The Highest Altar


Book Description

An engrossing mixture of adventure, treacherous travel, satanic ritual, and anthropology, The Highest Altar illuminates the significance of human sacrifice in man's past and present. Full-color illustrations and maps.




The Highest Altar


Book Description

In 1983 the author went to Peru to investigate the remains of the 500-year-old mummy of an Inca boy said to be the victim of human sacrifice. Later he discovered that human sacrifice is still practised in remote areas in the Andes. This book attempts to illuminate the significance of human sacrifice in man's social and religious development. Anthropologists and archaeologists are only now beginning to recognize that the ritual power to kill stands at the heart of many ancient societies and of much of our own cultural heritage - it is the mystery that unlocks the enduring enigma of Stonehenge, the complicated chain of high-altitude Incan shrines, Abraham's thwarted sacrifice of Isaac and even the crucifixion of Christ.




Altar of Bones


Book Description

A deathbed confession ignites a globe-spanning race for answers in this page-turning thriller described as The Da Vinci Code meets The Bourne Identity. “They didn’t have to kill him…He never drank from the altar of bones.” Cryptic dying words from a murdered homeless woman in present-day San Francisco unlock a long-buried secret that alters history. Now, a pair of ruthless assassins are sent to cut the few living “loose ends.” And a young, resourceful woman on the run encounters a determined man with his own connected past and vengeful agenda. Forced to partner for survival and answers, a fast-paced and deadly game of cat and mouse ensues, whisking the duo from the winding streets of Paris to the faded palaces of Budapest to the frozen lakes of Mongolia...where destiny, passion, and further betrayal await them. Jam-packed with pulse-pounding action and featuring a high-profile assassination, a doomed Hollywood legend, and guardians of an ancient religious icon housing a secret others will kill to possess, The Altar of Bones is certain to leave readers stunned and breathless.




Blood on the Altar


Book Description




Your Altar


Book Description

A reminder of the Divine, a space for spiritual encounter, or a focal point for meditation--the altar is a powerful tool for people of all faiths. Sandra Kynes demonstrates how to create personal altars and empower these sacred spaces according to your needs. Discover how to harness energies to manifest change, make decisions, receive wisdom, find balance, explore your soul, and grow spiritually. Kynes's unique approach provides nine overall matrices--each one corresponding to the number of objects placed on the altar--and the numerological significance of each. You'll also find suggested meditations and a wealth of helpful information--spanning chakras, colors, days of the week, elements, gemstones, gods/goddesses, runes, and more--for choosing appropriate symbols and objects that reflect your needs.




The Highest Altar


Book Description

An extraordinary exploration of human sacrifice details its religious and cultural significance, and its practice, past and present. 16 pages of full-color photos.




The Brazen Altar


Book Description

Welcome to the City. In this place of peace and plenty, with no disease, no suffering, and no want, people find meaning in service to their gods. They know the gods were created by humans, of course. But the gods protect and provide for the people, so why wouldn't the people serve the gods? In a Utopian society, what better way to express service than through pleasure and faith? For Kheema and her seven fellow Potentials, that means entering the temple of the Sun God to undergo months of training and practice to determine which of them will be chosen as Sacrifice. On the day of the summer Solstice, the one chosen as Sacrifice must recite the entire litany from atop the temple, while enduring nonstop forced orgasms from dawn 'til dusk. For Terlyn, service means becoming part of the Garden, bound naked and asleep while worshippers help themselves to her body. Terlyn wakes in ecstasy over and over, only to fall asleep again. The experience changes her, and her relationship with her friend and lover Donvin, who visits her while she is part of the Garden. Ashi's service to the god known as the Wild entails competing with other worshippers in a forest that appears overnight to demonstrate her resilience and will, so that she might become part of a ritual involving an altar, a long row of cages, and the complete abandonment of the self. The three stories brush against each other, revealing the heart of the City, as the people of the City serve, or ask for enlightenment from, multiple gods at once.




At the Mountains’ Altar


Book Description

In high-Andean Peru, Rapaz village maintains a temple to mountain beings who command water and weather. By examining the ritual practices and belief systems of an Andean community, this book provides students with rich understandings of unfamiliar religious experiences and delivers theories of religion from the realm of abstraction. From core field encounters, each chapter guides readers outward in a different theoretical direction, successively exploring the main paths in the anthropology of religion. As well as addressing classical approaches in the anthropology of religion to rural modernity, Salomon engages with newer currents such as cognitive-evolution models, power-oriented critiques, the ontological reworking of relativism, and the "new materialism" in the context of a deep-rooted Andean ethos. He reflects on central questions such as: Why does sacred ritualism seem almost universal? Is it seated in social power, human psychology, symbolic meanings, or cultural logics? Are varied theories compatible? Is "religion" still a tenable category in the post-colonial world? At the Mountains’ Altar is a valuable resource for students taking courses on the anthropology of religion, Andean cultures, Latin American ethnography, religious studies, and indigenous peoples of the Americas.




The Book of Altars and Sacred Spaces


Book Description

Learn to create altars and sacred spaces to bring magic into your daily life with The Book of Altars and Sacred Spaces.




The Altar Boys


Book Description

Boys with everything to live for ... A community betrayed ... The whistle-blower priest who paid the ultimate price **Shortlisted for the 2020 Walkley Book Award** **Shortlisted for the 2021 NSW Premier's Community and Regional History Prize** ** Shortlisted for the 2021 Prime Minister's Award** Glen Walsh and Steven Alward were childhood friends in their tight-knit working-class community in Newcastle, NSW. Both proud altar boys at the local Catholic church, they went on to attend the city's Catholic boys' high schools: Glen to Marist Brothers, Hamilton, and Steven to St Pius X. Both did well: Steven became a journalist; Glen a priest. But their lives came to be burdened by secrets kept and exposed. Glen discovered that another priest was sexually abusing boys and reported the offender to police, breaking his vows to the Catholic 'brotherhood' in the process. His decision to give evidence regarding the cover-up of clerical abuse at a landmark trial ended in tragedy. Meanwhile, Steven was fighting his own battle to overcome a traumatic past, a battle that also ended in tragedy. Ensuing investigations revealed that at least 60 men in the region had taken their own lives. What had happened, and why were so many of those men from the three Catholic high schools in the area? By six-time Walkley Award-winning investigative reporter Suzanne Smith and shortlisted for the 2020 Walkley Book Award, The Altar Boys is the explosive expose of widespread and organised clerical abuse of children in one Australian city, and how the cover-up in the Catholic Church in Australia extended from parish priests to every echelon of the organisation. Focusing on two childhood friends, their families and community, this gripping story is backed by secret documents, diary notes and witness accounts, and details a deliberate church strategy of using psychological warfare against witnesses in key trials involving paedophile priests.