Download or read book The Serpent and the Rainbow written by Wade Davis and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scientific investigation and personal adventure story about zombis and the voudoun culture of Haiti by a Harvard scientist. In April 1982, ethnobotanist Wade Davis arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombis—people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead and had been buried. Drawn into a netherworld of rituals and celebrations, Davis penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation, Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti—from the African origins of its people to the successful Haitian independence movement, down to the present day, where vodoun culture is, in effect, the government of Haiti’s countryside. The Serpent and the Rainbow combines anthropological investigation with a remarkable personal adventure to illuminate and finally explain a phenomenon that has long fascinated Americans.
Download or read book Journey of the Serpent People written by Gary A. David and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As above, so below. The parallels Gary David has found between the ancient Egyptian sky-ground system involving the pyramids of Giza and the constellation of Orion, and a similar project to build heaven on earth by the Hopi of Arizona, are eerie, compelling, and deeply thought-provoking." -Graham Hancock, author of Magicians of the GodsAccording to their mythological traditions, the Hopi of northern Arizona have survived three world-ages-each created and then destroyed because of social or spiritual chaos. Weare now at the end of the Fourth World, and soon going into the Fifth. Migration legends tell of Serpent People, the Nagas, who sailed on reed rafts across the Pacific from the continent of Mu to America in order to escape a deluge that wiped out the Third World. In antiquity the Hopi performed the Snake Dance in order to bring rain. This ritual still forms a crucial part of their sacred ceremonial cycle, in which the Antelope People equally participate. Some of the main points presented in this book are:*Ancestral Hopi mariners floated eastward with the equatorial countercurrents, landed on the west coast of North America, and gradually worked their way northward to arrive in the Four Corners region of the U.S. *The Hopi emerged from Grand Canyon, transitioning from the Third World into the current Fourth World. *Starting about 2500 BC, the Hopi Snake Clan made migrations north into Canada, south to Central America, west to the Pacific Ocean, and east to the Atlantic Ocean. They perhaps even helped to build Ohio's Great Serpent Mound, which is oriented to the Pole Star and Sirius. *There the Snake Clan and the Horn Clan met with a race of giants called the Allegewi, who built astounding earthworks and possibly even created the Serpent effigy itself. The book provides evidence of the latter group's origin in North Africa.*In their 1994 bestseller The Orion Mystery, Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert proposed what is known as the Orion Correlation Theory. They had discovered an ancient "unified ground plan" in which the pyramids at Giza form the pattern of Orion's Belt. According to their entire configuration, the Great Pyramid (Khufu) represents Alnitak, the middle pyramid (Khafra) represents Alnilam, and the slightly offset smaller pyramid (Menkaura) represents Mintaka. *On the other side of the globe I have discovered another Orion template. The Hopi tribe had migrated around the American Southwest for millennia, finally settling in northern Arizona in about the early 12th century AD. They built huge stone "apartment" complexes called pueblos, and subsisted as farmers on the harsh high desert. In Hopi cosmology the region that corresponds to the Duat--Egyptian afterlife--is called Tuuwanasavi (literally, "Center of the World"), located near the three Hopi Mesas. Similar to the ground-sky dualism of the three primary structures at Giza, these natural "pyramids" closely reflect the belt stars of Orion. This bold but rigorously researched book reveals the genetic and cultural connections between diverse peoples, including the Hopi, Hohokam, Mimbres, Navajo, Ojibwa, and Lenni Lenape of North America, as well as the Egyptians and Berbers of North Africa. This 560-page book is packed with 900 endnotes and 265 photos, drawings, maps, and sky charts.
Download or read book Tracking the Serpent written by Janine Pommy Vega and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 1997-06 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These are the true-life adventures of a woman who ranges over four continents, endeavoring to go beyond the limits of ordinary life. Recovering from an accident, she goes to Glastonbury, where she finds energy portrayed in ancient earthworks as a snake coiled in concentric circles around a hill. To walk this spiral is called threading the maze, which means both to ascend and to go deep within. This becomes a guiding emblem of her pilgrimages to sites of female spiritual and temporal power, from the Irish countryside to the Amazon jungle to the high mountain cultures of Nepal. Janine Pommy Vega, Beat Generation writer, performer, and musician, is the author of twelve books. For many years she has worked with Poets in the Schools, and she is a member of PEN's Prison Writing Committee.
