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Stairway to Heaven - Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,217
Discovery Miles 12 170
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Stairway to Heaven - Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation (Paperback)
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"Stairway to Heaven "is an incredibly broad ranging new study that
stretches from ancient Egypt and Babylon to Jewish and Christian
Kabbalists, Chinese Daoists, Hindu Tantra and Haitian Vodun and
finally to 19th and 20th century European occult societies,
uncovering a hitherto unrecognized common myth that has been
employed the world over in roughly the same form since the earliest
recorded texts. Beginning with the oldest form of Jewish mysticism
and extending this search through the dead sea scrolls, Levenda
reveals a consistent emphasis on the number seven and its
association with heavenly themes, including those of a chariot, a
Throne, a Temple and a divine Being. The author then examines the
myths and rituals of egypt, sumer and Babylon to locate the origin
of this myth and comes up with some surprising results in the
ascent rituals of the middle east. Shifting to the far east,
Levenda demonstrates how the mystical practices of China and India
display important similarities to these rituals, most notably in
the practices of the Chinese alchemists who used a map of seven
stars as their ladder to heaven.
Reinforced by visits to the Buddhist shrine of Borobudur in
indonesia, Levenda concludes that there was a myth common to
peoples across the ancient world that an ascent to the heavens was
possible using a ladder of seven stars, a process running parallel
to the alchemical idea of the perfection of metals and the
perfectibility of the soul.
This concept was enshrined in the rituals of the Western secret
societies of the 19th and 20th centuries such as the golden dawn
and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, and influenced the
development of new age occultism. exhaustive in scope and revealing
in its scholarship, "Stairway to Heaven "casts a fascinating new
multidisciplinary perspective on the mystical practices of heavenly
ascent.
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