Download or read book The Devils of Loudun written by Aldous Huxley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping biography by the author of Brave New World In 1634 Urbain Grandier, a handsome and dissolute priest of the parish of Loudun was tried, tortured and burnt at the stake. He had been found guilty of conspiring with the devil to seduce an entire convent of nuns. Grandier maintained his innocence to the end but four years after his death the nuns were still being subjected to exorcisms to free them from their demonic bondage. Huxley's vivid account of this bizarre tale of religious and sexual obsession transforms our understanding of the medieval world.
Download or read book The Devils of Loudun written by Aldous Huxley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2005 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1643: In one of history’s most sensational cases of mass possession and sexual hysteria, Urbain Grandier, a handsome seducer of women, and priest of the parish of Loudon, was found guilty of being in league with the devil and burnt at the stake. Huxley gives a vivid account of this bizarre tale of religious and sexual obsession.
Download or read book The Possession at Loudun written by Michel de Certeau and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is August 18, 1634. Father Urbain Grandier, convicted of sorcery that led to the demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of provincial Loudun in France, confesses his sins on the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre, then perishes in flames lit by his own exorcists. A dramatic tale that has inspired many artistic retellings, including a novel by Aldous Huxley and an incendiary film by Ken Russell, the story of the possession at Loudun here receives a compelling analysis from the renowned Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau. Interweaving substantial excerpts from primary historical documents with fascinating commentary, de Certeau shows how the plague of sorceries and possessions in France that climaxed in the events at Loudun both revealed the deepest fears of a society in traumatic flux and accelerated its transformation. In this tour de force of psychological history, de Certeau brings to vivid life a people torn between the decline of centralized religious authority and the rise of science and reason, wracked by violent anxiety over what or whom to believe. At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. He was author of eighteen books in French, three of which have appeared in English translation as The Practice of Everyday Life,The Writing of History, and The Mystic Fable, Volume 1, the last of which is published by The University of Chicago Press. "Brilliant and innovative. . . . The Possession at Loudun is [de Certeau's] most accessible book and one of his most wonderful."—Stephen Greenblatt (from the Foreword)
Download or read book The History of the Devils of Loudun written by Des Niau and published by . This book was released on 1887 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Divine Within written by Aldous Huxley and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A genius . . . a writer who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine.” — The New Yorker Brave New World author Aldous Huxley on enlightenment and the "ultimate reality." In this anthology of twenty-six essays and other writings, Aldous Huxley discusses the nature of God, enlightenment, being, good and evil, religion, eternity, and the divine. Huxley consistently examined the spiritual basis of both the individual and human society, always seeking to reach an authentic and clearly defined experience of the divine. Featuring an introduction by renowned religious scholar Huston Smith, this celebration of "ultimate reality" proves relevant and prophetic in addressing the spiritual hunger so many feel today.
Download or read book Case of Witchcraft written by Robert Rapley and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1998-08-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a Catholic priest, Grandier was an influential figure in the Loudun community and local government. A brilliant speaker, he was popular with his parishioners. But he had enemies, including Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII, who was trying to wrest political autonomy from local governors and centralize power in Paris. Grandier's support of the governor of Loudun meant that he was seen as an enemy of the crown. In addition, the debonair priest's romantic intrigues brought him into conflict with some of the town's most influential power brokers. When a nearby convent of Ursuline nuns began experiencing strange visions and hallucinations, Grandier's enemies seized the opportunity to orchestrate his downfall. These mass possessions, which spread through the convent despite attempts at exorcism, were regarded as witchcraft and Grandier was accused of having caused them. Condemned by Richelieu and the king, Grandier was tortured and burned at the stake for his alleged crimes. He maintained his innocence to the end. This tale of conspiracy, corruption, and mass hysteria provides a fascinating exploration of human behaviour and community dynamics.
Download or read book We Don t Go Back written by Howard David Ingham and published by . This book was released on 2018-07-08 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secret, strange, dark, impure and dissonant...Enter the haunted landscapes of folk horror, a world of pagan village conspiracies, witch finders, and teenagers awakening to evil; of dark fairy tales, backwoods cults and obsolete technologies. Beginning with the classics Night of the Demon, Witchfinder General, The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan's Claw, We Don't Go Back surveys the genre of screen folk horror from across the world. Travelling from Watership Down to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with every stop inbetween, We Don't Go Back is a thoughtful, funny and essential overview of folk horror in TV and cinema."A beautiful rumination on the dark films and television that shaped me and a generation of odd children, for good or ill, worth a year of your time, because you won't just read the book, you'll feel a burning desire to watch everything mentioned within." - Robin Ince"A comprehensive, accessible and often riotously funny tome weaving together folk horror in all its forms, from British television to the American backwoods, from Eastern European fairytales to the vengeful ghosts of East Asia. Ingham explores uncanny landscapes haunted by things buried, old cultures converging with the reluctance of contemporary reason, that very tension that gives his book its name. He attempts to both define folk horror and free it from definition, creating the ultimate guide to the genre's manifestations on film and offering a convincing argument as to why the genre resonates so compellingly with people today." - Kier-La Janisse, author of House of Psychotic Women
