In 1925, the influential Dutch anthropologist W. H. Rassers questioned the relationship of myth to ritual, taking as his case study the Javanese myth of the birth of the man-eating demon Kala. This myth, and its re-enactment, shed light on the social morphology and became immediately the subject of debate among students of Javanese culture. In this enticing work, Stephen C. Headley translates and studies ritual and myth in their variant forms, expanding upon Rassers' general proposition that the movement from cosmogony to exorcism discovers fundamental social forms that circulate values in...

"For two decades now, Stephen C. Headley has been one of the most original and systematic ethnographers of Javanese religion and cultural history. No one in contemporary Javanese ethnography has combed through the annals of nineteenth and twentieth century scholarship with as careful an eye for the variety of Javanese traditions. None combines this historical ethnography with as careful and unusual body of contemporary ethnography. Headley's new book brings these long-developed skills to bear on contemporary religious change in the Surakarta region of Central Java. In his analysis of the...