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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian religions > Pre-Christian European & Mediterranean religions
The twentieth century has seen a remarkable revival of 'the Old Religion, ' as adherents of New-paganism call the native religious traditions of Europe and tribal traditions from North America that predated Christianity. Many neo-pagan groups identify with Celtic (Druidic), Egyptian, Native American, Norse, or Roman traditions; others with modern science-fiction motifs; and still others with witchcraft. Neo-paganism is occultic in nature. A central figure in much of Neo-paganism is the Mother Goddess, who has been introduced and worshiped among certain feminists even in some mainline Protestant churches. Why this series? This is an age when countless groups and movements, old and new, mark the religious landscape in our culture, leaving many people confused or uncertain in their search for spiritual truth and meaning. Because few people have the time or opportunity to research these movements fully, these books provide essential information and insights for their spiritual journeys. Each book has five sections: - A concise introduction to the group - An overview of the group's theology -- in its own words - Tips for witnessing effectively to members of the group - A bibliography with sources for further study - A comparison chart that shows the essential differences between biblical Christianity and the group -- The writers of these volumes are well qualified to present clear and reliable information and help us discern religious truth from falsehood. This is an age when countless groups and movements, new and old, mark the religious landscape in our culture. As a result, many people are confused or uncertain in their search for spiritual truth and meaning. Because few people have the time or opportunity to research these movements fully, the Zondervan Guide to Cults and Religious Movements series provides essential information and insights for their spiritual journeys. The second wave of books in this series addresses a broad range of spiritual beliefs, from non-Trinitarian Christian sects to witchcraft and neo-paganism to classic non-Christian religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. All books but the summary volume, Truth and Error, contain five sections: -A concise introduction to the group being surveyed -An overview of the group s theology --- in its own words -Tips for witnessing effectively to members of the group -A bibliography with sources for further study -A comparison chart that shows the essential differences between biblical Christianity and the group -- Truth and Error, the last book in the series, consists of parallel doctrinal charts compiled from all the other volumes. Three distinctives make this series especially useful to readers: -Information is carefully distilled to bring out truly essential points, rather than requiring readers to sift their way through a sea of secondary details. -Information is presented in a clear, easy-to-follow outline form with menu bar running heads. This format greatly assists the reader in quickly locating topics and details of interest. -Each book meets the needs and skill levels of both nontechnical and technical readers, providing an elementary level of refutation and progressing to a more advanced level using arguments based on the biblical text. The writers of these volumes are well qualified to present clear and reliable information and help readers to discern truth from falsehood."
In this comprehensive book Michael Witzel persuasively demonstrates the prehistoric origins of most of the mythologies of Eurasia and the Americas ('Laurasia'). By comparing these myths with others indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa, Melanesia, and Australia ('Gondwana Land') Witzel is able to access some of the earliest myths told by humans. The Laurasian mythologies share a common story line that dates the world's creation to a mythic time and recounts the fortunes of generations of deities across four or five ages and human beings' creation and fall, culminating in the end of the universe and, occasionally, hope for a new world. These stories are contrasted with the 'southern' mythologies, which lack most of these features. Witzel's investigations are buttressed by archaeological data, as well as by comparative linguistics, and human population genetics. All suggest the African origins of anatomically modern humans and their subsequent journey along Indian Ocean shores, up to Australia and southern China, around 60,000 BCE. These itinerants' early mythology survives partly in sub-Saharan Africa and points along the path - the Andaman Islands, Melansia, and Australia. Laurasian mythology, Witzel shows, developed along this vast trail, probably in southwest Asia, around 40,000 BCE. Identifying features shared by virtually all mythologies of the globe, Witzel suggests that these features probably informed myths recounted by the communities of the 'African Eve.' As such, they are the earliest substantiation of our ultimate ancestors' spirituality. Moreover the Laurasian myths' key features, Witzel shows, survive today in all major religions and their multiple ideological offshoots.
From stories of resurrected mummies and thousand-year-old curses to
powerful pharaohs and the coveted treasures of the Great Pyramids,
ancient Egypt has had an unfaltering grip on the modern
imagination. Now, in Egyptian Mythology, Geraldine Pinch offers a
comprehensive introduction that untangles the mystery of Egyptian
Myth.
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 is the first survey of religious beliefs in the British Isles from the Old Stone Age to the coming of Christianity, one of the least familiar periods in Britaina s history. Ronald Hutton draws upon a wealth of new data, much of it archaeological, that has transformed interpretation over the past decade. Giving more or less equal weight to all periods, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, he examines a fascinating range of evidence for Celtic and Romano--British paganism, from burial sites, cairns, megaliths and causeways, to carvings, figurines, jewellery, weapons, votive objects, literary texts and folklore.
