Download or read book The Devil s Book of Culture written by Benjamin Feinberg and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2003-12-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1950s, the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico, has drawn a strange assortment of visitors and pilgrims—schoolteachers and government workers, North American and European spelunkers exploring the region’s vast cave system, and counterculturalists from hippies (John Lennon and other celebrities supposedly among them) to New Age seekers, all chasing a firsthand experience of transcendence and otherness through the ingestion of psychedelic mushrooms “in context” with a Mazatec shaman. Over time, this steady incursion of the outside world has significantly influenced the Mazatec sense of identity, giving rise to an ongoing discourse about what it means to be “us” and “them.” In this highly original ethnography, Benjamin Feinberg investigates how different understandings of Mazatec identity and culture emerge through talk that circulates within and among various groups, including Mazatec-speaking businessmen, curers, peasants, intellectuals, anthropologists, bureaucrats, cavers, and mushroom-seeking tourists. Specifically, he traces how these groups express their sense of culture and identity through narratives about three nearby yet strange discursive “worlds”—the “magic world” of psychedelic mushrooms and shamanic practices, the underground world of caves and its associated folklore of supernatural beings and magical wealth, and the world of the past or the past/present relationship. Feinberg’s research refutes the notion of a static Mazatec identity now changed by contact with the outside world, showing instead that identity forms at the intersection of multiple transnational discourses.
Download or read book The Devil s Book of Culture written by Benjamin Feinberg and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1950s, the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico, has drawn a strange assortment of visitors and pilgrims—schoolteachers and government workers, North American and European spelunkers exploring the region's vast cave system, and counterculturalists from hippies (John Lennon and other celebrities supposedly among them) to New Age seekers, all chasing a firsthand experience of transcendence and otherness through the ingestion of psychedelic mushrooms "in context" with a Mazatec shaman. Over time, this steady incursion of the outside world has significantly influenced the Mazatec sense of identity, giving rise to an ongoing discourse about what it means to be "us" and "them." In this highly original ethnography, Benjamin Feinberg investigates how different understandings of Mazatec identity and culture emerge through talk that circulates within and among various groups, including Mazatec-speaking businessmen, curers, peasants, intellectuals, anthropologists, bureaucrats, cavers, and mushroom-seeking tourists. Specifically, he traces how these groups express their sense of culture and identity through narratives about three nearby yet strange discursive "worlds"—the "magic world" of psychedelic mushrooms and shamanic practices, the underground world of caves and its associated folklore of supernatural beings and magical wealth, and the world of the past or the past/present relationship. Feinberg's research refutes the notion of a static Mazatec identity now changed by contact with the outside world, showing instead that identity forms at the intersection of multiple transnational discourses.
Download or read book Lucifer Rising written by Gavin Baddeley and published by Plexus Publishing. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucifer Rising is a popular history of Satanism: from Old Testament lore to the posturing of the world's most notorious heavy metal rock bands, all is made accessible. Containing many candid interviews with modern-day Satanists and controversial rock stars, this book makes light of popular culture's darkest secret.
Download or read book The Little Book of Satanism written by La Carmina and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-10-25 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover the fascinating history and culture of Satanism through the ages and learn why many Satanists today stand up for free inquiry and personal liberty. Satanism is too often misunderstood as a religion that makes blood sacrifices to an evil, horned Prince of Darkness. In reality, modern Satanists are nonviolent and nontheistic, and consider the Devil to be a meaningful metaphor for the pursuit of knowledge, reason, and justice. The Little Book of Satanism details the “mark of the beast” in cultural and historic movements over the centuries, which have informed the sincerely held beliefs and practices of Satanists today. Written by award-winning alternative culture journalist and blogger La Carmina, this comprehensive guide includes: A foreword from Lucien Greaves, activist, spokesperson, and cofounder of The Satanic Temple Information on Satan’s biblical origins, and his various names, appearances, and symbols Details on his age-old role as a scapegoat, from medieval witch trials to the 1980s Satanic Panic An overview of modern philosophy and practices, focusing on The Church of Satan, The Satanic Bible, and The Satanic Temple Examples of the Devil’s influence on art, literature, music, and films—from Paradise Lost to Rosemary’s Baby This accessible book explains how Satanism developed in the context of social history while debunking lurid conspiracy theories about serial killers and ritual abuse. It includes a primer on various Satanic practices such as social activism, rituals, and holidays. In the spirit of the fallen angel Lucifer, be inspired by Satanism’s affirmative values that courageously oppose arbitrary authority and champion nonconformity.
