Everyone prays. But no one finds it easy. We all need a little help. Pete Greig has been teaching on prayer - and leading a non-stop prayer movement - for twenty years. Now, for the first time, he puts his life's work into a response to the question everybody ultimately asks: how do I pray? This down-to-earth introduction to life's greatest adventure will guide you deeper in your relationship with God, helping you to become more centred and still, clearer in discerning God's voice, more able to make sense of your disappointments and more expectant for miraculous breakthroughs too. It's full of honest, hard-won wisdom interspersed with real-life stories - some humorous, others moving - to equip and inspire your prayer life. Journeying through the Lord's Prayer, and accompanied by online videos from The Prayer Course, which has been used by more than a million people, it unpacks nine essential aspects of prayer: stillness, adoration, petition, intercession, perseverance, contemplation, listening, confession and spiritual authority. From one of today's most visionary communicators, for those who've been praying for years as well as those who want to pray but don't know where to begin, How to Pray is the simple, life-changing guide you've been waiting for.

With an Introduction by Rageh Omaar Some twelve million Islamic pilgrims flock to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina annually in a voyage that is bidden of them by the fifth of the five pillars of Islam. If it can be funded, it is a religious duty to make the journey before they die. In recent years the Grand Mosque, and indeed the whole infrastructure that the pilgrims will encounter on their journey, has been substantially renovated and rebuilt to allow for the huge numbers who will come from all four corners of the earth. This photographic celebration of the Hajj pilgrimage will establish itself as the essential keepsake - a treasured tool in presenting the sights the traveller will encounter in the holy cities. Newsha Tavakolian's remarkable photography is reproduced here with full captions that detail the events and rituals that form part of the pilgrimage.

When sickness strikes, people around the world pray for healing. Many of the faithful claim that prayer has cured them of blindness, deafness, and metastasized cancers, and some believe they have been resurrected from the dead. Can, and should, science test such claims? A number of scientists say no, concerned that empirical studies of prayer will be misused to advance religious agendas. And some religious practitioners agree with this restraint, worrying that scientific testing could undermine faith. In Candy Gunther Brown's view, science cannot prove prayer's healing power, but what scientists can and should do is study prayer's measurable effects on health. If prayer produces benefits, even indirectly (and findings suggest that it does), then more careful attention to prayer practices could impact global health, particularly in places without access to conventional medicine. Drawing on data from Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians, Brown reverses a number of stereotypes about believers in faith-healing. Among them is the idea that poorer, less educated people are more likely to believe in the healing power of prayer and therefore less likely to see doctors. Brown finds instead that people across socioeconomic backgrounds use prayer alongside conventional medicine rather than as a substitute. Dissecting medical records from before and after prayer, surveys of prayer recipients, prospective clinical trials, and multiyear follow-up observations and interviews, she shows that the widespread perception of prayer's healing power has demonstrable social effects, and that in some cases those effects produce improvements in health that can be scientifically verified.

Temples for a Modern God is one of the first major studies of American religious architecture in the postwar period, and it reveals the diverse and complicated set of issues that emerged just as one of the nation's biggest building booms unfolded. Jay Price tells the story of how a movement consisting of denominational architectural bureaus, freelance consultants, architects, professional and religious organizations, religious building journals, professional conferences, artistic studios, and specialized businesses came to have a profound influence on the nature of sacred space. Debates over architectural style coincided with equally significant changes in worship practice. Meanwhile, suburbanization and the baby boom required a new type of worship facility, one that had to attract members and serve a social role as much as it had to to honor the Divine. Price uses religious architecture to explore how Mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and other traditions moved beyond their ethnic, regional, and cultural enclaves to create a built environment that was simultaneously intertwined with technology and social change, yet rooted in fluid and shifting sense of tradition. Price argues that these structures, as often mocked as loved, were physical embodiments of a significant, if underappreciated, era in American religious history.

