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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian religions > Pre-Christian European & Mediterranean religions
How did an ancient mythological figure who stole fire from the gods
become a face of the modern, lending his name to trailblazing
spaceships and radical publishing outfits alike? How did Prometheus
come to represent a notion of civilizational progress through
revolution-scientific, political, and spiritual-and thereby to
center nothing less than a myth of modernity itself ? The answer
Black Prometheus gives is that certain features of the myth-its
geographical associations, iconography of bodily suffering, and
function as a limit case in a long tradition of absolutist
political theology-made it ripe for revival and reinvention in a
historical moment in which freedom itself was racialized, in what
was the Age both of Atlantic revolution and Atlantic slavery.
Contained in the various incarnations of the modern
Prometheus-whether in Mary Shelley's esoteric novel, Frankenstein,
Denmark Vesey's real-world recruitment of slave rebels, or popular
travelogues representing Muslim jihadists against the Russian
empire in the Caucasus- is a profound debate about the means and
ends of liberation in our globalized world. Tracing the titan's
rehabilitation and unprecedented exaltation in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries across a range of genres and geographies turns
out to provide a way to rethink the relationship between race,
religion, and modernity and to interrogate the Eurocentric and
secularist assumptions of our deepest intellectual traditions of
critique.
How have the goddesses of ancient myth survived, prevalent even now
as literary and cultural icons? How do allegory, symbolic
interpretation, and political context transform the goddess from
her regional and individual identity into a goddess of philosophy
and literature? Emilie Kutash explores these questions, beginning
from the premise that cultural memory, a collective cultural and
social phenomenon, can last thousands of years. Kutash demonstrates
a continuing practice of interpreting and allegorizing ancient
myths, tracing these goddesses of archaic origin through history.
Chapters follow the goddesses from their ancient near eastern
prototypes, to their place in the epic poetry, drama and hymns of
classical Greece, to their appearance in Platonic and Neoplatonic
philosophy, Medieval allegory, and their association with
Christendom. Finally, Kutash considers how goddesses were made into
Jungian archetypes, and how some contemporary feminists made them a
counterfoil to male divinity, thereby addressing the continued role
of goddesses in perpetuating gender binaries.
The emergence of the cult of Osiris is, in most cases, dated to the
end of the 5th dynasty, the period in which the name of Osiris
appears in writing, and it is commonly held that before this period
not a trace of the cult can be discerned. This study is intended to
investigate whether this emergence was really so sudden, or if
there is evidence to suggest this appearance was preceded by a
period of development of the theology and mythology of the cult.
One of the most important aspects of the mythology of the cult is
the rebirth of Osiris. In the theology of the cult this rebirth was
projected on mortal men, and led to the postulation that every
human being, whether royal or non-royal, had the possibility to
attain eternal life after death. What made this cult even more
attractive is that this eternal life was not confined to the tomb,
as it used to be for non-royalty. The study is concerned with the
rebirth possibilities of non-royal persons and aims to determine
the chronological development of the rebirth connotations of the
various decoration themes that were used in the chapel of Old
Kingdom tombs. The decoration themes that are the subject of the
determinations are the group of bed-scenes consisting of the
bed-making scene and the marital bed-scene, the development in form
and length of the bread loaves on the offering table, the different
aspects of the scenes in which the "lotus" flower is depicted, and
the marsh scenes.
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H of H Playbook
(Hardcover)
Anne Carson; Illustrated by Anne Carson
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R619
R503
Discovery Miles 5 030
Save R116 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'Fans of Anne Carson, rejoice!... Carson's depth of knowledge about
Greek mythology coupled with her poetic sensibility and
illustrations is sure to breathe new life into this oft-told
story.' Lit Hub H of H Playbook is an explosion of thought, in
drawings and language, about a Greek tragedy called Herakles by the
5th-century BC poet Euripides. In myth Herakles is an embodiment of
manly violence who returns home after years of making war on
enemies and monsters (his famous "Labours of Herakles") to find he
cannot adapt himself to a life of peacetime domesticity. He goes
berserk and murders his whole family. Suicide is his next idea.
Amazingly, this does not happen. Due to the intervention of his
friend Theseus, Herakles comes to believe he is not, after all,
indelibly stained by his own crimes, nor is his life without value.
It remains for the reader to judge this redemptive outcome. "I
think there is no such thing as an innocent landscape," said Anselm
Kiefer, painter of forests grown tall on bones.
From the turn of the fifth century to the beginning of the
eighteenth, Christian writers were fascinated and troubled by the
"Problem of Paganism," which this book identifies and examines for
the first time. How could the wisdom and virtue of the great
thinkers of antiquity be reconciled with the fact that they were
pagans and, many thought, damned? Related questions were raised by
encounters with contemporary pagans in northern Europe, Mongolia,
and, later, America and China. Pagans and Philosophers explores how
writers--philosophers and theologians, but also poets such as
Dante, Chaucer, and Langland, and travelers such as Las Casas and
Ricci--tackled the Problem of Paganism. Augustine and Boethius set
its terms, while Peter Abelard and John of Salisbury were important
early advocates of pagan wisdom and virtue. University theologians
such as Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Bradwardine, and later
thinkers such as Ficino, Valla, More, Bayle, and Leibniz, explored
the difficulty in depth. Meanwhile, Albert the Great inspired
Boethius of Dacia and others to create a relativist conception of
scientific knowledge that allowed Christian teachers to remain
faithful Aristotelians. At the same time, early anthropologists
such as John of Piano Carpini, John Mandeville, and Montaigne
developed other sorts of relativism in response to the issue. A
sweeping and original account of an important but neglected chapter
in Western intellectual history, Pagans and Philosophers provides a
new perspective on nothing less than the entire period between the
classical and the modern world.
