• Explores how our ancestors used shamanic rituals at sacred sites to create portals for communication with nonhuman intelligences • Shares supporting evidence from the spiritual and shamanic beliefs of more than 100 Native American tribes • Shows how the earliest forms of shamanism began at sites like Qesem Cave in Israel more than 400,000 years ago From Göbekli Tepe in Turkey to the Egyptian pyramids, from the stone circles of Europe to the mound complexes of the Americas, Andrew Collins and Gregory L. Little show how, again and again, our ancestors built permanent sites of ceremonial activity where geomagnetic and gravitational anomalies have been recorded. They investigate how the earliest forms of animism and shamanism began at sites like the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia and Qesem Cave in Israel more than 400,000 years ago. They explain how shamanic rituals and altered states of consciousness combine with the natural forces of the earth to create portals for contact with otherworldly realms—in other words, the gods of our ancestors were the result of an interaction between human consciousness and transdimensional intelligence. The authors show how the spiritual and shamanic beliefs of more than 100 Native American tribes align with their theory, and they reveal how some of these shamanic transdimensional portals are still active, sharing vivid examples from Skinwalker Ranch in Utah and Bempton in northern England. Ultimately, Collins and Little show how our modern disconnection from nature and lack of a fully visible night sky makes the manifestations from these ultraterrestrial intelligences seem random. If we can restore our spiritual connections, perhaps we can once again communicate with the higher dimensional beings who triggered the advancements of our earliest ancestors.

Fae marry for love. Angels marry for politics.Véa has dreamed of becoming queen of the fae since she was a girl. But once she finally takes her throne, and her world is under attack by ruthless soul eaters, she's forced to watch it burn or marry a man she hates-Lux, king of angels.Nix is the half Elvan, half angel bastard prince of both the elvan nation and the land of the angels. When he takes his place as hand of the king beneath his brother, it becomes his duty to guard the new queen, Véa.Will Véa assimilate into a world where women are traded like cattle, or will she steal Lux's world out from under him with his brother at her side?If you liked Game of Thrones and From Blood and Ash, you'll love the sexy, magical world of Origins of the Gods.

Based on Nietzsche’s critique of religion and culture, and engaging the contemporary offshoots of that critique, this book assesses the myths of origins that have been used to articulate the fundamental attitude toward the relationship between shame and beauty. In reconsidering some of the myths upon which the West is based, from Hesiod and Greek mythology to Plato and the Bible, Hans pursues the ways in which we have habitually separated shame and beauty in order to create the grounds that would provide us with the authority for our lives we think we need. By juxtaposing Socrates’ repression of violence in The Republic and Nietzsche’s conception of the overman, the author revises the network of relations that are associated with the religious, the aesthetic, and the political, asserting that the religious derives from the aesthetic rather than the other way around, and establishing a necessary connection between the political and the aesthetic. Hans aims to raise yet again the questions embodied in Nietzsche’s attempt to prompt humans to face the true status of their actions in the world: are we finally able to address our shame without immediately projecting it onto another or repressing it? If so, what changes might we see in the psychological, social, and political worlds we would create out of such an acknowledgment? What value is to be found in accepting the uneasy relationship between shame and beauty upon which our lives rest? While The Origins of the Gods provides no definitive answers to such questions simply because none are possible, it makes use of such queries in order to reassert the great importance of Nietzsche’s affirmation of the value of the world as it is. It argues that this affirmation has something crucial to offer if we are willing to forgo an authorized existence and confront the beauty and shame from which our lives are inevitably constituted.

Presented in clear, comprehensible language, this study first explains the aspects of psychoanalytic theory relevant to the understanding of Greek myth, and then interprets, using psychoanalytic methodology, the Greek myth of origin and succession, particularly as stated in Hesiod's Theogony. Caldwell's provocative study will appeal to a wide range of classicists, teachers and students of mythology, and those interested in the application of psychoanalytic methods to literature.

What do we think about when we think about Greek food? For many, it is the meze and the traditional plates of a Greek island taverna at the height of summer. In Gifts of the Gods, Andrew and Rachel Dalby take us into and beyond the taverna in our minds to offer us a unique and comprehensive history of the foods of Greece. Greek food is brimming with thousands of years of history, lore, and culture. The country has one of the most varied landscapes of Europe, where steep mountains, low-lying plains, rocky islands, and crystal-blue seas jostle one another and produce food and wine of immense quality and distinctive taste. The book discusses how the land was settled, what was grown in different regions, and how certain fruits, herbs, and vegetables became a part of local cuisines. Moving through history—from classical to modern—the book explores the country’s regional food identities as well as the export of Greek food to communities all over the world. The book culminates with a look at one of the most distinctive features of Greece’s food tradition—the country’s world renown hospitality. Illustrated throughout and featuring traditional recipes that blend historical and modern flavors, Gifts of the Gods is a mouth-watering account of a rich and ancient cuisine.

