining prayer to a religion even though that religion is the majority in the class [15] [16]. Likewise with closing lessons that have been implemented.…”

Becoming Dead: Burial Assemblages as Vitalist Devices

“…A similar example concerns Sufi prayer beads, or tasbihs , supposedly made of a particular soil from Karbala, where Muhammad's grandson shed his blood. When crafting the beads, the maker claims to be able to smell if the correct soil has been used (Saramifar 2017, 48). There is much to gain by mapping the lines of becoming, but formation processes, origins and the itineraries of objects and features can nonetheless be addressed without involving Deleuzian philosophy.…”

Objects, object-ness, and shadows of meanings: carving prayer beads and exploring their materiality alongside a Khaksari Sufi Murshid

“…Photo copyright Younes Saramifar. to highlight the constant, discrete yo-yo movements between materials and materiality by accounting for what comes prior to the saturation with meanings, rather than through them. In sum, I use the tensile life of prayer beads (Saramifar 2018) as an example in service of the theoretical framework that is proposed. Thus, I argue that this object is something that has happened already but yet it projects mutual correspondence with affairs of humans by way of its allure.…”