Prayer: Did you mean...?

Illuminated manuscripts are, as their name suggests, hand-made books illumined by gold and silver ink. They were produced in Western Europe between c. 500 and c. 1600 CE and their subject matter is usually Christian scripture, practice, and...

The Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew (chapters 5, 6, and 7) became a foundational element of the religion of Christianity. The sermon is based on the traditions of Judaism and the Law of Moses, but with added interpretations of...

The Arapaho Creation Story is the account of how the world was made from the mud at the bottom of the endless waters by Father (also given as Pipe Person in some versions) with the help of the duck and the turtle. The story is similar to...

Shinto means 'way of the gods' and it is the oldest religion in Japan. Shinto's key concepts include purity, harmony, family respect, and subordination of the individual before the group. The faith has no founder or prophets and there is...

Ancient Egyptian writing is known as hieroglyphics ('sacred carvings') and developed at some point prior to the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 -2613 BCE). According to some scholars, the concept of the written word was first developed in...

Suleiman the Magnificent (aka Süleyman I or Suleiman I, r. 1520-1566) was the tenth and longest-reigning sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Hailed as a skilled military commander, a just ruler, and a divinely anointed monarch during his lifetime...

A medieval monastery was an enclosed and sometimes remote community of monks led by an abbot who shunned worldly goods to live a simple life of prayer and devotion. Christian monasteries first developed in the 4th century in Egypt and Syria...

The term Kabbalah refers specifically to the form of Jewish mysticism that became widespread in the Middle Ages. However, in recent decades it has essentially become a generic term for the entirety of Jewish mystical thought. Literally meaning...

Tara is a female deity in both Hinduism and Buddhism who personifies compassion and offers salvation from the suffering of rebirth and death. She is thought to have been born of empathy for the suffering world and is regularly invoked for...

Ignatius of Loyola (l. 1491-1556) was a Basque soldier who became a Catholic priest and theologian after a mystical experience convinced him he was called to the service of Christ. He founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) to defend the Church...