Winner, Association of American Publishers' Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award in Theology and Religious StudiesWinner, 2006 Salo Baron Prize for the Best First Book in Judaic Studies, American Academy of Jewish Research

This provocative study of Jerusalem's Temple Mount unravels popular scholarly paradigms about the origins of this contested sacred site and its significance in Jewish and Christian traditions. In God's Mountain, Yaron Z. Eliav reconstructs the early story of the Temple Mount, exploring the way the site was developed as a physical entity, religious concept, and cultural image. He traces the Temple Mount's origins and investigates its history, explicating the factors that shaped it both physically and conceptually.

Eliav refutes the popular tradition that situates the Temple Mount as a unique sacred space from the earliest days of the history of Israel and the Jewish people. Instead, he asserts that the Temple Mount emerged as a sacred space in Jewish and early Christian consciousness hundreds of years later. This new chronology provides the framework for a fresh consideration of the literary and archeological evidence, as well as new understandings of the religious and social dynamics that shaped the image of the Temple Mount as a sacred space for Jews and Christians.

"Eliav uses his impressive knowledge of Talmud, the Bible, archeology, languages, rabbinic texts, the classics and patristic literature to debunk the notion that the Temple Mount was a sacred space for ancient Jews and Christians. According to him, it did not achieve this status until long after the Second Temple was destroyed. In a dazzling display of erudition, he supports his thesis byproviding new readings of familiar sources and by citing many little-known references." -- Publishers Weekly

"All readers will be rewarded by Eliav's judicious insights, his nuanced reinterpretations, and his wide-ranging scholarship." -- Choice

"This book means to awaken an important scholarly debate and it deserves to succeed." -- Shofar

Yaron Z. Eliav is the Jean and Samuel Frankel Associate Professor for Rabbinic Literature at the University of Michigan.

With changed in language regarding gender issues, this alternative version of ates of Prayer for the House of Mourning includes services for the funeral home and house of the bereaved, afternoon and evening services, special At a House of Mourning service, additional readings, meditations and Kaddish.

The nineteenth-century writer and Masonic scholar Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie (1833 86) studied occultism with Frederick Hockley, and met the famous French occultist Eliphas Levi in 1861. He was also involved in the foundation of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. This extensive encyclopaedia, first published in 1877, is considered to be a classic Masonic reference work. It includes detailed information on the symbols, rites, legends, terms, people and places associated with Freemasonry. Some of the symbols are illustrated and lists of rankings are given, including a 'traditional' list of Grand Masters of England that includes Sts Swithin and Dunstan, Alfred the Great, Sir Christopher Wren (twice) and Charles II. Mackenzie aims in his entries to be critical when relevant: as he says in the Preface, freemasonry has 'received a willing tribute' in his book, but he hints at difficulties encountered in publishing material about a famously secretive society.

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.

The interpretation of animal sacrifice, now considered the most important ancient Greek and Roman religious ritual, has long been dominated by the views of Walter Burkert, the late J.-P. Vernant, and Marcel Detienne. No penetrating and general critique of their views has appeared and, in particular, no critique of the application of these views to Roman religion. Nor has any critique dealt with the use of literary and visual sources by these writers. This book, a collection of essays by leading scholars, incorporates all these subjects and provides a theoretical background for the study of animal sacrifice in an ancient context.

Originally published in 1923, this edition of The Travels of Fa-hsien was translated into English by H. A. Giles (1845-1935), a scholar of Chinese language and culture who helped popularize the Wade-Giles system for the Romanization of the Chinese languages. The Travels relates the story of Fa-hsien's journey from Central China across the Gobi Desert, over the Hindu Kush, and through India down to the mouth of the Hoogly, where he took a ship and returned to China by sea, bringing with him the books of the Buddhist Canon and images of Buddhist deities. This is a fascinating text that will be of value to anyone with an interest in Buddhism and Chinese literature.