Download or read book The History of the Devils of Loudun The Alleged Possession of the Ursuline Nuns and the Trial and Execution Urbain Grandier written by Edmund Goldsmid and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 1887-01-01 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Devil Within written by Brian Levack and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, wide-ranging survey of the history of demon possession and exorcism through the ages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of the Reformation, thousands of Europeans were thought to be possessed by demons. In response to their horrifying symptoms—violent convulsions, displays of preternatural strength, vomiting of foreign objects, displaying contempt for sacred objects, and others—exorcists were summoned to expel the evil spirits from victims’ bodies. This compelling book focuses on possession and exorcism in the Reformation period, but also reaches back to the fifteenth century and forward to our own times. Entire convents of nuns in French, Italian, and Spanish towns, thirty boys in an Amsterdam orphanage, a small group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts—these are among the instances of demon possession in the United States and throughout Europe that Brian Levack closely examines, taking into account the diverse interpretations of generations of theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, physicians, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and historians. Challenging the commonly held belief that possession signals physical or mental illness, the author argues that demoniacs and exorcists—consciously or not—are following their various religious cultures, and their performances can only be understood in those contexts. “Riveting [and] readable . . . must-reading for students of history, psychology and religion.” —Publishers Weekly “Levak, a distinguished historian of early modern witchcraft, now sets exorcism in a long historical perspective, providing the most comprehensive and scholarly overview of the theme yet published.” —Peter Marshall, Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book The History of the Devils of Loudun Volumes I III written by Des Niau and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Devils of Loudun written by Edmund Goldsmid and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " The following extraordinary account of the "Cause Célèbre" of Urbain Grandier, the Curé of Loudun, accused of Magic and of having caused the Nuns of the Convent of Saint Ursula to be possessed of devils, is written by an eye witness, and not only an eyewitness but an actor in the scenes he describes. It is printed at "Poitiers, chez J. Ftoreau et la veuve Ménier, Imprimeurs du Roi et de l’Université 1634." I believe two copies only are known: my own, and the one in the National Library, Paris. The writer is Monsieur des Niau, Counsellor at la Flèche, evidently a firm believer in the absurd charges brought against Grandier. Magic appears to have had its origin on the plains of Assyria, and the worship of the stars was the creed of those pastoral tribes who, pouring down from the mountains of Kurdistan into the wide level where Babylon afterwards raised its thousand towers, founded the sacerdotal race of the Chasdim or Chaldeans. To these men were soon alloted peculiar privileges and ascribed peculiar attributes, until, under the name of Magi, they acquired a vast and permanent influence. Their temples were astronomical observatories as well as holy places; and the legendary tower of Babel, in the Book of Genesis, is probably but the mythical equivalent of a vast edifice consecrated to the study of the seven planets, or perhaps, as the Bab (court or palace) of Bel, to the brilliant star of good fortune alone. Availing themselves of the general adoration of the stars, they appear to have invented a system of astrology the apotelesmatic science by which they professed to decide upon the nature of coming events and the complexion of individual fortunes..."
Download or read book The History of the Devils of Loudun written by Des Niau and published by . This book was released on 1887 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Grey Eminence written by Aldous Huxley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-10-31 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping biography by the author of Brave New World The life of Father Joseph, Cardinal Richelieu's aide, was a shocking paradox. After spending his days directing operations on the battlefield, Father Joseph would pass the night in prayer, or in composing spiritual guidance for the nuns in his care. He was an aspirant to sainthood and a practising mystic, yet his ruthless exercise of power succeeded in prolonging the unspeakable horrors of the Thirty Years' War. In his masterful biography, Huxley explores how an intensely religious man could lead such a life and how he reconciled the seemingly opposing moral systems of religion and politics.
Download or read book Those Barren Leaves written by Aldous Huxley and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-06-15 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We rely on your support to help us keep producing beautiful, free, and unrestricted editions of literature for the digital age. Will you support our efforts with a donation? Mrs. Aldwinkle, an English aristocrat of a certain age, has purchased a mansion in the Italian countryside. She wishes to bring a salon of intellectual luminaries into her orbit, and to that end she invites a strange cast of characters to spend time with her in her palazzo: Irene, her young niece; Ms. Thriplow, a governess-turned-novelist; Mr. Calamy, a handsome young man of great privilege and even greater ennui; Mr. Cardan, a worldly gentleman whose main talent seems to be the enjoyment of life; Hovenden, a young motorcar-obsessed lord with a speech impediment; and Mr. Falx, a socialist leader. To this unlikely cast is soon added Mr. Chelifer, an author with an especially florid, overwrought style that is wasted on his day job as editor of The Rabbit Fancier’s Gazette, and the Elvers, a scheming brother who is the guardian of his mentally-challenged sister. As this unlikely group mingles, they discuss a great many grand topics: love, art, language, life, culture. Yet very early on the reader comes to realize that behind the pompousness of their elaborate discussions lies nothing but vacuity—these characters are a satire of the self-important intellectuals of Huxley’s era. His skewering of their intellectual barrenness continues as the group moves on to a trip around the surrounding country, in a satire of the Grand Tour tradition. The party brings their English snobbery out in full force as they traipse around Rome, sure of nothing else except in their belief that Italy is culturally superior simply because it’s Italy. As the vacation winds down, we’re left with a biting lampoon of the elites who suppose themselves to be at the height of art and culture—the kinds of personalities that arise in every generation, sure of their own greatness but unable to actually contribute anything to the world of art and culture that they feel is so important.
Download or read book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom written by Andrew Dickson White and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eyeless in Gaza written by Aldous Huxley and published by Carroll & Graf Pub. This book was released on 1995 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aldous Huxley- a major figure of the literary and intellectual history of this century- dramatizes here one man's disillusionment threatening to plunge the world into a new morass.
Download or read book Science Liberty And Peace written by Aldous Leonard Huxley and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-08-01 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Science, Liberty And Peace" by Aldous Leonard Huxley. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
