First and foremost, Witchcraft or Wicca is a religion. In "The Sabbats, "Edain McCoy reveals the eight major holidays of this faith and the many ways in which they are celebrated.
There are two basic types of holidays. The first come at the Solstices and Equinoxes. The others divide the time between those dates in two, resulting in eight major holidays or Sabbats with approximately the same amount of days between them. The balance, here, gives the appearance of spokes in a wheel, so this cycle is commonly called the Wheel of the Year.
The holidays represent two things. First, the harvest cycle. Each holiday represents a time in the growth of crops. From planting to growth, from harvesting to letting the lands lie fallow in the cold winter, the festivals follow the agricultural cycles of ancient times. However, they also represent the eternal love of the God and Goddess, following the God's birth from the Goddess and his death before she gives birth to him again. This also follows the pattern of the Sun which moves from warm and high in the sky to cold and low in the sky.
The book is filled with ways you can follow the Wheel of the Year, whether you work with a coven, with your family, or by yourself. You will learn the secrets of ritual construction and handicrafts appropriate to each of the festivals. You will also learn recipes for traditional foods for each holiday and even songs appropriate to the Sabbats.
This is a wonderful, joyous book filled with color, information, and wisdom. If you are involved with Paganism in any way, this book is a must for your studies and practices. This book functions as both a resource and as a practical manual for the celebration of the holidays. Get your copy today.

Few thinkers have been as influential as Augustine of Hippo. His writings, such as Confessions and City of God, have left an indelible mark on Western Christianity. He has become so synonymous with Christianity in the West that we easily forget he was a man of two cultures: African and Greco-Roman. The mixture of African Christianity and Greco-Roman rhetoric and philosophy gave his theology and ministry a unique potency in the cultural ferment of the late Roman empire. Augustine experienced what Latino/a theology calls mestizaje, which means being of a mixed background. Cuban American historian and theologian Justo Gonzalez looks at the life and legacy of Augustine from the perspective of his own Latino heritage and finds in the bishop of Hippo a remarkable resource for the church today. The mestizo Augustine can serve as a lens by which to see afresh not only the history of Christianity but also our own culturally diverse world.

An examination of the beliefs and history of the secretive Yezidi sect * Explains how the Yezidis worship Melek Ta'us, the Peacock Angel, an enigmatic figure often identified as "the devil" or Satan, yet who has been redeemed by God to rule a world of beauty and spiritual realization * Examines Yezidi antinomian doctrines of opposition, their cosmogony, their magical lore and taboos, the role of angels, ritual, and symbology, and how the Yezidi faith relates to other occult traditions such as alchemy * Presents the first English translation of the poetry of Caliph Yazid ibn Muawiya, venerated by the Yezidis as Sultan Ezi The Yezidis are an ancient people who live in the mountainous regions on the borders of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. This secretive culture worships Melek Ta'us, the Peacock Angel, an enigmatic figure often identified as "the devil" or Satan, hence the sect is known as devil-worshippers and has long been persecuted. Presenting a study of the interior, esoteric dimensions of Yezidism, Peter Lamborn Wilson examines the sect's antinomian doctrines of opposition, its magical lore and taboos, and its relation to other occult traditions such as alchemy. He explains how the historical founder of this sect was a Sufi of Ummayad descent, Sheik Adi ibn Musafir, who settled in this remote region around 1111 AD and found a pre-Islamic sect already settled there. Sheik Adi was so influenced by the original sect that he departed from orthodox Islam, and by the 15th century the sect was known to worship the Peacock Angel, Melek Ta'us, with all its "Satanic" connotations. Revealing the spiritual flowering that occurs in an oral culture, the author examines Yezidi cosmogony, how they are descended from the androgynous Adam--before Eve was created--as well as the role of angels, ritual, alchemy, symbology, and color in Yezidi religion. He also presents the first English translation of the poetry of Caliph Yazid ibn Muawiya, venerated by the Yezidis as Sultan Ezi. Showing the Yezidi sect to be a syncretic faith of pre-Islamic, Zoroastrian, Christian, Pagan, Sufi, and other influences, Wilson reveals how these worshippers of the Peacock Angel do indeed worship "the Devil"--but the devil is not "evil." God has redeemed him, and he rules a world of beauty and spiritual realization.

