Robert Eisler's "Orpheus - The Fisher: Comparative Studies in Orphic and Early Christian Cult Symbolism" offers a profound exploration into the intricate and symbolic worlds of Orphic and early Christian traditions. In this scholarly yet accessible work, Eisler delves into the deep connections and shared motifs between these two ancient belief systems, uncovering the rich tapestry of symbolism that underlies their rituals, myths, and spiritual teachings.Eisler begins by examining th...

This vintage work contains a treatise on an anthropological interpretation of sadism, masochism, and lycanthropy, which has been compiled from the notes of a lecture delivered at a meeting of the 'Royal Society of Medicine'. This fascinating and arresting collection of notes will be of considerable utility to anyone with an interest in psychiatry or the influential work of Robert Eisler. It is a book not to be missed by collectors of this kind of literature. Many antiquarian books such as ...

First Published in 1938, The Enigma of the Fourth Gospel by Robert Eisler presents a comprehensive overview of the Fourth gospel, its author, and its writer. In forty-one chapters, it discusses themes like an insoluble enigma; the preface to the Christian reader; the longer Anti-Marcionite preface to the Fourth Gospel; the Greek and the Latin texts of the Anti-Marcionite prologue to Luke; the two traditions about the evangelist John; John killed by King Herod in Jewish tradition; ...

First published in 1951, Man into Wolf attempts to suggest the possibility of historical, or rather prehistorical, evolutionist derivation of all crimes of violence, from the individual attack on life known as murder or manslaughter to the collective organized killing which we call war. The author has tried to show that the evidence from prehistory can be made intelligible on the theory of Jung’s archetypes surviving in the collective conscience and revealing themselves all over t...

From the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, a delightful, truly consoling work that proves that philosophy can be a supreme source of help for our most painful everyday problems.Perhaps only Alain de Botton could uncover practical wisdom in the writings of some of the greatest thinkers of all time. But uncover he does, and the result is an unexpected book of both solace and humor. Dividing his work into six sections -- each highlighting a different psychic ...

Philosopher and social analyst Ivan Illich, one of the most influential thinkers of second half of this century, directs his attention to waterm the 'stuff' of purity and the creative force of the imagination without which life in unthinkable. He deals with the dual nature of water, as life-giving material substance and as the wellspring of forml, on which are founded the most basic myths and cultural manifestations: water as cleanser, water as domestic necessity and water as a religious a...

Image and Imagination presents some of C.S. Lewis's finest literary criticism and religious exposition. This selection gathers together forty book reviews—never before reprinted—as well as four major essays which have been unavailable for many decades, and a fifth essay, “Image and Imagination,” published for the first time. The essays and reviews substantiate Lewis's reputation as an eloquent and authoritative critic across a wide range of literature, and as a keen judge of conte...

A 'wilful extremist' according to the London Times, Hélène Cixous is hailed as one of the most formidable writers and thinkers of our time. Acclaimed by luminaries such as Jacques Derrida, her writing has nonetheless been misunderstood and misread, to a surprising extent. With the inclusion of Stigmata, one of her greatest works into the Routledge Classics series, this is about to change. Questions that have long concerned her – the self and the other, autobiographies of writing, ...

Following her widely acclaimed Autobiography of Red ("A spellbinding achievement" --Susan Sontag), a new collection of poetry and prose that displays Anne Carson's signature mixture of opposites--the classic and the modern, cinema and print, narrative and verse.In Men in the Off Hours, Carson reinvents figures as diverse as Oedipus, Emily Dickinson, and Audubon. She views the writings of Sappho, St. Augustine, and Catullus through...

In an age when deleted scenes from Adam Sandler movies are saved, it’s sobering to realize that some of the world’s greatest prose and poetry has gone missing. This witty, wry, and unique new book rectifies that wrong. Part detective story, part history lesson, part exposé, The Book of Lost Books is the first guide to literature’s what-ifs and never-weres.In compulsively readable fashion, Stuart Kelly reveals details about tantalizing vanished works by the famous, the acclaimed, and...

“A splendid addition to an already extraordinary oeuvre.”—Teju Cole, The New YorkerGerman-born W. G. Sebald is best known as the innovative author of Austerlitz, the prose classic of World War II culpability and conscience that put its author in the company of Nabokov, Calvino, and Borges. Now comes the first major collection of this literary master’s poems. Skillfully translated by Iain Galbraith, they range from pieces Sebald wrote as a student ...

Music, whether performed or heard, has been seen as therapeutic in the history of many cultures. How have its therapeutic properties been conceptualized and explained? Which cultures have used music therapy? What were their aims and techniques, and how much continuity is there between ancient, medieval and modern practice? These are the questions addressed by the essays in this volume. They focus on the place of music therapy in European intellectual, medical and musical traditions, from t...