To impress them forever he orders a great wall to be built, driving his people to exhaustion and despair so that they cry to the Sun God for help. In answer, another kind of man, Enkidu, is sent to earth to live among the animals and learn kindness from them. He falls in love with Shamhat, a singer from the temple, and he follows her back to Uruk. There, Enkidu, the “uncivilized” beast from the forest, shows the evil Gilgamesh through friendship what it means to be human.

    Such is the case right now with our wounded feeling function- our inability to find joy, worth, and meaning in life. Robert A. Johnson, the celebrated author of 'He, She', and 'We', revisits two medieval tales and illuminates how this feeling function has become a casualty of our modern times.Johnson tells the story of the Wounded Fisher King from the Grail Myth to illustrate the anxiety and loneliness that plague men. From the folktale of the Handless Maiden, he explains the very different frustrations of women and describes how these disparities in the way we suffer account for much of the tension and miscommunication between men and women. His insightful analysis shows that these two stories, created centuries ago, are even more relevant today.Robert A. Johnson, a noted lecturer and Jungian analyst, is also the author of 'He, She, We, Inner Work, Ecstasy, Transformation', and 'Owning Your Own Shadow'.

    Joyce scholar Edmund L. Epstein has arranged this material as running commentary on A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake. With a new foreword by Phil Cousineau for this Collected Works edition, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words is both an introduction to the major work of Joyce and a representative portrait of Joseph Campbell as a critic of Joyce. It is also a major contribution to Joyce criticism, the fruit of a lifetime’s meditation on the great Irish writer’s writings.

    The delicate relationship growing between Adam Underwood and Eva Brooke is nearly destroyed with the reappearance of his former wife, Lilith.

    

    At such times, the earth becomes arid, life becomes devoid of meaning, the ground of culture cracks and splits, and gaps develop among peoples and between people and nature. Only water can bring the piece back together, awaken seeds hidden in the ground, and enliven the parched Tree of Life." One of the most important ways to call forth the water of life is through story. For years Michael Meade has been steeped in stories, some from the ground of his own life, others from the ancient rivers of Celtic, European, and African myth. Still others emerge from years spent as a teacher, listening to the stories that both men and women carry. From these stories he derives medicine for healing individual wounds and uncovers rituals for the remaking of community. Through stories that explore and illuminate the lives of men, Meade examines the wounds that often arise between father and son and the spells that can exist between mother and child. These "troubles" are investigated from psychological and mythological perspectives in order to uncover the layers of meaning embedded in life experiences and to discover the seeds of healing. At the core of the book are stories of initiatory events that mark a man's or a woman's soul over and pull a person deeper into life than he or she would normally choose to go. Seen as tempering through fire and water, these events decide who a person is, cause some power to erupt from inside, or strip everything away until all that remains is one's essential self. Attuned to our modern needs - the wounds of divorce, addiction, and loss, the moral abandonment of children, the gap between the genders - and our mythic inheritance, Men and the Water of Life offers narratives that reflect and resonate with the oldest parts of the human psyche - the place where things began and the place where things can begin again.

    This larger, completely new, 3rd edition contains many compositions not in the previous editions; new translations of previously included compositions; incorporation of new text fragments identified or excavated since the last publication; all new footnotes; references and commentary brought up to date to reflect scholarly work of the last 10 years; and 100 more pages than the old two-volume edition.

    Timothy Gantz traces the development of each myth in narrative form and summarizes the written and visual evidence in which the specific details of the story appear.

    A Masterful blend of archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, and lively personal reportage, Maya Comos tells a constellation of stories, from the historical to the mythological, and envokes the awesome power of one of the richest civilizations ever to grace the earth.

    Myth has always been closely linked with astrology. Experience these myths and gain a deeper perspective on your eternal self. Learn how the characteristics of the gods developed into the meanings associated with particular planets and signs. Look deeply into your own personal myths, and enjoy a living connection to the world of the deities within you. When you finally stand in the presence of an important archetype (through the techniques of dreamwork, symbolic amplification, or active imagination described in the book), the god or goddess will have something to tell you.