This 75th anniversary edition of a classic bestseller is stunningly illustrated and designed to enchant fans of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology at all ages. Since its original publication by Little, Brown and Company in 1942, Edith Hamilton's Mythology has sold millions of copies throughout the world and established itself as a perennial bestseller. For more than seven decades readers have chosen this book above all others to discover the enchanting world of mythology -- from Odysseus's adventure-filled journey to the Norse god Odin's effort to postpone the final day of doom. This deluxe, hardcover edition is fully-illustrated throughout with all-new, specially commissioned art, making it a true collector's item.
A Companion to Greek Mythology presents a series of essays that explore the phenomenon of Greek myth from its origins in shared Indo-European story patterns and the Greeks contacts with their Eastern Mediterranean neighbours through its development as a shared language and thought-system for the Greco-Roman world. * Features essays from a prestigious international team of literary experts * Includes coverage of Greek myth s intersection with history, philosophy and religion * Introduces readers to topics in mythology that are often inaccessible to non-specialists * Addresses the Hellenistic and Roman periods as well as Archaic and Classical Greece
Discover the most legendary story ever told in the SUNDAY TIMES bestseller TROY, Stephen Fry's most epic book yet 'An inimitable retelling of the siege of Troy . . . Fry's narrative, artfully humorous and rich in detail, breathes life and contemporary relevance into these ancient tales' OBSERVER 'An amiable meander through the myth of Troy' TIMES 'Troy. The most marvellous kingdom in all the world. The Jewel of the Aegean. Glittering Ilion, the city that rose and fell not once but twice . . .' _______ The story of Troy speaks to all of us. It is the kidnapping of Helen, a queen celebrated for her beauty, which sees the Greeks launch a thousand ships against that great city, to which they will lay siege for ten whole and very bloody years. It is Zeus, the king of the gods, who triggers war when he asks the Trojan prince Paris to judge the fairest goddess of them all. Aphrodite bribes Paris with the heart of Helen, wife of King Menelaus of the Greeks, and nature takes its course. It is a terrible, brutal war with casualties on all sides. The Greeks cannot defeat the Trojans - since Achilles, the Greek's boldest warrior, is consumed with jealousy over an ally's choice of lover and will not fight . . . The stage is set for the oldest and greatest story ever told, where monstrous passions meet the highest ideals and the lowest cunning. In Troy you will find heroism and hatred, revenge and regret, desire and despair. It is these human passions, written bloodily in the sands of a distant shore, that still speak to us today. Troy is a myth in which we seek the truth about ourselves, which Stephen Fry brings breathtakingly to life for our modern age. *** NOW COMES WITH A PROTECTIVE DUST JACKET *** _______ 'Fry's knowledge of the world - ancient and modern - bursts through at the seams . . . The reader will find themselves on a fun romp through the world's greatest story' DAILY TELEGRAPH PRAISE FOR MYTHOS AND HEROES: 'A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased' Times 'A head-spinning marathon of legends' Guardian 'An Olympian feat. The gods seem to be smiling on Fry - his myths are definitely a hit' Evening Standard 'An odyssey through Greek mythology. Brilliant . . . all hail Stephen Fry' Daily Mail 'A rollicking good read' Independent
God is unbounded. God became flesh. While these two assertions are equally viable parts of Western Christian religious heritage, they stand in tension with one another. Fearful of reducing God's majesty with shallow anthropomorphisms, philosophy and religion affirm that God, as an eternal being, stands wholly apart from creation. Yet the legacy of the incarnation complicates this view of the incorporeal divine, affirming a very different image of God in physical embodiment. While for many today the idea of an embodied God seems simplisticaeven pedestrianaChristoph Markschies reveals that in antiquity, the educated and uneducated alike subscribed to this very idea. More surprisingly, the idea that God had a body was held by both polytheists and monotheists. Platonic misgivings about divine corporeality entered the church early on, but it was only with the advent of medieval scholasticism that the idea that God has a body became scandalous, an idea still lingering today. In God's Body Markschies traces the shape of the divine form in late antiquity. This exploration follows the development of ideas of God's corporeality in Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions. In antiquity, gods were often like humans, which proved to be important for philosophical reflection and for worship. Markschies considers how a cultic environment nurtured, and transformed, Jewish and Christian descriptions of the divine, as well as how philosophical debates over the connection of body and soul in humanity provided a conceptual framework for imagining God. Markschies probes the connections between this lively culture of religious practice and philosophical speculation and the christological formulations of the church to discover how the dichotomy of an incarnate God and a fleshless God came to be. By studying the religious and cultural past, Markschies reveals a Jewish and Christian heritage alien to modern sensibilities, as well as a God who is less alien to the human experience than much of Western thought has imagined. Since the almighty God who made all creation has also lived in that creation, the biblical idea of humankind as image of God should be taken seriously and not restricted to the conceptual world but rather applied to the whole person.
