Book picks similar to
Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity by Algis Uždavinys
philosophy
history
non-fiction
platonism
Auras
Edgar Evans Cayce - 1973
Includes a chart on the colors of the visible spectrum and their correlations to musical notes, planets, and attitudes.
Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith
Norman Cohn - 1993
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.
Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts
Donald Michael Kraig - 1988
Already over 100,000 people are using it.Author Donald Michael Kraig wrote this after teaching the information in classes for ten years. It is refined, tested, and easy to understand. It is filled with exercises, techniques, and rituals to help you. It is presented in a series of eleven lessons. Follow the lessons, practice the rituals and techniques, and by the end of your work you will be a magician. What does it cover? Rituals, healing, initiation, talismans, astral travel, creative visualization, psychic self-defense, evocation of spirits, the Kabalah, physical exercise, and magical tools such as wands.Want more? You'll also learn the secrets of true meditation, how to use the Tarot, how to remember your dreams, how to do the rituals of Western Magick, including rituals of the Pentagram, Hexagram, Middle Pillar, Rose Cross, and Watchtower. You'll learn how to manipulate magical energy, secrets of relaxation, Wicca, pathworking, Tantra, and sex magick.Once you have finished working your way through this book you will be an accomplished magician. You will be able to perform real magick. Then this book will become the most valuable reference tool in your collection of books.What if you want to know even more about a subject? No problem. Each chapter has a bibliography so you can go even deeper into any topic. There is an annotated bibliography at the end with even more resources.In the new, second edition the contents pages contain more information so it is even easier to find what you need, but there is also an entirely new appendix with answers to many of the most frequently asked questions that Kraig has received over the years. This book is a must!
Angel Tech: A Modern Shaman's Guide to Reality Selection
Antero Alli - 1986
It includes the great neurological scripts of the past: Tarot, Cabala, Alchemy, and the Hindu Chakra System.
The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens & the I Ching
Dennis J. McKenna - 1975
A thoroughly revised edition of the much-sought-after early work by Terence and Dennis McKenna that looks at shamanism, altered states of consciousness, and the organic unity of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.
The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel
Mark S. Smith - 1990
Miller In this remarkable, acclaimed history of the development of monotheism, Mark S. Smith explains how Israel's religion evolved from a cult of Yahweh as a primary deity among many to a fully defined monotheistic faith with Yahweh as sole god. Repudiating the traditional view that Israel was fundamentally different in culture and religion from its Canaanite neighbors, this provocative book argues that Israelite religion developed, at least in part, from the religion of Canaan. Drawing on epigraphic and archaeological sources, Smith cogently demonstrates that Israelite religion was not an outright rejection of foreign, pagan gods but, rather, was the result of the progressive establishment of a distinctly separate Israelite identity. This thoroughly revised second edition ofThe Early History of God includes a substantial new preface by the author and a foreword by Patrick D. Miller.
The Complete World of Greek Mythology
Richard Buxton - 2004
From the first millennium BC until today, the myths have been repeated in an inexhaustible series of variations and reinterpretations. They can be found in the latest movies and television shows and in software for interactive computer games. This book combines a retelling of Greek myths with a comprehensive account of the world in which they developed their themes, their relevance to Greek religion and society, and their relationship to the landscape."Contexts, Sources, Meanings" describes the main literary and artistic sources for Greek myths, and their contexts, such as ritual and theater."Myths of Origin" includes stories about the beginning of the cosmos, the origins of the gods, the first humans, and the founding of communities."The Olympians: Power, Honor, Sexuality" examines the activities of all the main divinities."Heroic exploits" concentrates on the adventures of Perseus, Jason, Herakles, and other heroes."Family sagas" explores the dramas and catastrophes that befall heroes and heroines."A Landscape of Myths" sets the stories within the context of the mountains, caves, seas, and rivers of Greece, Crete, Troy, and the Underworld."Greek Myths after the Greeks" describes the rich tradition of retelling, from the Romans, through the Renaissance, to the twenty-first century.Complemented by lavish illustrations, genealogical tables, box features, and specially commissioned drawings, this will be an essential book for anyone interested in these classic tales and in the world of the ancient Greeks.
