Humans are demons; that’s just a fact. But Deyo, a hardened San Diego gangster, couldn’t care less about such mumbo jumbo. All he wants is to score his next fix, and word on the street is that an exotic and deadly new strain of heroin - Lions - is exactly what he needs. He’s even almost forgotten that bizarre, disturbing memory he’s so desperate to obliterate. Almost. It’s when Lions turns out to be far more than he bargained for that Deyo is thrust into a world the likes of which he could never have imagined. A world with powerful, god-like creatures that lead him through a wickedly humorous odyssey of brutal carnage, explosive lust, and horrifying consequences. A world that turns his entire sense of reality on its head and leaves him with more questions than answers. A world that exists just under our noses. The world of Numen.

Since the early 1990s there have been various movements designed to encourage 'masculine spirituality'. All these movements share a concern that spirituality has become too feminine and that men's experiences of the spiritual are being marginalized. The task of masculine spirituality is to promote 'authentic' masculine characteristics within a spiritual context. Numen, Old Men examines these characteristics to argue that masculine spirituality is thinly veiled patriarchy. The mythopoetic, evangelical, and Catholic men's movements are shown to promote a hetero-patriarchal spirituality by appealing to either combative and oppressive neo-Jungian archetypes or biblical models of man as the leader of the family. Numen, Old Men examines spiritualities that aim to honour and transcend both the masculine and feminine, and offers gay spirituality as an example of masculine spirituality that resists patriarchy.

Zen Buddhist ideas and practices in many ways are unique within the study of religion, and artists, poets and Buddhists practitioners worldwide have found inspiration from this tradition. Until recent years, representations of Zen Buddhism have focussed almost entirely on philosophical, historical or “spiritual” aspects. This book investigates the contemporary living reality of the largest Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhist group, Myōshinji. Drawing on textual studies and ethnographic fieldwork, Jørn Borup analyses how its practitioners use and understand their religion, how they practice their religiosity and how different kinds of Zen Buddhists (monks, nuns, priest, lay people) interact and define themselves within the religious organization. Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism portrays a living Zen Buddhism being both uniquely interesting and interestingly typical for common Buddhist and Japanese religiosity.