'Lively' THE TIMES 'Engrossing' THE SPECTATOR 'Stunning' WOMAN & HOME 'Marvellous' BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE Through ancient art, evocative myth, intriguing archaeological discoveries and philosophical explorations, Bettany Hughes takes us on a voyage of discovery to reveal the truth behind Venus, and why this immortal goddess is so much more than nudity, romance and sex. It is both the remarkable story of one of antiquity's most potent forces, and the story of human desire - how it transforms who we are and how we behave.

This engaging and accessible textbook provides an introduction to the study of ancient Jewish and Christian women in their Hellenistic and Roman contexts. This is the first textbook dedicated to introducing women's religious roles in Judaism and Christianity in a way that is accessible to undergraduates from all disciplines. The textbook provides brief, contextualising overviews that then allow for deeper explorations of specific topics in women's religion, including leadership, domestic ritual, women as readers and writers of scripture, and as innovators in their traditions. Using select examples from ancient sources, the textbook provides teachers and students with the raw tools to begin their own exploration of ancient religion. An introductory chapter provides an outline of common hermeneutics or "lenses" through which scholars approach the texts and artefacts of Judaism and Christianity in antiquity. The textbook also features a glossary of key terms, a list of further readings and discussion questions for each topic, and activities for classroom use. In short, the book is designed to be a complete, classroom-ready toolbox for teachers who may have never taught this subject as well as for those already familiar with it. Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean is intended for use in undergraduate classrooms, its target audience undergraduate students and their instructors, although Masters students may also find the book useful. In addition, the book is accessible and lively enough that religious communities' study groups and interested laypersons could employ the book for their own education.

This is the first book fully dedicated to Indian philosophical doxography. It examines the function such dialectical texts were intended to serve in the intellectual and religious life of their public. It looks at Indian doxography both as a witness of inter- and intra-sectarian dialogues and as a religious phenomenon. It argues that doxographies represent dialectical exercises, indicative of a peculiar religious attitude to plurality, and locate these 'exercises' within a known form of 'yoga' dedicated to the cultivation of 'knowledge' or 'gnosis' (jnana). Concretely, the book presents a critical examination of three Sanskrit doxographies: the Madhyamakah?dayakarika of the Buddhist Bhaviveka, the ?a?darsanasamuccaya of the Jain Haribhadra, and the Sarvasiddhantasa?graha attributed to the Advaitin Sa?kara, focusing on each of their respective presentation of the Mima?sa view. It is the first time that the genre of doxography is considered beyond its literary format to ponder its performative dimension, as a spiritual exercise. Theoretically broad, the book reaches out to academics in religious studies, Indian philosophy, Indology, and classical studies.

First published in 1949, Ancient Roman Religion is an introduction to some of the most outstanding features of the complicated religion, or rather series of religions, which flourished in Rome between the earliest recoverable ages of her long history and the close of the classical epoch. This book will be of interest students of religion, literature and history.

Attuned to the movements of nature, the Celts understood that all things are connected, and they "divined" answers to their queries as well as what the future holds from the animals, plants, the winds, and the seasons. Trees and animals had particular knowledge of past, present, and future. Through natural methods of divination, bards, healers, soothsayers, and holy women and men gained powers to see into the unseen. Stories and legends of their powers were told and retold, transmitting an enormous store of wisdom across the generations. In this oracle deck and guidebook, Rosemarie Anderson interprets Celtic myths and legends to create an oracle system of 64 cards featuring symbols from the ancient Celtic ways of knowing. The symbols represent three thousand years of Celtic culture and history, derived from archaeological excavations of Bronze and Iron Age Celtic sites throughout Europe and from the myths, folktales, and faery traditions still flourishing in rural Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The symbols of the cards represent cauldrons, spirals, leprechauns, faeries, animals, trees, the wondrous child (Cu Chulainn), the Sacred King, Cernunnos (the antlered god), the Morrigan (the raven goddess), Tir na nog (the Blessed Isles), and other imagery and figures from Celtic lore. The accompanying guidebook explores the meaning, symbology, and mythic background for each card, such as how the Triple-Mother Goddess (Card 1) represents magnificence and the primal goddess in all her aspects--maiden, mother, and crone. The guidebook also explores the Celtic worldview, the basic principles of Celtic divination, as well as how to use the oracle to receive answers to specific questions. Conveying the power and wisdom of the ancient Celtic ways of knowing, this oracle offers a hands-on way to gain insight into the hidden forces at play in our lives.

