This exploration of cultural resilience examines the complex fate of classical Egyptian religion during the centuries from the period when Christianity first made its appearance in Egypt to when it became the region's dominant religion (roughly 100 to 600 C.E. Taking into account the full range of witnesses to continuing native piety--from papyri and saints' lives to archaeology and terracotta figurines--and drawing on anthropological studies of folk religion, David Frankfurter argues that the religion of Pharonic Egypt did not die out as early as has been supposed but was instead relegated from political centers to village and home, where it continued a vigorous existence for centuries.

In analyzing the fate of the Egyptian oracle and of the priesthoods, the function of magical texts, and the dynamics of domestic cults, Frankfurter describes how an ancient culture maintained itself while also being transformed through influences such as Hellenism, Roman government, and Christian dominance. Recognizing the special characteristics of Egypt, which differentiated it from the other Mediterranean cultures that were undergoing simultaneous social and political changes, he departs from the traditional "decline of paganism/triumph of Christianity" model most often used to describe the Roman period. By revealing late Egyptian religion in its Egyptian historical context, he moves us away from scenarios of Christian triumph and shows us how long and how energetically pagan worship survived.

From even before the time of Alexander the Great, the Greek gods spread throughout the Mediterranean, carried by settlers and largely adopted by the indigenous populations. By the third century b.c., gods bearing Greek names were worshipped everywhere from Spain to Afghanistan, with the resulting religious systems a variable blend of Greek and indigenous elements. Greek Gods Abroad examines the interaction between Greek religion and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean with which it came into contact. Robert Parker shows how Greek conventions for naming gods were extended and adapted and provides bold new insights into religious and psychological values across the Mediterranean. The result is a rich portrait of ancient polytheism as it was practiced over 600 years of history.

In this beautifully-written guide, Chief Druid Philip Carr-Gomm shows how the way of Druids can be followed today. He explains-- The ancient history and inspiring beliefs of the ancient Druids-- Druidic wild wisdom and their tree-, animal- and herb-lore-- The mysteries of the Druids' seasonal celebrations-- The Druids' use of magic and how their spirituality relates to paths such as Wicca. This guide will show how the wild wisdom of the Druids can help us to connect with our spirituality, our innate creativity, the natural world and our sense of ancestry. The life-enhancing beliefs and practices of this spiritual path have much to offer our 21st-century world.

In the ancient realm of the Celts, the seer was a person who opened a window to reveal a complete view of the cosmos, in which the otherworld and the everyday world interconnect. This was the essence of true perception and wisdom, known as glefiosa, or 'bright knowledge'. For the seer, the babbling of the stream, the swaying of treetops in the wind, the hunting and foraging of animals are all brimful of deeper meaning. The Art of Celtic Seership shows how to connect with this visionary wisdom, nurture it in ourselves and harness it to live in harmony with each other and with the earth, and to bring profound insight and understanding to our day-to-day existence. It describes the tools and techniques of the druids, bards and seers of old, and explains how we too can draw inspiration from the natural world and open ourselves to developing our prophetic and visionary powers. Practical exercises include calling upon your ancestors, working with your dreams, cultivating a connection with the faery folk, experimenting with trance states, entering into the consciousness of the stones, trees and other natural features around you, asking a question of the universe and listening to the reply and reading omens and signs in the symbols you encounter through the day.

"Primitive Man as Philosopher" is influential anthropologist and ethnologist Paul Radin's enduringly relevant survey of an array of aboriginal cultures and belief systems, including those of the Winnebago, Oglala Sioux, Maori, Banda, the Buin of Melanesia, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Zuni, and Ewe. Radin examines the conditioning of thought and religion practiced among the members of each society and the freedom of individuals to deviate from the group and to affect change. Written in a straightforward, almost conversational style, Radin's discourse is rooted in firsthand accounts. He allows his subjects to speak for themselves by quoting extensively from interviews (many of which he conducted in the course of his own fieldwork), and includes a veritable anthology of poems and songs from the varied traditions. Radin, known in his field for his honesty and integrity, offers brilliant interpretations of myth and symbolism in his exploration of their deeper meanings in each culture. Readers both in and out of the field will appreciate the rich and varied insights of this classic of anthropology. Celebrated anthropologist Neni Panourgiá provides a new introduction to this landmark and pioneering work.