    This is the first book in English on the seventeenth-century Chinese masterpiece Liaozhai's Records of the Strange (Liaozhai zhiyi) by Pu Songling, a collection of nearly five hundred fantastic tales and anecdotes written in Classical Chinese.

    Charmingly illustrated.

    Included in the book are sections on the woodwinds, brass, the rhythm section and the string section. A recording is included to follow along with the printed scores.

    Now, in Gabriel's Palace, scholar Howard Schwartz has collected the greatest of these stories, sacred and secular, in a marvelously readable anthology. Gabriel's Palace offers a treasury of 150 pithy and powerful tales, involving experiences of union with the divine, out-of-body travel, encounters with angels and demons, possession by spirits holy and pernicious, and more. Schwartz provides an informative introduction placing these remarkable tales firmly in the context of centuries of post-biblical Jewish tradition. The body of the text presents spellbinding tales from the Talmud, Zohar, the Hasidic masters, and an enormous range of other sources. Here are stories of Shimon bar Yohai, reputed to be the author of the Zohar; Isaac Luria, known as the Ari, who was the central figure among the Safed mystics of the 16th century; Israel ben Eliezer, known as Baal Shem Tov, who founded Hasidism; Elimelech of Lizensk, possessor of legendary mystical powers; and Nachman of Bratslav, the great storyteller whose wandering spirit is said to protect his followers to this day. Together, these tales paint a vivid picture of a world of signs and symbols, where everything that took place had meaning, a world of mythic proportions....A world in which the spirits of the dead were no longer invisible, nor the angels, where the master and his disciples labor to repair the world so that the footsteps of the Messiah might be heard. Drawn from rabbinic, kabbalistic, folk, and Hasidic sources, these collected tales form a rich genre all their own. In Gabriel's Palace, the powerful tradition of Jewish mysticism comes to life in clear, contemporary English.

    An invaluable book for those who participate in the writing process, as well as those who enjoy the end result. "Willard's perspective on the relationship between writing and personal experience is uniquely enlightening and affirmative" (Robert Pack, Director, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference).

    Once this was a radically new way of imagining the destiny of the world and of mankind. How did it originate, and what kind of world-view preceded it? In this engrossing book, the author of the classic work The Pursuit of the Millennium takes us on a journey of exploration, through the world-views of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, through the innovations of Iranian and Jewish prophets and sages, to the earliest Christian imaginings of heaven on earth.Until around 1500 B.C., it was generally believed that once the world had been set in order by the gods, it was in essence immutable. However, it was always a troubled world. By means of flood and drought, famine and plague, defeat in war, and death itself, demonic forces threatened and impaired it. Various combat myths told how a divine warrior kept the forces of chaos at bay and enabled the world to survive. Sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C., the Iranian prophet Zoroaster broke from that static yet anxious world-view, reinterpreting the Iranian version of the combat myth. For Zoroaster, the world was moving, through incessant conflict, toward a conflictless state—“cosmos without chaos.” The time would come when, in a prodigious battle, the supreme god would utterly defeat the forces of chaos and their human allies and eliminate them forever, and so bring an absolutely good world into being. Cohn reveals how this vision of the future was taken over by certain Jewish groups, notably the Jesus sect, with incalculable consequences. Deeply informed yet highly readable, this magisterial book illumines a major turning-point in the history of human consciousness. It will be mandatory reading for all who appreciated The Pursuit of the Millennium.

    Presented in both English and the original languages, these works offer unique insights into the worldview and lives of pre-literate peoples in various stages of cultural and social development. The poems reveal the beliefs, perceptions, and artistic genius of fifteen peoples scattered across Northern Europe from Scandinavia, deep into Russia and beyond the Urals, and of the Hungarians in Central Europe. Magnificently produced, with more than forty-five illustrations, the book begins with contexualizing essays on the Finno-Ugrian peoples, oral poetry, and the beliefs and ritual practices reflected in the poems. The poems themselves are arranged thematically, according to such topics as cosmology, hunting, agriculture, animal husbandry, love, marriage, healing, and death. They are followed by a poem-by-poem commentary which contextualizes and explicates the text.

