A scientific investigation and personal adventure story about zombis and the voudoun culture of Haiti by a Harvard scientist. In April 1982, ethnobotanist Wade Davis arrived in Haiti to investigate two documented cases of zombis—people who had reappeared in Haitian society years after they had been officially declared dead and had been buried. Drawn into a netherworld of rituals and celebrations, Davis penetrated the vodoun mystique deeply enough to place zombification in its proper context within vodoun culture. In the course of his investigation, Davis came to realize that the story of vodoun is the history of Haiti—from the African origins of its people to the successful Haitian independence movement, down to the present day, where vodoun culture is, in effect, the government of Haiti’s countryside. The Serpent and the Rainbow combines anthropological investigation with a remarkable personal adventure to illuminate and finally explain a phenomenon that has long fascinated Americans.

These are the true-life adventures of a woman who ranges over four continents, endeavoring to go beyond the limits of ordinary life. Recovering from an accident, she goes to Glastonbury, where she finds energy portrayed in ancient earthworks as a snake coiled in concentric circles around a hill. To walk this spiral is called threading the maze, which means both to ascend and to go deep within. This becomes a guiding emblem of her pilgrimages to sites of female spiritual and temporal power, from the Irish countryside to the Amazon jungle to the high mountain cultures of Nepal. Janine Pommy Vega, Beat Generation writer, performer, and musician, is the author of twelve books. For many years she has worked with Poets in the Schools, and she is a member of PEN's Prison Writing Committee.

"As above, so below. The parallels Gary David has found between the ancient Egyptian sky-ground system involving the pyramids of Giza and the constellation of Orion, and a similar project to build heaven on earth by the Hopi of Arizona, are eerie, compelling, and deeply thought-provoking." -Graham Hancock, author of Magicians of the GodsAccording to their mythological traditions, the Hopi of northern Arizona have survived three world-ages-each created and then destroyed because of social or spiritual chaos. Weare now at the end of the Fourth World, and soon going into the Fifth. Migration legends tell of Serpent People, the Nagas, who sailed on reed rafts across the Pacific from the continent of Mu to America in order to escape a deluge that wiped out the Third World. In antiquity the Hopi performed the Snake Dance in order to bring rain. This ritual still forms a crucial part of their sacred ceremonial cycle, in which the Antelope People equally participate. Some of the main points presented in this book are:*Ancestral Hopi mariners floated eastward with the equatorial countercurrents, landed on the west coast of North America, and gradually worked their way northward to arrive in the Four Corners region of the U.S. *The Hopi emerged from Grand Canyon, transitioning from the Third World into the current Fourth World. *Starting about 2500 BC, the Hopi Snake Clan made migrations north into Canada, south to Central America, west to the Pacific Ocean, and east to the Atlantic Ocean. They perhaps even helped to build Ohio's Great Serpent Mound, which is oriented to the Pole Star and Sirius. *There the Snake Clan and the Horn Clan met with a race of giants called the Allegewi, who built astounding earthworks and possibly even created the Serpent effigy itself. The book provides evidence of the latter group's origin in North Africa.*In their 1994 bestseller The Orion Mystery, Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert proposed what is known as the Orion Correlation Theory. They had discovered an ancient "unified ground plan" in which the pyramids at Giza form the pattern of Orion's Belt. According to their entire configuration, the Great Pyramid (Khufu) represents Alnitak, the middle pyramid (Khafra) represents Alnilam, and the slightly offset smaller pyramid (Menkaura) represents Mintaka. *On the other side of the globe I have discovered another Orion template. The Hopi tribe had migrated around the American Southwest for millennia, finally settling in northern Arizona in about the early 12th century AD. They built huge stone "apartment" complexes called pueblos, and subsisted as farmers on the harsh high desert. In Hopi cosmology the region that corresponds to the Duat--Egyptian afterlife--is called Tuuwanasavi (literally, "Center of the World"), located near the three Hopi Mesas. Similar to the ground-sky dualism of the three primary structures at Giza, these natural "pyramids" closely reflect the belt stars of Orion. This bold but rigorously researched book reveals the genetic and cultural connections between diverse peoples, including the Hopi, Hohokam, Mimbres, Navajo, Ojibwa, and Lenni Lenape of North America, as well as the Egyptians and Berbers of North Africa. This 560-page book is packed with 900 endnotes and 265 photos, drawings, maps, and sky charts.