A study of social and economic transformations in the Near East during Palaeolithic-Neolithic transition, first published in 2000.

Religions and mythologies from around the world teach that God or gods created humans. Atheist, humanist, and materialist critics, meanwhile, have attempted to turn theology on its head, claiming that religion is a human invention. In this book, E. Fuller Torrey draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to propose a startling answer to the ultimate question. Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods locates the origin of gods within the human brain, arguing that religious belief is a by-product of evolution. Based on an idea originally proposed by Charles Darwin, Torrey marshals evidence that the emergence of gods was an incidental consequence of several evolutionary factors. Using data ranging from ancient skulls and artifacts to brain imaging, primatology, and child development studies, this book traces how new cognitive abilities gave rise to new behaviors. For instance, autobiographical memory, the ability to project ourselves backward and forward in time, gave Homo sapiens a competitive advantage. However, it also led to comprehension of mortality, spurring belief in an alternative to death. Torrey details the neurobiological sequence that explains why the gods appeared when they did, connecting archaeological findings including clothing, art, farming, and urbanization to cognitive developments. This book does not dismiss belief but rather presents religious belief as an inevitable outcome of brain evolution. Providing clear and accessible explanations of evolutionary neuroscience, Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods will shed new light on the mechanics of our deepest mysteries.

Chronicles the transformations of the Greek gods throughout history, evaluating their changing characters, stories and symbolic relevance in a variety of cultures spanning the ancient world through the Renaissance era.

"Silly," "stupid," "irrational," "simple." "Wicked," "hateful," "obstinate," "anti-social." "Extravagant," "perverse." The Roman world rendered harsh judgments upon early Christianity--including branding Christianity "new." Novelty was no Roman religious virtue. Nevertheless, as Larry W. Hurtado shows in Destroyer of the gods, Christianity thrived despite its new and distinctive features and opposition to them. Unlike nearly all other religious groups, Christianity utterly rejected the traditional gods of the Roman world. Christianity also offered a new and different kind of religious identity, one not based on ethnicity. Christianity was distinctively a "bookish" religion, with the production, copying, distribution, and reading of texts as central to its faith, even preferring a distinctive book-form, the codex. Christianity insisted that its adherents behave differently: unlike the simple ritual observances characteristic of the pagan religious environment, embracing Christian faith meant a behavioral transformation, with particular and novel ethical demands for men. Unquestionably, to the Roman world, Christianity was both new and different, and, to a good many, it threatened social and religious conventions of the day. In the rejection of the gods and in the centrality of texts, early Christianity obviously reflected commitments inherited from its Jewish origins. But these particular features were no longer identified with Jewish ethnicity and early Christianity quickly became aggressively trans-ethnic--a novel kind of religious movement. Its ethical teaching, too, bore some resemblance to the philosophers of the day, yet in contrast with these great teachers and their small circles of dedicated students, early Christianity laid its hard demands upon all adherents from the moment of conversion, producing a novel social project. Christianity's novelty was no badge of honor. Called atheists and suspected of political subversion, Christians earned Roman disdain and suspicion in equal amounts. Yet, as Destroyer of the gods demonstrates, in an irony of history the very features of early Christianity that rendered it distinctive and objectionable in Roman eyes have now become so commonplace in Western culture as to go unnoticed. Christianity helped destroy one world and create another.

A book of breathtaking scope, in which the mystery of how the world began infolds in an epic narrative that sets the Gods against the world's great artists, their rivals in creative energy. Despite the best efforts of scientists, theologians and aestheticians, creation and creativity both remain mysterious. How did our world begin? Where do we come from? And how can we understand or describe that obscure source we call imagination, from which works of art emerge? Peter Conrad’s book investigates these mysteries, in a survey of cultural history that begins with the differing accounts of creation and advances to our own world, where creativity seems to have warped into a fierce delight in destruction. He describes the long illness and eventual demise of the Christian God, and shows how artists and scientists were ready and eager to take over a creative role that was once a heavenly prerogative. At the same time, he probes the creative impulse of writers, painters and musicians, celebrating the audacity of the restless, rebellious beings who first questioned the limits placed on thoughts and dreams, supplemented nature with their own creations, and came to be known as artists.