    A New York Public Library Outstanding Reference BookFilled with more than 500 color photographs, charts, maps, and line drawings, this is an incomparable guide to the world's most important mythological traditions.

    folk-stories of the Innu people of Eastern Canada

    BEAGLEILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE BARR "Although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, nobody knows what a wombat looks like and everyone knows what a dragon looks like." Not a novel, not a book of short stories, Adventures in Unhistory is a book of the fantastic--a compendium of magisterial examinations of Mermaids, Mandrakes, and Mammoths; Dragons, Werewolves, and Unicorns; the Phoenix and the Roc; about places such as Sicily, Siberia, and the Moon; about heroic, sinister, and legendary persons such as Sindbad, and Aleister Crowley, and Prester John; and--revealed at last--the Secret of Hyperborea. The facts are here, the foundations behind rumors, legends, and the imaginations of generations of tale-spinners. But far from being dry recitals, these meditations, or lectures, or deadpan prose performances are as lively, as crazily inventive, as witty as the best fiction of the author, a writer praised by Gardner Dozois as "one of the great short story writers of our times." Who, on the subject of Dragons, could write coldly, dispassionately, guided only by logic?  Certainly not Avram Davidson. Certain facts, these facts, deserve more than recitation; they deserve flourish, verve, gusto, style--the late, great Avram Davidson's unique voice.  That prose which, in the words of Peter S. Beagle's Preface to this volume, "cries out to be read aloud."

    But a beautiful woman comes, bearing a message. Only if the people learn to cooperate in the building of a great tipi, will she return with the first peace pipe and the rules of how it must be offered to the earth. Her message delivered, she returns to the hills and is transformed into a white buffalo, which in turn becomes a grazing herd.

    Throughout the rich fifteen-hundred-year history of classical Arabic literature, the qasidah served as profane anti-text to the sacred text of the Qur'an. While recognizing the esteem in which Arabs have traditionally held this poetry of the pagan past, modern critics in both East and West have yet to formulate a poetics that would provide the means to analyze and evaluate the qasidah. Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych here offers the first aesthetics appropriate for this orally composed Arabic verse, an aesthetics that is built on--and tested on--close readings of a number of the poems. Drawing on the insights of contemporary literary theory, anthropology, and the history of religions, Stetkevych maintains that the poetry of the qasidah is ritualized in both form and function. She brings to bear an extensive body of lore, legend, and myth as she interprets individual themes and images with references to rites of passage and rituals of sacrifice. Her English translations of the poems under discussion convey the power and beauty of the originals, as well as a sense of their complex intertextuality and distinctive lexicon. The Mute Immortals Speak will be important for students and scholars in the fields of Middle Eastern literatures, Islamic studies, folklore, oral literature, and literary theory, and by anthropologists, comparatists, historians of religion, and medievalists.

    . . planned and executed with quite unusual care." —OperaThere has long been a need for a modern English translation of Wagner's Ring—a version that is reliable and readable yet at the same time is a true reflection of the literary quality of the German libretto. This acclaimed translation, which follows the verse form of the original exactly, fills that niche. It reads smoothly and idiomatically, yet is the result of prolonged thought and deep background knowledge.The translation is accompanied by Stewart Spencer's introductory essay on the libretto and a series of specially commissioned texts by Barry Millington, Roger Hollinrake, Elizabeth Magee and Warren Darcy that discuss the cycle's musical structure, philosophical implications, medieval sources and Wagner's own changing attitude to its meaning. With a glossary of names, a review of audio and video recordings, and a select bibliography, the book is an essential complement to Wagner's great epic.

    The clear, open text and story lengths make these versions especially suitable to children in the early grades. Among the great tales included are the Greek myths of Persephone and King Midas, the Norse myth The Death of Balder, the Celtic myth The Unicorn, the Native American Iroquois myth Naming the Winds, and a West African legend Iyadola's Babies that explains why the Earth Mother's children are so many different colors.

