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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems
You will always encounter challenges on your life's journey and to
know you have the resources and the spiritual 'tools' within you to
face every situation, will make the journey much easier. You can
create a life of adventure, love, happiness and joy. It's up to
you! May you live your journey joyfully, manifest your dreams,
connect to your spiritual source, love and be loved.
The Ancient and Accepted Rite for England and Wales covers the
4th-33rd degrees, including the 18th 'Rose Croix' degree. The
author explores the historic background to this important part of
Freemasonry with the original being published in 1980. A second
edition appeared in 1987 which was a completely revised work after
much new documented evidence was discovered, and this third edition
is another reprint of this authoritative study.
The end of the eighteenth century saw the end of the witch trials
everywhere. This volume charts the processes and reasons for the
decriminalisation of witchcraft but also challenges the widespread
assumption that Europe has been 'disenchanted'. For the first time
surveys are given of the social role of witchcraft in European
communities down to the end of the nineteenth century and of the
continued importance of witchcraft and magic as topics of debate
among intellectuals and other writers
Harry Gilmore has no idea of the terrible danger he faces when he
meets a beautiful girl in a local student bar. Drugged and
abducted, Harry wakes up in a secure wooden compound deep in the
Welsh countryside, where he is groomed by the leaders of a
manipulative cult, run by the self-proclaimed new messiah known as
The Master. When the true nature of the cult becomes apparent,
Harry looks for any opportunity to escape. But as time passes, he
questions if The Master's extreme behavior and teachings are the
one true religion. With Harry's life hanging by a thread, a team of
officers, led by Detective Inspector Laura Kesey, investigate his
disappearance. But will they find him before it's too late?
*Previously published as The Girl in White*
Examining the birth and development of early modern atheism from
Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670) to d'Holbach's
Systeme de la nature (1770), this study considers Spinoza, Hobbes,
Cudworth, Bayle, Meslier, Boulainviller, Du Marsais, Freret,
Toland, Collins, Hume, Diderot, Voltaire, and d'Holbach and
positions them in a general interpretive scheme, based on the idea
that early modern atheism is itself an unwanted fruit of early
modern metaphysics and theology. Breaking with a long-standing
tradition, Descartes claimed that it was possible to have a "clear
and distinct" idea of God, indeed that the idea of God was the
"clearest and most distinct" of all ideas accessible to the human
mind. Humans could thus obtain a scientific knowledge of God's
nature and attributes. But as soon as God became an object of
science, He also became the object of a thoroughgoing scientific
analysis and criticism. The effortlessness with which early modern
atheists managed to turn round their adversaries' arguments to
their own favour is a sign that the new doctrines of God which
emerged in the seventeenth-century, each based in its own way on
principles and dogmas related to the new science of nature, were
plunging headfirst towards the precipice under their own steam.
This volume is an all-in-one publication introducing students and
teachers at all levels of Theology to almost the entire spectrum of
theologies and hermeneutics in Africa and the western world.
Although a strong emphasis is placed on the contribution of Africa
to Christian Theology there is no hidden agenda to tell the reader
what the only 'sound' theology is. Contributors had total freedom
to expand on their fields of specialization and readers can make up
their own minds.
Examining the theme of child sacrifice as a psychological
challenge, this book applies a unique approach to religious ideas
by looking at beliefs and practices that are considered deviant,
but also make up part of mainstream religious discourse in Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity. Ancient religious mythology, which
survives through living traditions and transmitted narratives,
rituals, and writings, is filled with violent stories, often
involving the targeting of children as ritual victims. Christianity
offers Abraham's sacrifice and assures us that the "only begotten
son" has died, and then been resurrected. This version of the
sacrifice myth has dominated the West. It is celebrated in an act
of fantasy cannibalism, in which the believers share the divine
son's flesh and blood. This book makes the connection between
Satanism stories in the 1980s, the Blood Libel in Europe, The
Eucharist, and Eastern Mediterranean narratives of child sacrifice.
Between the age of St. Augustine and the sixteenth century
reformations magic continued to be both a matter of popular
practice and of learned inquiry. This volume deals with its use in
such contexts as healing and divination and as an aspect of the
knowledge of nature's occult virtues and secrets.
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