We change and develop 'the past' with narrative, and we create 'the future' by re-mixing the stored elements in order to continue it onwards. All the verbal tenses cluster around the same mighty place, the same source of narrative and mythic significance. The people had a name for this place: the Well of Urdhr, Anglo-Saxon wyrd, one of three Norns of fate, Urdhr, Verdhandi and Skuld, who cluster around the Well. These Norns are mighty beings, beyond and above the gods, in the sense that they are eternal and know the fates, the rise and fall of the gods themselves. They are watchers of the Well and helpers to the Tree. The Tree, which contains all the worlds in present time, all the branches of the Now, is nourished at its roots by the Well's waters. 'Bright From the Well' consists of five stories plus five essays and a rune-poem. The stories revolve around themes from Norse myth - the marriage of Frey and Gerd, the story of how Gullveig-Heidh reveals her powers to the gods, a modern take on the social-origins myth Rig's Tale, Loki attending a pagan pub moot and the Ragnarok seen through the eyes of an ancient shaman. The essays include examination of the Norse creation or origins story, of the magician in or against the world and a chaoist's magical experiences looked at from the standpoint of Northern magic.' Dave Lee coaches breathwork, writes fiction and non-fiction, blends incenses and oils, creates music and collage.

A free open access ebook is upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Flight during times of persecution has a long and fraught history in early Christianity. In the third century, bishops who fled were considered cowards or, worse yet, heretics. On the face, flight meant denial of Christ and thus betrayal of faith and community. But by the fourth century, the terms of persecution changed as Christianity became the favored cult of the Roman Empire. Prominent Christians who fled and survived became founders and influencers of Christianity over time. Bishops in Flight examines the various ways these episcopal leaders both appealed to and altered the discourse of Christian flight to defend their status as purveyors of Christian truth, even when their exiles appeared to condemn them. Their stories illuminate how profoundly Christian authors deployed theological discourse and the rhetoric of heresy to respond to the phenomenal political instability of the fourth and fifth centuries.

A divination tool to connect with guides from the Egyptian pantheon
- A 35-card deck with original artwork by award-winning illustrator Kris Waldherr
- Guidebook includes detailed card interpretations and 8 divinatory spreads
- By the authors of "Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt: Awakening the Healing Power of the Heart"
"The Anubis Oracle" is a shamanic guide to inner Egypt, a place of mystery, ancestral wisdom, and abiding love that resides within each of us. It is a place where the "neteru"--the archetypal deities and elemental spirits from the Egyptian pantheon--lead us on our journey of transformation, a journey designed to open our hearts and teach us the inner workings of the soul.
The full-color deck contains a Key Card, a card for each of the 22 deities and 4 elements, and 8 composite cards that portray several deities together. These composites represent 8 major portals of initiation and complex archetypal relationships. The accompanying book provides detailed interpretations for each card and instructions for 8 divinatory spreads that include entering into the mystery, achieving higher love and wisdom, and identifying our sacred purpose. By divining with the neteru, the shaman within awakens. This allows the neteru to reveal the answers we seek in our personal lives and in our interactions with the world by connecting us with the wisdom, guidance, and shamanic mysteries of Egypt that live within us.

When Oedipus met the Sphinx on the road to Thebes, he did more than answer a riddle - he spawned a myth that, told and retold, would become one of Western culture's central narratives about self-understanding. Identifying the story as a threshold myth - in which the hero crosses over into an unknown and dangerous realm where rules and limits are not known - Oedipus and the Sphinx offers a fresh account of this mythic encounter and how it deals with the concepts of liminality and otherness. Almut-Barbara Renger assesses the story's meanings and functions in classical antiquity - from its presence in ancient vase painting to its absence in Sophocles' tragedy - before arriving at two of its major reworkings in European modernity: the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and the poetics of Jean Cocteau. Through her readings, she highlights the ambiguous status of the Sphinx and reveals Oedipus himself to be a liminal creature, providing key insights into Sophocles' portrayal and establishing a theoretical framework that organizes evaluations of the myth's reception in the twentieth century. Revealing the narrative of Oedipus and the Sphinx to be the very paradigm of a key transition experienced by all of humankind, Renger situates myth between the competing claims of science and art in an engagement that has important implications for current debates in literary studies, psychoanalytic theory, cultural history, and aesthetics.

Although it has long been acknowledged that the early Irish literary corpus preserves both pre-Christian and Christian elements, the challenges involved in the understanding of these different strata have not been subjected to critical examination. This volume draws attention to the importance of reconsidering the relationship between religion and mythology, as well as the concept of 'Celtic religion' itself. When scholars are attempting to construct the so-called 'Celtic' belief system, what counts as 'religion'? Or, when labelling something as 'religion' as opposed to 'mythology', what do these entities entail? This volume is the first interdisciplinary collection of articles which critically reevaluates the methodological challenges of the study of 'Celtic religion'; the authors are eminent scholars in the field of Celtic Studies representing the disciplines of theology, literary studies, history, law and archaeology, and the book represents a significant contribution to the present scholarly debate concerning the pre-Christian elements in early medieval source materials. Contents 1 Introduction: 'Celtic Religion': Is this a Valid Concept?, Alexandra Bergholm and Katja Ritari 2 Celtic Spells and Counterspells, Jacqueline Borsje (available Open Access at the University of Amsterdam Digital Academic Repository) 3 The Gods of Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, John Carey 4 Staging the Otherworld in Medieval Irish Literature, Joseph Falaky Nagy 5 The Biblical Dimension of Early Medieval Latin Texts, Thomas O'Loughlin 6 Ancient Irish Law Revisited: Rereading the Laws of Status and Franchise, Robin Chapman Stacey 7 A Dirty Window on the Iron Age? Recent Developments in the Archaeology of Pre-Roman Celtic Religion, Jane Webster