The prayer "Jesus, I trust in You" is a whole program of life, Fr. Thaddaeus Lancton, MIC, explains in Stepping on the Serpent: The Journey of Trust with Mary. In fact, it tells us how to make our pilgrimage home to God the Father through the Son with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, especially through the Church and Our Lady. Father Thaddaeus, a priest with the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, explains that life is a continual choice between two paths: trust and distrust. A Christian cannot remain neutral. To advance on our journey, we need to know our enemy, Satan, but more importantly, we need to know our companion, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She teaches us how to live the prayer "Jesus, I trust in You" in all our difficulties and trials; recognize the temptations of the serpent of distrust, the devil; step on him; and leave him in the dust. Saying the prayer "Jesus, I trust in You" is easy. Living this prayer, as Mary did, is not. Father Thaddaeus shows us the way. Book jacket.

The global prominence of snakes in religion, myth, and folklore underscores our deep connection to them—but why, when few of us have firsthand experience? The answer, Isbell suggests, lies in snakes’ singular impact on primate evolution; predation pressure from snakes is ultimately responsible for the superior vision and large brains of primates.

The Serpent of Stars (Le serpent d¢étoiles, 1993; reprinted 1999 Grasset) takes place in rural southern France in the early part of the century. The novel’s elusive narrative thread ties landscape to character to an expanse just beyond our grasp. The narrator encounters a shepherding family and glimpse by glimpse, each family member and the shepherding way of life is revealed to us. The novel culminates in a large shepherds’ gathering where a traditional Shepherd’s Play—a kind of creation myth that includes in its cast The River, The Sea, The Man, and The Mountain—is enacted. The work’s proto-environmental world view as well as its hybrid form—part play, part novel—makes The Serpent of Stars astonishingly contemporary. W.S. Merwin’s "Green Fields" begins, "By this part of the century few are left who believe/in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts/of them served on plates and the pleas from slatted trucks..." This novel leaves the reader believing not only in the animals, but the terrain they are part of, the people who tend them, and the life all these elements together compose.

For Dennis Covington, what began as a journalistic assignment - covering the trial of an Alabama preacher convicted of attempting to murder his wife with poisonous snakes - would evolve into a headlong plunge into a bizarre, mysterious, and ultimately irresistible world of unshakable faith: the world of holiness snake handling, where people drink strychnine, speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick, and, some claim, raise the dead. Set in the heart of Appalachia, Salvation on Sand Mountain is Covington's unsurpassed and chillingly captivating exploration of the nature, power, and extremity of faith - an exploration that gradually turns inward, until Covington finds himself taking up the snakes. University.

Award-winning author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh brings an ancient Mesoamerican creation myth to life Long ago, the gods of Mesoamerica set out to create humans. They tried many times during each sun, or age. When all their attempts failed and the gods grew tired, only one did not give up: Quetzalcóatl—the Feathered Serpent. To continue, he first had to retrieve the sacred bones of creation guarded by Mictlantecuhtli, lord of the underworld. Gathering his staff, shield, cloak, and shell ornament for good luck, Feathered Serpent embarked on the dangerous quest to create humankind. Award-winning author and illustrator Duncan Tonatiuh brings to life the story of Feathered Serpent, one of the most important deities in ancient Mesoamerica. With his instantly recognizable, acclaimed art style and grand storytelling, Tonatiuh recounts a thrilling creation tale of epic proportions.

After the four worlds Alfred has at last found his people on Chelstra, the realm of sea. But his travels have taught him to be cautious... and Alfred soon realizes his caution is justified, even among his own kind. The one person Alfred can trust is, strangely, Haplo the Patryn. But Haplo's lord has decreed all Sartan to be the enemy, and Haplo dares not go against his lord. Now the companions have arrived in a land where humans, elves, and dwarves have learned to live in peace. Unaware of an even greater threat to all the realms, it is Sartan and Patryn who will disrupt this alliance of the lesser races in their struggle to gain control of all four worlds. Only Alfred and Haplo realize that they have a much older -- and more powerful -- enemy than each other...

Set against the stunning backdrop of Renaissance France, The Serpent and the Moon is a true story of love, war, intrigue, betrayal, and persecution. At its heart is one of the world's greatest love stories: the lifelong devotion of King Henri II of France to Diane de Poitiers, a beautiful aristocrat who was nineteen years older than her lover. At age fourteen, Henri was married to fourteen-year-old Catherine de' Medici, an unattractive but extremely wealthy heiress who was to bring half of Italy to France as her dowry. When Catherine met Henri on her wedding day, she fell instantly in love, but Henri could see no one but the beautiful Diane. When Henri eventually became king, he and Diane ruled France as one. Meanwhile, Catherine took as her secret motto the words "Hate and Wait" and lived for the day Diane would die and she could win Henri's love and rule by his side. Fate had another plan. Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent, herself a descendant of both Catherine and Diane, imbues this seldom-told story with an insider's grasp of royal life. The Serpent and the Moon is a fascinating love story as well as a richly woven history of an extraordinary time.