125 religions,
side by side.

I. BEFORE HISTORY — c.100,000 – 3000 BCE

II. THE FIRST CIVILISATIONS — c.3000 – 1000 BCE

III. THE AXIAL AGE — c.900 – 200 BCE

IV. THE CLASSICAL & IMPERIAL WORLD — c.200 BCE – 500 CE

V. THE MEDIEVAL WORLD — c.500 – 1500 CE

VI. REFORMATION & EARLY MODERN — 1500 – 1800

VII. THE MODERN AGE — 1800 – 1945

VIII. POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY — 1945 – PRESENT

Side by side

After death, side by side

The scriptures

The long timeline

1. c.100,000–120,000 years ago Deliberate burial with grave goods at Qafzeh and Skhul — the earliest widely accepted evidence of belief in a continuing self.
2. c.65,000 years ago Proposed occupation of Australia at Madjedbebe (disputed; some argue c.50,000). Aboriginal religion becomes the longest continuously practised tradition known.
3. c.35,000–41,000 years ago The Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel — a human body with a lion's head, the oldest known image of something that does not exist.
4. c.40,000 years ago Mungo Lady cremated and Mungo Man buried in ochre at Lake Mungo, Australia.
5. c.9600 BCE Göbekli Tepe built by people who had not yet adopted farming — temples before agriculture, reversing the old assumption.
6. c.8000–6000 BCE Plastered ancestral skulls at Jericho, in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B — the dead kept in the house, remodelled in clay.
7. c.4000 BCE Temple platforms at Eridu, the city the Sumerians called the first.
8. c.3300 BCE Indus Valley civilisation begins. Its religion remains unreadable because its script has never been deciphered.
9. c.3200 BCE Proto-cuneiform at Uruk. The oldest writing on earth was invented to count temple offerings.
10. c.3100 BCE Egypt unified under Narmer; kingship framed as a divine office from the start.
11. c.2400 BCE Pyramid Texts carved in the pyramid of Unas — the oldest religious literature in existence.
12. c.2300 BCE Enheduanna, priestess of Ur, composes hymns. The first author in history whose name we know is a woman.
13. 18th c. BCE The Old Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh joins the Sumerian poems into one narrative — the oldest long poem, and its subject is the refusal to accept death.
14. c.1600 BCE Shang dynasty oracle bone divination in China; kings consult their dead ancestors on war and harvest.
15. c.1500 BCE Rigveda composed in the Punjab — the oldest surviving Indo-European text, transmitted orally for 3,000 years.
16. c.1500–1000 BCE Zarathustra composes the Gathas (majority current dating; a minority argue c.600 BCE).
17. c.1353 BCE Akhenaten imposes the worship of the Aten and closes Egypt's temples. Abolished within a decade of his death.
18. c.1250 BCE Ugarit's Baal Cycle written in the world's first alphabetic cuneiform.
19. c.1200 BCE Israelite settlements appear in the Canaanite highlands. The Merneptah Stele gives the first extrabiblical mention of Israel.
20. 1046 BCE The Duke of Zhou articulates the Mandate of Heaven — the right to rule is conditional and revocable.
21. c.900 BCE Ancestral cults, temple states and priestly bureaucracies are established across Eurasia. The Axial Age begins.
22. c.850 BCE Parshvanatha, the 23rd Jain Tirthankara.
23. c.800 BCE Upanishads composed. Karma, samsara, atman and moksha enter Indian thought and change it permanently.
24. c.800–700 BCE Homer and Hesiod give the Greeks their gods' names, forms and genealogies.
25. 776 BCE First Olympiad, held as a festival of Zeus.
26. 722 BCE Assyria destroys the northern kingdom of Israel — the origin of the Samaritan split.
27. c.622 BCE Josiah's reform centralises Israelite worship in Jerusalem and suppresses the local shrines.
28. c.599 BCE Mahavira born; Jainism takes its final form.
29. 587 BCE Babylon destroys the First Temple. In exile, Judaism reorganises around text, sabbath and circumcision instead of sacrifice.
30. 551 BCE Confucius born in Lu.
31. 539 BCE Cyrus takes Babylon and frees the Judean exiles — the contact point through which Zoroastrian ideas enter Judaism.
32. c.500 BCE Charvaka materialism, Ajivika fatalism, Buddhism and Jainism all contest the Vedic sacrificial order at once.
33. c.480–400 BCE The Buddha. The first sermon at Sarnath (revised chronology; traditional dates are c.563–483 BCE).
34. 399 BCE Socrates executed on charges including impiety and introducing new gods.
35. c.380 BCE Plato makes the immortal soul, its imprisonment in the body and post-mortem judgment philosophically respectable.
36. c.268 BCE Ashoka converts after the slaughter at Kalinga and sends Buddhist missions abroad. Buddhism becomes a world religion.
37. 167 BCE Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV.
38. c.100 BCE Mahayana Buddhism emerges with the bodhisattva ideal.
39. 29 BCE Augustus establishes the Roman imperial cult — loyalty tested by sacrifice.
40. c.30–33 CE Jesus of Nazareth crucified in Jerusalem. His followers report resurrection appearances.
