The book is a good introduction to either religious studies or to the importance of religious dress to personal or group identity. Well worth reading.
TRC
Anthropologist Hume (Univ. of Queensland, Australia) has published several works on pagan and aboriginal religious practices in Australia. This book, filled with ideas and quotes from other writers, attempts to provide an overview of an extremely complex subject.
- B. B. Chico, Regis University, CHOICE
Hume’s emphasis on the smell, feel, texture, and types of cloth used in religious practice is particularly original, as is her discussion of dress associated with the dead. This unique volume underscores the ways that clothing contributes to people’s identities and their sense of moral order, in this world and beyond.
- Elisha P. Renne, University of Michigan, USA,
Lucidly written, this is a superb account of religious life, its rites and taboos read through dress and embellishment. Hume engages new ground in her world-wide coverage of Western religions, Islam, the great Eastern faiths and mystical ceremonies. With exceptional insight she demonstrates the sensorial and transformative lie at the heart of these embodied practices.
- Margaret Maynard, The University of Queensland, Australia.,
This book combines deep insights into the symbolic significance with evocative descriptions of the sensuous experience of religious dress and adornment in a wide array of spiritual traditions, from Catholicism to Candomblé and from Buddhism to Modern Paganism. By digging beneath appearances, Lynne Hume enables the reader to acquire an embodied sense of the varieties of religious devotion and experience through what people wear.
- David Howes, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Sensory Studies, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada,