Download or read book Myth Cosmos and Society written by Bruce Lincoln and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cosmos Chaos and the World to Come written by Norman Cohn and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All over the world people look forward to a perfect future, when the forces of good will be finally victorious over the forces of evil. Once this was a radically new way of imagining the destiny of the world and of mankind. How did it originate, and what kind of world-view preceded it? In this engrossing book, the author of the classic work The Pursuit of the Millennium takes us on a journey of exploration, through the world-views of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India, through the innovations of Iranian and Jewish prophets and sages, to the earliest Christian imaginings of heaven on earth. Until around 1500 B.C., it was generally believed that once the world had been set in order by the gods, it was in essence immutable. However, it was always a troubled world. By means of flood and drought, famine and plague, defeat in war, and death itself, demonic forces threatened and impaired it. Various combat myths told how a divine warrior kept the forces of chaos at bay and enabled the world to survive. Sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C., the Iranian prophet Zoroaster broke from that static yet anxious world-view, reinterpreting the Iranian version of the combat myth. For Zoroaster, the world was moving, through incessant conflict, toward a conflictless state--"cosmos without chaos." The time would come when, in a prodigious battle, the supreme god would utterly defeat the forces of chaos and their human allies and eliminate them forever, and so bring an absolutely good world into being. Cohn reveals how this vision of the future was taken over by certain Jewish groups, notably the Jesus sect, with incalculable consequences. Deeply informed yet highly readable, this magisterial book illumines a major turning-point in the history of human consciousness. It will be mandatory reading for all who appreciated The Pursuit of the Millennium.
Download or read book Myth and Cosmos written by John Middleton and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Myth of the Eternal Return written by Mircea Eliade and published by Bollingen. This book was released on 1971 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essay on humanity's experience of history and its interpretation begins with a study of the traditional or mythological view and concludes with a comparative estimate of modern historiological approaches.
Download or read book The Truth of Myth written by Tok Thompson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To the student of myth: This book attempts to provide a concise overview of the theoretical approaches to studying mythology, both in theory and in everyday life. Whether one is interested in a particular myth or mythic tradition, or understanding comparative mythology more broadly, or even the subject and overview of mythology as a whole, this text attempts to present a clear and understandable introduction to some of the best tried and true approaches, as well as to address some of the perennial problems and points of confusion. To embark on the study of myth is to join a noisy chorus of scholars, both present and past, in attempting to divine the meaning of some of the most important, intriguing, and at times puzzling narratives that humankind has ever crafted. We hope this text will help provide you with the theoretical background and tools to allow for a rich, full study of mythology in all its myriad forms. To the teacher of myth: Myth has been the source of a great deal of theoretical disagreement and confusion as well. We have tried to address some of the controversies by appealing to a close and careful consideration of the data, which at times helps keep lofty theorizing firmly anchored in the real world. Additionally, we have tried to present a historical background to the study of myth, which should also help illuminate the close relationships between a society, and that society's views of myth. Mythology does not occur without people: it is only with a strong grounding in the study of humankind that we can hope to make progress in our understanding. Where doubt within the scholarly community has arisen, we have tried to pay attention to both sides of the debates. The resulting text is intended to be a detailed, yet engaging, introduction to the study of world mythology, and a scholarly counterweight to popular, unscientific views. Our experience in teaching myth is that the most vexing issues stem from the several strained if not contradictory connotations that the term myth carries. Is myth archaic, or is it part of all societies and thus modern as well? Is it part of religion and/or science, or does it contrast with these? Most vexingly, does myth designate falsehood, or the highest forms of truth-those that form the core, guiding principles of particular societies' engagements of the cosmos and life within it? There is also the double signification of the term mythology, which points to both an academic tradition and the object studied by that tradition. Our view is that while such antinomies are unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future, much can be gained by locating and identifying them and by attempting to understand how and why they have emerged. We hope that this approach not only lends clarity to the topic of myth, but also serves to energize the study to which we now turn"--