Jane Ellen Harrison (1850 1928) was a pioneer in the academic study of myth in its historical and archaeological context, and was also one of the first women to make a full-time career as an academic. In her introduction to this book (1903), making the point that 'Greek religion' was usually studied using the surviving literary retellings of myths and legends, she states: 'The first preliminary to any scientific understanding of Greek religion is a minute examination of its ritual'. Using the then emerging disciplines of anthropology and ethnology, she demonstrates that the specific mythological tales of the Greeks embody systems of belief or philosophy which are not unique to Greek civilisation but which are widespread among societies both 'primitive' and 'advanced'. Her work was enormously influential not only on subsequent scholars of Greek religion but in the wider fields of literature, anthropology and psychoanalysis.

Ancestor worship is often assumed by contemporary European audiences to be an outdated and primitive tradition with little relevance to our societies, past and present. This book questions that assumption and seeks to determine whether ancestor ideology was an integral part of religion in Viking Age and early medieval Scandinavia. The concept is examined from a broad socio-anthropological perspective, which is used to structure a set of case studies which analyse the cults of specific individuals in Old Norse literature. The situation of gods in Old Norse religion has been almost exclusively addressed in isolation from these socio-anthropological perspectives. The public gravemound cults of deceased rulers are discussed conventionally as cases of sacral kingship, and, more recently, religious ruler ideology; both are seen as having divine associations in Old Norse scholarship. Building on the anthropological framework, this study introduces the concept of 'superior ancestors', employed in social anthropology to denote a form of political ancestor worship used to regulate social structure deliberately. It suggests that Old Norse ruler ideology was based on conventional and widely recognised religious practices revolving around kinship and ancestors and that the gods were perceived as human ancestors belonging to elite families.

This collection of essays explores the rhetoric and practices surrounding views on life after death and the end of the world, including the fate of the individual, apocalyptic speculation and hope for cosmological renewal, in a wide range of societies from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Byzantine era. The 42 essays by leading scholars in each field explore the rich spectrum of ways in which eschatological understanding can be expressed, and for which purposes it can be used. Readers will gain new insight into the historical contexts, details, functions and impact of eschatological ideas and imagery in ancient texts and material culture from the twenty-fifth century BCE to the ninth century CE. Traditionally, the study of "eschatology" (and related concepts) has been pursued mainly by scholars of Jewish and Christian scripture. By broadening the disciplinary scope but remaining within the clearly defined geographical milieu of the Mediterranean, this volume enables its readers to note comparisons and contrasts, as well as exchanges of thought and transmission of eschatological ideas across Antiquity. Cross-referencing, high quality illustrations and extensive indexing contribute to a rich resource on a topic of contemporary interest and relevance. Eschatology in Antiquity is aimed at readers from a wide range of academic disciplines, as well as non-specialists including seminary students and religious leaders. The primary audience will comprise researchers in relevant fields including Biblical Studies, Classics and Ancient History, Ancient Philosophy, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Art History, Late Antiquity, Byzantine Studies and Cultural Studies. Care has been taken to ensure that the essays are accessible to undergraduates and those without specialist knowledge of particular subject areas.

The definitive and comprehensive edition of Robert Graves's classic retelling of the Greek myths 'Icarus disobeyed his father's instructions and began soaring towards the sun, rejoiced by the lift of his great sweeping wings. Presently, when Daedalus looked over his shoulder, he could no longer see Icarus; but scattered feathers floated on the waves below...' These are the greatest stories ever told - the labours of Hercules, the voyage of the Argonauts, Theseus and the minotaur, Midas and his golden touch, the Trojan War and Odysseus's journey home - brought together into one epic and unforgettable story. Ideal for the first time reader, it can be read as a single page-turning narrative, while full commentaries as well as a comprehensive index of names make it equally valuable for anyone seeking an authoritative and detailed account of the spectacular stories that make up the bedrock of Western literature. The Greek Myths is a classic among classics, a treasure trove of extraordinary tales and a masterful work of literature in its own right.

