Traditionally gnawa musicians in Morocco played for all-night ceremonies where communities gathered to invite spirits to heal mental, physical, and social ills untreatable by other means. Now gnawa music can be heard on the streets of Marrakech, at festivals in Essaouira, in Fez's cafes, in Casablanca's nightclubs, and in the bars of Rabat. As it moves further and further from its origins as ritual music and listeners seek new opportunities to hear performances, musicians are challenged to adapt to new tastes while competing for potential clients and performance engagements. Christopher Witulski explores how gnawa musicians straddle popular and ritual boundaries to assert, negotiate, and perform their authenticity in this rich ethnography of Moroccan music. Witulski introduces readers to gnawa performers, their friends, the places where they play, and the people they play for. He emphasizes the specific strategies performers use to define themselves and their multiple identities as Muslims, Moroccans, and traditional musicians. The Gnawa Lions reveals a shifting terrain of music, ritual, and belief that follows the negotiation of musical authenticity, popular demand, and economic opportunity.

Rosslyn Chapel is a deeply enigmatic 15th-century Gothic masterpiece, situated near Edinburgh. Although generally referred to as a 'chapel' and acting as a local parish church these days, Rosslyn is actually much more than either - and in fact most people who have studied the site in detail come to the conclusion that those who created the structure in the 15th century were not, in reality, intent on building a Christian church at all. In fact, nothing at Rosslyn is what it seems. With its overpowering air of mystery, its superlative stone carvings and its strong Templar and Freemasonic connections, Rosslyn represents one of the most absorbing historical puzzles in Britain. The discovery of new evidence by the authors puts a new slant on the motivations of those who decided to create a New Jerusalem in the Scottish Lowlands. The signs pointed the authors to a lost holy relic - the skull of St Matthew the Evangelist, in whose name the chapel is dedicated. There is startling evidence that this skull came to Rosslyn in the early 15th century, brought there by polymath, librarian and all-round genius Sir Gilbert Hay, who also put together a substantial library. What follows is no less than an adventure, using the clues from the lost books to locate St Matthew's skull - now in Washington, DC. The authors also embark on a thorough examination of Rosslyn Chapel's credentials, both a Christian church and as an icon of the impending Renaissance, a reconstruction of King Solomon's Temple and an astronomical observatory - all suffused with ancient beliefs that would have had the chapel's builders burned at the stake if their true motivations had been discovered.