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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies > Satanism & demonology
This is Laurence Gardner's final book, written shortly before his
death in 2010 and is the accompanying book to his Origin of God
(published 2011 by dash house publishing). Together with Origin of
God, this book outlines an irrefutable and searing indictment of
conventional belief and exposes the evils and absurdities
perpetuated over the millenia in the name of Christianity. In
Revelation of the Devil, Laurence Gardner traces the history of the
Devil, from its roots in Mesopotamia and the Old Testament all the
way up to the modern world of today. Travelling through the New
Testament, as well as the Koran, and then passing in turn through
the Inquisitions, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, he unmasks
what he has called "the myth of evil and the conspiracy of Satan."
For nearly 2,000 years a supernatural entity known as the Devil has
been held responsible by Church authorities for bringing sin and
wickedness into the world. Throughout this period, the Devil has
been portrayed as a constant protagonist of evil, although his
origin remains a mystery and his personality has undergone many
interpretive changes, prompting questions such as: If God is all
good and all powerful, then why does evil exist? How can it exist?
If God created everything, then where did the Devil come from? If
the Devil exists, then why does he not feature in any pre-Christian
document? Revelation of the Devil follows the Devil's sinister
history, in the manner of a biography, from his scriptural
introduction to the dark satanic cults of the present day. In a
strict chronological progression, we experience the mood of each
successive era as the Devil's image was constantly manipulated to
suit the changing motives of his creators in their bid for
threat-driven clerical control.
Examining the theme of child sacrifice as a psychological
challenge, this book applies a unique approach to religious ideas
by looking at beliefs and practices that are considered deviant,
but also make up part of mainstream religious discourse in Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity. Ancient religious mythology, which
survives through living traditions and transmitted narratives,
rituals, and writings, is filled with violent stories, often
involving the targeting of children as ritual victims. Christianity
offers Abraham's sacrifice and assures us that the "only begotten
son" has died, and then been resurrected. This version of the
sacrifice myth has dominated the West. It is celebrated in an act
of fantasy cannibalism, in which the believers share the divine
son's flesh and blood. This book makes the connection between
Satanism stories in the 1980s, the Blood Libel in Europe, The
Eucharist, and Eastern Mediterranean narratives of child sacrifice.
The Book of the Law, the holy text that forms the basis of Thelema,
was transmitted to Crowley by the entity known as Aiwass in Cairo,
on three successive days during April 1904. Acting as a medium,
Crowley recorded the communications on hotel notepads and later
organized his automatic writing into a short, coherent document.
Aiwass/Crowley presents The Book of the Law as an expression of
three god-forms in three chapters: Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit.
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Demoniality
(Hardcover)
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari, Montague Summers
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R510
Discovery Miles 5 100
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Ships in 12 - 19 working days
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The devil is the most charismatic and important figure in the blues
tradition. He's not just the music's namesake (""the devil's
music""), but a shadowy presence who haunts an imagined Mississippi
crossroads where, it is claimed, Delta bluesman Robert Johnson
traded away his soul in exchange for extraordinary prowess on the
guitar. Yet, as scholar and musician Adam Gussow argues, there is
much more to the story of the devil and the blues than these
cliched understandings. In this groundbreaking study, Gussow takes
the full measure of the devil's presence. Working from original
transcriptions of more than 125 recordings released during the past
ninety years, Gussow explores the varied uses to which black
southern blues people have put this trouble-sowing, love-wrecking,
but also empowering figure. The book culminates with a bold
reinterpretation of Johnson's music and a provocative investigation
of the way in which the citizens of Clarksdale, Mississippi,
managed to rebrand a commercial hub as ""the crossroads"" in 1999,
claiming Johnson and the devil as their own.
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