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This is a volume about the life and power of ritual objects in their religious ritual settings. In this Special Issue, we see a wide range of contributions on material culture and ritual practices across religions. By focusing on the dynamic interrelations between objects, ritual, and belief, it explores how religion happens through symbolic materiality. The ritual objects presented in this volume include: masks worn in the Dogon dance; antique ecclesiastical silver objects carried around in festive processions and shown in shrines in the southern Andes; funerary photographs and films functioning as mnemonic objects for grieving children; a dented rock surface perceived to be the god’s footprint in the archaic place of pilgrimage, Gaya (India); a recovered manual of rituals (from Xiapu county) for Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, juxtaposed to a Manichaean painting from southern China; sacred stories and related sacred stones in the Alor–Pantar archipelago, Indonesia; lotus symbolism, indicating immortalizing plants in the mythic traditions of Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia;

ritual --- rituality --- ritualism --- digital games --- assassination --- initiation --- nizarism --- Templar Order --- Abui --- Alor --- Lamòling --- Alor-Pantar Archipelago --- oral legends and myths --- traditional religions --- Manichaeism --- ritual manual --- Xiapu manuscripts --- Buddhist worship and repentance ritual --- Diagram of the Universe --- children --- objects --- funerary photography --- death ritual --- continuing bonds --- Hinduism --- India --- material culture --- ritual --- Vi??u’s footprint --- place of pilgrimage --- sacred geography --- imaginative embodiment --- Ravana --- Sri Lanka --- Sinhalese Buddhist Majority --- ritualizing --- procession --- healing --- ritual creativity --- Nilotic lotus --- sacral tree --- ankh --- sema-taui --- Bible --- kingship --- libation ritual --- South America --- colonial period --- religious transfer of meaning --- multiple readings of images --- mask --- Dogon --- funeral --- performance --- symbol --- embodiment --- Hinduism --- India --- Govardhan puja --- cow dung --- gender --- ritual art --- nature --- human-nonhuman sociality --- symbolic anthropology --- ethnography