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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General > Philosophy of religion
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God: Myths of the Male Divine (Paperback, Revised)
Loot Price: R531
Discovery Miles 5 310
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God: Myths of the Male Divine (Paperback, Revised)
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Loot Price R531
Discovery Miles 5 310
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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He has been a trickster, a shaman, a divine child; he has been a
sacrificial victim, a consort of the earth goddess, a warrior, a
sky king; and the creator, a distant and impersonal immensity. He
is the male divine, seen in the many gods of myth, and his life
story is told here in this graceful and illuminating account by
David Leeming and Jake Page.
Illustrating their points with materials ranging from the
prehistoric cave paintings to the mystic Jewish Kabbalah, from the
ancient Indian Vedas to tales of the North American Indians and
other myths from around the world, Leeming and Page reveal the
changing mask of the male divine. We see how that divinity emerged
in some areas from cults involving "animal masters" (as in the Bear
Man of the Cherokee Indians), sorcerers, and shamans who embarked
on spirit journeys. God sometimes appeared as the trickster--as
Loki of the Norse people, Legba of Africa's Yoruba, Raven and
Coyote of North America, and Krishna of India--both creative and
bedeviling.
With the Neolithic age came the rise of agriculture and animal
husbandry, of settlements and specialization in the roles of males
and females--and a more sophisticated body of myths and rituals.
Here the Mother Goddess was dominant, and the male God became her
consort, ultimately dying in order that nature might be renewed.
The authors illustrate this new stage in the male divine with tales
of the Egyptian Osiris, the Caananite Baal, and Wiyot of
California's Luiseno Indians, among others. They describe the rise
of a male sky God as "the equal to, the true mate, of Goddess, who
was still associated with Earth." In the Iron Age, the sky God
became more aggressive, separating from the Goddess and taking his
place as the King God, as Zeus, Odin, and Horus.
Ultimately he emerged as the creator, a more distant and impersonal
force. Here Leeming and Page also illuminate an important trend--a
sense that the divine is beyond gender, that it permeates all
things (as seen in Chinese Tao, the Indian Brahmin, and En Sof of
the Kabbalah). They see a movement in the biography of God toward a
reunion with the Goddess. "As the Supreme Being becomes less
Goddess and less God," they write, "it speaks more clearly to the
essential human need for unity and understanding."
In their previous work together, Goddess, Leeming and Page
provided a marvelous biography of the female divine--an account
that won a wide and enduring audience. Now, in God, they provide
the perfect companion volume--completing, as the authors write, "a
record of what we humans believe ourselves at the deepest level to
be."
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