The shadow of war stretches over the northlands. The elven wood burns as Zarrum invaders encroach from the north. Ogres, orcs, and goblin hoards wreak havoc and take strongholds, leaving slaughtered people and burned out villages in their wake. Jayde, a young elvish battlemage, burns as well . . . with vengeance. Her village destroyed, her mother murdered, she takes up her sword and bow, cloaking herself in spellcraft, to becoming the Butterfly Assassin, a thorn in the side of the Zarrum invaders. Still, hiding and killing is lonely work until she meets a human paladin from the south. A man of faith that calls her deeds to task. Mathus, Paladin of Thon the Thunderer, doesn’t know quite what to make of the elf girl he’s fallen in with. Swift with her blade and spells, Fiona doesn’t fit into any of the carefully crafted boxes he’s created for women or elves. Could she be the object of his god-given quest? The Butterfly Illusion is the second book in the Heroes of Harth series, an epic adventure across a sprawling fantasy world.
The closest he will ever come to happiness is when he's hurting her. Will she let him? A beautiful and twisted story of first love and innocence lost -- written when the author was just eighteen. Sphinxie and Cadence. Promised to each other in childhood. Drawn together again as teens. Sphinxie is sweet, compassionate, and plain. Cadence is brilliant, charismatic. Damaged. And diseased. When they were kids, he scarred her with a knife. Now, as his illness progresses, he becomes increasingly demanding. She wants to be loyal -- but fears for her life. Only the ultimate sacrifice will give this love an ending.
In this beautiful nonfiction biography, a Robert F. Sibert Medal winner, the Newbery Honor–winning author Joyce Sidman introduces readers to one of the first female entomologists and a woman who flouted convention in the pursuit of knowledge and her passion for insects. One of the first naturalists to observe live insects directly, Maria Sibylla Merian was also one of the first to document the metamorphosis of the butterfly. Richly illustrated throughout with full-color original paintings by Merian herself, The Grew Who Drew Butterflies will enthrall young scientists. Bugs, of all kinds, were considered to be “born of mud” and to be “beasts of the devil.” Why would anyone, let alone a girl, want to study and observe them? The Girl Who Drew Butterflies answers this question. Booklist Editor’s Choice Chicago Public Library Best of the Year Kirkus Best Book of the Year Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book Junior Library Guild Selection New York Public Library Top 10 Best Books of the Year
David Henry Hwang’s beautiful, heartrending play featuring an afterword by the author – winner of a 1988 Tony Award for Best Play and nominated for the 1989 Pulitzer Prize Based on a true story that stunned the world, M. Butterfly opens in the cramped prison cell where diplomat Rene Gallimard is being held captive by the French government—and by his own illusions. In the darkness of his cell he recalls a time when desire seemed to give him wings. A time when Song Liling, the beautiful Chinese diva, touched him with a love as vivid, as seductive—and as elusive—as a butterfly. How could he have known, then, that his ideal woman was, in fact, a spy for the Chinese government—and a man disguised as a woman? In a series of flashbacks, the diplomat relives the twenty-year affair from the temptation to the seduction, from its consummation to the scandal that ultimately consumed them both. But in the end, there remains only one truth: Whether or not Gallimard's passion was a flight of fancy, it sparked the most vigorous emotions of his life. Only in real life could love become so unreal. And only in such a dramatic tour de force do we learn how a fantasy can become a man's mistress—as well as his jailer. M. Butterfly is one of the most compelling, explosive, and slyly humorous dramas ever to light the Broadway stage, a work of unrivaled brilliance, illuminating the conflict between men and women, the differences between East and West, racial stereotypes—and the shadows we cast around our most cherished illusions. M. Butterfly remains one of the most influential romantic plays of contemporary literature, and in 1993 was made into a film by David Cronenberg starring Jeremy Irons and John Lone.
“Sometimes ideas change the world. This astonishing, miraculous, shattering, inspiring book captures the origins and the arc of the movement for sex equality. It’s a book whose time has come—always, but perhaps now more than ever.” —Cass Sunstein, coauthor of Nudge Under certain conditions, small simple actions can produce large and complex “butterfly effects.” Butterfly Politics shows how Catharine A. MacKinnon turned discrimination law into an effective tool against sexual abuse—grounding and predicting the worldwide #MeToo movement—and proposes concrete steps that could have further butterfly effects on women’s rights. Thirty years after she won the U.S. Supreme Court case establishing sexual harassment as illegal, this timely collection of her previously unpublished interventions on consent, rape, and the politics of gender equality captures in action the creative and transformative activism of an icon. “MacKinnon adapts a concept from chaos theory in which the tiny motion of a butterfly’s wings can trigger a tornado half a world away. Under the right conditions, she posits, small actions can produce major social transformations.” —New York Times “MacKinnon [is] radical, passionate, incorruptible and a beautiful literary stylist... Butterfly Politics is a devastating salvo fired in the gender wars... This book has a single overriding aim: to effect global change in the pursuit of equality.” —The Australian “Sexual Harassment of Working Women was a revelation. It showed how this anti-discrimination law—Title VII—could be used as a tool... It was the beginning of a field that didn’t exist until then.” —U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Enter the world of butterfly fairies with these 16 beautifully rendered stained glass vignettes. Each of these magical creatures is pictured with a pair of wings inspired by the patterns of real-life butterflies.
In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders...until he meets Donald Shimoda--former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard's imagination soar.... In Illusions, the unforgettable follow-up to his phenomenal bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don't need airplanes to soar...that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them... and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places--like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves.