Download or read book The Devils We Know written by James A. Morone and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2015-08-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is there an American culture? Certainly, says James Morone. Americans are fighting over it now. They have been fighting over it since the first Puritan stepped ashore. Americans hate government (no national health insurance!) and call for more of it (lock ‘em up!). They prize democracy (power to the people) and scramble to restrict it (the electoral college in the 21st century?). They celebrate opportunity -- but only for some (don’t let those people in!). Americans proclaim liberty then wrestle over which kind—positive (freedom from want) or negative (no new taxes!)? In this volume Morone offers his own answer to the conundrum of American political culture: It is a perpetual work in progress. Immigrants arrive, excluded groups demand power, and each generation injects new ethnicities, races, religions, ideas, foods, entertainments, sins, and body types into the national mix. The challengers—the devils we know—keep inventing new answers to the nation’s fundamental question: Who are we? Each essay in The Devils We Know takes up a different aspect of the creative conflicts that shape America. Ranging from Huck Finn to Obamacare, Morone explores the ways in which culture interacts with other forces—most notably the rules and organizations that channel collective choices. The battle to define the nation’s political culture spills over into every area of American life, but three are especially important: democracy, economics, and morals—each, in turn, complicated by race, race, race. Written over 25 years, these essays constitute a closely observed and deeply thoughtful vision of what America is—its ideas, images, rules, institutions, and culture clashes. Together, they explain just why America is the way it is. And what it might become.
Download or read book The Devil s Redemption 2 volumes written by Michael J. McClymond and published by Baker Academic. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 1376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will all evil finally turn to good, or does some evil remain stubbornly opposed to God and God's goodness? Will even the devil be redeemed? Addressing a theological issue of perennial interest, this comprehensive book (in two volumes) surveys the history of Christian universalism from the second to the twenty-first century and offers an interpretation of how and why universalist belief arose. The author explores what the church has taught about universal salvation and hell and critiques universalism from a biblical, philosophical, and theological standpoint. He shows that the effort to extend grace to everyone undermines the principle of grace for anyone.
Download or read book Devil House written by John Darnielle and published by MCD. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “It’s never quite the book you think it is. It’s better.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times From John Darnielle, the New York Times bestselling author and the singer-songwriter of the Mountain Goats, comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling. Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success—and a movie adaptation—to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell––his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected—back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is. Devil House is John Darnielle’s most ambitious work yet, a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a spellbinding tale of crime, writing, memory, and artistic obsession.
Download or read book The Devil A Very Short Introduction written by Darren Oldridge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-31 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Devil has fascinated writers and theologians since the time of the New Testament, and inspired many dramatic and haunting works of art. Today he remains a potent image in popular culture. The Devil: A Very Short Introduction presents an introduction to the Christian Devil through the history of ideas and the lives of real people.
Download or read book The Devil written by Philip C. Almond and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Although the Devil still 'lives' in modern popular culture, for the past 250 years he has become marginal to the dominant concerns of Western intellectual thought. That life could not be thought or imagined without him, that he was a part of the everyday, continually present in nature and history, and active at the depths of our selves, has been all but forgotten. It is the aim of this work to bring modern readers to a deeper appreciation of how, from the early centuries of the Christian period through to the recent beginnings of the modern world, the human story could not be told and human life could not be lived apart from the 'life' of the Devil. With that comes the deeper recognition that, for the better part of the last two thousand years, the battle between good and evil in the hearts and minds of men and women was but the reflection of a cosmic battle between God and Satan, the divine and the diabolic, that was at the heart of history itself."—from The Devil Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub; Ha-Satan or the Adversary; Iblis or Shaitan: no matter what name he travels under, the Devil has throughout the ages and across civilizations been a compelling and charismatic presence. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the supposed reign of God has long been challenged by the fiery malice of his opponent, as contending forces of good and evil have between them weighed human souls in the balance. In The Devil, Philip C. Almond explores the figure of evil incarnate from the first centuries of the Christian era. Along the way, he describes the rise of demonology as an intellectual and theological pursuit, the persecution as witches of women believed to consort with the Devil and his minions, and the decline in the belief in Hell and in angels and demons as corporeal beings as a result of the Enlightenment. Almond shows that the Prince of Darkness remains an irresistible subject in history, religion, art, literature, and culture. Almond brilliantly locates the "life" of the Devil within the broader Christian story of which it is inextricably a part; the "demonic paradox" of the Devil as both God's enforcer and his enemy is at the heart of Christianity. Woven throughout the account of the Christian history of the Devil is another complex and complicated history: that of the idea of the Devil in Western thought. Sorcery, witchcraft, possession, even melancholy, have all been laid at the Devil's doorstep. Until the Enlightenment enforced a "disenchantment" with the old archetypes, even rational figures such as Thomas Aquinas were obsessed with the nature of the Devil and the specific characteristics of the orders of demons and angels. It was a significant moment both in the history of demonology and in theology when Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) denied the Devil's existence; almost four hundred years later, popular fascination with the idea of the Devil has not yet dimmed.