    Demeter refuses to allow spring to appear until she has been reunited with her daughter Persephone, who has been abducted to the Underworld by Pluto.

    The versatile power of these ornamental designs, and hence their use as a source of inspiration for designers and craftspeople of all kinds, is revealed to the full in this step-by-step guide. Celtic mazes belong to an ancient class of spiral ornament which Celtic artists of the early middle ages developed with unequalled ingenuity and virtuosity. These patterns can even be drawn freehand following the method described here - a technique used by the ancient masters, now rediscovered and clearly illustrated for the first time. The beauty and simplicity of the designs makes them an ideal introduction to Celtic art, comprising delightful calligraphy and illumination which everyone can produce for themselves.

    This book provides detailed instruction of practical usage of Ifa by practitioners and non-practitioners and answers many questions with respect to "How to Pray ' the Ifa Way." The book, "The Bible" of the traditional Yoruba Religion, is 6 x 9, has 271 pp with photographs. It is written in English with Yoruba and has a comprehensive glossary. Fundamentals of the Yoruba Religion (Orisa Worship) began with Chief FAMA's early quest for knowledge of the Orisa; her positive experiences, initially, with the officials of Orunmila Temple in Lagos, Nigeria and an opportunity to write for an Orunmila Magazine. The book has been diligently researched and is an enchanting yet powerful overview of Yoruba religion. It is written in a friendly, readable style and many aspects of Yoruba are discussed. The reader benefits from the author's style of writing; her intimate knowledge of the Yor--b culture, and from her practical experience in the tradition of the religion. The explanation of the structure and characteristics of the religion is complete enough to offer some new insight to a Priest/Priestess; straight forward enough to stimulate the most intellectually inclined student and at the same time basic enough for any one who has just encountered Yoruba. Fundamentals of the Yoruba Religion (Orisa Worship) is a veritable encyclopedia. Chapters of the basics of the religion, prayers and chants, messages from the Odus combine easily with aspects of the Orisa history of the Yoruba and elements of initiation (including photographs). Fundamentals of the Yoruba Religion (Orisa Worship) answers long standing questions and diverts misconceptions about a religion that is, at present, experiencing a resurgence and is embraced by millions of Africans both on the continent and in the "New World." Fundamentals of the Yoruba Religion (Ors Worship) is an invaluable resource and should become a staple for anyone who is interested in the Yoruba religion. There is no other work like it.

    In this hauntingly beautiful and compelling new book, Kay Whitaker goes far beyond her previous work. In Sacred Link the Hetakas, in their unpredictable and delightful style, throw Whitaker into the middle of their terrifying yet wondrous and irresistible dance that pushes her perception past its restraints, unleashing the staggering effects of the senses of the spirit. As Whitaker is empowered by the gifts of non-ordinary reality she sees how our dominant cultures have created a numbing, destructive prison that has kept the human race captive for eons and totally unaware of the power, opportunity and extraordinary beauty that it hides from itself. Whitaker discovers that by igniting our physical senses, not only women, but all people can take the Hetakas' guaranteed ride into Forbidden Paradise.

    With six published novels, two anthologies, a volume of literary criticism, plays, and other published works behind her, she is one of the most celebrated American writers of her time. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., writes in the preface of Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, coedited with K. A. Appiah, that "Morrison's greatest capacities as a writer are her ability to create a densely lyrical narrative texture that is instantly recognizable as her own, and to make of the particularity of the African-American 'experience' the basis for a representation of humanity tout court." These critical perspectives are reviews from the popular press, essays - by such noted scholars and authors as Houston A. Baker, Jr., author of Workings of the Spirits, and Roberta Rubenstein, author of Boundaries of the Self - and interviews with Morrison that present her own perspective. This unique and revealing collection, which also includes a chronology of her life and career, offers insight and information useful to academic and lay readers alike. The critical essays explain how Morrison's work is influenced by writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, William Faulkner, and James Baldwin; by Biblical scripture; and by Black music and speech rituals. They examine why Morrison's writing is "at once difficult and popular," says Gates. When Sara Blackburn reviewed Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye, for the New York Times, she wrote that the novelist "reaped the benefits of a growing middle-class women's movement that was just beginning to acknowledge the reality of its blac