The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences
Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm - 2017
Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.
Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential
Caroline Myss - 2001
Myss’s experience of working with people led her to develop an insightful and ingenious process for deciphering your own Sacred Contract—or higher purpose—using a new theory of archetypes that builds on the works of Jung, Plato, and many other contemporary thinkers. Myss examines the lives of the spiritual masters and prophets—Abraham, Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad—whose archetypal journeys illustrate the four stages of a Sacred Contract and provide clues for discovering your own. Myss explains how you can identify your particular spiritual energies, or archetypes—the gatekeepers of your higher purpose—and use them to help you find out what you are here on earth to learn and whom you are meant to meet. Exploring your Sacred Contract will shine a light on the purpose and meaning of your life. You are meant to do certain tasks, you are meant to have certain relationships. In coming to know your archetypal companions, you also begin to see how to live your life in ways that make the best use of your personal power and lead you to fulfill your greatest—in fact, your divine—potential.Both visionary and practical, Sacred Contracts is a bold, powerful work of spiritual wisdom. Without a doubt, your most intriguing challenge in life is to recognize your spiritual commitments and live them to the fullest.
The Hiram Key
Christopher Knight - 1996
Their startling and unexpected conclusions are presented here—backed by rigorous analyses of ancient Egyptian records, the Old and New Testaments, early Christian and Rabbinical texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the rituals of Freemasonry.
The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth
Monica Sjöö - 1987
Now, with a new introduction and full-color artwork, this passionate and important text shows even more clearly that the religion of the Goddess—which is tied to the cycles of women’s bodies, the seasons, the phases of the moon, and the fertility of the earth—was the original religion of all humanity.
The Magician's Companion: A Practical and Encyclopedic Guide to Magical and Religious Symbolism
Bill Whitcomb - 2002
Over thirty-five magical models are compared and discussed. Begins with an introduction to magic, including a program of study so you can use any of the ninety-one systems described. Reveals the secrets of alchemy, magical alphabets, the chakras, the Tree of Life, astrology, and much more. It makes the ancient magical systems accessible, understandable and useful to modern magicians.
The Emerald Tablet: Alchemy of Personal Transformation
Dennis William Hauck - 1999
Ostensibly concerned with turning base metals into gold, alchemy was in fact dedicated to transforming the lead of self into the gold of spirit. This brilliant history of alchemy traces its sources back to ancient Egypt, and presents alchemy as a useful, practical system of self-transformation. Each of the seven steps of alchemical transformation is explained, with hands-on techniques and exercises, treating alchemy as a living discipline for achieving a spiritual awakening.
Book of the Hopi
Frank Waters - 1963
The Hopis have kept this view a secret for countless generations, and this book was made possible only as a result of their desire to record for future generations the principles of their "Road of Life." The breaking of the Hopi silence is significant and fascinating because for the first time anthropologists, ethnologists, and everyone interested in the field of Indian study have been given rich material showing the Hopi legends, the meaning of their religious rituals and ceremonies, and the beauty of a conception of life within the natural world that is completely untouched by materialistic worlds."Only a person as deeply steeped in Hopi mysticism as the Hopis themselves could have produced this volume. Mr. Waters and Mr. Fredericks have approached the task of combining Hopi art, history, tradition, myth, folklore, and ceremonialism with dignity and authority.... Deserves to be part of the library of any student of the American Southwest."—American Anthropologist
The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need
Joanna Martine Woolfolk - 1982
But the CD-ROM in this new edition allows the reader to cast his or her chart in just a few minutes by inputting the date, time and place of birth into the computer, producing a personalized astrological chart in just a few minutes. In addition to revealing the planets' influence on romance, health, and career, The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need takes a closer look at the inner life of each sign. Celebrated astrologer Joanna Martine Woolfolk offers abundant insights on the personal relationships and emotional needs that motivate an individual, on how others perceive astrological types, and on dealing with the negative aspects of signs. Readers will also welcome the inclusion of new discoveries in astronomy.