Download or read book The Art of the Occult written by S. Elizabeth and published by Frances Lincoln. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A visual feast of eclectic artwork informed and inspired by spiritual beliefs, magical techniques, mythology and otherworldly experiences. Mystical beliefs and practices have existed for millennia, but why do we still chase the esoteric? From the beginning of human creativity itself, image-makers have been drawn to these unknown spheres and have created curious artworks that transcend time and place – but what is it that attracts artists to these magical realms? From theosophy and kabbalah, to the zodiac and alchemy; spiritualism and ceremonial magic, to the elements and sacred geometry – The Art of the Occult introduces major occult themes and showcases the artists who have been influenced and led by them. Discover the symbolic and mythical images of the Pre-Raphaelites; the automatic drawing of Hilma af Klint and Madge Gill; Leonora Carrington's surrealist interpretation of myth, alchemy and kabbalah; and much more. Featuring prominent, marginalised and little-known artists, The Art of the Occult crosses mystical spheres in a bid to inspire and delight. Divided into thematic chapters (The Cosmos, Higher Beings, Practitioners), the book acts as an entertaining introduction to the art of mysticism – with essays examining each practice and over 175 artworks to discover. The art of the occult has always existed in the margins but inspired the masses, and this book will spark curiosity in all fans of magic, mysticism and the mysterious.
Download or read book Speak of the Devil written by Joseph P. Laycock and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book-length study of The Satanic Temple, Joseph Laycock, a scholar of new religious movements, contends that the emergence of "political Satanism" marks a significant moment in American religious history that will have a lasting impact on how Americans frame debates about religious freedom. Though the group gained attention for its strategic deployment of outrage, it claims to have developed beyond politics into a religious movement. Equal parts history and ethnography, Speak of the Devil demonstrates why religious Satanism is significant to larger conversations about the definition of religion, religious freedom, and religious tolerance.
Download or read book A Host of Devils written by Zachary Kingdon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Host of Devils provides an in-depth account of the background, origin and development of the spirit figure sculptures which emerged during colonial times among the Makonde people of Mozambique. The creation of such works is shown to connect with a regional system of knowledge and practice, within which spirits function as a format for expression. The book describes the ways in which the sculpture emerged, as well as the author's experience of learning how to carve.
Download or read book Raising Hell written by Richard Crouse and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the 2012 release of The Devils, Raising Hell examines the film from its inception through its reception.
Download or read book Isle of Devils Isle of Saints written by Michael J. Jarvis and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2022-06-14 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This social and cultural history of seventeenth-century Bermuda recounts the colony's development under the Virginia and Bermuda companies, with particular emphasis on how multiracial, multicultural interaction, a distinct maritime island environment, a pervasive Puritan religious culture, and thickening ties with other Anglo-American colonies created a distinctive new American-Bermudian identity. Puritanism, slavery, family tobacco farming, overcrowding, and out-migration shaped Bermuda's development and a growing network of Atlantic linkages that islanders formed that primed it to become a major maritime hub in the age of sail"--
Download or read book A Little Devil in America written by Hanif Abdurraqib and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A sweeping, genre-bending “masterpiece” (Minneapolis Star Tribune) exploring Black art, music, and culture in all their glory and complexity—from Soul Train, Aretha Franklin, and James Brown to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Whitney Houston, and Beyoncé ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Dallas Morning News, Publishers Weekly “Gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance.”—Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds in “Gimme Shelter” in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder,” a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance. Touching on Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Billy Dee Williams, the Wu-Tan Clan, Dave Chappelle, and more, Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE GORDON BURN PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Rolling Stone, Esquire, BuzzFeed, Thrillist, She Reads, BookRiot, BookPage, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, LitHub, Library Journal, Booklist
Download or read book The Devil s Highway written by Luis Alberto Urrea and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2008-11-16 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important book from a Pulitzer Prize finalist follows the brutal journey a group of men take to cross the Mexican border: "the single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of U.S. border policy" (The Atlantic). In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern American classic.
Download or read book The Devil s Bible written by Dana Chamblee Carpenter and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She’s spent the last seven hundred years hiding in plain sight. But Mouse's past is about to catch up with her. The Devil’s Bible. Once considered an eighth wonder of the world, the ancient book is shrouded in mystery. No one knows who wrote it or where it was written. Even dry-boned scholars whisper about the secrets hidden in the book: How it calls to the power-hungry. How it drives people mad. How it was written in the shadows by the hand of the devil himself. But no one knows the truth—no one except Mouse. She’s been running from the truth at the heart of the Devil’s Bible for so long that no one even knows her name anymore. She calls herself Emma Nicholas—a normal name for a normal college professor living a normal life. But all of it is a lie, and, when forces emerge that threaten to expose her, Mouse has no choice but to take flight once more. Desperate and on the run, Mouse unexpectedly finds hope in a stranger’s kindness. But it will take more than hope to win this game of souls—a battle between good and evil set in motion long ago at the birth of the Devil’s Bible.