Beyond its housing estates and identikit high streets there is another Britain. This is the Britain of mist-drenched forests and unpredictable sea-frets: of wraith-like fog banks, druidic mistletoe and peculiar creatures that lurk, half-unseen, in the undergrowth, tantalising and teasing just at the periphery of human vision. How have the remarkably persistent folkloric traditions of the British Isles formed and been formed by the identities and psyches of those who inhabit them? In her sparkling new history, Carolyne Larrington explores the diverse ways in which a myriad of imaginary and fantastical beings has moulded the cultural history of the nation. Fairies, elves and goblins here tread purposefully, sometimes malignly, over an eerie, preternatural landscape that also conceals brownies, selkies, trows, knockers, boggarts, land-wights, Jack o'Lanterns, Barguests, the sinister Nuckleavee, or water-horse, and even Black Shuck: terrifying hell-hound of the Norfolk coast with eyes of burning coal. Focusing on liminal points where the boundaries between this world and that of the supernatural grow thin those marginal tide-banks, saltmarshes, floodplains, moors and rock-pools wherein mystery lies the author shows how mythologies of Mermen, Green men and Wild-men have helped and continue to help human beings deal with such ubiquitous concerns as love and lust, loss and death and continuity and change. Evoking the Wild Hunt, the ghostly bells of Lyonesse and the dread fenlands haunted by Grendel, and ranging the while from Shetland to Jersey and from Ireland to East Anglia, this is a book that will captivate all those who long for the wild places: the mountains and chasms where Gog, Magog and their fellow giants lie in wait."

'Thought-provoking and charmingly rendered.' Guardian Imagine a world where seductive male sirens lure brave heroines to their death, where Icara and her mother fly too close to the sun, and where beautiful men are forced to wed underworld queens... For thousands of years, Greek myths have been told and retold. In these stories, brutality and bravery are reserved for men, while women are wicked witches or helpless maidens. Today, these myths continue to shape our ideas about justice, tragedy and what makes a hero's journey. Karrie and Jonathan love these stories, and have found a way to breathe new life into them by making one crucial change... Following the incredible success of Gender Swapped Fairy Tales they have taken that same simple step. They haven't rewritten the stories in this book. They haven't reimagined the endings, or reinvented characters. What they have done is switch all the genders. You'll be enchanted by the refreshing world this swap creates - and thunderstruck by the new characters you're about to discover.

Addressing the close connections between ancient divination and knowledge, this volume offers an interlinked and detailed set of case studies which examine the epistemic value and significance of divination in ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Focusing on diverse types of divination, including oracles, astrology, and the reading of omens and signs in the entrails of sacrificial animals, chance utterances and other earthly and celestial phenomena, this volume reveals that divination was conceived of as a significant path to the attainment of insight and understanding by the ancient Greeks and Romans. It also explores the connections between divination and other branches of knowledge in Greco-Roman antiquity, such as medicine and ethnographic discourse. Drawing on anthropological studies of contemporary divination and exploring a wide range of ancient philosophical, historical, technical and literary evidence, chapters focus on the interconnections and close relationship between divine and human modes of knowledge, in relation to nuanced and subtle formulations of the blending of divine, cosmic and human agency; philosophical approaches towards and uses of divination (particularly within Platonism), including links between divination and time, ethics, and cosmology; and the relationship between divination and cultural discourses focusing on gender. The volume aims to catalyse new questions and approaches relating to these under-investigated areas of ancient Greek and Roman life. which have significant implications for the ways in which we understand and assess ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of epistemic value and variant ways of knowing, ancient philosophy and intellectual culture, lived, daily experience in the ancient world, and religious and ritual traditions. Divination and Knowledge in Greco-Roman Antiquity will be of particular relevance to researchers and students in classics, ancient history, ancient philosophy, religious studies and anthropology who are working on divination, lived religion and intellectual culture, but will also appeal to general readers who are interested in the widespread practice and significance of divination in the ancient world.

Join Egyptologist Garry J. Shaw on a tour up the Nile, through a beautiful and fascinating landscape populated with a rich mythology: the stories of Horus, Isis, Osiris, and their enemies and allies, tales of vengeance, tragedy, and fantastic metamorphoses. The myths of ancient Egypt have survived in fragments of ancient hymns and paintings on the walls of tombs and temples, spells inked across coffins and stories scrawled upon scrolls. Shaw not only retells these stories with his characteristic wit, but also reconnects them to the temples and monuments that still stand today, offering a fresh look at the most visited sites in Egypt. Shaw's evocative descriptions of the ancient ruins will transport you to another landscape - including the magnificent sites of Dendera, Tell el-Amarna, Edfu, and Thebes. At each site, discover which gods or goddesses were worshipped there, as well as the myths and stories that formed the backdrop to the rituals and customs of everyday life. Each chapter ends with a potted history of the site, as well as tips for visiting the ruins today. Illustrations throughout bring to life the creation of the world and the nebulous netherworld, the complicated relationships between fickle gods, powerful magicians and pharaohs, and eternal battles on a cosmic scale. This is the perfect companion to the myths of Egypt and the gods and goddesses that shaped its ancient landscape. With 58 illustrations

