Death.As mortals we long for those who have been separated from us by the veil of death. We venerate ancestors, known and unknown; we grieve for love ones lost; we ready ourselves for death, or fear it deeply as the ultimate unknown.In Hellenic tradition, the god who rules beyond the veil is called many things. Most often, He is referred to as Hades, a name also given to His realm. He is a somber god, for the most part, one too aware of the responsibilities He bears. But He...

Polytheism: from the Greek poly for "many" and theos for "god."While the term itself may be simple enough to define, the traditions, beliefs, and practices that fall under it are complex and diverse. Contemporary Reclaiming Witchcraft, early Medieval Heathenry, the native practices of the Aztecs, Shintoism and Taoism, and present-day Hellenismos — to name just a few — all fall under the wide umbrella of polytheism. Yet they are often radically different in their cosmologies, mythol...

Satyrs. Panes. Silenoi. Kouretes. Anthusae. Naiads. Dryads. Nymphs.Do you sense the sacred on the shores of the ocean or the banks of a river? Do you see the divine in the craggy slopes of a mountain or under the light of the midnight moon?Reverence for and worship of nature is humanity's oldest religion, from a time before that word even existed. Humanity saw Gods and Goddesses and spirits and Powers in the trees and the rivers, in the vastness of the sky and the ocean, in...

Acts of Speech explores performative, public, and private religious speech and how they construct identity and difference. It blends praise poetry primarily in honor of various Hellenic Gods, including Apollon, the Mousai, Hermes, and Mnemosyne, with more private poems in a tense dance of parasociality and intimacy. Above all, it is a time capsule of experiences frozen in syllable, verse, and image.

'Sharanya's poems are, in her own phrase, a form of phosphorescence - glowing in darkness, simmering with wonder, mythic in resonance, boldly embodied, hence surprisingly spiritful, even spiritual in the finest sense of the word. They are also skeptical and reflective, tempering and enhancing the glowing flame. Riptides of Tamil hide beneath or within her honed English, for those who can hear and see.' - David Shulman. Sita in a forest, loved and left behind, looks towards the night sky an...

Spanning thirty years of intensive research, this book proves what many scholars could not explain: that today’s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought-Western and Eastern philosophies.Thomas McEvilley explores how trade, imperialism, and migration currents allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East. This groundbreaking reference will stir relentless debate among philosophers,...

Ashrams in Europe twenty-five hundred years ago? Greek philosophers studying in India? Meditation classes in ancient Rome? It sounds unbelievable, but it’s historically true. Alexander the Great had an Indian guru. Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plotinus all encouraged their students to meditate. Apollonius, the most famous Western sage of the first century c.e., visited both India and Egypt — and claimed that Egyptian wisdom was rooted in India.In Lost Masters, award-winning...

C.S. Morrissey’s brilliant translations bring a modern, lyrical sensibility to Theogony and Works and Days, Hesiod’s two great poems that paved the way for subsequent achievements in Greek philosophy. Theogony tells of the first generations of the gods and recollects how Zeus established his cosmic reign of justice. Works and Days examines the two-fold role of competition in life, what Hesiod calls “the bad strife” and “the good strife” and how they affe...

In this challenging and enlightening companion volume to the bestselling Goddesses in Everywoman, Jean Shinoda Bolen turns her attention to the powerful inner patterns--or archetypes--that shape men's personalities, careers, and personal relationships. Viewing these archtypes as the inner counterparts of the outer world of cultural stereotypes, she demonstrates how men an women can gain an nvaluable sense of wholeness and integration when what they do is consistent with who they a...

Fragments of wisdom from the ancient worldIn the sixth century b.c.-twenty-five hundred years before Einstein--Heraclitus of Ephesus declared that energy is the essence of matter, that everything becomes energy in flux, in relativity. His great book, On Nature, the world's first coherent philosophical treatise and touchstone for Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius, has long been lost to history--but its surviving fragments have for thousands of years tan...

A collection of five bite-size myths from across the globe, Tricks and Transformations by Anthony Horowitz includes astonishing tales from Greek, Japanese and Chinese mythology.Part of the Legends series of six books, Tricks and Transformations includes the greatest stories of metamorphosis from across the globe, including the fate of Greek hunter Actaeon, and the Monkey King from Chinese myth.Featuring black and white illustrations, the Legends series by ...

From the Fall Equinox and Beltane to celebrations of peace and justice, A Pagan Ritual Prayer Book offers more than 700 prayers for the rituals of life--from the sacred to the mundane. A companion to the popular A Book of Pagan Prayer, this handbook of rituals and prayers is organized thematically, making it convenient to use if one is seeking prayers for specific occasions, seasons, times of day, meals, or milestones. Included is an extensive section on the requisites of ritual and how to...