A thorough explanation of Celtic history and beliefs is followed by
an analysis of their view and its modern relevance. After all, it's
the religion we all used to follow in the West. Massively
comprehensive but very accessible, all students of religion and
serious seekers will find this definitive guide to what Druid means
and how to be one today.
The Babylonian Talmud is full of stories of demonic encounters, and
it also includes many laws that attempt to regulate such
encounters. In this book, Sara Ronis takes the reader on a journey
across the rabbinic canon, exploring how late antique rabbis
imagined, feared, and controlled demons. Ronis contextualizes the
Talmud's thought within the rich cultural matrix of Sasanian
Babylonia, placing rabbinic thinking in conversation with Sumerian,
Akkadian, Ugaritic, Syriac Christian, Zoroastrian, and Second
Temple Jewish texts about demons to delve into the interactive
communal context in which the rabbis created boundaries between the
human and the supernatural, and between themselves and other
religious communities. Demons in the Details explores the wide
range of ways that the rabbis participated in broader discussions
about beliefs and practices with their neighbors, out of which they
created a profoundly Jewish demonology.
As Christian spaces and agents assumed prominent positions in civic
life, the end of the long span of the fourth century was marked by
large-scale religious change. Churches had overtaken once-thriving
pagan temples, old civic priesthoods were replaced by prominent
bishops, and the rituals of the city were directed toward the
Christian God. Such changes were particularly pronounced in the
newly established city of Constantinople, where elites from various
groups contended to control civic and imperial religion. Rebecca
Stephens Falcasantos argues that imperial Christianity was in fact
a manifestation of traditional Roman religious structures. In
particular, she explores how deeply established habits of ritual
engagement in shared social spaces-ones that resonated with
imperial ideology and appealed to the memories of previous
generations-constructed meaning to create a new imperial religious
identity. By examining three dynamics-ritual performance, rhetoric
around violence, and the preservation and curation of civic
memory-she distinguishes the role of Christian practice in
transforming the civic and cultic landscapes of the late antique
polis.
Ancient Greek Religion: Historical Sources in Translation presents
a wide range of documents relating to the religious world of the
ancient Greeks from the earliest surviving literature to around the
end of the fourth century BCE. Presents a wide range of documents
relating to the religious world of the ancient Greeks, from the
earliest surviving literature to around the end of the fourth
century BCE Provides extensive background information for readers
with no previous knowledge of classical studies Brings together new
and rare passages for comparison - with occasional new
interpretations - to appeal to professionals Offers a variety of
less frequently examined material and looks at familiar texts in
new ways Includes the use of extensive cross-referencing to
indicate the interconnectedness of different aspects of religious
practice and thought Includes the most comprehensive commentary and
updated passages available in a single volume
After centuries of near silence, Latin poetry underwent a
renaissance in the late fourth and fifth centuries CE evidenced in
the works of key figures such as Ausonius, Claudian, Prudentius,
and Paulinus of Nola. This period of resurgence marked a milestone
in the reception of the classics of late Republican and early
imperial poetry. In Classicism and Christianity in Late Antique
Latin Poetry, Philip Hardie explores the ways in which poets
writing on non-Christian and Christian subjects used the classical
traditions of Latin poetry to construct their relationship with
Rome's imperial past and present, and with the by now not-so-new
belief system of the state religion, Christianity. The book pays
particular attention to the themes of concord and discord, the
"cosmic sense" of late antiquity, novelty and renouatio, paradox
and miracle, and allegory. It is also a contribution to the ongoing
discussion of whether there is an identifiably late antique poetics
and a late antique practice of intertextuality. Not since Michael
Robert's classic The Jeweled Style has a single book had so much to
teach about the enduring power of Latin poetry in late antiquity.
Examining the power of hieroglyphic thinking--how thoughts create
reality--and the multiple meanings behind every word of power, the
author shows how, with the Neteru, we imagine the world into
existence, casting a spell of consciousness over the material
world. Uncovering the deep layers of meaning and symbol within the
myths of the Egyptian gods and goddesses, Ellis investigates the
shamanic journeys that ancient Egyptian priests used to view the
unconscious and the afterlife and shares their initiations for
immaculate conception, transubstantiation, resurrection, and
eternal life - initiations that later became part of the Christian
mystery school. Revealing the words of power used by these ancient
priests/sorcerers, she explains how to search for the deeper,
hidden truths beneath their spells and shows how ancient Egyptian
consciousness holds the secret of life itself. Revealing the
initiatory secrets of the Osirian Mystery school, Ellis provides
the essential teachings and shamanic tools needed to return to Zep
Tepi--the creative source--as we face the transitional time of
radical change currently at hand.