    In fact original fairy tales are still being written. Over the last century and a half many well-known authors have used the characters and settings and themes of traditional tales such as 'Cinderella', 'Hansel and Gretel', and 'Beauty and the Beast' to produce new and characteristic works of wonder and enchantment. The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales brings together forty of the best of these stories by British and American writers from John Ruskin and Nathaniel Hawthorne to I. B. Singer and Angela Carter. These tales are full of princes and princesses, witches and dragons and talking animals, magic objects, evil spells, and unexpected endings. Some of their authors, like John Ruskin and Oscar Wilde, use the form to point a social or spiritual moral; others such as Jeanne Desy and Richard Kennedy, turn the traditional stories inside out to extraordinary effect. James Thurber, Bernard Malamud, and Donald Barthelme, among many others, bring the characters and plots of the traditional fairy tale into the contemporary world to make satiric comments on modern life. The literary skill, wit, and sophistication of these stories appeal to an adult audience, even though some of them were originally written for children. They include light-hearted comic fairy stories like Charles Dickens's 'The Magic Fishbone' and L. F. Baum's 'The Queen of Quok', thoughtful and often moving tales like Lord Dunsany's 'The Kith of the Elf Folk' and Philip K. Dick's 'The King of the Elves', and profoundly disturbing ones like Lucy LaneClifford's 'The New Mother', and Ursula Le Guin's 'The Wife's Story'. Together they prove that the fairy tale is not only one of the most popular and enduring forms, but a significant and continually developing part of literature.Uncle David's nonsensical story about giants and fairies / Catherine Sinclair --Feathertop / Nathaniel Hawthorne --The King of the Golden River / John Ruskin --The story of Fairyfoot / Frances Browne --The light princess / George MacDonald --The magic fishbone / Charles Dickens --A toy princess / Mary De Morgan --The new mother / Lucy Lane Clifford --Good luck is better than gold / Juliana Horatia Ewing --The apple of contentment / Howard Pyle --The griffin and the minor canon / Frank Stockton --The selfish giant / Oscar Wilde --The rooted lover / Laurence Housman --The song of the morrow / Robert Louis Stevenson --The reluctant dragon / Kenneth Grahame --The book of beasts / E. Nesbit --The Queen of Quok / L.F. Baum --The magic ship / H.G. Wells --The Kith of the elf-folk / Lord Dunsany --The story of Blixie Bimber and the power of the gold buckskin whincher / Carl Sandburg --The lovely myfanwy / Walter De la Mare --The troll / T.H. White --Gertrude's child / Richard Hughes --The unicorn in the garden / James Thurber --Bluebeard's daugher / Sylvia Townsend Warner --The chaser / John Collier --The King of the elves / Philip K. Dick --In the family / Naomi Mitchison --The jewbird / Bernard Malamud --Menaseh's dream / I.B. Singer --The glass mountain / Donald Barthelme --Prince Amilec / Tanith Lee --Petronella / Jay Williams --The man who had seen the rope trick / Joan Aiken --The courtship of Mr Lyon / Angela Carter --The princess who stood on her own two feet / Jeanne Desy --The wife's story / Ursula Le Guin --The river maid / Jane Yolen --The porcelain man / Richard Kennedy --Old man Potchikoo / Louise Erdrich

    Mermaids and medicine women, spirits of the wind, water, and woods inhabit this book of Ojibwa myths, exquisitely illustrated by Maxine Noel, a member of Oglala Sioux.

    With rich, vivid illustrations, and a factography from the tribal life before and after USA and Canada. Adapted for younger readers, and the first visitors in N.A. world.