Butterflies - Messages from Psyche explores the phenomena of visual perception, illusion and reality, unveiling the tangled web that insects weave as they employ colour and pattern to deceive their predators. Philip Howse explains how these living tapestries have been designed by evolution to protect insects from their principal predators, which include birds, lizards and monkeys. These insectivores, it is argued, detect their prey by perceiving small details of shape and colour rather than the 'whole picture' of the insect. Many butterflies and moths have bizarre combinations of images on their wings and bodies which prompt comparison with the works of art of surrealists such as Magritte and Dali. They have a similar effect: to unsettle the way in which things are normally perceived: to confuse and shock. Many of the signs and symbols also resonate within the human psyche, surfacing in our art, architecture, stories and legends.
I firmly declare that I am not an Atheist but an advocate of Advaita i.e., world is one, and all of us are one. Atheists also call the world as an illusion, but as an Advaitist I do believe that all of us are God just veiled by senses. As German Mystic, Meister Eckhart says: “The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me.” Atheist denies the existence of God which could lead to immorality in our life though under illusion. I do believe in contacting various levels of energies available in the cosmos as per Vedic Shastras for various types and levels of happiness to live a good life, though, it is illusion. The cosmos to me is an illusory field. Beyond the concept of Cosmos lies the web-wave field which is discussed extensively in this book. Atheist defines the final power as infinite which has no motive and thereby does not grant human wishes, whereas I do believe in the infinite atman called as Paramaatma which absorbs us in its web-wave field of pure bliss and never again to give us the illusion of birth death cycles. If one merges with it he escapes the illusion of birth and death. To the question of existence of God, I had explained in this book that during the cycles of birth and death through the illusory field there are various degrees and levels of cosmic power which does helps to mitigate the illusory effects and come out of the illusory field to merge with Paramaatma. I do make a distinction between consciousness and illusion. Both are same but marginally different. In consciousness one has the awareness whether inside or outside the body. Consciousness permits to have awareness outside the body. It could have a motive. But illusion exists inside a body and not necessarily outside the body. Illusion is a particle that pertains to the matter and its awareness is inside a body only. But consciousness is not. Consciousness exists outside the body too but inside the illusory field. Outside the body there is no illusion. Illusion gets dissipated when the body no longer exists totally with its senses. All senses pertain to illusion. All our scope, our sciences and philosophy, particularly life, death, rebirth, beliefs pertains to the body which gets the illusion, because the body is matter. Vedas and Adi Shankar Acharya call illusion as Maya, and consciousness as Prajnaa. The illusion has to be perfect for all of us during the illusory life, giving us the utmost happiness in all walks of this life. Everything to us happens only in illusion and so we must evoke the divine power to be happy in this illusion in the short life and thereafter free us from this illusory world. On this score the invocation of divine or cosmic energies are absolutely a must. Though it is easier to talk about illusion in theory, in practical life it is not easy either. Everyone has their daily routine to follow, like attending their work, begetting children, raising children, getting them married, owning property, engagement in business or agriculture or profession and so on. No one can quit these and gloat on illusion. Except for a very few no one would sacrifice anything or give up their rights, based on a concept called illusion or the illusory field. They feel real during their sojourn in this worldly life and they would like to feed their senses with pleasures. One would not gift his house to charity because of the fact that everything is illusion, as they find these philosophical talks are not practically appealing. They feel they are living a real life. A life in which they own and have to own properties, joy, children, education, as if they are going to live for long. The idea to write this book came to me as I went through Vedic / Upanishad teachings. Whether the world we live is real? Or illusory? Therefore, the main idea of this book is to make an honest attempt to investigate who is behind our lives, and if so, why is he required to play the drama of creating us, and what he wants to achieve through our creation. More fully what is that cosmic code that is behind creation? Physics describes it as fermions and bosons. But it is more than that. It is illusion. Fermions and Bosons themselves come from illusion. Particularly illusion of existence. Everything we feel, see, hear, touch, and smell is illusion. This illusion defines an impartial God or infinities. The illusion can alone define an impartial God. Many religions have come out with answers recently during the last 2200 years or so, but I find the Upanishads and other spiritual texts and teachers in India offer answers to this question conforming to modern physics and experiments. This is what this book is all about. An inquiry into secret of Human life. Most of the religious texts describe God in human form. The prophets or teachers are described as an incarnation or children of God or to whom God revealed himself in a place, at a time and handed over the words of wisdom. The main purpose of all religious texts is to tell humanity that there is a super power who is watching us and he would guide us to heaven where he lives, if we live our human lives conforming to the teachings laid down by his messengers or prophets. If such conformity is not accepted, then we would be doomed to hell. Or in other terms there would be no salvation for such person. The biggest irony is God also permits them to kill persons who do not follow such religious teachings. God treats them as enemies. The enemies of God must be killed. The tribes who are enemies of God can be killed. Well this is the irony. When God must be all LOVE, one fails to understand that such God asks for killing, when he can kill them himself. Why seek the help of other humans to kill fellow humans when he can himself do the killing? And again, why should he kill after creation. If so, why create at all! Why create such evil persons at all in this earth, who steal, or cheat or commit adultery, or who murder others? What is the purpose of such creation and evaluation? What is the purpose of God having such a character? Persons who are responsible in writing these texts know very well that unless you use the name of God no one is going to believe their own writings. Every piece of their own advice has to be stated as if they come from the mouth of God himself for mankind to believe. Their own opinions are stated as if they originated from God. Therefore, God is a convenient tool. This book goes into the semantics of the main topic that Cosmic code is illusion and I have used scientific, philosophical, mathematical, and Vedic teachings, to prove clearly my conviction, that the world we live is only illusion. It is not for the sake of writing a book I have written but it is out of my own strong feeling that the Universe has to be illusory to have an Impartial God. I trust the readers will find it interesting and get convinced.
