Origins of the Gods

Origins of the Gods

Author: Andrew Collins

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 1591434106

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• 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.


Religion of the Gods

Religion of the Gods

Author: Kimberley Christine Patton

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-02-09

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0199723281

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In many of the world's religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, a seemingly enigmatic and paradoxical image is found--that of the god who worships. Various interpretations of this seeming paradox have been advanced. Some suggest that it represents sacrifice to a higher deity. Proponents of anthropomorphic projection say that the gods are just "big people" and that images of human religious action are simply projected onto the deities. However, such explanations do not do justice to the complexity and diversity of this phenomenon. In Religion of the Gods, Kimberley C. Patton uses a comparative approach to take up anew a longstanding challenge in ancient Greek religious iconography: why are the Olympian gods depicted on classical pottery making libations? The sacrificing gods in ancient Greece are compared to gods who perform rituals in six other religious traditions: the Vedic gods, the heterodox god Zurvan of early Zoroastrianism, the Old Norse god Odin, the Christian God and Christ, the God of Judaism, and Islam's Allah. Patton examines the comparative evidence from a cultural and historical perspective, uncovering deep structural resonances while also revealing crucial differences. Instead of looking for invisible recipients or lost myths, Patton proposes the new category of "divine reflexivity." Divinely performed ritual is a self-reflexive, self-expressive action that signals the origin of ritual in the divine and not the human realm. Above all, divine ritual is generative, both instigating and inspiring human religious activity. The religion practiced by the gods is both like and unlike human religious action. Seen from within the religious tradition, gods are not "big people," but other than human. Human ritual is directed outward to a divine being, but the gods practice ritual on their own behalf. "Cultic time," the symbiotic performance of ritual both in heaven and on earth, collapses the distinction between cult and theology each time ritual is performed. Offering the first comprehensive study and a new theory of this fascinating phenomenon, Religion of the Gods is a significant contribution to the fields of classics and comparative religion. Patton shows that the god who performs religious action is not an anomaly, but holds a meaningful place in the category of ritual and points to a phenomenologically universal structure within religion itself.


The Faces of the Gods

The Faces of the Gods

Author: Leslie G. Desmangles

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0807861014

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Vodou, the folk religion of Haiti, is a by-product of the contact between Roman Catholicism and African and Amerindian traditional religions. In this book, Leslie Desmangles analyzes the mythology and rituals of Vodou, focusing particularly on the inclusion of West African and European elements in Vodouisants' beliefs and practices. Desmangles sees Vodou not simply as a grafting of European religious traditions onto African stock, but as a true creole phenomenon, born out of the oppressive conditions of slavery and the necessary adaptation of slaves to a New World environment. Desmangles uses Haitian history to explain this phenomenon, paying particular attention to the role of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maroon communities in preserving African traditions and the attempts by the Catholic, educated elite to suppress African-based "superstitions." The result is a society in which one religion, Catholicism, is visible and official; the other, Vodou, is unofficial and largely secretive.


Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt

Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt

Author: Emily Teeter

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-06-13

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0521848555

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This book is a vivid reconstruction of ancient Egyptian religious rituals that were enacted in temples, tombs, and private homes.


Why So Many Gods?

Why So Many Gods?

Author: Tim Baker

Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780785247630

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Presents brief descriptions of over one hundred world religions, secular worldviews, cults, and occult practices from a Christian point-of-view, covering the basic beliefs, a short history, and examples in pop culture.


The Essential Guide to Possession, Depossession, and Divine Relationships

The Essential Guide to Possession, Depossession, and Divine Relationships

Author: Paxson, Diana L.

Publisher: Weiser Books

Published: 2015-03-01

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1578635527

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Bestselling author of several fantasy novels including Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Ancestors of Avalon, Diana L. Paxson now turns her attention to Trance Possession. Specifically, how to safely and effectively enter and to exit possessory trance. In possessory trance, one voluntarily offers one’s body as a vehicle for spirit work. This differs from other forms of trance in that one’s “normal” personality is replaced by a personality that is identified by oneself and one’s community as a spirit or a god. Here Paxson explores all aspects of trance possession, including: how to prepare for possessory trance how to enter and exit trance possession safely, and what to do if things get too heavy connecting with Saints and Spirits, including those found in Afro-Diasporic religions A practical book of particular interest to witches and pagans, each chapter includes two to five exercises that will assist you in your personal experiences with possession.