Download or read book Myth and Geology written by Luigi Piccardi and published by Geological Society of London. This book was released on 2007 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is the first peer-reviewed collection of papers focusing on the potential of myth storylines to yield data and lessons that are of value to the geological sciences. Building on the nascent discipline of geomythology, scientists and scholars from a variety of disciplines have contributed to this volume. The geological hazards (such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and cosmic impacts) that have given rise to myths are considered, as are the sacred and cultural values associated with rocks, fossils, geological formations and landscapes. There are also discussions about the historical and literary perspectives of geomythology. Regional coverage includes Europe and the Mediterranean, Afghanistan, Cameroon, India, Australia, Japan, Pacific islands, South America and North America. Myth and Geology challenges the widespread notion that myths are fictitious or otherwise lacking in value for the physical sciences." -- BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Myth of the Eternal Return written by Mircea Eliade and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in English in 1954, this founding work of the history of religions secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-scholar Mircea Eliade. Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no fewer than half a dozen European languages, The Myth of the Eternal Return illuminates the religious beliefs and rituals of a wide variety of archaic religious cultures. While acknowledging that a return to their practices is impossible, Eliade passionately insists on the value of understanding their views to enrich the contemporary imagination of what it is to be human. This book includes an introduction from Jonathan Z. Smith that provides essential context and encourages readers to engage in an informed way with this classic text.
Download or read book The Myth of the Eternal Return Or Cosmos and History written by Mircea Eliade and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Dictionary of Creation Myths written by David Adams Leeming and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cosmos of the Ancients written by Stefan Stenudd and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-09-09 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophers of Ancient Greece lived in a time when the gods were worshipped and the myths about them very much alive. They were generally regarded as accurate and there was no scientific evidence at hand to dismiss them. So, were they believed? This book explores to what extent the Greeks were able to question their own mythology. This is done by examining the cosmology of their philosophers and what roles they allowed therein for the gods - as much as possible according to their own words. To the philosophers, the quest to understand the world was neither made redundant by the mythology nor completely independent of it. If they were able to express doubts regarding the gods as well as the myths about them, and many of them certainly were, then their contemporaries must have been able to grasp the same. The Greeks were devoted to their mythology, but not all of them blindly so. Stefan Stenudd is a Swedish author and historian of ideas, who specializes on studies of the patterns of thought in creation myths.
Download or read book Cosmos and History written by Mircea Eliade and published by . This book was released on 1959 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This founding work of the history of religions, first published in English in 1954, secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986). Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no less than half a dozen European languages, Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return makes both intelligible and compelling the religious expressions and activities of a wide variety of archaic and "primitive" religious cultures. While acknowledging that a return to the "archaic" is no longer possible, Eliade passionately insists on the value of understanding this view in order to enrich our contemporary imagination of what it is to be human. Jonathan Z. Smith's new introduction provides the contextual background to the book and presents a critical outline of Eliade's argument in a way that encourages readers to engage in an informed conversation with this classic text.
Download or read book What Is Religion written by Thomas A. Idinopulos and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1998 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of Religion: BRIAN C. WILSON.
Download or read book Myth Chaos and Certainty written by Rosolino Buccheri and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a study of the three evolutions in a circle (cosmos, life, and knowledge) with the aim of discussing human social behavior, a metaphor of the general behavior of nature (from which man derives) within the fluctuating equilibrium between the opposite tendencies to cohesion and shredding; a circularity revealing an indefinite and probably never conclusive run-up of human beings to the knowledge of nature; an analysis that demonstrates any theoretical/practical impossibility to formulate absolute certainties, since it depicts a situation in which man finds himself hovering between a rational way of living and the contradictory modus operandi of mythos. All that, within a society where the powerful communication and transportation technologies give rise to conflicts and fragmentations, where anyone’s will to self-distinguishing is enhanced by highlighting any small difference and obscuring any large similarity. The main difference between this book and existing ones stems from its interdisciplinary nature, particularly because it establishes a close connection between three, apparently so different disciplines—cosmology, life sciences, and sociology—compared with respect to their increasing complexity laws, giving rise to always more chaotic configurations.