41. c.49 CE The Council of Jerusalem rules that Gentile converts need not be circumcised. A Jewish sect becomes a world religion.
42. 70 CE Rome destroys the Second Temple. Sacrifice ends. Rabbinic Judaism is built at Yavneh out of the ruins.
43. 132–136 CE Bar Kokhba revolt crushed; Judea devastated; Rabbi Akiva executed.
44. c.144 CE Marcion assembles the first Christian canon, forcing the orthodox to assemble theirs.
45. c.200 CE Mishnah compiled by Judah ha-Nasi.
46. c.240 CE Mani begins preaching — the first founder known to have deliberately designed a world religion.
47. c.245 CE Plotinus opens his school in Rome; Neoplatonism supplies the machinery for all later Abrahamic mysticism.
48. 301 CE Armenia adopts Christianity as its state religion, traditionally the first nation to do so.
49. 313 CE Edict of Milan legalises Christianity in the Roman empire.
50. 325 CE Council of Nicaea. Arianism condemned; the Son declared of one substance with the Father.
51. 380 CE Christianity becomes the official religion of the Roman empire.
52. 391 CE The Serapeum of Alexandria destroyed; Theodosius bans pagan sacrifice.
53. 394 CE The last dated hieroglyphic inscription, at Philae. Egyptian religion is dying a century before its temples are closed.
54. 415 CE Hypatia murdered by a mob in Alexandria.
55. 431 CE Council of Ephesus; the Church of the East separates.
56. 451 CE Council of Chalcedon. Egypt, Syria and Armenia reject its formula — the first permanent division of Christianity.
57. c.500 CE Babylonian Talmud completed at Sura and Pumbedita.
58. 529 CE Justinian ends state funding for the Neoplatonic school at Athens.
59. c.535–537 CE Narses closes the temples of Philae and jails the priests — the institutional end of Egyptian religion.
60. c.538–552 CE Buddhism reaches Japan from Korea; the court divides over adopting it.
61. 610 CE Muhammad receives the first revelation on Mount Hira.
62. 622 CE The Hijra. The Islamic calendar counts from the founding of the community, not from the Prophet's birth.
63. 635 CE Alopen reaches Chang'an; Christianity is preached in China for the first time.
64. 651 CE The Arab conquest of Iran begins the long displacement of Zoroastrianism.
65. 680 CE Karbala. Husayn killed; Shia identity is fixed permanently around martyrdom and injustice.
66. 712 CE The Kojiki fixes the Japanese imperial descent from Amaterasu.
67. c.775 CE Samye monastery founded; Buddhism established in Tibet.
68. 781 CE The Xi'an Stele records 150 years of Christianity in Tang China.
69. c.788 CE Adi Shankara; Advaita Vedanta systematised.
70. 843 CE The Triumph of Orthodoxy ends iconoclasm in Byzantium.
71. 922 CE al-Hallaj executed in Baghdad, reportedly for declaring I am the Truth.
72. 988 CE Vladimir converts the Rus; the Perun idol is thrown into the Dnieper.
73. 1000 CE Iceland converts to Christianity by parliamentary decision, to preserve the peace.
74. 1054 CE The Great Schism between Rome and Constantinople.
75. 1095 CE The First Crusade preached at Clermont.
76. 1111 CE al-Ghazali dies, having made Sufism acceptable to the legal establishment.
77. c.1162 CE Sheikh Adi at Lalish; Yazidism takes organised form.
78. 1193 CE Nalanda destroyed; Buddhism's institutional collapse in India is completed.
79. 1204 CE The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople. This, more than 1054, makes the schism permanent.
80. 1244 CE Montségur falls; around 220 Cathar perfecti walk into a mass pyre.
81. c.1280 CE The Zohar circulates in Castile.
82. 1313 CE Zhu Xi's commentaries become the basis of the Chinese imperial examinations for the next six centuries.
83. 1325 CE Tenochtitlan founded.
84. 1469 CE Guru Nanak born. Sikhism begins.
85. 1492 CE Expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Lurianic Kabbalah is, in effect, the theological answer to it.
86. 1517 CE Luther's Ninety-five Theses. The printing press turns a local dispute into the Reformation.
87. 1521 CE Tenochtitlan falls; the Aztec state religion ends within a generation.
88. 1531 CE The apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe at Tepeyac becomes the route by which indigenous Mexico enters Catholicism.
89. 1534 CE Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy.
90. 1553 CE Michael Servetus burned at Geneva for denying the Trinity.
91. 1562 CE Bishop Diego de Landa burns the Maya codices at Mani, destroying almost an entire literature.
92. 1545–1563 CE Council of Trent sets the shape of Catholicism for four hundred years.
93. 1568 CE The Edict of Torda in Transylvania — the first broad act of religious toleration in Europe.
94. 1572 CE Isaac Luria dies at Safed, having produced the Kabbalah that dominates everything after him.
95. 1614 CE Casaubon dates the Hermetic texts to the Roman era. A philological argument destroys a tradition's prestige overnight.
96. 1618–1648 CE The Thirty Years War. Perhaps eight million dead in a war with religion at its core.