Was religious practice in ancient Rome cultic and hostile to
individual expression? Or was there, rather, considerable latitude
for individual initiative and creativity? Joerg Rupke, one of the
world's leading authorities on Roman religion, demonstrates in his
new book that it was a lived religion with individual
appropriations evident at the heart of such rituals as praying,
dedicating, making vows, and reading. On Roman Religion
definitively dismantles previous approaches that depicted religious
practice as uniform and static. Juxtaposing very different,
strategic, and even subversive forms of individuality with
traditions, their normative claims, and their institutional
protections, Rupke highlights the dynamic character of Rome's
religious institutions and traditions. In Rupke's view, lived
ancient religion is as much about variations or even outright
deviance as it is about attempts and failures to establish or
change rules and roles and to communicate them via priesthoods,
practices related to images or classified as magic, and literary
practices. Rupke analyzes observations of religious experience by
contemporary authors including Propertius, Ovid, and the author of
the "Shepherd of Hermas." These authors, in very different ways,
reflect on individual appropriation of religion among their
contemporaries, and they offer these reflections to their
readership or audiences. Rupke also concentrates on the ways in
which literary texts and inscriptions informed the practice of
rituals.
"Exploring Religion in Ancient Egypt "offers a stimulating
overview of the study of ancient Egyptian religion by examining
research drawn from beyond the customary boundaries of Egyptology
and shedding new light on entrenched assumptions.Discusses the
evolution of religion in ancient Egypt - a belief system that
endured for 3,000 yearsDispels several modern preconceptions about
ancient Egyptian religious practicesReveals how people in ancient
Egypt struggled to secure well-being in the present life and the
afterlife
Andrew N. Palmer's vivid translation of the Syriac Life of Barsauma
opens a fascinating window onto the ancient Middle East, seen
through the life and actions of one of its most dramatic and
ambiguous characters: the monk Barsauma, ascetic hero to some,
religious terrorist to others. The Life takes us into the eye of
the storm that raged around Christian attempts to define the nature
of Christ in the great Council of Chalcedon, the effect of which
was to split the growing Church irrevocably, with the Oriental
Orthodox on one side and Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic on the
other. Previously known only in extracts, this ancient text is now
finally brought to readers in its entirety, casting dramatic new
light on the relations among pagans, Jews, and Christians in the
Holy Land and on the role of religious violence, real or imagined,
in the mental world of a Middle East as shot through with conflict
as it is today.
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Pilgrimage Explored
(Hardcover)
J Stopford; Contributions by A. M. Koldeweij, Ben Nilson, Debra J. Birch, E.D. Hunt, …
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R2,184
Discovery Miles 21 840
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The history and underlying ideology of pilgrimage examined, from
prehistory to the middle ages. The enduring importance of
pilgrimage as an expression of human longing is explored in this
volume through three major themes: the antiquity of pilgrimage in
what became the Christian world; the mechanisms of Christian
pilgrimage(particularly in relation to the practicalities of the
journey and the workings of the shrine); and the fluidity and
adaptability of pilgrimage ideology. In their examination of
pilgrimage as part of western culture from neolithictimes onwards,
the authors make use of a range of approaches, often combining
evidence from a number of sources, including anthropology,
archaeology, history, folklore, margin illustrations and wall
paintings; they suggest that it is the fluidity of pilgrimage
ideology, combined with an adherence to supposedly traditional
physical observances, which has succeeded in maintaining its
relevance and retaining its identity. They also look at the ways in
whichpilgrimage spilled into, or rather was part of, secular life
in the middle ages. Dr JENNIE STOPFORD teaches in the Centre for
Medieval Studies, University of York. Contributors: RICHARD
BRADLEY, E.D. HUNT, JULIEANN SMITH, SIMON BARTON, WENDY R. CHILDS,
BEN NILSON, KATHERINE J. LEWIS, DEBRA J. BIRCH, SIMON COLEMAN, JOHN
ELSNER, A. M. KOLDEWEIJ.
Why did the Vikings sail to England? Were they indiscriminate
raiders, motivated solely by bloodlust and plunder? One narrative,
the stereotypical one, might have it so. But locked away in the
buried history of the British Isles are other, far richer and more
nuanced, stories; and these hidden tales paint a picture very
different from the ferocious pillagers of popular repute. In this
book, Eleanor Parker unlocks secrets that point to more complex
motivations within the marauding army that in the late-9th century
voyaged to the shores of eastern England in its sleek,
dragon-prowed longships. Exploring legends from forgotten medieval
texts, and across the varied Anglo-Saxon regions, she depicts
Vikings who came not just to raid but also to settle personal
feuds, intervene in English politics and find a place to call home.
Native tales reveal the links to famous Vikings like Ragnar
Lothbrok and his sons, Cnut, and Havelok the Dane. Each myth shows
how the legacy of the newcomers can still be traced in landscape,
place-names and local history. Meticulously researched and
elegantly argued, Dragon Lords uncovers the remarkable degree to
which England is Viking to its core.
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