Download or read book The Archetypal Cosmos written by Keiron Le Grice and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern world is passing through a time of critical change on many levels: cultural, political, ecological, and spiritual. We are witnessing the decline and dissolution of the old order and the tumult and uncertainty of a new birth. Against this background is the urgent need for a coherent framework of meaning to guide and to lead individuals and society beyond the growing fragmentation of culture, belief, and personal identity. Keiron Le Grice asserts that developing insights of a new cosmology can provide this framework to us discover an underlying order that shapes our life experiences. In a compelling synthesis of ideas from the seminal thinkers of depth psychology and new paradigm sciences, The Archetypal Cosmos positions the new discipline of archetypal astrology at the center of an emerging worldview that reunifies psyche and cosmos, spirituality and science, and mythology and metaphysics to enable us to see mythic gods, heroes, and themes in a new light. The author draws especially on the work of Jung, Joseph Campbell, Richard Tarnas, Fritjof Capra, David Bohm and Brian Swimme. Heralding a "rediscovery of the gods" and passage into a new spiritual era, The Archetypal Cosmos presents a new understanding of the role of myth and archetypal principles in our lives, one that could give a cosmic perspective and deeper meaning to our personal experiences.
Download or read book The Myth of the Eternal Return written by Mircea Eliade and published by Bollingen Foundation. This book was released on 2005 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Princeton classic edition"--P. 4 of cover.
Download or read book Death War and Sacrifice written by Bruce Lincoln and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1991-08-27 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the world's leading specialists in Indo-European religion and society, Bruce Lincoln expresses in these essays his severe doubts about the existence of a much-hypothesized prototypical Indo-European religion. Written over fifteen years, the essays—six of them previously unpublished—fall into three parts. Part I deals with matters "Indo-European" in a relatively unproblematized way, exploring a set of haunting images that recur in descriptions of the Otherworld from many cultures. While Lincoln later rejects this methodology, these chapters remain the best available source of data for the topics they address. In Part II, Lincoln takes the data for each essay from a single culture area and shifts from the topic of dying to that of killing. Of particular interest are the chapters connecting sacrifice to physiology, a master discourse of antiquity that brought the cosmos, the human body, and human society into an ideologically charged correlation. Part III presents Lincoln's most controversial case against a hypothetical Indo-European protoculture. Reconsidering the work of the prominent Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumézil, Lincoln argues that Dumézil's writings were informed and inflected by covert political concerns characteristic of French fascism. This collection is an invaluable resource for students of myth, ritual, ancient societies, anthropology, and the history of religions. Bruce Lincoln is professor of humanities and religious studies at the University of Minnesota.
Download or read book Norse Mythology written by John Lindow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-10-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norse Mythology explores the magical myths and legends of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Viking-Age Greenland and outlines the way the prehistoric tales and beliefs from these regions that have remained embedded in the imagination of the world. The book begins with an Introduction that helps put Scandinavian mythology in place in history, followed by a chapter that explains the meaning of mythic time, and a third section that presents in-depth explanations of each mythological term. These fascinating entries identify particular deities and giants, as well as the places where they dwell and the varied and wily means by which they forge their existence and battle one another. We meet Thor, one of the most powerful gods, who specializes in killing giants using a hammer made for him by dwarfs, not to mention myriad trolls, ogres, humans and strange animals. We learn of the ongoing struggle between the gods, who create the cosmos, and the jötnar, or giants, who aim to destroy it. In the enchanted world where this mythology takes place, we encounter turbulent rivers, majestic mountains, dense forests, storms, fierce winters, eagles, ravens, salmon and snakes in a landscape closely resembling Scandinavia. Beings travel on ships and on horseback; they eat slaughtered meat and drink mead. Spanning from the inception of the universe and the birth of human beings to the universe's destruction and the mythic future, these sparkling tales of creation and destruction, death and rebirth, gods and heroes will entertain readers and offer insight into the relationship between Scandinavian myth, history, and culture.