97. 1666 CE Shabbetai Zvi, proclaimed messiah, converts to Islam. Public messianism is discredited for centuries.
98. 1688 CE The Germantown Petition — four Quakers write the first formal protest against slavery in the American colonies.
99. 1699 CE Guru Gobind Singh founds the Khalsa and abolishes caste surnames.
100. 1717 CE Premier Grand Lodge of England; organised Freemasonry begins.
101. 1738 CE John Wesley's Aldersgate experience; Methodism begins.
102. 1744 CE The Diriyah pact between Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Ibn Saud.
103. c.1740–1760 CE The Baal Shem Tov; Hasidism turns Kabbalah into a popular, joyful piety.
104. 1794 CE Paine's Age of Reason; the Cult of the Supreme Being in revolutionary France.
105. 1829 CE Sati abolished in Bengal after Ram Mohan Roy argues against it from Hindu scripture.
106. 1830 CE The Book of Mormon published; the Latter-day Saint movement begins.
107. 1838 CE Nakayama Miki's revelation founds Tenrikyo — a religion started by a farmer's wife.
108. 1844 CE The Báb declares his mission; the Great Disappointment the same decade produces Adventism.
109. 1848 CE The Hydesville rappings; modern Spiritualism begins.
110. 1863 CE Bahá'u'lláh declares himself in the garden of Riḍván.
111. 1875 CE The Theosophical Society founded — the channel through which karma and reincarnation enter Western popular culture.
112. 1879 CE Mary Baker Eddy organises the Church of Christ, Scientist.
113. 1889 CE Mirza Ghulam Ahmad founds the Ahmadiyya movement.
114. 1893 CE World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago. Vivekananda, Dharmapala and Soyen Shaku introduce Asian religion to America.
115. 1904 CE Crowley writes the Book of the Law in Cairo; Thelema begins.
116. 1906 CE Azusa Street. A racially integrated revival in a Los Angeles stable launches the fastest-growing Christian movement in history.
117. 1916 CE Sotaesan's enlightenment; Won Buddhism founded.
118. 1919 CE The first Waldorf school opens in Stuttgart; the March First Movement in Korea is led largely by Cheondoists.
119. 1926 CE Caodaism declared at Tây Ninh.
120. 1930 CE Haile Selassie crowned; Rastafari begins. The Nation of Islam founded in Detroit the same year.
121. 1939–1945 CE The Holocaust. Approximately six million Jews murdered — two-thirds of European Jewry and a third of all Jews alive.
122. 1945 CE State Shinto abolished; Hirohito renounces divinity on 1 January 1946.
123. 1945 CE The Nag Hammadi library found in Egypt — Gnostics can be read in their own words for the first time in sixteen centuries.
124. 1947 CE Dead Sea Scrolls discovered at Qumran; Partition of India causes mass communal violence.
125. 1948 CE State of Israel founded.
126. 1954 CE Gardner publishes Witchcraft Today; Scientology and the Unification Church are both incorporated the same year.
127. 1956 CE B. R. Ambedkar converts to Buddhism with roughly half a million Dalits — the largest single conversion event of the century.
128. 1959 CE The 14th Dalai Lama flees Tibet for India.
129. 1965 CE Second Vatican Council closes. Vernacular liturgy, religious liberty, and the repudiation of Jewish collective guilt.
130. 1966 CE ISKCON founded in a New York storefront; the Church of Satan founded in San Francisco; the Cultural Revolution begins in China.
131. 1967 CE Catholic Charismatic Renewal begins at Duquesne; the Beatles study with the Maharishi.
132. 1972 CE Ásatrú recognised in Iceland; Sally Priesand ordained as America's first woman rabbi.
133. 1978 CE The Latter-day Saints lift the priesthood ban on Black members; the Dalai Lama recognises Bon as Tibet's fifth tradition.
134. 1979 CE The Iranian Revolution; the seizure of the Grand Mosque; MBSR founded at UMass. Bahá'í persecution in Iran begins.
135. 1984 CE Operation Blue Star at the Golden Temple; Pakistan criminalises Ahmadi religious self-description.
136. 1990 CE Employment Division v. Smith narrows US free exercise protection; Congress answers with RFRA in 1993.
137. 1993 CE Church of the Lukumi v. Hialeah — a Santería church wins a landmark unanimous free exercise ruling.
138. 1999 CE Falun Gong banned in China; Lutherans and the Vatican sign a joint declaration on justification, 482 years after Luther.
139. 2002 CE The clerical sexual abuse crisis breaks in Boston and then worldwide.
140. 2003 CE Haiti grants Vodou official recognition.
141. 2014 CE ISIS attacks Sinjar. The UN determines in 2016 that the Yazidi genocide occurred.
142. 2020 CE Pew's global count: 2.3bn Christians, 2.0bn Muslims, 1.9bn unaffiliated, 1.2bn Hindus, 324m Buddhists, 14.8m Jews.
143. 2021 CE For the first time, fewer than half of England and Wales identify as Christian in the census.
144. 2022 CE Shinzo Abe assassinated; Japan begins moving to strip the Unification Church of religious status.
145. c.2060 (projected) Pew projects Muslims to draw level with Christians, and the unaffiliated share of humanity to fall, because secularisation is concentrated in low-fertility countries.

