Approaching the Sacred Grove : the Orphic Impulse in Pagan Religious Music


Book Description

"Contemporary religious Paganism (also called Neo-Paganism) is an emerging area of study for scholars of religion in the United States and elsewhere. This dissertation analyzes Pagan religious music in the context of a more general recurrent religious impulse encoded in literature, music and ideology. Among studies of contemporary American Paganism, few have examined the internal logics of musics created and distributed within the Pagan community. This dissertation discusses Pagan music in terms of its relationship with folk ideology, theology, ecclesiology, humor, youth, and Christianity. This dissertation utilizes discourse and image analysis of pre-recorded music, reviews, journals, sheet music and handouts from Wlccan, Druidry, Asatru, Church of All Worlds, and Thelemic sources. This work finds the dominant themes of Pagan music centering around rituals of sacred time, erotic and filial love, humor and theological kinship with sacred beings both within and beyond the world. Minor thematics of cultural politics, civil integration and resistance to modernity are also discussed. The dissertation concludes that the religious music of American Pagans is profoundly influenced by discourses of resistance, individualism, Congregationalism, and ecstatic tellurism"--Abstract.




Jesus Christ, Sun of God


Book Description

The early Christian Gnosis did not spring up in isolation, but drew upon earlier sources. In this book, many of these sources are revealed for the first time. Special emphasis is placed on the Hellenistic doctrine of the "Solar Logos" and the early Christian symbolism which depicted Christ as the Spiritual Sun, the illumination source of order, harmony, and spiritual insight. Based on 15 years of research, this is a unique book which throws a penetrating light on the secret traditions of early Christianity. It clearly demonstrates that number is at the heart of being. Jesus Christ, Sun of God, illustrates how the Christian symbolism of the Spiritual Sun is derived from numerical symbolism of the "ancient divinities."







The Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism


Book Description

A stimulating new approach to understanding the relationship between music and culture in the long nineteenth century.




The Fairy-faith in Celtic Countries


Book Description

In this study, which is first of all a folk-lore study, we pursue principally an anthropo-psychological method of interpreting the Celtic belief in fairies, though we do not hesitate now and then to call in the aid of philology; and we make good use of the evidence offered by mythologies, religions, metaphysics, and physical sciences.




Greek & Roman Myths


Book Description

The classical gods of Rome uncoiled from the fertile imaginations of the ancient Greeks whose gods were passionate and violent, jealous of their powers and subject to both mighty outbursts of love and all-consuming bouts of vengeful war. The dark forces of the ancient world were held at bay by the resourceful and emerging civilisation that formed the basis of Western culture, providing a tradition of fabulous tales that are retold in this new book. FLAME TREE 451: From mystery to crime, supernatural to horror and myth, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic.




Cosmic Order and Divine Power


Book Description

The treatise De mundo offers a cosmology in the Peripatetic tradition which subordinates what happens in the cosmos to the might of an omnipotent god. Thus the work is paradigmatic for the philosophical and religious concepts of the early imperial age, which offer points of contact with nascent Christianity.




Fred D'Aguiar and Caribbean Literature


Book Description

With Fred D'Aguiar and Caribbean Literature: Metaphor, Myth, Memory, Leo Courbot offers the first research monograph entirely dedicated to a comprehensive reading of the verse and prose works of Fred D'Aguiar, prized American author of Anglo-Guyanese origin. "Postcolonial" criticism, when related to the history of the African diaspora, regularly inscribes itself in the wake of Sartrean philosophy. However, Fred D'Aguiar's both typical and untypical Caribbean background, in addition to the singularity of his diction, call for a different approach, which Leo Courbot convincingly carries out by reading literature in the light of Jacques Derrida and Édouard Glissant's less conventional sense of the intrinsically metaphorical and cross-cultural nature of language.




The Student's Mythology


Book Description