Society and the Supernatural in Song China is at once a meticulous examination of spirit possession and exorcism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a social history of the full panoply of China's religious practices and practitioners at the moment when she was poised to dominate the world economy. Although the Song dynasty (960-1276) is often identified with the establishment of Confucian orthodoxy, Edward Davis demonstrates the renewed vitality of the dynasty's Taoist, Buddhist, and local religious traditions. He charts the rise of hundreds of new temple-cults and the lineages of clerical exorcists and vernacular priests; the increasingly competitive interaction among all practitioners of therapeutic ritual; and the wide social range of their patrons and clients.

In 1945 thirteen volumes, or fragments of volumes, written on papyrus were found by chance near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt. It appears that they had come from the library of a gnostic community and together comprised 49 works, written in Coptic and most of them unknown.
None of the works included in the discovery has been so much discussed and has created so much interest as "The Gospel according to Thomas. It is in fact a great collection of Logia, a harvesting of 114 "Sayings of Jesus" together with a prologue which stresses the esoteric character of the sayings and attributes their recording and preservation to the apostle Didymus Jude Thomas.
Many of the sentences are identical with the Logia of the Synoptic Gospels or are closely related to them. Other sayings on the contrary are extracanonical. Among these are certain "agrapha" which were already known or can now be recognized in ancient or medieval literature from patristic, gnostic, Manichaean, or even Catharist sources. Finally, the collection comprises many Logia which are quite new and have never before been seen.
This reprint of the original 1959 edition presents the Coptic text based on a minute examination of the manuscript, together with as faithful a translation as possible.

There are four things to study in a religion; it's founder, whose life and character will be impressed on it; the exoteric religion, for the masses of the people; the philosophy, necessary for the learned and the cultured; the mysticism, expressing the universal yearning of the human spirit for union with its source.

"Mystics have groped for words in which to account for the supreme reality of this experience... All this is said in classic and unforgettable pages by The Cloud of Unknowing, the work of an anonymous fourteenth-century English writer. . . Johnston [provides] the first extended and coherent theological treatment .... a most welcome and valuable contribution."-Thomas Merton

'Dread Jesus' explores the black, dreadlocked Jesus taken from Christianity by the teachings of Rastafari. Is Rastafari simply a bizarre Christian cult, destined to fade if the Emperor Haile Selassie never reappears? Or could it become a vibrant two-thirds world reform movement, recalling Christianity to its original, non-oppressing gospel for all people? Rigorously researched, William David Spencer's unique and compelling study - which includes exclusive interviews with major Rastafarian thinkers and close analysis of the lyrics of many reggae songs - will prove genuinely accessible to anyone who wishes to learn more about Rastafari and its significance for global Christianity.

David-Neel illustrates the point that there is much more to life than is found on the surface. Readers are initiated into powerful meditations, breathing exercises, the control of body heat, visions, shamanic magic and past life recollection.

"To the reader who is able to pierce the outer covering, this grand poem will reveal the deepest of esoteric teachings. Compiled and adapted from numerous old and new translations of the original Sanscrit text.

"Pentikainen s exceptional interdisciplinary study will richly reward those interested in the dynamics of artistic creation and cultural construction, ethnic emergence and political nationalism, and shamanistic belief systems." American Anthropologist

..". a splendid contribution to the literature on folk epics... " The Scandinavian-American Bulletin

The Kalevala, created during the 1830s and 1840s, is based on authentic folklore collected and compiled by Elias Lonnrot. It was the Kalevala that initiated the process leading to the foundation of Finnish identity during the nineteenth century and was, therefore, one of the crucial factors in the formation of Finland as a new nation in the twentieth century."

In this book the author explores Kalee Bhava, the Goddess, and her moods that were born out of torment and love crashing together to ignite life into existence.

An ethnographic study of voodoo in West Africa's Ewe populations of coastal Ghana, Togo, and Benin.

Pierce Brosnan was first offered the part of Bond in 1986, only to be prevented from taking it by contractual obligations to the television series Remington Steele. It wasn't until 1995 that he burst onto the big screen as the legendary James Bond in Goldeneye. To many, it was a part he was born to play. Brosnan decided to become an actor after seeing Goldfinger when he was ten, he married an ex-Bond girl and seems to have just the right combination of good looks, charm and single-mindedness for which James Bond was famed.

The following essay is an effort towards the freeing of our consciousness from the limitation in which it habitually dwells, and which exits only by means of certain illusions that are common to all men.

This jewel of which I am writing is no diamond dug out of the darkness of the earth, but is no less a thing than the mind of man when it has been drawn from the darkness of material life and become perfectly clear. This book is important to anyone interested in yoga.