The family tree

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN RELIGION  (reconstructed, c.4000 BCE)
   |
   +-- Indo-Iranian
   |     +-- Historical Vedic religion --> HINDUISM
   |     |        +-- Vaishnavism / Shaivism / Shaktism / Smartism
   |     |        +-- Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita
   |     |        +-- Bhakti movement --> Sikh milieu, ISKCON, Hare Krishna
   |     |        +-- reform: Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission
   |     |        \-- reactions AGAINST it:
   |     |              +-- JAINISM      +-- BUDDHISM     +-- Ajivika      +-- Charvaka
   |     |                                        |
   |     |                                        +-- Theravada
   |     |                                        +-- Mahayana --> Chan/ZEN, Pure Land, NICHIREN, Tiantai
   |     |                                        +-- Vajrayana --> Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelug
   |     |                                        \-- modern --> Won Buddhism, Secular Buddhism / mindfulness
   |     |
   |     \-- Old Iranian religion --> ZOROASTRIANISM
   |              +-- Zurvanism  +-- Mithraism (Roman form is largely a new construction)
   |              \-- influence --> Second Temple Judaism, Manichaeism, Mandaeism, Yazidism
   |
   +-- Hellenic --> Greek religion --> Orphism, Pythagoreanism --> Plato --> NEOPLATONISM
   |                                                                          \-- Hermeticism --> Renaissance magic --> Golden Dawn --> THELEMA, WICCA, chaos magic
   +-- Italic     --> Roman religion (absorbs Etruscan divination)
   +-- Celtic     --> Druidic religion  ......... (broken) ......... modern Druidry (1717+)
   +-- Germanic   --> Norse paganism    ......... (broken) ......... Ásatrú / Heathenry (1972+)
   \-- Balto-Slavic --> Slavic & Baltic paganism ... (broken) ...... Rodnovery, Romuva (1990s+)