    The male gods

    These classic stories portray that part of the male psyche that is normally buried under conventional male roles, heroic ideals, and patriarchal ambitions, breaking dramatically with traditional masculine values and typical stereotypes.

    'A strange, compelling book... an undoubted success.' —The New York Times

    This book reveals many varied and intriguing meanings behind a whole host of flowers, explores their special powers and properties and the myths that surround them.

    Babylonian Creation Myths2. Greek Philosophical Mythology3. Teutonic Hero Myths4. Buddhist Regeneration Myths5. Egyptian Myths of the Afterlife

    

    

    He supports his thesis with evidence drawn from East Anglian archaeology, hagiography and folklore. His argument, detailed and passionate, offers the exciting possibility that he has discovered the lost origins of the poem in the pre-Viking kingdom of 8th-century East Anglia.SAM NEWTON was awarded his Ph.D. for work on Beowulf.

    Examines the role of the bear in Native American culture, looking at its place in rituals, ceremonies, traditions, and myths.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    He explores how the mind originated, how cultures developed, the conflict between matriarchy and patriarchy, and the nature of patriarchal paranoia which he asserts was and continues to be the source of warfare.

    An introductory textbook that surveys major aspects of the traditional religious lives of native peoples in all parts of the Americas.

    The author’s lyrical style complements these dazzling showpieces, while the insightful text treats themes relevant to today’s world.

    Book by

    This mythical animal of a gigantic size, a body covered by scales, terrible look which breaths fire, is represented with wings, it sinks into the gound which is its dwelling and flies in the air with the majesty that only it has. There exist many traditions about this flying reptile, which is represented as a faithful server of the earth and of the hidden treasures that there are in it. However, on the other hand it is an undeniable symbol of the psychic defects that exist within man. It is the Dragon of Darkness with Seven Heads that all adepts must disintegrate; Egos, les, defects...It is that black monster that Hercules, Cadmus, Siegfried, Saint George, Saint Michael, Appollo, Jason, Indra...eliminated.Unlike several countries, China and Japan consider the figure of the dragon as beneficial; in other religions of the planet it has a double identity, it is like fire itself that can be useful or harmful. It is positive if it is in its place, the kitchen, in a lit candle...but it is destructive if that fire goes out of its place and burns the house, starting a fire.

    A retelling of the timeless myth about loss and recovery from depression, with additional psychological commentary.

    These volumes reproduce the articles, introductory essays, and illustrations as they appeared in the full Mythologies set, and each includes a new Preface by Wendy Doniger.This volume gathers eighty articles on mythologies from around the world. A section on the Americas and the South Pacific covers myths of native Americans, from the Inuit to the Mesoamericans, about such topics as the cosmos, fire, and the creation of the world. Essays on African mythology range from the 266 basic signs of West Africa to themes such as twins, the placenta, and masks. The final section, covering Celtic, Norse, and Slavic traditions opens with an overview of the Indo-Europeans and concludes with an essay on the religion and myths of Armenia.

    Segal shows how these plays draw on ancient traditions of poetic and ritual commemoration, particularly epic song, and at the same time refashion these traditions into new forms. In place of the epic muse of martial glory, Euripides, Segal argues, evokes a muse of sorrows who transforms the suffering of individuals into a "common grief for all the citizens," a community of shared feeling in the theater. Like his predecessors in tragedy, Euripides believes death, more than any other event, exposes the deepest truth of human nature. Segal examines the revealing final moments in Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Hecuba, and discusses the playwright's use of these deaths--especially those of women--to question traditional values and the familiar definitions of male heroism. Focusing on gender, the affective dimension of tragedy, and ritual mourning and commemoration, Segal develops and extends his earlier work on Greek drama. The result deepens our understanding of Euripides' art and of tragedy itself.

    For centuries the Persians waged war against their traditional enemies the Turanians, and from this struggle came inspring stories ofvalour. This collection includes tales of the legendary heroes, including the great warrior Rustem, who overcame demons and dragons and tragically slew his own son in battle.