From America's fight for independence to the Paris Commune - an exotic collection of fanatics, adventurers, poets and thinkers are brought vividly to life. Holy Madness probes into the psyche that was responsible for so many of the founding events of our modern world, and into the instincts that inspired its most generous and most murderous impulses. It explains how the Enlightenment dislodged Christianity from its central position in the life of European societies and how man's quest for ecstasy and transcendence flooded into areas such as the arts, spawning the Romantic movement. This dramatic journey which begins in America in 1776 and goes right up to the last agony of the Paris Commune in 1871, takes in the French revolution, the Irish rebellion, the Polish risings, the war of Greek liberation, the Russian insurrection, the Hungarian struggles for freedom, the liberation of South America, and the Italian Risorgimento. 'An ambitious and in many ways brilliant book' Hilary Mantel

Presents an examination of the art and legends of some of the most colourful figures in South Asian and Himalayan culture. Containing contributions from ten prominent world scholars, this book provides a survey of the Mahasiddhas in art, as well as essays on associated themes: iconographic, canonical, literary, historical, and sociological. This is a groundbreaking examination of the art and legends of some of the most colourful figures in South Asian and Himalayan culture. With contributions from ten prominent world scholars, it provides both an exhaustive survey of the

In 1583 in Vienna, a 16-year-old girl suffered stomach cramps. A team of Jesuits exorcized her for eight weeks. The priests announced that they had expelled 12,652 demons from her, demons that her grandmother had kept as flies in glass jars. The grandmother was tortured into confessing that she was a witch who had engaged in sex with Satan. She was then burned at the stake. This was one of perhaps one million such executions during three centuries of witch-hunts. In 1989 in Moradabad, India, a pig caused hundreds of people to kill one another when the animal walked through a Muslim holy ground. Muslims, who think pigs are an embodiment of Satan, accused Hindus of driving the pig into the sacred spot. Members of both faiths went on a rampage, stabbing and clubbing. The pig riot spread to a dozen cities and left two hundred dead. A squad of armed Islamic zealots raided a Christian church at Behawalpur, Pakistan, on October 28, 2001, killing the minister, fourteen worshipers, and the church's police guard. It is said that there is never enough religion in the world to make people love one another--just enough to make them hate one another. Incendiary blends of fundamentalist religion, politics, nationalism, and ethnic zealotry engender countless examples of atrocity in the name of faith and orthodoxy. If anything, religious persecution is more savage now than everbefore in the history of mankind. HOLY HORRORS chronicles the grim spectrum of religious persecution from ancient times to the present. Fully illustrated with drawings, woodcuts, and photographs, the book recounts such historic religious persecution as the Crusades, the Islamic jihads, the Catholic wars against heretics, the Inquisition, witch-hunts, and the Reformation. It also chronicles modern-day atrocities, including the Holocaust, the seemingly insoluble Catholic-Protestant schism in Northern Ireland, religious tribalism in in Lebanon, and the barbaric cruelty of the theocracy in Iran.

Prologue. Insanity and religion -- Part I. Sanctified insanity: between history and psychology -- The paradox that inhabits ambiguity -- Meanings of insanity -- Part II. Abnormality and social change: early Christianity vs. rabbinic Judaism -- Abnormality and social change -- Socializing nature: the ascetic totem -- Epilogue. Psychology, religion, and social change

Mark Salzman's Lying Awake is a finely wrought gem that plumbs the depths of one woman's soul, and in so doing raises salient questions about the power-and price-of faith. Sister John's cloistered life of peace and prayer has been electrified by ever more frequent visions of God's radiance, leading her toward a deep religious ecstasy. Her life and writings have become examples of devotion. Yet her visions are accompanied by shattering headaches that compel Sister John to seek medical help. When her doctor tells her an illness may be responsible for her gift, Sister John faces a wrenching choice: to risk her intimate glimpses of the divine in favor of a cure, or to continue her visions with the knowledge that they might be false-and might even cost her her life.

Amma, universally known as "The Hugging Saint," went through a two-decade transformation from a simple fisherman's daughter to an international wonder worshiped by millions. Gail "Gayatri" Tredwell was there every step of the way--from early devotee to head female disciple, ever-present personal attendant, handmaiden, whipping post, and unwilling keeper of some devastating secrets. Because she became fluent in the Malayalam language and had continual intimate proximity to Amma for twenty years, Tredwell is uniquely capable of portraying this famous woman. She tells her tale with straightforward honesty, fairness, and a dash of Aussie snap and wit. Although the guru's flaws are a necessary part of her story and awakening, she strives to be factual throughout, digging deep to eschew victim frameworks and take responsibility for her own role in accepting the abuse and perpetuating the lies. Tredwell takes us vividly through her varying stages, starting with naïveté and innocent devotion, then on to dawning awareness and confusion, finally to emotional breakdown and her shocking "enlightenment"--her realization that the liberation she urgently required was is in fact liberation from her own guru

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press When Edmund Creffield and his "Holy Roller" religious cult made headlines in 1903, it was page one news - not just in the Pacific Northwest, but around the nation. Yet few people in the region today have heard Creffield's name or his story. In fact, the descendants of the people who were involved still refuse to discuss those events of a century ago.

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press When Edmund Creffield and his "Holy Roller" religious cult made headlines in 1903, it was page one news - not just in the Pacific Northwest, but around the nation. Yet few people in the region today have heard Creffield's name or his story. In fact, the descendants of the people who were involved still refuse to discuss those events of a century ago.

Throughout the past millennium, certain Tibetan Buddhist yogins have taken on profoundly norm-overturning modes of dress and behavior, including draping themselves in human remains, consuming filth, provoking others to violence, and even performing sacrilege. They became known far and wide as "madmen" (smyon pa, pronounced nyönpa), achieving a degree of saintliness in the process. This book offers the first comprehensive study of Tibet's "holy madmen" drawing on their biographies and writings, as well as tantric commentaries, later histories, oral traditions, and more. Much of The Holy Madmen of Tibet is dedicated to examining the lives and legacies of the three most famous "holy madmen" who were all of the Kagyü sect: the Madman of Tsang (author of The Life of Milarepa), the Madman of Ü, and Drukpa Künlé, Madman of the Drukpa Kagyü. Each born in the 1450s, they rose to prominence during a period of civil war and of great shifts in Tibet's religious culture. By focusing on literature written by and about the "holy madmen" and on the yogins' relationships with their public, this book offers in-depth looks at the narrative and social processes out of which sainthood arises, and at the role biographical literature can play in the formation of sectarian identities. By showing how understandings of the "madmen" have changed over time, this study allows for new insights into current notions of "crazy wisdom." In the end, the "holy madmen" are seen as self-aware and purposeful individuals who were anything but insane.