ANCIENT NEAR EAST
   +-- Sumerian --> Babylonian / Assyrian  (last cuneiform tablet 79/80 CE)
   +-- Egyptian --> Atenism (dies with Akhenaten); Isis & Serapis cults  (extinct c.537 CE)
   \-- Canaanite / Ugaritic
          \-- ISRAELITE RELIGION
                 +-- SAMARITANISM  (splits c.400 BCE, ~850 people survive)
                 +-- JUDAISM --> Rabbinic Judaism
                 |        +-- Karaite (rejects the Talmud)
                 |        +-- Kabbalah --> HASIDISM
                 |        \-- modern: Orthodox / Conservative / Reform / Reconstructionist
                 |
                 +-- CHRISTIANITY
                 |        +-- Church of the East        (splits 431)
                 |        +-- Oriental Orthodox         (splits 451 — Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Syriac)
                 |        +-- EASTERN ORTHODOX   (splits 1054)
                 |        \-- ROMAN CATHOLIC
                 |                \-- Reformation 1517
                 |                       +-- Lutheran   +-- Reformed / Calvinist --> Presbyterian, Congregational
                 |                       +-- Anglican --> METHODIST --> Holiness --> PENTECOSTAL --> charismatic
                 |                       +-- Anabaptist --> Mennonite, Amish, Hutterite
                 |                       +-- Baptist    +-- Quaker    +-- Unitarian
                 |                       \-- restorationist: LATTER-DAY SAINTS, Adventist, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science
                 |
                 \-- ISLAM
                          +-- SUNNI  (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali) --> Wahhabi / Salafi
                          +-- SHIA   --> Twelver, Ismaili, Zaydi --> Alawi, Alevi, DRUZE
                          +-- Ibadi
                          +-- SUFISM (a dimension, not a sect — runs through both)
                          \-- later: Ahmadiyya, Nation of Islam
   and standing apart, claiming all of them:  BAHÁ'Í FAITH (1863)

EAST ASIAN
   +-- Shang ancestor & Shangdi religion
   |      +-- CONFUCIANISM --> Neo-Confucianism (Zhu Xi, Wang Yangming) --> Korean & Japanese forms
   |      \-- DAOISM --> Celestial Masters, Quanzhen; Chinese folk religion
   +-- Japanese kami worship --> SHINTO --> State Shinto (1868–1945) --> sect Shinto --> TENRIKYO
   +-- Korean folk religion --> Muism; CHEONDOISM
   \-- Tibetan pre-Buddhist religion --> BON

AFRICAN & DIASPORIC
   +-- YORUBA / ORISA --> Santería (Cuba), Candomblé (Brazil), Trinidad Orisha, Umbanda
   +-- VODUN (Fon/Ewe) --> Haitian Vodou, Louisiana Voodoo
   \-- African + Christianity --> AFRICAN INITIATED CHURCHES (Zionist, Aladura, Kimbanguist)

INDIGENOUS AMERICAN
   +-- Maya  +-- Aztec  +-- Inca / Andean   --> all fused after conquest into folk Catholicism
   \-- Plains & Southwest traditions --> NATIVE AMERICAN CHURCH (1918)

NON-THEISTIC LINE
   Charvaka (India, c.6th c. BCE) ... Epicureanism ... DEISM (1624) --> Unitarianism, freethought
        \-- SECULAR HUMANISM (1876/1933)  |  organised atheism  |  THE UNAFFILIATED (1.9bn)

