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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian religions > Pre-Christian European & Mediterranean religions
In Classical Greece women were almost entirely excluded from public life. Yet the feminine was accorded a central place in religious thought and ritual. This volume explores the often paradoxical centrality of the feminine in Greek culture, showing how out of sight was not out of mind. The contributors adopt perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, such as archaeology, art history, psychology and anthropology, in order to investigate various aspects of religion and cult. They include the part played by women in death ritual, the role of the heroines, and the fact that goddesses had no childhood, at the same time posing questions about how we know what rituals meant to their participants. The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece is a lively and colourful exploration of the ways in which religion and ritual reveal women's importance in the Greek polis, showing how ideologies about female roles and behaviour were both endorsed and challenged in the realm of the sacred.
The fascinating untold story of how the ancients imagined robots
and other forms of artificial life-and even invented real automated
machines The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant
called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics
Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500
years ago, long before medieval automata, and centuries before
technology made self-moving devices possible, Greek mythology was
exploring ideas about creating artificial life-and grappling with
still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, "life through
craft." In this compelling, richly illustrated book, Adrienne Mayor
tells the fascinating story of how ancient Greek, Roman, Indian,
and Chinese myths envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving
devices, and human enhancements-and how these visions relate to and
reflect the ancient invention of real animated machines. As early
as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants, animated statues,
and even ancient versions of Artificial Intelligence, while in
Indian legend, Buddha's precious relics were defended by robot
warriors copied from Greco-Roman designs for real automata. Mythic
automata appear in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, Medea,
Daedalus, Prometheus, and Pandora, and many of these machines are
described as being built with the same materials and methods that
human artisans used to make tools and statues. And, indeed, many
sophisticated animated devices were actually built in antiquity,
reaching a climax with the creation of a host of automata in the
ancient city of learning, Alexandria, the original Silicon Valley.
A groundbreaking account of the earliest expressions of the
timeless impulse to create artificial life, Gods and Robots reveals
how some of today's most advanced innovations in robotics and AI
were foreshadowed in ancient myth-and how science has always been
driven by imagination. This is mythology for the age of AI.
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Ishtar
(Hardcover)
Louise Pryke
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R4,595
Discovery Miles 45 950
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Ishtar is the first book dedicated to providing an accessible
analysis of the mythology and image of this complex goddess. The
polarity of her nature is reflected in her role as goddess of
sexual love and war, and has made her difficult to characterise in
modern scholarship. By exploring this complexity, Ishtar offers
insight into Mesopotamian culture and thought, and elucidates a
goddess who transcended the limits of gender, divinity and nature.
It gives an accessible introduction to the Near Eastern pantheon,
while also opening a pathway for comparison with the later Near
Eastern and Mediterranean deities who followed her.
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.
Unknown until it was discovered by archaeologists on the Temple of the Sun, the mystic Egyptian horoscopes are divided into 12 signs, each one ruled by a different Egyptian god. This extraordinary system is 4000 years old, but Storm Constantine, a recognised authority on Egyptian Mythology, brings it right up to date, with telling new insights into your personality. After extensive research, she has extrapolated the personalities of the gods and godesses and interpreted this ancient system for today's readers. For each sign, she reveals:the positive and negative characteristics of each sign• advice on maintaining health and the most suitable job• how to relate to partner, child, or friend according to their sign• your fate and fortune through the year.
Ever since its domestication, the horse has played a central
role in the history of mankind. This multifunctional animal was
responsible for revolutionizing transportation and fighting
techniques, which led ultimately to significant social, economic
and cultural changes. "Horses in Celtic Culture "examines a
fascinating topic that to date has received very little attention
from historians and literary specialists.
Druidism was the religion of the Celts and the Druids themselves
were all-powerful, taking precedence over the Celtic kings. Over
and above the evidence of classical texts and of archaeology, the
richest source of information about the Druids is the vernacular
material from Ireland and Wales. It is the author's unparalleled
familiarity with the Gaelic texts, and her ability to see Druidism
through Celtic eyes, that marks out this study from earlier books
and strips away modern myths about the Druids.
In an innovative sequence of topics, Ken Dowden explores the uses Greeks made of myth and the uses to which we can put myth in recovering the richness of their culture. Most aspects of Greek life and history - including war, religion and sexuality - which are discernable through myth, as well as most modern approaches, are given a context in a book which is designed to be useful, accessible and stimulating. eBook available with sample pages: 0203138570
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."
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.
Journey to a hauntingly beautiful fairyland steeped in Celtic
lore. Vivid, luminescent scenes vibrate with significant detail,
deep meaning, and sheer beauty. Not everyone is lucky enough to
experience these magical creatures firsthand, but this tarot will
draw you into a unique realm of fey wisdom and guidance.
The legends of the Norse and Germanic regions of Europe--spanning
from Germany and Austria across Scandinavia to Iceland and
England--include a broad range of mythical characters and places,
from Odin and Thor, to berserkers and Valhalla, to the Valkyries
and Krampus. In this encyclopedia, Claude Lecouteux explores the
origins, connections, and tales behind many gods, goddesses,
magical beings, rituals, folk customs, and mythical places of Norse
and Germanic tradition. More than a reference to the Aesir and the
Vanir pantheons, this encyclopedia draws upon a wealth of
well-known and rare sources, such as the Poetic Edda, the Saga of
Ynglingar by Snorri Sturluson, and The Deeds of the Danes by Saxo
Grammaticus. The author describes the worship of the elements and
trees, details many magical rituals, and shares wild folktales from
ancient Europe, such as the strange adventure of Peter Schlemihl
and the tale of the Cursed Huntsman. He also dispels the false
beliefs that have arisen from the Nazi hijacking of Germanic
mythology and from its longtime suppression by Christianity.
