Some stories are considered make-believe while others are considered "real." The question that one must ask is, "What is real?". The conflicts that characters face in all tales are real enough. The choices they make and the outcomes that occur are certainly real. Choices are often contingent upon the current conflicts being faced, and that is undoubtedly real. Jack faced a giant who wanted to eat him while King Arthur faced Saxons who simply wanted to eat. Who is real and
With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce the population by half. . While he did all this, he carefully constructed an image of himself as a deeply feeling humanitarian. Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize in 1999, King Leopold’s Ghost is the true and haunting account of this man’s brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. It is also the inspiring and deeply moving account of a handful of missionaries and other idealists who travelled to Africa and unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a gruesome holocaust. Instead of turning away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Adam Hochschild brings life to this largely untold story and, crucially, casts blame on those responsible for this atrocity.
One of the West’s leading intellectuals offers a provocative look at America’s withdrawal from world leadership and the rising powers who seek to fill the vacuum left behind. The United States was once the hope of the world, a beacon of freedom and the defender of liberal democracy. Nations and peoples on all continents looked to America to stand up for the values that created the Western worldand to oppose autocracy and repression. Even when America did not live up to its ideals, it still recognized their importance, at home and abroad. But as Bernard-Henri Lévy lays bare in this powerful and disturbing analysis of the world today, America is retreating from its traditional leadership role, and in its place have come five ambitious powers, former empires eager to assert their primacy and influence. Lévy shows how these five—Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and Sunni radical Islamism—are taking steps to undermine the liberal values that have been a hallmark of Western civilization. The Empire and the Five Kings is a cri de coeur that draws upon lessons from history and the eternal touchstones of human culture to reveal the stakes facing the West as America retreats from its leadership role, a process that did not begin with Donald Trump's presidency and is not likely to end with him. The crisis is one whose roots can be found as far back as antiquity and whose resolution will require the West to find a new way forward if its principles and values are to survive. As seen on Real Time with Bill Maher (2/22/2019) and Fareed Zakaria GPS (2/17/2019).
In 1665 an anonymous treatise was added to a book skeptical of witchcraft. That book, "The Discoverie of Witchcraft", compiled by Reginald Scot and published in 1584, defended those accused of witchcraft. It also included so many examples of rituals and charms that it became popular with magical practitioners themselves. "The Magitians Discovered" Volume 2 consists of the anonymous material, along with sections from Scot's original "Discoverie" dealing with ritual magic. talismans. and amulets. This is supplemented by excerpts from two works believed to be written and translated by one of the authors of the anonymous material
The legendary Pluto had mysteriously fallen. The direct son of Pluto, Yan Ming, possessed the orthodox bloodline of Pluto, but was trapped in the Nine Hells Abyss by his younger brother. What they didn't know was that Xiao Zhu, who had the innate Netherworld Ghost Body, had the good fortune to obtain the Obsidian Stone, and Yan Ming, who was hiding in the Obsidian Stone, was her chosen one ...
The fifth book of this dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts. The Los Angeles Firestorm killed over a hundred thousand people, set in revenge against necromancer Eric Carter for defying the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. Carter feels every drop of that blood on his hands. But now there's a new problem. Too many ghosts in one spot and the barrier separating them from the living cracks. And when they cross it, they feed off all the life they can get hold of. People die. L.A. suddenly has a lot more ghosts. But it's not just one or two ghosts breaking through: it's dozens. Another mage is pulling them through the cracks and turning them into deadly weapons. Eric follows a trail that takes him through the world of the Chinese Triads, old associates, old crimes. And a past that he thought he was done with. Carter needs to find out how to get things under control, because if more ghosts break through, there's going to be even more blood on his hands.
Austronesia is the vast oceanic region which stretches from Madagascar to Taiwan to New Zealand. Encompassing both scattered archipelagos and major landmasses, Austronesia - derived from the Latin australis,'southern',and Greek nesos,'island' - is used primarily as a linguistic term, designating a family of languages spoken by peoples with a shared heritage. Julian Baldick, a celebrated historian of ancient religion, here argues that the diverse inhabitants of the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, New Guinea and Oceania show a common inheritance that extends beyond language. This commonality is found above all in mythology and ritual, which reach back to an ancient, prehistoric past. From around 1250 BCE the original proto-Oceanic speakers migrated eastwards from South-East Asia. Navigating by the sun, the stars, bird flight, the swells of the sea and cloud-swathed mountain islands, Austronesian voyagers used canoes and outriggers to settle on new territories. They developed a unified pattern of religion characterised by mortuary rites, headhunting and agrarian rituals of the annual calendar, culminating in a post-harvest festival often sexual in nature. This unique overview of Austronesian belief and tradition - the author's final book, and published posthumously - will be essential reading for students of religion, prehistory and anthropology.