Kinyras, in Greco-Roman sources, is the central culture-hero of early Cyprus: legendary king, metallurge, Agamemnon's (faithless) ally, Aphrodite's priest, father of Myrrha and Adonis, rival of Apollo, ancestor of the Paphian priest-kings, and much more. Kinyras increased in depth and complexity with the demonstration in 1968 that Kinnaru-the divinized temple-lyre-was venerated at Ugarit, an important Late Bronze Age city just opposite Cyprus on the Syrian coast. John Curtis Franklin seeks to harmonize Kinyras as a mythological symbol of pre-Greek Cyprus with what is known of ritual music and deified instruments in the Bronze Age Near East, using evidence going back to early Mesopotamia. Franklin addresses issues of ethnicity and identity; migration and colonization, especially the Aegean diaspora to Cyprus, Cilicia, and Philistia in the Early Iron Age; cultural interface of Hellenic, Eteocypriot, and Levantine groups on Cyprus; early Greek poetics, epic memory, and myth-making; performance traditions and music archaeology; royal ideology and ritual poetics; and a host of specific philological and historical issues arising from the collation of classical and Near Eastern sources. Kinyras includes a vital background study of divinized balang-harps in Mesopotamia by Wolfgang Heimpel. This paperback edition contains minor corrections, while retaining the foldout maps of the original hardback edition as spreads, alongside illustrations and artwork by Glynnis Fawkes.

Giving access to the latest critical thinking on the subject, Medea is a comprehensive guide to sources that paints a vivid portrait of the Greek sorceress Medea, famed in myth for the murder of her children after she is banished from her own home and replaced by a new wife. Emma Griffiths brings into focus previously unexplored themes of the Medea myth, and provides an incisive introduction to the story and its history.

Studying Medea 's everywoman status one that has caused many intricacies of her tale to be overlooked Griffiths places the story in ancient and modern context and reveals fascinating insights into ancient Greece and its ideology, the importance of life, the role of women and the position of the outsider.

In clear, user-friendly terms, the book situates the myth within analytical frameworks such as psychoanalysis, and Griffiths highlights Medea 's position in current classical study as well as her lasting appeal.

This book is an exploration of the ideals and values of the ascetic and monastic life, as expressed through clothes. Clothes are often seen as an extension of us as humans, a determinant of who we are and how we experience and interact with the world. In this way, they can play a significant role in the embodied and material aspects of religious practice. The focus of this book is on clothing and garments among ancient monastics and ascetics in Egypt, but with a broader outlook to the general meaning and function of clothes in religion. The garments of the Egyptian ascetics and monastics are important because they belong to a period of transition in the history of Christianity and very much represent this way of living. This study combines a cognitive perspective on clothes with an attempt to grasp the embodied experiences of being clothed, as well as viewing clothes as potential actors. Using sources such as travelogues, biographies, letters, contracts, images, and garments from monastic burials, the role of clothes is brought into conversation with material religion more generally. This unique study builds links between ancient and contemporary uses of religious clothing. It will, therefore, be of interest to any scholar of religious studies, religious history, religion in antiquity, and material religion.

What stories, mysteries and secrets can you find in the stars? A wonderful illustrated tour of the night sky for children aged 5+ years. Lara Hawthorne's beautiful illustrations take the reader on one of the most fascinating journeys that humankind has ever made and one that is common to us all. From ancient Egyptians building the pyramids, to early Polynesian sailors criss-crossing the Pacific Ocean, and astronauts travelling into space, the night sky has guided and inspired people across the world, and throughout time. Now it's your turn to look to the skies and discover the mysteries they hide. For fans of Usborne's Big Books of Stars and Planets and Dr Emily Grossman's World-Whizzing Facts!

Published in 1987: This posthumous publication (1902) on the important Miscellanies of Clement, includes the complete Greek text of Book Seven with English translation and detailed notes. This is preceded by an extensive introduction based on the editor's lectures, discussing Christianity and philosophy in Clement's foundational work, which relates to a Victorian debate concerning the supposed pollution of 'pure' Christianity by 'alien' Greek thought. The Editor argued that not only had Hellenism been present from the earliest days of Christianity, but also that the interaction between the two had resulted in a 'de-secularization of philosophy'. He also emphasised Clement's view that the archetypal Christian ought to live 'as much by prayer and love as by knowledge and thought'.

