Religion : Mysticism

In From Metaphysics to Midrash, Shaul Magid explores the exegetical tradition of Isaac Luria and his followers within the historical context in 16th-century Safed, a unique community that brought practitioners of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam into close contract with one another. more...

Price: $33.95

This volume examines gender-specific religious practices and contends that the pursuit of holiness can destabilize binary gender itself. Though saints may be classified as masculine or feminine, holiness may also cut across gender divisions and demand a break from normally gendered behaviour. more...

Price: $155.00

In God and the Creative Imagination , Paul Avis argues that metaphor, symbol and myth, are the key to a real knowledge of God and the sacred. more...

Price: $44.95

The islands of Britain have been a crossroads of gods, heroes, and kings-those of flesh as well as those of myth-for thousands of years. Successive waves of invasion brought distinctive legends, rites, and beliefs. The ancient Celts displaced earlier indigenous peoples, only to find themselves displaced in turn by the Romans, who then abandoned the islands to Germanic tribes, a people themselves nearly overcome in time by an influx of Scandinavians. With each wave of invaders came a battle for the mythic mind of the Isles as the newcomer's belief system met with the existing systems of gods, legends, and myths. In Gods, Heroes, and Kings, medievalist Christopher Fee and veteran myth scholar David Leeming unearth the layers of the British Isles' unique folkloric tradition to discover how this body of seemingly disparate tales developed. The authors find a virtual battlefield of myths in which pagan and Judeo-Christian beliefs fought for dominance, and classical, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Celtic narrative threads became tangled together. The resulting body of legends became a strange but coherent hybrid, so that by the time Chaucer wrote "The Wife of Bath's Tale" in the fourteenth century, a Christian theme of redemption fought for prominence with a tripartite Celtic goddess and the Arthurian legends of Sir Gawain-itself a hybrid mythology. Without a guide, the corpus of British mythology can seem impenetrable. Taking advantage of the latest research, Fee and Leeming employ a unique comparative approach to map the origins and development of one of the richest folkloric traditions. Copiously illustrated with excerpts in translation from the original sources, Gods, Heroes, and Kings provides a fascinating and accessible new perspective on the history of British mythology. more...

Price: $35.00

From the tenth century, the monastic community at Ely venerated a group of female saints: --AElig--;thelthryth, its founding patroness, who died in 679, supposedly a virgin despite two marriages; her sister Seaxburh; another supposed sister Wihtburh, whose remains had been stolen by the monks of Ely from her tomb in Norfolk; Seaxburgh's daughter Eormenhild; and Eormenhild's daughter W--aelig--;rburh. This is the first edition and translation of the Lives of these saints. - ;Goscelin, monk of Saint-Bertin, who came to England in the early 1060s, was one of the most prolific hagiographers of the Anglo-Saxon saints. William of Malmesbury described him as 'second to none since Bede in the celebration of the English saints'. Part of his career was spent in wandering exile, and one of the places Goscelin stayed briefly was Ely, who twelfth-century house-history portrays him working late at night on verses commemorating Ely's patroness, St --AElig--;thelfryth. By the late tenth century, the cult of --AElig--;thelfryth, the seventh-century virgin-queen whose two unconsummated marriages were recounted in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, had been combined with that of her sister Seaxburh, and of another supposed sister, Wihtburh (whose relics were 'translated' from East Dereham in Norfolk to Ely in 974). To this group were added Seaxburh's daughter Eormenhild, and Eormenhild's daughter W--aelig--;rburh. A collection of the Lives of these female saints - some probably the work of Goscelin - is preserved in three twelfth-century Ely manuscripts.Taken together these texts offer a fascinating insight into Ely's view of the women venerated by the community and of its own past history. - ;The Latin is splendidly translated by Love, whose English is a treat to read. She also provides informative notes, in which reference is made to earlier Anglo-Saxon and patristic sources; biblical quotations and allusions are likewise noted...informative a more...

Price: $200.00