John Gardner has worked in anthroposophy and Waldorf education for close to sixty years. The present volume collects some of his most striking thoughts on various aspects of education and adolescence viewed from the perspective of spiritual science. "It is a characteristic of youth, " he writes, "that what will later be accomplishment appears first as longing." This longing, which appears in manifold guises, is above all a longing for true forms of knowing. At the deepest levels, young people's thinking seeks to become imagination, their life of feeling to become inspiration, while in their sexuality, they experience the burgeoning seed of intuition. The leading question of education is how these longings are to be nurtured and cultivated so thai they fulfill their promise, and we grow up as free, responsible human beings able to care for each other and the greater life that sustains us. Such are the issues that John Gardner considers in this wise collection, which also includes reflections on such topics as discipline and the importance of play.

Ever since her early days at the Findhorn Community in Scotland, Dorothy Maclean has been helping people attune to nature and connect with their inner divinity. Now, in Choices of Love, she discusses the nature of divine love and how each of us can avail ourselves of its power to enrich any aspect of our lives.

The immensity of divine love, how to contact it, the nature of the Divine, blocks to understanding, the nature of good and evil, and the angelic world of nature and of human groupings such as cities, states, and nations, are among the topics Dorothy Maclean addresses.

The reader of Choices of Love will come away with a clearer understanding of themselves and the universal love of which we are all a part.

This anthology explores Rastafari religion, culture, and politics in Jamaica and other parts of the African diaspora. An Afro-Caribbean religious and cultural movement that sprang from the streets of Kingston, Jamaica and the 1930s, today Rastafari has close to one million adherents. The basic message of Rastafari -- the dismantling of all oppressive institutions and the liberation of humankind -- even has strong appeal to non-believers who are captivated by reggae music, the lyrics, and the \u0022immortal spirit\u0022 of its enormously popular practitioner, Bob Marley.Probing into Rastafari's still evolving belief system, political goals, and cultural expression, the contributors to this volume emphasize the importance of Africana history and the Caribbean context. \u0022Long before the term 'Afrocentricity' came into popular use in the United States, Jamaican Rastafarians had embraced the concept as the most important recipe for naming their reality and reclaiming their black heritage in the African diaspora.\u0022

Bound for the Promised Land is the first extensive examination of the impact on the American religious landscape of the Great Migration-the movement from South to North and from country to city by hundreds of thousands of African Americans following World War I. In focusing on this phenomenon's religious and cultural implications, Milton C. Sernett breaks with traditional patterns of historiography that analyze the migration in terms of socioeconomic considerations. Drawing on a range of sources-interviews, government documents, church periodicals, books, pamphlets, and articles-Sernett shows how the mass migration created an institutional crisis for black religious leaders. He describes the creative tensions that resulted when the southern migrants who saw their exodus as the Second Emancipation brought their religious beliefs and practices into northern cities such as Chicago, and traces the resulting emergence of the belief that black churches ought to be more than places for "praying and preaching." Explaining how this social gospel perspective came to dominate many of the classic studies of African American religion, Bound for the Promised Land sheds new light on various components of the development of black religion, including philanthropic endeavors to "modernize" the southern black rural church. In providing a balanced and holistic understanding of black religion in post-World War I America, Bound for the Promised Land serves to reveal the challenges presently confronting this vital component of America's religious mosaic.

"At a time when the New Age movement is starting to make good on the Spiritualists' vision of America as a 'grand clairvoyant nation', Carroll's work raises provocative questions about the tension betwen freedom and authority in the harmonial religions of today." Church History

..". offers the most comprehensive, sane examination of its topic yet available, no mean achievement for a subject long afflicted by religious partisanship and now perhaps in danger of sympathetic attraction." Journal of American History

..". fascinating reading it will be for those with a taste for good scholarly writing and a love of the American past and the manifold varieties of the spiritual quest." The Quest

"In addition to being an excellent introduction to mid-19th-century Spiritualism, Carroll s work also offers scholars a new vantage point from which to view the religious creativity that was so prominent in antebellum America in general." Choice

During the decade before the Civil War, a growing number of Americans gathered around tables in dimly lit rooms, joined hands, and sought enlightening contact with spirits. The result was Spiritualism, a distinctly colorful religious ideology centered on spirit communication and spirit activity. Spiritualism in Antebellum America analyzes the attempt by spiritually restless Americans of the 1840s and 1850s to negotiate a satisfying combination of freedom and authority as they sought a sense of harmony with the universe."