Download or read book Stepping on the Serpent written by Thaddaeus Lancton MIC and published by . This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prayer "Jesus, I trust in You" is a whole program of life, Fr. Thaddaeus Lancton, MIC, explains in Stepping on the Serpent: The Journey of Trust with Mary. In fact, it tells us how to make our pilgrimage home to God the Father through the Son with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, especially through the Church and Our Lady. Father Thaddaeus, a priest with the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, explains that life is a continual choice between two paths: trust and distrust. A Christian cannot remain neutral. To advance on our journey, we need to know our enemy, Satan, but more importantly, we need to know our companion, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She teaches us how to live the prayer "Jesus, I trust in You" in all our difficulties and trials; recognize the temptations of the serpent of distrust, the devil; step on him; and leave him in the dust. Saying the prayer "Jesus, I trust in You" is easy. Living this prayer, as Mary did, is not. Father Thaddaeus shows us the way. Book jacket.
Download or read book Serpent in the Sky written by John Anthony West and published by Quest Books. This book was released on 2012-12-19 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Anthony West's revolutionary reinterpretation of the civilization of Egypt challenges all that has been accepted as dogma concerning Ancient Egypt. In this pioneering study West documents that: Hieroglyphs carry hermetic messages that convey the subtler realities of the Sacred Science of the Pharaohs. Egyptian science, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy were more sophisticated than most modern Egyptologists acknowledge. Egyptian knowledge of the universe was a legacy from a highly sophisticated civilization that flourished thousands of years ago. The great Sphinx represents geological proof that such a civilization existed. This revised edition includes a new introduction linking Egyptian spiritual science with the perennial wisdom tradition and an appendix updating West's work in redating the Sphinx. Illustrated with over 140 photographs and line drawings.
Download or read book Salvation on Sand Mountain written by Dennis Covington and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Dennis Covington, what began as a journalistic assignment - covering the trial of an Alabama preacher convicted of attempting to murder his wife with poisonous snakes - would evolve into a headlong plunge into a bizarre, mysterious, and ultimately irresistible world of unshakable faith: the world of holiness snake handling, where people drink strychnine, speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick, and, some claim, raise the dead. Set in the heart of Appalachia, Salvation on Sand Mountain is Covington's unsurpassed and chillingly captivating exploration of the nature, power, and extremity of faith - an exploration that gradually turns inward, until Covington finds himself taking up the snakes. University.
Download or read book Feathered Serpent and the Five Suns written by Duncan Tonatiuh and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh brings an ancient Mesoamerican creation myth to life Long ago, the gods of Mesoamerica set out to create humans. They tried many times during each sun, or age. When all their attempts failed and the gods grew tired, only one did not give up: Quetzalcóatl—the Feathered Serpent. To continue, he first had to retrieve the sacred bones of creation guarded by Mictlantecuhtli, lord of the underworld. Gathering his staff, shield, cloak, and shell ornament for good luck, Feathered Serpent embarked on the dangerous quest to create humankind. Award-winning author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh brings to life the story of Feathered Serpent, one of the most important deities in ancient Mesoamerica. With his instantly recognizable, acclaimed art style and grand storytelling, Tonatiuh recounts a thrilling creation tale of epic proportions.
Download or read book The Fruit the Tree and the Serpent written by Lynne A. Isbell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global prominence of snakes in religion, myth, and folklore underscores our deep connection to them—but why, when few of us have firsthand experience? The answer, Isbell suggests, lies in snakes’ singular impact on primate evolution; predation pressure from snakes is ultimately responsible for the superior vision and large brains of primates.
Download or read book The Rainbow Serpent written by Dick Roughsey and published by Harpercollins Childrens Books. This book was released on 1993-09-15 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the aborigine story of creation featuring Goorialla, the great Rainbow Serpent.
