Just before the turn of the century, a renegade Russian aristocrat named Madame Blavatsky came to America claiming that man was descended not from the ape but from spiritual beings. Thus began Theosophy, the very first "new age" religion. This thought-provoking and often hilarious study delineates the course of Theosophy and other sects which have come down through the years. Photos.
With a rich cultural history and Hollywood stars publicly attesting to a wide range of faiths, it's no surprise that California's spiritual landscape is as diverse as its natural surroundings. The Visionary State weaves text and image into a compelling narrative of religion, architecture, and consciousness in California, from neopaganism to televangelism, UFO cults to austere Zen Buddhism. Acclaimed culture critic Erik Davis brings together the immigrant and homegrown religious influences that have been part of the region's character from its earliest days, drawing connections between seemingly unlike traditions and celebrating the diversity of California's spiritual composition. Michael Rauner's evocative photographs depict the sites and structures where these traditions have taken root and flourished. The Visionary State is a landmark look at what is likely the most varied locale for religious activity anywhere.
Here are 200 irresistible love letters from over the centuries, love letters both historic and fictional, love letters by poets and by princes, love letters enchanting, tragic, comic, superbly selected, beautifully printed, conveniently portable, to have with you wherever and whenever you're in the mood for love.
How did a decade that dawned with the Age of Aquarius end in Altamont and the Manson Family bloodbath? The 1960s were a time of revolution - political, social psychedelic, sexual. But there was another revolution that many historians forget the rise of a powerful current that permeated pop culture and has been a central influence on it ever since. It was a magical revolution - a revival of the occult. Previously rejected and ridiculed beliefs took centre stage, reaching the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, saturating the the hippies and flower power, hitting the big screen with Rosemary's Baby and the bookshelves with Lord of the Rings. The Tarot. I Ching, astrology, Kabbala, yogis, witchcraft, UFOs, Aleister Crowley. Yin Yang and the Tibetan Book of the Dead now became the common currency they are today. But the vibes went bad, the auras darkened. Did that darker undercurrent win out? Gary Lachman here charts this explosion, its rise and fall, and its enduring legacy --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The Everyman's Library Pocket Poets hardcover series is popular for its compact size and reasonable price which does not compromise content. Love Songs and Sonnets includes Ronsard's famous sonnets to Helene, Dorothy Parker's sardonic reflections on men and Anne Bradstreet's touching poem "To my Husband." Shakespeare is here, of course, and Burnas, whose comparison of his love to a red, red rose remains one of the most celebrated of all poetic similes. This edition also includes a variety of delights by everyone from Thomas Wyatt to Langston Hughes, from Aphra Behn to John Updike. With a Foreword by Peter Washington, and an index of first lines.
It has often been said that love, both sacred and profane, is the only true subject of the lyric poem. Nothing better justifies this claim than the splendid poems in this volume, which range from the writings of ancient China to those of modern-day America and represent, at its most piercing, a universal experience of the human soul. Includes poems by John Donne, Christina Rossetti, W. H. Auden, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Graves, e. e. cummings, Dorothy Parker, William Shakespeare, Sappho, Bhartrhari, Anna Akhmatova, and W. B. Yeats, among many others.
Poets have always drawn inspiration from the wild fancies of dream life. We spend a third of our lives asleep, and throughout history our nocturnal visions have engaged the interpretive talents of our greatest writers. This treasury of poets–Sidney, Donne, Blake, Keats, Wordsworth, Whitman, Rilke, Plath, Graves, Roethke, Bishop, Moore, Updike, and many more–encompasses lullabies, invocations, aubades, songs, epigrams, and stories, in every conceivable mood from the broadly comic to the tragic. It includes poems about daydreams and nightmares, about falling asleep and about waking up, about insomnia, night thoughts, monsters of the dark, twilight, dawn, and the rebirth of morning. From Auden’s “Lullaby” to Rossetti’s “Nuptial Sleep,” from Salvatore Quasimodo’s “Insomnia” to Thom Gunn’s “Annihilation of Nothing,”Poems of Sleep and Dreamsevokes the whole haunting, magical spectrum of sleep and dream.
