Social Lives of Mantras : From Ancient India to the Contemporary West

Challenging the Orientalist exoticisation of mantras and their restriction to ‘Eastern religions’, Joseph L. Kimmel traces the understanding, practice, and purposes of mantras across a variety of historical and cultural contexts, from early Christianity to the present day. This comparative approach reveals the richness and versatility of this ancient tradition, offering an illuminating account of its significance and function. Moreover, this study specifically underscores mantras’ enduring relationality: how mantras function as crucial mediators of relationships between humans and deities, bodhisattvas, and other exalted nonhumans. As such, this volume contributes to long-standing debates around mantras’ meaningfulness by demonstrating how they persistently communicate relational meaning and influence human–nonhuman relationships.

Beginning with the origins of Indic mantras in ancient Vedic traditions and their reinterpretation along Tantric Hindu and Buddhist lines, this book illuminates how mantric-like speech has also characterised Christian practices in understudied ways, from early Christians’ invocations of Jesus to medieval and contemporary iterations of the Orthodox ‘Jesus-prayer’.

This volume also analyses how mantric relationality has been embraced in so-called ‘New Age’ traditions through the recitation of contemporary ‘manifestation’ mantras. By comparing such mantras with those of other religious traditions, this work advances a compelling argument for mantras’ enduring relevance, widespread appeal and ongoing, relational significance as tools of ritual communication between humans and exalted nonhumans.