Download or read book The Serpent of Stars written by Jean Giono and published by Archipelago. This book was released on 2004-04-23 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Serpent of Stars (Le serpent d¢étoiles, 1993; reprinted 1999 Grasset) takes place in rural southern France in the early part of the century. The novel’s elusive narrative thread ties landscape to character to an expanse just beyond our grasp. The narrator encounters a shepherding family and glimpse by glimpse, each family member and the shepherding way of life is revealed to us. The novel culminates in a large shepherds’ gathering where a traditional Shepherd’s Play—a kind of creation myth that includes in its cast The River, The Sea, The Man, and The Mountain—is enacted. The work’s proto-environmental world view as well as its hybrid form—part play, part novel—makes The Serpent of Stars astonishingly contemporary. W.S. Merwin’s "Green Fields" begins, "By this part of the century few are left who believe/in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts/of them served on plates and the pleas from slatted trucks..." This novel leaves the reader believing not only in the animals, but the terrain they are part of, the people who tend them, and the life all these elements together compose.
Download or read book Snake written by Erica Wright and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Feared and worshiped in equal measure, snakes have captured the imagination of poets, painters, and philosophers for centuries. From Ice Age cave drawings to Snakes on a Plane, this creature continues to enthrall the public. But what harm has been caused by our mythologizing? While considering the dangers of stigma, Erica Wright moves from art and pop culture to religion, fetish, and ecologic disaster. This book considers how the snake has become more symbol than animal, a metaphor for how we treat whatever scares us the most, whether or not our panic is justified. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in the The Atlantic.
Download or read book The Lost Pillars of Enoch written by Tobias Churton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the unified science-religion of early humanity and the impact of Hermetic philosophy on religion and spirituality • Investigates the Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus’s famous story that Seth’s descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe • Reveals how this original knowledge has influenced civilization through Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Masonic, Hindu, and Islamic mystical knowledge • Examines how “Enoch’s Pillars” relate to the origins of Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Newtonian science, William Blake, and Theosophy Esoteric tradition has long maintained that at the dawn of human civilization there existed a unified science-religion, a spiritual grasp of the universe and our place in it. The biblical Enoch--also known as Hermes Trismegistus, Thoth, or Idris--was seen as the guardian of this sacred knowledge, which was inscribed on pillars known as Enoch’s or Seth’s pillars. Examining the idea of the lost pillars of pure knowledge, the sacred science behind Hermetic philosophy, Tobias Churton investigates the controversial Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus’s famous story that Seth’s descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe. He traces the fragments of this sacred knowledge as it descended through the ages into initiated circles, influencing civilization through Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Masonic, Hindu, and Islamic mystical knowledge. He follows the path of the pillars’ fragments through Egyptian alchemy and the Gnostic Sethites, the Kabbalah, and medieval mystic Ramon Llull. He explores the arrival of the Hermetic manuscripts in Renaissance Florence, the philosophy of Copernicus, Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, and the origins of Freemasonry, including the “revival” of Enoch in Masonry’s Scottish Rite. He reveals the centrality of primal knowledge to Isaac Newton, William Stukeley, John Dee, and William Blake, resurfacing as the tradition of Martinism, Theosophy, and Thelema. Churton also unravels what Josephus meant when he asserted one Sethite pillar still stood in the “Seiriadic” land: land of Sirius worshippers. Showing how the lost pillars stand as a twenty-first century symbol for reattaining our heritage, Churton ultimately reveals how the esoteric strands of all religions unite in a gnosis that could offer a basis for reuniting religion and science.
