Master Sikhism, Taoism and Shinto: a 133-Card Comparative Religion Study Guide

Other and Comparative Religions (deck code EJ6738, 133 cards) is really four decks stacked in one, and it studies far better once you know where the seams are.

The four blocks, in card order

• Cards 1-26 — Sikhism. Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh, the Guru Granth Sahib as eternal eleventh guru, Ik Onkar, Waheguru, the Five Ks (kesh, kangha, kara, kirpan, kachera), the Khalsa of 1699, Harmandir Sahib, gurdwara, langar, kirtan, seva, simran, Miri Piri, Gurmukhi, the Five Thieves, jivanmukti, and the three pillars kirat karo, vand chakko, naam japo.
• Cards 27-42 — Taoism. Tao, Tao Te Ching, Laozi, Zhuangzi, wu wei, qi, de, yin and yang, the Three Treasures, tai chi, the Eight Immortals, internal alchemy.
• Cards 43-73 — Shinto. Kami, jinja, torii, Kojiki, Nihon Shoki, Amaterasu, misogi, harae, kegare, matsuri, ofuda, ema, kamidana, shimenawa, kannushi, miko, kagura, shinsen, musubi, Izanagi and Izanami, Ise Jingu rebuilt every twenty years, shinbutsu-shugo, and State Shinto (1868-1945).
• Cards 74-133 — comparative religion as an academic field. Al-Biruni and Ibn Hazm, the Abrahamic family, Tanakh, Talmud, tahrif, Khatam an-Nabiyyin, supersessionism, Christology, Trinitarianism, Gnosticism, Mandaeism, Bahai Faith, Babism, Iranian religions, Zoroastrianism and the Parsis, Manichaeism, Vedas, Advaita Vedanta, avatars, Puranic texts, Theravada and Mahayana, Chan and Zen, soteriology, the Figurists and the Jingjiao documents.

The seam, and one card that contradicts another

The comparative block re-glosses Taoist vocabulary the deck has already taught: Tao appears at card 29 and again at 100, de at 34 and 101, qi at 33 and 102, Chan and Zen at 103 and 129. Keep the first version of each — cards 29, 33 and 34 are the sharper definitions — and suspend the later duplicates rather than reviewing both.

Then there is card 108: Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism speak of falling back into nonexistence, rather than eternal life after death. Theravada is explicit that nibbana is not annihilation, and the deck itself supplies the rebuttal twenty cards later, at card 112, where Nicholas de Lange notes that comparative religion grew inside Christian theology faculties with a tendency to force differing phenomena into a Christian pattern. Card 108 is that tendency in action. Rewrite it as release from the cycle of rebirth and you have both a correct card and a worked example of the field's oldest bias.

Two smaller repairs: card 119 gives the Mahdi as the final Imam of the Twelve, which is Twelver Shia doctrine rather than general Muslim belief, and card 114 defines reincarnation as the cycle of rebirth — the cycle is samsara, and Buddhist rebirth explicitly involves no permanent self.

Study tips for this deck

Do not shuffle across the seam on the first pass. Sikhism, Taoism and Shinto share no vocabulary, so a mixed session gives your memory nothing to contrast with. Run the three blocks separately until each is solid, then let the comparative block shuffle into everything.

Write the three missing definition cards first. Jainism is named in cards 94, 97 and 111 and never defined; Confucianism is listed both as a Taoic religion and an East Asian one with no card of its own; Nestorian Christianity carries cards 105 and 106 without ever being explained. Write those three before you start, or every card that mentions them stays half-answerable.

Deck EJ6738 is in the Flip It library at flip-it.app. Once the comparative block clicks, the natural next step is depth on the traditions it only names in passing: Islam: beliefs, Qur'an and practice and Christianity: doctrine, the Bible and the councils.