For many centuries, Hindus have taken it for granted that the religious images they place in temples and home shrines for purposes of worship are alive. Hindu priests bring them to life through a complex ritual "establishment" that invokes the god or goddess into material support. Priests and devotees then maintain the enlivened image as a divine person through ongoing liturgical activity: they must awaken it in the morning, bathe it, dress it, feed it, entertain it, praise it, and eventually put it to bed at night. In this linked series of case studies of Hindu religious objects, Richard Davis argues that in some sense these believers are correct: through ongoing interactions with humans, religious objects are brought to life.

Davis draws largely on reader-response literary theory and anthropological approaches to the study of objects in society in order to trace the biographies of Indian religious images over many centuries. He shows that Hindu priests and worshipers are not the only ones to enliven images. Bringing with them differing religious assumptions, political agendas, and economic motivations, others may animate the very same objects as icons of sovereignty, as polytheistic "idols," as "devils," as potentially lucrative commodities, as objects of sculptural art, or as symbols for a whole range of new meanings never foreseen by the images' makers or original worshipers.

The British explorer Sir Richard F. Burton (1821 90) was a colourful and often controversial character. A talented linguist and keen ethnologist, he worked in India during the 1840s as an interpreter and intelligence officer for General Sir Charles Napier, and published several books about his experiences in 1851 2. He first gained celebrity, however, for his adventurous 1853 trip to Mecca, under the disguise of a pilgrim, which is described in this lively three-volume publication (1855 6). Few Europeans had ever visited the Muslim holy places; one of them was John Lewis Burckhardt, whose 1829 account is also reissued in this series. Volume 1 of Burton's book describes his arrival in Egypt, the weeks he spent in Alexandria and Cairo polishing his linguistic and cultural skills, and how, at the end of Ramadan, he travelled to Suez by camel, and from there by boat to Yanbu al-Bahr.

The British explorer Sir Richard F. Burton (1821-90) was a colourful and often controversial character. A talented linguist and keen ethnologist, he worked in India during the 1840s as an interpreter and intelligence officer for General Sir Charles Napier, and published several books about his experiences in 1851-2. He first gained celebrity, however, for his adventurous 1853 trip to Mecca, under the disguise of a pilgrim, which is described in this lively three-volume publication (1855-6). Few Europeans had ever visited the Muslim holy places; one of them was John Lewis Burckhardt, whose 1829 account is also reissued in this series. Volume 3 of Burton's book vividly describes the pilgrims' journey from Medina to Mecca, with catering including coffee, rice and 'occasionally ... tough mutton and indigestible goat', crowded camp-sites and all-night prayers and singing. Finally he arrives at the Kaabah and witnesses the culminating ceremonies of the hajj.

Eliphas Levi, born Alphonse Louis Constant, (1810-75) was instrumental in the revival of Western occultism in the nineteenth century, and published several influential books on magic that are also reissued in this series. This posthumous publication (1896) is a translation by William Wynn Westcott, co-founder of the 'Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn', of an unpublished French manuscript by Levi, then owned by the spiritualist Edward Maitland. It includes eight of the author's drawings. Each short chapter outlines the meaning of one of the twenty-two tarot trumps and is followed by a brief editor's note describing the card's iconography and summarising interpretations (sometimes deliberately misleading) given in Levi's earlier publications. The book ends with Kabbalistic prayers and rituals, praise of Jesus Christ as the great initiate, and a surprising assertion that Christianity has superseded ancient magic, revealing the life-long tension between Catholicism and magic in Levi's personality and thought.

The purpose of this book, published in 1813 by Thomas Duer Broughton (1778 1835), is to provide an English audience with an accurate description of 'the character, manners, domestic habits and religious ceremonies of the Mahrattas'. Broughton, an army officer in the East India Company, first arrived in India while serving as a cadet in the Bengal establishment in 1795, and eventually rose to the positions of captain in 1805, major in 1816 and colonel in 1829. The book consists of a series of thirty-two letters addressed to his brother, and most of the letters describe the events and the environment of the Rajputana region, beginning with an account of a journey from Agra to Kerowli. The letters which follow all contain fascinating descriptions of festivals and other events, and cultural encounters of all kinds, painting a vivid portrait of life for the British in early nineteenth-century India.