The words, and how to say them

• Abrahamic (AY-bra-HAM-ic): The family of religions tracing themselves to Abraham: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and later Bahá'í and Druze. · general
• Advaita (ad-VY-ta): Non-dualism. The doctrine that the individual self and ultimate reality are numerically identical. · Hinduism
• Ahimsa (a-HIM-sa): Non-violence toward all living things. Central to Jainism, important in Hinduism and Buddhism. · Dharmic
• Ahura Mazda (a-HOO-ra MAZ-da): The Wise Lord; the one uncreated good God of Zoroastrianism. · Zoroastrianism
• Akh (ahkh): In Egyptian religion, the effective transfigured dead — what a person becomes if the rites succeed. · Egypt
• Amrit (UM-rit): Sikh initiation ceremony; also the sweetened water used in it. · Sikhism
• Anatta (a-NUT-ta): Non-self. The Buddhist denial that there is any permanent, unchanging self or soul. · Buddhism
• Anekantavada (a-NEK-anta-VAA-da): Many-sidedness. The Jain doctrine that reality exceeds any single viewpoint. · Jainism
• Animism (AN-i-mizm): The attribution of personhood and agency to non-human beings, places and forces. · general
• Apophatic (ap-o-FAT-ic): Negative theology — describing God only by what he is not. · Christianity, Neoplatonism
• Aret̄e / aretalogy (a-re-TAL-o-jee): A hymn in which a deity declares their own powers in the first person. · Greco-Roman
• Asha (AH-sha): Truth and cosmic order in Zoroastrianism; the opposite of druj, the lie. · Zoroastrianism
• Ase (AH-shay): Vital power to make things happen, in Yoruba religion. · Yoruba
• Atman (AHT-man): The self or soul in Hindu thought, held by Advaita to be identical with Brahman. · Hinduism
• Autocephalous (aw-toe-SEF-a-lus): Self-governing. Used of Orthodox churches that elect their own head. · Orthodoxy
• Avatar (AV-a-tar): A descent of a deity into the world; used of Vishnu's appearances as Rama, Krishna and others. · Hinduism
• Axial Age (AK-see-al): Karl Jaspers' term for the period c.800–200 BCE when Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Jainism, Israelite prophecy, Zoroastrianism and Greek philosophy all appeared. · general
• Ba (bah): The mobile personality in Egyptian anthropology, depicted as a bird with a human head. · Egypt
• Bardo (BAR-doe): The intermediate state between death and rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism. · Buddhism
• Bhakti (BUCK-tee): Loving devotion to a personal God; the dominant mode of popular Hinduism. · Hinduism
• Bid'a (BID-ah): Innovation in religion; a term of condemnation in Salafi thought. · Islam
• Blót (bloat): Norse sacrificial offering, followed by a feast. · Heathenry
• Bodhisattva (bo-dee-SUT-va): A being who postpones their own final liberation for the sake of all beings. · Mahayana
• Brahman (BRUH-mun): The impersonal absolute in Hindu philosophy. Not to be confused with Brahmin, the priestly class. · Hinduism
• Caliph (KAY-lif): Successor to Muhammad as head of the Muslim community. Abolished in 1924. · Islam
• Chinvat Bridge (CHIN-vat): The bridge every Zoroastrian soul must cross, which widens or narrows according to its deeds. · Zoroastrianism
• Covenant (CUV-a-nant): A binding two-sided agreement between God and a people; the structural idea of Judaism. · Judaism
• Dao (dow): The way; the underlying pattern of reality, held to be unnameable. · Daoism
• Darshan (DAR-shan): Seeing and being seen by a deity or holy person; the core act of Hindu temple worship. · Hinduism
• Demiurge (DEM-ee-urj): A lesser creator god who made the material world; malevolent or ignorant in Gnostic systems. · Gnosticism
• Devekut (de-ve-KOOT): Cleaving to God; sustained attachment, the Hasidic ideal. · Judaism
• Dharma (DAR-ma): In Hinduism, duty and cosmic order. In Buddhism, the Buddha's teaching and the nature of things. · Dharmic
• Dhikr (THIKR): Remembrance; the Sufi practice of repeating God's names. · Islam
• Docetism (doe-SEE-tizm): The doctrine that Christ only appeared to have a physical body. · early Christianity
• Dreaming, the (—): English rendering of Tjukurpa — not the past but an ongoing creative condition re-entered through ritual. · Aboriginal Australia
• Dukkha (DOO-ka): Usually translated suffering; more precisely the unsatisfactoriness of conditioned existence. · Buddhism
• Ein Sof (ayn SOFE): The Infinite; God beyond all description, in Kabbalah. · Judaism
• Emanation (em-a-NAY-shun): Reality overflowing from a source rather than being deliberately created. Neoplatonic. · Neoplatonism
• Engram (EN-gram): In Scientology, a recorded moment of pain or unconsciousness held in the reactive mind. · Scientology