Contacts with the Gods from Space

Contacts with the Gods from Space

Author: George King with Richard Lawrence

Publisher: The Aetherius Society

Published: 2014-03-11

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 0937249947

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Dr. King was undoubtedly the greatest medium of the last century. His contacts with other worlds are unrivaled. This book goes beyond the Transmissions of the Masters into the multitudinous ways in which They are helping humanity at this crossroads in our evolution. It also describes how we can all cooperate with an amazing Cosmic Plan for the salvation and enlightenment of humanity.


You Are Gods

You Are Gods

Author: David Bentley Hart

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2022-04-01

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0268201951

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David Bentley Hart offers an intense and thorough reflection upon the issue of the supernatural in Christian theology and doctrine. In recent years, the theological—and, more specifically, Roman Catholic—question of the supernatural has made an astonishing return from seeming oblivion. David Bentley Hart’s You Are Gods presents a series of meditations on the vexed theological question of the relation of nature and supernature. In its merely controversial aspect, the book is intended most directly as a rejection of a certain Thomistic construal of that relation, as well as an argument in favor of a model of nature and supernature at once more Eastern and patristic, and also more in keeping with the healthier currents of mediaeval and modern Catholic thought. In its more constructive and confessedly radical aspects, the book makes a vigorous case for the all-but-complete eradication of every qualitative, ontological, or logical distinction between the natural and the supernatural in the life of spiritual creatures. It advances a radically monistic vision of Christian metaphysics but does so wholly on the basis of credal orthodoxy. Hart, one of the most widely read theologians in America today, presents a bold gesture of resistance to the recent revival of what used to be called “two-tier Thomism,” especially in the Anglophone theological world. In this astute exercise in classical Christian orthodoxy, Hart takes the metaphysics of participation, high Trinitarianism, Christology, and the soteriological language of theosis to their inevitable logical conclusions. You Are Gods will provoke many readers interested in theological metaphysics. The book also offers a vision of Christian thought that draws on traditions (such as Vedanta) from which Christian philosophers and theologians, biblical scholars, and religious studies scholars still have a great deal to learn.


Odyssey of the Gods

Odyssey of the Gods

Author: Erich von Däniken

Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser

Published: 2011-10-15

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1601636342

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Erich von Däniken’s monumental Chariots of the Gods changed the way generations have looked at mythology, ancient history, and the possibility of advanced beings from other worlds visiting Earth. Now he tackles the history of Greece and again challenges our beliefs about how our civilization arose. Using painstaking archaeological research and evidence from the writings of Plato and Aristotle, he suggests that the Greek “myths” were, in fact, very much a reality, that the Greek “gods” were actually extraterrestrial beings who arrived on Earth many thousands of years ago. Many of you may find von Däniken’s conclusions astounding, but they are argued with such vigor and clarity that you’ll be forced to consider the implications of his findings for mankind. Odyssey of the Gods includes new, eye-opening information about: A revolutionary interpretation of the sites and legends of ancient Greece The conflict between “alien” gods and humans The true origin of centaurs, the Cyclops, and other “mythical” creatures A startling new explanation of the Atlantis legend


Talking to the Spirits

Talking to the Spirits

Author: Kenaz Filan

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-02-22

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1620551500

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A guide to direct communication with the spirits and the Gods • Offers practices for seekers and groups to learn to hear and respond to the spirits and the Gods as well as what to do (and not do) if you receive a message • Explains how to authenticate spiritual messages with divination • Discusses how to avoid theological conflicts when someone’s personal gnosis differs from that of their Pagan group For our ancestors the whole world was alive with spirits. The Gods bubbled forth from rivers and springs and whispered in the breezes that rustled through cities and farms. The ground underfoot, the stones, the fire that cooked the food and drove off the darkness, these all had spirits--not just spirits in some other dimension, but spirits in them who could be spoken to and allied with. In today’s world we are led to believe that the spirits long ago went silent and that spiritual wisdom can only be gained through established religious doctrine. Providing a guide for opening two-way conversation with the spirits of daily life as well as direct communication with the Gods, Kenaz Filan and Raven Kaldera explore how to enrich your spiritual path with personal gnosis--asking your Guides for assistance or teachings and receiving a response. They explain how to develop your sensitivity to the voices of the Divine, discern genuine spiritual messages from the projection of internal psychodrama, and what to do (and not do) with the messages you receive. Confirming their own personal gnosis with Northern Tradition Pagan beliefs and Greco-Roman, Celtic, Egyptian, and indigenous hunter-gatherer lore, the authors discuss how to avoid theological conflicts when someone’s personal gnosis differs from that of their Pagan group as well as how to authenticate messages with individual and group divination. Offering practices and principles for seekers and groups, they reveal that the spirits never went silent, we simply forgot how to hear them.