Download or read book Serpent in the Garden written by James A. Cates and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to examine the complexity of sexual identity, philosophy, and behavior in Amish culture. The Amish offer a startling contrast to the postmodern view of sexuality and gender roles. After the sexual revolution of the 1960s, mainstream American culture never looked back. Meanwhile, the Amish never looked forward. In twenty-first-century Amish communities, heteronormative sexuality is still based on a unifying principle: an understanding of sexuality as emerging from a divine plan. In the eyes of the Amish, sex is squandered by those who embrace it as hedonistic or who carve out a sexual identity that moves them away from that singular, God-given purpose. But this communal emphasis on sex for procreation does not mean that the Amish do not possess a complex range of sexual identities and opinions. In Serpent in the Garden, clinical psychologist James A. Cates breaks new ground in the study of Amish sexuality by examining this shrouded, rarely discussed subject. The first book to bring Amish sexuality into primary focus, this volume argues that, because the Amish are a sexual minority, queer theory is the ideal framework from which to observe their views on sex, sexuality, and gender. The book offers a broad view of sexuality in Amish culture that includes the challenges that gays and lesbians face in the community, as well as an exploration of Amish gender roles, their views toward intimacy, their responses to cases of child sexual abuse, and the role of fetishes among the Amish. Cates draws from multiple perspectives and years of research on the Amish themselves. He also looks at pushback against alternative behaviors or identities, as well as Amish success in keeping mainstream values at bay. With this book, Cates establishes Amish sexuality as a topic worthy of professional attention. Offering readers a more sophisticated understanding of the Amish and of sexual expression among cultures, Serpent in the Garden will appeal to scholars working on gender and sexuality, the Amish, and social service professionals who serve the Amish community.
Download or read book The Serpent Rising written by Mary Garden and published by . This book was released on 2024-05-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1973, Mary Garden abandoned a promising academic career to spend seven years in India at the feet of such gurus as Rajneesh, Sathya Sai Baba and an enigmatic yogi in the Himalayan jungle - Swami Balyogi Premvarni. The Serpent Rising is her own story of the heaven and hell she experienced as she fell under the spell of self-appointed 'god-men'. What was thought to be a passing fad of the 1960s and 1970s has not disappeared. People still search for something better, and still surrender their minds and bodies to gurus and yoga teachers. The #MeToo movement has exposed countless men guilty of sexual harassment and assault. Now #MeToo is shaking the yoga world and gurus who claim to be enlightened, but who are in fact sexual predators. Most of their groups are sex cults. Recent documentaries such as Wild Wild Country (Rajneesh/Osho), Yogi, Guru, Predator (on Bikram Choudhury) and The Vow (Keith Ranierre, Nxivm) shine a light on how easy it is to fall under the spell of these charlatans.
Download or read book The Serpent and the Moon written by Princess Michael of Kent and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-09-13 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against the stunning backdrop of Renaissance France, The Serpent and the Moon is a true story of love, war, intrigue, betrayal, and persecution. At its heart is one of the world's greatest love stories: the lifelong devotion of King Henri II of France to Diane de Poitiers, a beautiful aristocrat who was nineteen years older than her lover. At age fourteen, Henri was married to fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici, an unattractive but extremely wealthy heiress who was to bring half of Italy to France as her dowry. When Catherine met Henri on her wedding day, she fell instantly in love, but Henri could see no one but the beautiful Diane. When Henri eventually became king, he and Diane ruled France as one. Meanwhile, Catherine took as her secret motto the words "Hate and Wait" and lived for the day Diane would die and she could win Henri's love and rule by his side. Fate had another plan. Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent, herself a descendant of both Catherine and Diane, imbues this seldom-told story with an insider's grasp of royal life. The Serpent and the Moon is a fascinating love story as well as a richly woven history of an extraordinary time.
Download or read book The Serpent s Shadow written by Rick Riordan and published by Puffin Books. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carter and Sadie Kane face the impossible task of defeating Apophis, the serpent of chaos, before he can destroy the mortal world. Unfortunately, the magicians of the House of Life are on the brink civil war, the Gods are divided, and the young initiates of Brooklyn House stand almost alone against the forces of chaos.
Download or read book Search for the golden serpent written by Luciana Cavallaro and published by Luciana Cavallaro. This book was released on 2015-03-27 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A true page-turner, in a similar vein to Wilbur Smith and David Gemmell, is an action-packed adventure story catapulting a reluctant hero from one dangerous encounter to another. Evan has been having some very strange dreams. The Perth-based architect dismissed an unexpected phone call from an entrepreneur in Greece, asking him to restore his family home, as the ravings of a crank. Until, that is, the dreams begin, each more vivid than the last. A dream encounter with a mysterious character called Zeus sees him catapulted back in time to 500 years before the birth of Christ. Evan finds himself quickly embroiled in a plot to prevent the birth of Christianity, an unwilling player in an epic struggle between the old gods and the new, fighting for his life.