The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths explores and compares the most influential sets of divine myths in Western culture: the Homeric pantheon and Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. Heath argues that not only does the God of the Old Testament bear a striking resemblance to the Olympians, but also that the Homeric system rejected by the Judeo-Christian tradition offers a better model for the human condition. The universe depicted by Homer and populated by his gods is one that creates a unique and powerful responsibility - almost directly counter to that evoked by the Bible-for humans to discover ethical norms, accept death as a necessary human limit, develop compassion to mitigate a tragic existence, appreciate frankly both the glory and dangers of sex, and embrace and respond courageously to an indifferent universe that was clearly not designed for human dominion. Heath builds on recent work in biblical and classical studies to examine the contemporary value of mythical deities. Judeo-Christian theologians over the millennia have tried to explain away Yahweh's Olympian nature while dismissing the Homeric deities for the same reason Greek philosophers abandoned them: they don't live up to preconceptions of what a deity should be. In particular, the Homeric gods are disappointingly plural, anthropomorphic, and amoral (at best). But Heath argues that Homer's polytheistic apparatus challenges us to live meaningfully without any help from the divine. In other words, to live well in Homer's tragic world - an insight gleaned by Achilles, the hero of the Iliad - one must live as if there were no gods at all. The Bible, Homer, and the Search for Meaning in Ancient Myths should change the conversation academics in classics, biblical studies, theology and philosophy have - especially between disciplines - about the gods of early Greek epic, while reframing on a more popular level the discussion of the role of ancient myth in shaping a thoughtful life.

'A great storyteller' Madeline Miller, author of Circe In this powerful new collection, Charlotte Higgins foregrounds Greek mythology's most enduring heroines. Here are the myths of Heracles and Theseus, the Trojan war, Thebes and Argos and Athens. They are stories of love and desire, adventure and magic, destructive gods, helpless humans, fantastical creatures and resourceful witches. In this telling the female characters take centre stage as Athena, Helen, Circe, Penelope and others weave these stories into elaborate imagined tapestries. In Charlotte Higgins's thrilling new interpretation of these ancient stories, their tales combine to form a dazzling, sweeping epic of storytelling. With a series of original drawings by Chris Ofili.

This book examines the ways in which lived religion in Roman Italy involved personal and communal experiences of the religious agency generated when ritualised activities caused human and more-than-human things to become bundled together into relational assemblages. Drawing upon broadly posthumanist and new materialist theories concerning the thingliness of things, it sets out to re-evaluate the role of the material world within Roman religion and to offer new perspectives on the formation of multi-scalar forms of ancient religious knowledge. It explores what happens when a materially informed approach is systematically applied to the investigation of typical questions about Roman religion such as: What did Romans understand 'religion' to mean? What did religious experiences allow people to understand about the material world and their own place within it? How were experiences of ritual connected with shared beliefs or concepts about the relationship between the mortal and divine worlds? How was divinity constructed and perceived? To answer these questions, it gathers and evaluates archaeological evidence associated with a series of case studies. Each of these focuses on a key component of the ritualised assemblages shown to have produced Roman religious agency - place, objects, bodies, and divinity - and centres on an examination of experiences of lived religion as it related to the contexts of monumentalised sanctuaries, cult instruments used in public sacrifice, anatomical votive offerings, cult images and the qualities of divinity, and magic as a situationally specific form of religious knowledge. By breaking down and then reconstructing the ritualised assemblages that generated and sustained Roman religion, this book makes the case for adopting a material approach to the study of ancient lived religion.

The book offers a critical investigation of a wide range of features of religious discourse in the transmitted forensic, symbouleutic and epideictic orations of the Ten Attic Orators, a body of 151 speeches which represents the mature flourishing of the ancient art of public speaking and persuasion. Serafim focuses on how the intersections between such religious discourse and the political, legal and civic institutions of classical Athens help to shed new light on polis identity-building and the construction of an imagined community in three institutional contexts - the law court, the Assembly and the Boule: a community that unites its members and defines the ways in which they make decisions. After a full-scale survey of the persistently and recurrently used features of religious discourse in Attic oratory, he contextualizes and explains the use of specific patterns of religious discourse in specific oratorical contexts, examining the means or restrictions that these contexts generate for the speaker. In doing so, he explores the cognitive/emotional and physical/sensory reactions of the speaker and the audience when religious stimuli are provided in orations, and how this contributes to the construction of civic and political identity in classical Athens. Religious Discourse in Attic Oratory and Politics will be of interest to anyone working on classical Athens, particularly its legal institutions, on ancient rhetoric, and ancient Greek religion and politics.