This is the second of three volumes, first published in 1906, which explore the Egyptian theology of the afterlife. It contains the complete hieroglyphic text of the short form of the Am-Tuat and of the Book of Gates, with translations and reproductions of all the illustrations. In the Book of Gates the doctrines of the sophisticated cult of Osiris are prominent: they affirm that the beatified live for ever in the kingdom of Osiris, and feed daily upon his eternal body. The object of all the Books of the Other World was to provide the dead with a 'guide' or 'handbook,' containing a description of the regions through which their souls would have to pass on their way to the Kingdom of Osiris, and which would supply them with the words of power and magical names necessary for an unimpeded journey from this world to the next.
A complete guide to the techniques of the pre-Celtic Druids for understanding the past, present, and future In this practical guide, Jon G. Hughes shares ancient secret Druidic techniques of divination passed down to him across five generations in an unbroken lineage of influential Welsh Druids. Hughes explains the three forms of divination used by his tradition: interpretive divination, used by readers of the Sevens (small staves with engraved sigils); inductive divination, which includes instructions for reading the wind, reading smoke, and divination using water; and intuitive divination, whose tools includes cup-stones and slate mirrors for scrying. Providing step-by-step instructions for practices in each of the three forms, he offers a wealth of divinatory techniques and explains how to access the altered states of consciousness necessary to read time backward and forward. He also explores the crafting and use of all tools and mixtures the reader will need to perform each type of divination, including botanical compounds, scrying wands, and a slate speculum vitae, the "mirror of life." He reveals how the prime function of divination in this school of Druidic lore is to gain insight into past, present, and future events through a process of internalizing them, akin to empathy, and then interpreting them. By providing an understanding of pre-Celtic beliefs and clear instructions for Druidic practices, Hughes offers each of us the opportunity to begin our own practical experimentation and journey of discovery into the ancient art of Druidic divination.
In Isis in a Global Empire, Lindsey Mazurek explores the growing popularity of Egyptian gods and its impact on Greek identity in the Roman Empire. Bringing together archaeological, art historical, and textual evidence, she demonstrates how the diverse devotees of gods such as Isis and Sarapis considered Greek ethnicity in ways that differed significantly from those of the Greek male elites whose opinions have long shaped our understanding of Roman Greece. These ideas were expressed in various ways - sculptures of Egyptian deities rendered in a Greek style, hymns to Isis that grounded her in Greek geography and mythology, funerary portraits that depicted devotees dressed as Isis, and sanctuaries that used natural and artistic features to evoke stereotypes of the Nile. Mazurek's volume offers a fresh, material history of ancient globalization, one that highlights the role that religion played in the self-identification of provincial Romans and their place in the Mediterranean world.
This book explores the development of tombs as a cultural phenomenon in ancient Egypt and examines what tombs reveal about ancient Egyptian culture and Egyptians belief in the afterlife. * Investigates the roles of tombs in the development of funerary practices * Draws on a range of data, including architecture, artifacts and texts * Discusses tombs within the context of everyday life in Ancient Egypt * Stresses the importance of the tomb as an eternal expression of the self
From around 750BC to 12BC, the Celts were the most powerful people in central and northern Europe. With the expansion of the Roman Empire and the later Christianization of these lands, they were pushed to the fringes of north-western Spain, France and the British Isles. But there the mythology of these peoples held strong. The tales from Celtic myth were noted down and also absorbed into other cultures. From Roman and Christian scribes we know of characters like Morrigan the shape-shifting queen, who could change herself from a crow to a wolf, Cu Chulainn, who, mortally wounded in battle, tied himself with his own intestines to a rock so that he'd die standing up, and the Cauldron of Bran, which could restore life. Other than being fascinating in their own right, Celtic legends are of interest for the influence they had over subsequent mythologies. The story of the Holy Grail first appears in medieval romances but its antecedents can be found in the Celtic tale, the Mabinogion. Illustrated with more than 180 artworks and photographs and maps, Celtic Myths is an expertly written account of the mythological tales that both fascinate us and influence other writings.
In this unique survey of the indigenous pre-Christian and pre-Muslim religions of Central Asia, Julian Baldick-one of the foremost authorities on global comparative religion-describes a common inheritance among the beliefs of the various peoples who have lived in central Asia. In ancient times these peoples shared remarkable commonalities in forms of worship and spiritual expression, all largely based on the role of animals in their lives. The harsh physical climate of the region led to an emphasis on hunting and animals, and shamans relied heavily on animal sacrifices to create spiritual purity. As a result, animals and spirituality became intertwined. The animal focused characteristics of the region's forms of worship have not only survived in the legends of the area but have found their way into the mythologies of the West. Baldick proposes that the myths and rituals of Central Asia served as possible foundations for such great works as the Odyssey, the Gospels, and Beowulf. This classic work surveying ancient pagan religion is now available in paperback with a new afterword offering fresh insights on the field. It will fascinate readers with interests ranging from Asian Studies and anthropology to religion and literary studies.
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