This book is a study of religious ecstasy, and the ways that it has been suppressed in both the academic study of religion, and in much of the modern practice of religion. It examines the meanings of the term, how ecstatic experience is understood in a range of religions, and why the importance of religious and mystical ecstasy has declined in the modern West. June McDaniel examines how the search for ecstatic experience has migrated into such areas as war, terrorism, transgression, sexuality, drug use, and anti-institutional forms of spirituality. She argues that the loss of religious and mystical ecstasy, as both a religious goal and as a topic of academic study, has had wide-ranging negative effects. She also proposes that the field of religious studies must go beyond criminalizing, trivializing and pathologizing ecstatic and mystical experiences. Both religious studies and theology need to take these states seriously as important aspects of lived human experience.

Kay Dowling was used to luxury, expensive pleasures, and the gentlemen who could afford them. But when she accompanied her wealthy family to her late grandfather's ranch, it was ordinary Tom McNair who caught her eye. Then Tom was arrested for a not-so-ordinary murder, and Kay's life was turned upside-down. But she was determined to help Tom prove his innocence, even if she had to put her own life in danger to do it.

The highly acclaimed and provocatively rendered story of a young postulant's claim to divine possession and religious ecstasy.

For millennia, seekers have used physical and emotional extremes to achieve transcendence and exaltation. Today, many BDSM and leather practitioners are discovering the potential of SM practice to reach personal, interpersonal and spiritual goals. In Radical Ecstasy, bestselling BDSM/sexuality authors Easton and Hardy document their own journeys into the transcendent realm of kink. With their trademark frankness and humor, they share their own stories and philosophies. They also share techniques that have worked for them - techniques which combine tantric breathing, visualization and movement with a combined half-century of BDSM experience - to create states of transcendence during solo and partnered sexual and BDSM practice. As outrageously revolutionary as any sex book published in the last decade, Radical Ecstasy sets the stage for the new millennium in BDSM and sacred-sex practices - a "must" for any kink, tantra, pagan or sacred-sex practitioner. "Amazingly mindful exploration of that which cannot be easily put into words... the ecstatic experience from sex to sadomasochism, from trance to intuition to archetypes and spiritual awakening. Totally real and personal. Not a 'how to' but a nurturing 'can do' book." - Fakir Musafar, father of the modern primitive movement. "Progressive, deliciously honest, and HOT HOT HOT! Dossie and Janet ask difficult questions about the nature of sex, intimacy and ecstasy, then they actually manage to answer the questions, plus turn us on when they do. These two erotically gifted women have a way with words - and sex. They raise the bar on erotic writing and sex education to new heights. I'm in awe." - Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., prostitute/porn star turned sex guru/sexologist "Fascinating, heartfelt, honest, real stories of the heart/spirit/energy connection experienced in the passionate rituals of intimate consensual power play. These two courageous women write brilliantly of how erotic energies connect us with the big love we all seek from the source." - Cleo Dubois, educator, ritualist, video producer/star

Written by the world's leading experts on MDMA, "Ecstasy: The Complete Guide" takes the first unbiased look at the risks and the benefits of this unique drug, including the science of how it works; its promise as a treatment for depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, and other mental illnesses; and how to minimize the risks of use.

“The role of the critic,” Daniel Mendelsohn writes, “is to mediate intelligently and stylishly between a work and its audience; to educate and edify in an engaging and, preferably, entertaining way.” His latest collection exemplifies the range, depth, and erudition that have made him “required reading for anyone interested in dissecting culture” (The Daily Beast). In Ecstasy and Terror, Mendelsohn once again casts an eye at literature, film, television, and the personal essay, filtering his insights through his training as a scholar of classical antiquity in illuminating and sometimes surprising ways. Many of these essays look with fresh eyes at our culture’s Greek and Roman models: some find an arresting modernity in canonical works (Bacchae, the Aeneid), while others detect a “Greek DNA” in our responses to national traumas such as the Boston Marathon bombings and the assassination of JFK. There are pieces on contemporary literature, from the “aesthetics of victimhood” in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life to the uncomfortable mixture of art and autobiography in novels by Henry Roth, Ingmar Bergman, and Karl Ove Knausgård. Mendelsohn considers pop culture, too, in essays on the feminism of Game of Thrones and on recent films about artificial intelligence—a subject, he reminds us, that was already of interest to Homer. This collection also brings together for the first time a number of the award-winning memoirist’s personal essays, including his “critic’s manifesto” and a touching reminiscence of his boyhood correspondence with the historical novelist Mary Renault, who inspired him to study the Classics.

Tregenna Hill: Altars and Allegories are love poems cutting through and across the many layers of love: personal, historical, religious, and philosophical; an elegy to the beginnings and ends, to the untranslatable moments in time which contain all that is Good and Beautiful. At the altar before God and human intimacy, there remains the gentle yet brutal yoking of eros and agape with innocence, ecstasy, confession, newness, temporality, death, and surrender.

The Road to the Spring is the first book publication of Mary Austin’s (1868–1934) poems. Best known for her prose book The Land of Little Rain (1903), Austin was in fact a poet from the beginning of her career to the end, even though she never published a volume dedicated to her own original poetry. Instead, Austin’s work came to light in collections of poetry and in prestigious journals such as Poetry, the Nation, the Forum, Harper’s, and Saturday Review of Literature, among many others. The Road to the Spring contains more than 200 poems, most of which can only be found in out-of-print books, magazines, and periodicals, and her unpublished manuscripts archived at the Huntington Library. This singular publication includes her original work, poems she claimed to have written with her grammar school pupils at the end of the nineteenth century, and her translations and “re-expressions” of Native American songs, which often diverge greatly from any other known sources. Warren includes an introduction, laying out Austin’s place in American literature and situating her writings in feminist, environmentalist, regionalist, and Native American contexts. He also includes notes for those new to Austin’s work, glossing Native terms, geographical names, and the ethnological sources of the Native songs she re-creates.

This book is a collection of thoughts everyone may have at a time of their life. Many question, many answers. Some emotions, some facts. A combination of feelings and a glimpse of life is tried to be portrayed on the pages of this book. So if you look for an outlet for your feelings, just embrace the book and go through these poems…