• Eschatology (es-ka-TOL-o-jee): Teaching about last things — death, judgment, the end of the world. · general
• Evocatio (ev-o-KAT-ee-oh): Roman rite formally inviting an enemy city's god to defect before a siege. · Rome
• Fana (fa-NAA): Annihilation of the ego in God; the Sufi goal. · Islam
• Filioque (fil-ee-OH-kway): And the Son — the Western addition to the Nicene Creed that the Orthodox reject. · Christianity
• Gilgul (gil-GOOL): Transmigration of souls, in Kabbalah and Hasidism. · Judaism
• Glossolalia (gloss-o-LAY-lee-a): Speaking in tongues. · Pentecostalism
• Gnosis (NO-sis): Direct experiential knowledge, held to be salvific. · Gnosticism
• Guru (GOO-roo): Teacher. In Sikhism, one of ten human Gurus and then the scripture itself. · Dharmic
• Hadith (ha-DEETH): A report of Muhammad's words or actions, graded for reliability. · Islam
• Halakha (ha-la-KHA): Jewish law, in the broadest sense — the whole system of obligation. · Judaism
• Haruspicy (ha-RUS-pi-see): Divination by inspecting a sacrificed animal's liver. Etruscan, adopted by Rome. · Etruscan, Rome
• Hesychasm (HEZ-i-kazm): The Orthodox inner tradition of stillness and the Jesus Prayer. · Orthodoxy
• Hijra (HIJ-ra): Muhammad's migration to Medina in 622; year one of the Islamic calendar. · Islam
• Hubris (HYOO-bris): Overreaching one's mortal station; the cardinal offence in Greek religion. · Greece
• Ihsan (ih-SAAN): Worshipping God as though you see him; the interior dimension Sufism pursues. · Islam
• Ijma (ij-MAA): Scholarly consensus, a source of Sunni law. · Islam
• Immanent (IM-a-nent): Present within the world. Opposite of transcendent. · general
• Innaecheon (in-NAY-chun): Man is heaven — the central Cheondoist doctrine. · Cheondoism
• Ital (EYE-tal): Rastafari dietary discipline: natural, unprocessed, usually vegan, no salt. · Rastafari
• Jihad (ji-HAAD): Struggle. Classically divided into the greater struggle against one's own failings and the lesser, regulated, armed struggle. · Islam
• Jiva (JEE-va): The individual soul in Jainism, present in all living things including plants and water. · Jainism
• Ka (kah): The vital double in Egyptian anthropology, which the mummy anchors. · Egypt
• Kami (KAH-mee): Anything that inspires awe — gods, ancestors, mountains, waterfalls, exceptional people. · Shinto
• Karma (KAR-ma): Action and its consequence. An impersonal moral physics requiring no judge. · Dharmic
• Kashrut (kash-ROOT): Jewish dietary law. · Judaism
• Kegare (keh-GAH-reh): Ritual defilement in Shinto. A condition to be washed off, not a sin to be forgiven. · Shinto
• Koan (KO-ahn): A paradoxical case set for a Zen student and tested in private interview. · Zen
• Kusti (KOOS-tee): The sacred cord Zoroastrians tie and retie with prayer several times daily. · Zoroastrianism
• Langar (LUN-gar): The free communal kitchen in every gurdwara, open to anyone of any religion. · Sikhism
• Li (lee): In Confucianism, ritual propriety. In Neo-Confucianism, principle or pattern — a different word in Chinese. · Confucianism
• Lwa (lwah): The working spirits of Haitian Vodou, each paired with a Catholic saint. · Vodou
• Ma'at (mah-AHT): Truth, order and balance in Egyptian religion; the feather the heart is weighed against. · Egypt
• Mahanta (ma-HAHN-ta): The Living ECK Master in Eckankar. · Eckankar
• Mandate of Heaven (—): The Chinese doctrine that Heaven grants and withdraws the right to rule, making successful rebellion self-legitimising. · China
• Maya (MY-ya): In Advaita, the provisional reality of the appearing world — not non-existence but dependent existence. · Hinduism
• Miasma (my-AZ-ma): Ritual pollution in Greek religion, contagious and contracted regardless of intent. · Greece
• Miaphysite (MY-a-fy-site): Holding that Christ has one united nature at once divine and human. The Oriental Orthodox position. · Christianity
• Midrash (MID-rash): Rabbinic interpretation, often narrative, that fills the gaps in the biblical text. · Judaism
• Moksha (MOKE-sha): Release from the cycle of rebirth; the goal of Hindu practice. · Hinduism
• Monolatry (mo-NOL-a-tree): Worshipping one god while not denying that others exist. Distinct from monotheism. · general
• Mudra (MOO-dra): A ritual hand gesture. · Dharmic
• Nembutsu (nem-BOOT-soo): Recitation of Amida Buddha's name; the whole of Pure Land practice. · Pure Land
• Nirvana (nir-VAH-na): Literally blowing out; the extinguishing of greed, hatred and delusion, and thus of rebirth. · Buddhism
• Orisa / orisha (o-REE-sha): The spirits of Yoruba religion and its diaspora forms. · Yoruba