Complete with rare illustrations and information from obscure
sources appearing for the first time in English, this detailed
reference work represents an excellent resource for scholars and
those seeking to reconnect to their pagan pasts and restore the old
religion.
More than 100,000 copies sold in France A fascinating new journey
through Greek mythology that explains the myths' timeless lessons
and meaning Heroes, gods, and mortals. The Greek myths are the
founding narratives of Western civilization: to understand them is
to know the origins of philosophy, literature, art, science, law,
and more. Indeed, as Luc Ferry shows in this masterful book, they
remain a great store of wisdom, as relevant to our lives today as
ever before. No mere legends or cliches ("Herculean task,"
"Pandora's box," "Achilles heel," etc.), these classic stories
offer profound and manifold lessons, providing the first sustained
attempt to answer fundamental human questions concerning "the good
life," the burden of mortality, and how to find one's place in the
world. Vividly retelling the great tales of mythology and
illuminating fresh new ways of understanding them, The Wisdom of
the Myths will enlighten readers of all ages.
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 revised edition of West's revolutionary reinterpretation of
the civilization of Egypt challenges all that has been accpeted as
dogma concerning this ancient and enigmatic land. It features a new
introduction linking Egyptian science with the perennial wisdom
tradition and an appendix updating the author's work in redating
the Sphinx. Illustrations.
With contributions spanning from the Neolithic Age to the Iron Age,
this book offers important insights into the religions and ritual
practices in ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern communities through
the lenses of their material remains. The book begins with a
theoretical introduction to the concept of material religion and
features editor introductions to each of its six parts, which
tackle the following themes: the human body; religious
architecture; the written word; sacred images; the spirituality of
animals; and the sacred role of the landscape. Illustrated with
over 100 images, chapters provide insight into every element of
religion and materiality, from the largest building to the smallest
amulet. This is a benchmark work for further studies on material
religion in the ancient Near East and Egypt.
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.
Giovanni Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Pagan Gods is an ambitious
work of humanistic scholarship whose goal is to plunder ancient and
medieval literary sources so as to create a massive synthesis of
Greek and Roman mythology. The work also contains a famous defense
of the value of studying ancient pagan poetry in a Christian world.
The complete work in fifteen books contains a meticulously
organized genealogical tree identifying approximately 950
Greco-Roman mythological figures. The scope is enormous: 723
chapters include over a thousand citations from two hundred Greek,
Roman, medieval, and Trecento authors. Throughout the Genealogy,
Boccaccio deploys an array of allegorical, historical, and
philological critiques of the ancient myths and their iconography.
Much more than a mere compilation of pagan myths, the Genealogy
incorporates hundreds of excerpts from and comments on ancient
poetry, illustrative of the new spirit of philological and cultural
inquiry emerging in the early Renaissance. It is at once the most
ambitious work of literary scholarship of the early Renaissance and
a demonstration to contemporaries of the moral and cultural value
of studying ancient poetry. This is the first volume of a projected
three-volume set of Boccaccio's complete Genealogy.
The only work of its kind to survive from classical antiquity, the
Library of Apollodorus is a unique guide to Greek mythology, from
the origins of the universe to the Trojan War.
Apollodorus' Library has been used as a source book by classicists
from the time of its compilation in the 1st-2nd century BC to the
present, influencing writers from antiquity to Robert Graves. It
provides a complete history of Greek myth, telling the story of
each of the great families of heroic mythology, and the various
adventures associated with the main heroes and heroines, from Jason
and Perseus to Heracles and Helen of Troy. As a primary source for
Greek myth, as a reference work, and as an indication of how the
Greeks themselves viewed their mythical traditions, the Library is
indispensable to anyone who has an interest in classical mythology.
Robin Hard's accessible and fluent translation is supplemented by
comprehensive notes, a map and full genealogical tables. The
introduction gives a detailed account of the Library's sources and
situates it within the fascinating narrative traditions of Greek
mythology.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has
made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the
globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to
scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of
other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading
authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date
bibliographies for further study, and much more.
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
The best-selling, essential, and straightforward translation of the
Homeric Hymns, accompanied by an expanded introduction and updated
expert notes. A rich source for students of Greek mythology and
literature, the Homeric Hymns are also fine poetry. Attributed by
the ancients to Homer, these prooimia, or preludes, were actually
composed by various poets over centuries. They were performed at
religious festivals as entertainment meant to stir up enthusiasm
for far more ambitious compositions that followed them, namely the
Iliad and Odyssey. Each of the thirty-three poems is written in
honor of a Greek god or goddess. Together, the hymns provide a
fascinating view into the ancients' view of deities. In this
long-awaited third edition of his acclaimed translations of the
hymns, Apostolos Athanassakis preserves the vigor and the magic of
the ancient text while modernizing traditional renditions of
certain epithets and formulaic phrases. He avoids lengthening or
truncating lines, thereby crafting a symmetrical text, and makes an
effort to keep to an iambic flow without sacrificing accuracy.
Athanassakis enhances his classic work with a new index of names
and topics, updated bibliography, revised genealogical charts, and
careful and selective changes in the translations themselves. An
expanded introduction addresses ancient reception of the hymns.
Numerous additions to the notes, reflecting over twenty-five years
of scholarship, draw on modern anthropological and archaeological
research to explore prominent themes and religious syncretism
within the poems. These materials all enrich the reader's
experience of these ancient and influential poems. A perennial
classroom favorite, The Homeric Hymns embodies thrilling new
visions of antiquity.
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