The ancient Athenians were "quarrelsome as friends, treacherous as neighbors, brutal as masters, faithless as servants, shallow as lovers--all of which was in part redeemed by their intelligence and creativity." Thus writes Philip Slater in this classic work on narcissism and family relationships in fifth-century Athenian society. Exploring a rich corpus of Greek mythology and drama, he argues that the personalities and social behavior of the gods were neurotic, and that their neurotic conditions must have mirrored the family life of the people who perpetuated their myths. The author traces the issue of narcissism to mother-son relationships, focusing primarily on the literary representation of Hera and the male gods and showing how it related to devalued women raising boys in an ambitious society dominated by men. "The role of homosexuality in society, fatherless families, working mothers, women's status, and violence, male pride, and male bonding--all these find their place in Slater's analysis, so honestly and carefully addressed that we see our own societal dilemmas reflected in archaic mythic narratives all the more clearly."--Richard P. Martin, Princeton University Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.

Throughout history, the relationship between Jews and their land has been a vibrant, much-debated topic within the Jewish world and in international political discourse. Identity and Territory explores how ancient conceptions of Israel-of both the land itself and its shifting frontiers and borders-have played a decisive role in forming national and religious identities across the millennia. Through the works of Second Temple period Jews and rabbinic literature, Eyal Ben-Eliyahu examines the role of territorial status, boundaries, mental maps, and holy sites, drawing comparisons to popular Jewish and Christian perceptions of space. Showing how space defines nationhood and how Jewish identity influences perceptions of space, Ben-Eliyahu uncovers varied understandings of the land that resonate with contemporary views of the relationship between territory and ideology.

Javier Teixidor has found evidence that belief in a supreme god developed during the first millennium B.C. The Phoenician and Aramaic inscriptions he discusses indicate a trend toward monotheism that facilitated the spread of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The author concludes that the traditional characteristics of the popular religions were preserved during this period and that the Hellenistic culture and the mystery cults did not have a significant effect on popular piety. Here, then, is a major reinterpretation of the religious life of the Near East in the Greco-Roman period based on a reliable source of information. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A scholarly account of the views on the nature of God held by Greek philosophers up to the time of Socrates. Originally published in 1937. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In recent years, the topic of ancient Greek hero cult has been the focus of considerable discussion among classicists. Little attention, however, has been paid to female heroized figures. Here Deborah Lyons argues for the heroine as a distinct category in ancient Greek religious ideology and daily practice. The heroine, she believes, must be located within a network of relations between male and female, mortal and immortal. Using evidence ranging from Homeric epic to Attic vase painting to ancient travel writing, she attempts to re-integrate the feminine into our picture of Greek notions of the hero. According to Lyons, heroines differ from male heroes in several crucial ways, among which is the ability to cross the boundaries between mortal and immortal. She further shows that attention to heroines clarifies fundamental Greek ideas of mortal/immortal relationships. The book first discusses heroines both in relation to heroes and as a separate religious and mythic phenomenon. It examines the cultural meanings of heroines in ritual and representation, their use as examples for mortals, and their typical "biographies." The model of "ritual antagonism," in which two mythic figures represented as hostile share a cult, is ultimately modified through an exploration of the mythic correspondences between the god Dionysos and the heroines surrounding him, and through a rethinking of the relationship between Iphigeneia and Artemis. An appendix, which identifies more than five hundred heroines, rounds out this lively work. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

What did Zeus mean to the Greeks? And who was Hera, united with Zeus historically and archetypally as if they were a human pair? C. Kerenyi fills a gap in our knowledge of the religious history of Europe by responding to these questions. Examining the word Zeus and its Greek synonyms theos and daimon, the author traces the origins of Greek religion in the Minoan-Mycenacan civilization. He shows how Homer's view of the gods decisively shaped the literary and artistic tradition of Greek divine mythology. The emergence of the Olympian family is seen as the expression of a humane Zeus cult determined by the father image but formed within the domain of Hera. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.