• Orthopraxy (OR-tho-prax-ee): Correct practice, as against orthodoxy, correct belief. Greek, Roman, Jewish and Shinto religion are orthopraxic. · general
• Panentheism (pan-EN-thee-izm): God is in everything and also exceeds it. Distinct from pantheism, where God is everything. · general
• Prasadam (pra-SAA-dam): Food offered to a deity and then eaten; the offering returns as grace. · Hinduism
• Puja (POO-ja): Image worship with light, flowers, incense, food and water. · Dharmic
• Qi (chee): Vital breath or energy in Chinese thought. · China
• Rebbe (REB-buh): A Hasidic leader, held to channel between the community and God. · Judaism
• Ren (ren): Humaneness or benevolence; the master virtue in Confucianism. · Confucianism
• Responsa (re-SPON-sa): Rabbinic answers to submitted legal questions — an unbroken genre from the 7th century to the present. · Judaism
• Rta (ri-TA): Cosmic order in Vedic religion; the ancestor of dharma. · Hinduism
• Salaf (SA-laf): The first three generations of Muslims, taken as the standard by Salafi movements. · Islam
• Samsara (sam-SAA-ra): The cycle of birth, death and rebirth. · Dharmic
• Sangha (SUNG-ha): The Buddhist monastic community, and more broadly the community of practitioners. · Buddhism
• Sefirot (se-fee-ROTE): The ten divine emanations of Kabbalah, arranged as the Tree of Life. · Judaism
• Shakti (SHUCK-tee): Power or energy, understood as feminine and as the active principle of the cosmos. · Hinduism
• Shirk (shirk): Associating anything with God; the one unforgivable sin in Islam. · Islam
• Shruti / Smriti (SHROO-tee / SMRI-tee): Heard (revealed) versus remembered (traditional) scripture in Hinduism. · Hinduism
• Sigil (SIJ-il): A statement of intent condensed into a glyph, charged and then deliberately forgotten. · chaos magic
• Silsila (SIL-si-la): The initiatory chain of a Sufi order, traced back to the Prophet. · Islam
• Songline (—): A sung sequence that is simultaneously a myth, a navigational map and a title deed to country. · Aboriginal Australia
• Sunna (SOON-na): The Prophet's example, the second source of Islamic law after the Quran. · Islam
• Syncretism (SIN-kre-tizm): The fusing of elements from different religions. Often used pejoratively; almost every religion is one. · general
• Takfir (tak-FEER): Declaring another Muslim an unbeliever. Severely restricted by mainstream scholars. · Islam
• Taqiyya (ta-KEE-ya): Permissible concealment of one's faith under threat. Shia and Druze. · Islam
• Tawhid (tow-HEED): The absolute oneness of God; the organising principle of Islamic theology. · Islam
• Tengri (TENG-ree): The eternal blue sky, supreme being of the steppe religions. · Tengrism
• Terma (TER-ma): A treasure text, held to have been hidden by Padmasambhava for later discovery. · Tibet
• Theosis (thee-OH-sis): Deification; participation in God's energies. The goal of Orthodox spirituality. · Orthodoxy
• Theotokos (thee-o-TOE-kos): God-bearer; the title for Mary affirmed at Ephesus in 431 and rejected by the Church of the East. · Christianity
• Theurgy (THEE-ur-jee): Ritual work to draw down divine presence, as against pure contemplation. Iamblichus' innovation. · Neoplatonism
• Tikkun (tee-KOON): Repair. In Lurianic Kabbalah, the gathering of divine sparks scattered when the vessels shattered. · Judaism
• Tirthankara (TEER-thun-ka-ra): A ford-maker; one of the 24 Jain teachers who show the crossing. · Jainism
• Torii (TOR-ee-ee): The gate marking the boundary of Shinto sacred space. · Shinto
• Transubstantiation (tranz-sub-stan-she-AY-shun): The Catholic doctrine that the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood in substance while the appearances remain. · Catholicism
• Tulku (TOOL-koo): A recognised reincarnate teacher in Tibetan Buddhism. · Tibet
• Tzimtzum (tsim-TSOOM): God's withdrawal to make room for a world, in Lurianic Kabbalah. · Judaism
• Ummah (OOM-mah): The worldwide Muslim community. · Islam
• Vèvè (VEH-veh): A cornmeal ground-drawing that calls a specific lwa. · Vodou
• Wu wei (woo way): Non-action; better rendered effortless action, or not forcing. · Daoism
• Wyrd (weird): Fate as woven; not negotiable, including by the gods. · Heathenry
• Yajna (YUJ-nya): Vedic fire sacrifice, understood as the engine that keeps the cosmos turning. · Hinduism
• Yin and yang (yin / yahng): Complementary, mutually generating opposites. Not a good-versus-evil dualism. · China
• Zakat (za-KAAT): Obligatory alms, roughly 2.5% of accumulated wealth. One of the Five Pillars. · Islam
• Zazen (ZAH-zen): Seated Zen meditation. · Zen