Religion : Mysticism

An informative work of historical and contemporary Chinese myths, including a collection of historical documents, detailing myths as they live and change in China today. This work focuses on the Han Chinese people, but ranges across the full ethnic spectrum of ancient and modern China. more...

Price: $105.00

Hindu mythology is a complex mythology of multifaceted deities, lengthy heroic tales, and arcane philosophies, with a 3000-year history of reinterpretations and adaptations. This text looks at the connections between the structure of myth cycles and Indian storytelling and music traditions. more...

Price: $95.00

Drawing on the latest scholarship, John Lindow, an internationally known authority on Norse mythology, covers the tales, their literary and oral sources, and their emergence into popular tradition, religion, and art. more...

Price: $80.00

This book investigates the problem of esoteric traditions in early Christianity, their origin and their transformation in Patristic hermeneutics, in the West as well as in the East. It argues that these traditions eventually formed the basis of nascent Christian mysticism in Late Antiquity. more...

Price: $45.00

The image of St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square is a familar Russian landmark. Yet few people know what made Basil so famous. He was a saint who wandered about naked, bullied passers-by, brawled in the market-place, and once even smashed a revered icon. Saints such as Basil overturn the conventional concept of sainthood - what, we may ask, is saintly about them? This book aims to solve the mystery by exploring the figure of the holy fool in Byzantium and in later Russian. history. - ;There are saints in Orthodox Christian culture who overturn the conventional concept of sainthood. Their conduct may be unruly and salacious, they may blaspheme and even kill - yet, mysteriously, those around them treat them with even more reverence. Such saints are called 'holy fools'. In this pioneering study Sergey A. Ivanov examines the phenomenon of holy foolery from a cultural standpoint. He identifies its prerequisites and its development in religious thought, and traces the. emergence of the first hagiographic texts describing these paradoxical saints. He describes the beginnings of holy foolery in Egyptian monasteries of the fifth century, followed by its high point in the cities of Byzantium, with an eventual decline in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. He also. compares the important Russian tradition of holy fools, which in some form has survived to this day. - ;Ivanov shows himself to be keenly attuned to all the main questions presented by the phenomenon of holy folly, as well as thedecisive role of the hagiographer...he always manages to add something new, to say something fresh...Still, this book is a gift. Throughly researched, well documented, chock-full of insights- and, one should add, exquisitely translated-it is the best exsisting monograph on the subject. - Peter C. Bouteneff Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies;A rich and fascinating book - Averil Cameron, Journal of Ecclesiastical History;Ivanov's volume remains indispens more...

Price: $125.00