The Raelians came to the attention of the world in 2002 when the spokesperson for Clonaid, a company founded by Raelian followers, announced that the first human clone had been born--a claim that although has not been independently substantiated, prompted outrage and condemnation from scientists, religious organizations, and the White House. Aliens Adored is the first full length, in-depth look at the Raelian movement, a fascinating new religion founded in the 1970s by charismatic prophet, Rael. Born in France as Claude Vorilhon, the former race-car driver started the religion after he experienced a visitation from the aliens (the "elohim") who, in his cosmology, created humans by cloning themselves. The millenarian movement awaits the return of the alien creators, and in the meantime seeks to develop the potential of its adherents through free love, sexual experimentation, opposition to nuclear proliferation and war, and the development of the science of cloning. Sociologist Susan J. Palmer has studied the Raelian movement for more than a decade, observing meetings and rituals, and enjoying unprecedented access to the group's leaders as well as to its rank-and-file members. In Aliens Adored she provides a thorough analysis of the movement, focusing on issues of sexuality, millenarianism, and the impact of the scientific worldview on religion and the environment. Palmer traces Rael's philosophy and the formation of the Raelian subculture. Rael's radical sexual ethics, his gnostic anthropocentricism, and shallow ecotheology offer us a mirror through which we see how our worldviews have been shaped by the forces of globalization, postmodernism, and secular humanism.

Written with a rare combination of analysis and speculation, this comprehensive study of Javanese religion is one of the few books on the religion of a non-Western people which emphasizes variation and conflict in belief as well as similarity and harmony. The reader becomes aware of the intricacy and depth of Javanese spiritual life and the problems of political and social integration reflected in the religion.
"The Religion of Java" will interest specialists in Southeast Asia, anthropologists and sociologists concerned with the social analysis of religious belief and ideology, students of comparative religion, and civil servants dealing with governmental policy toward Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

In this book you can discover the hidden and mystical secrets in Christianity. Few people realise that great mystical secrets lie hidden within the teachings of Christianity, secrets to the laws of the universe and their application to our lives. The Occult Christ reveals Christianity's origin in the tradition of the Ancient Mystery Schools from around the world. The true Christ Mysteries were a cosmic effort to restore the power and mysticism of the Divine on a personal level. One of its goals was to acknowledge and reaffirm the role of the Divine Feminine within the world and within us. They reveal how to access great power through the sacred festivals of the seasons - times in which the veils between the physical and the spiritual are thinnest. They show a way for greater self-realisation that will enhance all spiritual faiths and endeavours. The Occult Christ will breathe new life into your spiritual foundations and help you to walk the road of shadows where secret knowledge of the soul dwells. prosperity; discover the occult meaning of the cross and star; discover the 7 masculine and 7 feminine mysteries of spiritual initiation; discover the hidden significance of people and events in the life of the historical Jesus; work and commune with angelic hierarchies; and, gain insight into the psychic phenomena of scriptures, along with the Qabalistic teachings.

Here is a complete translation of all the published cuneiform tablets of the various Babylonian creation stories, of both the Semitic Babylonian and the Sumerian material. Each creation account is preceded by a brief introduction dealing with the age and provenance of the tablets, the aim and purpose of the story, etc. Also included is a translation and discussion of two Babylonian creation versions written in Greek. The final chapter presents a detailed examination of the Babylonian creation accounts in their relation to our Old Testament literature.

"Christopher White's "Unsettled Minds "makes clear how important new psychologies of religion were for those Protestants navigating their way out of Calvinism and evangelical revivalism. Just as his religious liberals remapped mind and spirit, White has remapped the historical terrain of religion and psychology in American culture. He spotlights not a cultural world absorbed with ecstasy, altered states, or mythic depths, but instead one riveted on measured stages of spiritual growth and effective habits of self-discipline."--Leigh Eric Schmidt, Princeton University
"An important contribution to the growing literature on the history of religious experience and of the distinctive dynamics of Christian interiority in the modern U.S."--Robert Orsi, Northwestern University
"Today, when brain researchers and psychologists are again attempting to explain religion, this remarkable study suggests that we should not be surprised to see religious believers creatively embracing new scientific findings and making use of them for religious purposes unexpected by scientists."--Ann Taves, author of "Fits, Trances, and Visions"

In "Kwaio Religion," Roger Keesing examines how the Kwaio, challenged by 110 years of European colonialism and now by the militant Christianity of their own rapidly Westernizing nation, have managed to continue their ancestral ways. Drawing on fieldwork carried out over a lost 20 years, Keesing explores the phenomenological reality of world where one's group includes the living and the dead, where conversations with the spirits, and the sing of their presence and acts, are very much a part of everyday life. He describes conceptions of "mana" and "tabu" that shed revealing light on old issues regarding Oceanic religion. Keesing situates the elegant though largely implicit structures of Kwaio cosmology within a framework of the "political economy of knowledge," examining the distribution of expertise in the community and the uses of religion as ideology, and asking how symbolic systems are perpetuated and changed. Questioning some currently fashionable anthropological approaches to symbolism, myth, ritual, and cosmology--approaches Keesing characterizes as "cultural cryptography"-- "Kwaio Religion" challenges common assumptions about cultural symbols and shared meanings.

Black Elk was one of the greatest religious thinkers produced by native North America, and the Sun Dance the central religious ritual of his Lakota tradition. Beginning with a review of the recent critical work on Black Elk by Paul B. Steinmetz, Julian Rice and Michael K. Steltenkamp, Holler reconstructs the history and development of the Lakota Sun Dance, essential background for understanding Black Elk's thought. His analysis is a comprehsnive study of the dance, which was banned by the government in 1883. Holler shows how Black Elk adapted the dance to the conditions and circumstances of reservation life, reinterpreting it in terms commensurate with Christianity. His firsthand account of the dance associated with Frank Fools Crow at Three Mile Camp near Kyle, South Dakota, shows how the contemporary Sun Dance reflects Black Elk's vision. Holler's book offers a philosophical engagement with native North American religion, carried out in close dialogue with anthropology. Readers who were captivated by John G. Neihardt's gripping portrait of Black Elk in ""Black Elk Speaks"" may be surprised to learn that he was a vital and creative leader until his death in 1950, not the broken, despairing old man made famous by Neihardt. Holler establishes that Black Elk was both a sincere traditionalist and a sincere Christian, seeing the two religious traditions as expressions of the sacred. Students of religion should be stimulated by Holler's interpretation of Black Elk as a creative thinker, rather than a passive informant on his people's past. Those interested in Native Americans, especially the Lakota, should appreciate his authoritative reconstruction of the Sun Dance, which proposes new understandings of this central Lakota religious ritual. The book also includes a glossary of terms.