Including sections on Greek and Roman Gods, Minor Deities, Heroes and the practices of the time, it also includes a large number of illustrations. This version has been specially formatted for today's e-readers, and is a fantastic addition to any eBook collection. Whether you are a student of ancient history, or just want to know more about Zeus, Saturn, Icarus and the

    Encompassing their iron-age beginnings, European colonization, the various strands of ‘Celticness’ (race, politics, and culture), as well as the Celtic Tiger of today, this encyclopedia gets to the very heart of Celtic origin and meaning, as well as delving into the cultural and mythical background that draws so many to claim their Celtic roots today.Including:• The Celtic People and Their Way of Life• Celtic Places• Celtic Religion• Myths, Legends, and Stories• Symbols, Ideas, and Archetypes• Celtic Twilight and RevivalAccompanied by illustrations and maps, which show the spread of Celts across the globe, as well as the symbols of Celtic mythology and religion

    “The group of beliefs which constituted what for convenience' sake is called the Egyptian religion in an existence of some thousands of years passed through nearly every phase known to the student of comparative mythology. If the theologians of ancient Egypt found it impossible to form a pantheon of deities with any hope of consistency, assigning to each god or goddess his or her proper position in the divine galaxy as ruling over a definite sphere, cosmic or psychical, it may be asked in what manner the modern mythologist is better equipped to reduce to order elements so recondite and difficult of elucidation as the mythic shapes of the divinities worshipped in the Nile Valley.”

    Tolkien's On Fairy-stories is his most-studied and most-quoted essay, an exemplary personal statement of his own views on the role of imagination in literature, and an intellectual tour de force vital for understanding Tolkien's achievement in writing The Lord of the Rings .Contained within is an introduction to Tolkien's original 1939 lecture and the history of the writing of On Fairy-stories, with previously unseen material. Here, at last, Flieger and Anderson reveal the extraordinary genesis of this seminal work and discuss how the conclusions that Tolkien reached during the composition of the essay would shape his writing for the rest of his life.

    Beginning with the creation of Earth out of Chaos, Vernant continues with the castration of Uranus, the war between the Titans and the Olympian gods, the wily ruses of Prometheus and Zeus, and the creation of Pandora, the first woman. His narrative takes readers from the Trojan War to the voyage of Odysseus, from the story of Dionysus to the terrible destiny of Oedipus to Perseus's confrontation with the Gorgons.Jean-Pierre Vernant has devoted himself to the study of Greek mythology. In recounting these tales, he unravels for us their multiple meanings and brings to life the beloved figures of legend whose narratives lie at the origin of our civilization. With remarkable psychological acuity, Vernant presents a picture of the world as the Greeks understood it. The relationship between the human and the divine -- realms that have always been intimately connected -- and their place within a world of potent natural forces are evoked effortlessly in a narrative that retains the magical quality of myth and reads with the compelling momentum of a good novel.

    Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller shows how women's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archeological digs" into the ruins of the female unconsious. Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes helps women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

    A study of Arthurian romance and legend which draws together the different strands of Arthurian myth, from sources as diverse as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Malory, Chretien de Troyes, the Mabinogion, and the English Gawain cycles.

    These myths featured gods and goddesses, mighty beings who look human but have amazing powers and live forever. Now you can meet these extraordinary characters and hear their legends, brought to life again by Aliki in this splendid, panoramic look at the amazing stories and characters of Greek legend. "[Will meet the] demand for basic information on the gods and goddesses at the primary level."—BL. "Aliki's fans will welcome her introduction to these famous Greeks."—SLJ. 1994 "Pick of the Lists" (ABA)

    In Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, Charlene Spretnak recreates, the original, goddess-centered myths and illuminates the contemporary emergence of a spirituality based on our embeddedness in nature.

    Discover the history, folklore and scientific evidence surrounding all psychic phenomena - from poltergeists, mediums, and haunted places, to clairvoyance, astrology, and teleportation. Lift the veil on a world of supernatural mysteries, ghost stories and methods of divinitation... and discover if you might be psychic yourself. With information to intrigue and fascinate both believer and sceptic, this is an indispensable map of the psychic world.

    These are stories that passed down through the ages virtually unaltered in their telling. To those who told and listened to them, they expressed something fundamental about Irish culture and the Irish way of life. The stories in this volume feature a wide variety of fantastic beings, including ghosts, witches, fairies, and changelings, but several feature creatures that are virtually exclusive to Ireland: the banshee, the merrow, the pooka, and the leprechaun. Read these tales of frightening supernatural horrors, brave folk heroes, and everyday people clever enough to outwith the devil, and you'll agree that they could only take place on Irish soil.

    Trees felled in the wrong season breed termites. If eels are drowned in wine, those who drink it get a loathing for liquor.These and similar flights of fancy were articles of faith in the twelfth century — the era of the fascinating Latin prose bestiary translated in this volume. The translator is T. H. White, author of The Once and Future King and outstanding medievalist. Of The Book of Beasts, White writes: "No Latin prose bestiary has ever before been printed, even in Latin. This is the first and only English translation in print."The bestiary was a bestseller in the Middle Ages, a kind of natural history cum-zoological survey that presumed to describe the animals of the world and to point out the human traits they exemplified. Combining the surprisingly accurate with the endearingly phantasmagorical, the bestiarists came up with a bewildering array of real and exotic creatures. The behavior or attributes of the animals often functioned as a metaphor for teaching religious, moral, and political precepts.In addition to a multitude of real mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish, described here with varying degrees of zoological accuracy, the bestiarist introduces a swarm of fanciful denizens thought to haunt the Dark Ages: manticore, a creature with a man's face, a lion's body, and a ravenous appetite for human flesh; dragon or draco, the biggest serpent and the embodiment of the Devil; amphivia, a fish that could walk on land and swim in the sea; jaculus, a flying serpent; the familiar phoenix; the griffin; and other exotic fauna.Much of the charm of this edition lies in the copious footnotes compiled by T. H. White. With immense erudition, wit, grace, and a singular lack of condescension, the author illuminates literary, scientific, historical, linguistic, and other aspects of the bestiarist's catalog. He further enhances the volume with informative discussions of the history of the bestiary from its origins in remote oral traditions; through Herodotus, Pliny and Aristotle; during the medieval period and the Renaissance; and up to Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors (1646). Both amusing and amazing, The Book of Beasts is not only a rich survey of the proto-zoology on which much of our later science is based, but also a revealing, illustrated examination of how pre-scientific man perceived the earth's creatures.

    These fascinating entries identify particular deities and giants, as well as the places where they dwell and the varied and wily means by which they forge their existence and battle one another. We meet Thor, one of the most powerful gods, who specializes in killing giants using a hammer made for him by dwarfs, not to mention myriad trolls, ogres, humans and strange animals. We learn of the ongoing struggle between the gods, who create the cosmos, and the jotnar, or giants, who aim to destroy it. In the enchanted world where this mythology takes place, we encounter turbulent rivers, majestic mountains, dense forests, storms, fierce winters, eagles, ravens, salmon and snakes in a landscape closely resembling Scandinavia. Beings travel on ships and on horseback; they eat slaughtered meat and drink mead.Spanning from the inception of the universe and the birth of human beings to the universe's destruction and the mythic future, these sparkling tales of creation and destruction, death and rebirth, gods and heroes will entertain readers and offer insight into the relationship between Scandinavian myth, history, and culture.

    This magnificent book is a collection of stories, anecdotes, and legends from all six of the regions where celtic ways have persisted in the modern world.

    Find out all about the Doctor's TARDIS, his regenerations, and much, much more!