Urgent!It's happened again! David Wisniewski has completed another daring raid into the vault of parent rules. Within these forbidden pages lurk the real reasons why grown-ups want you to brush your teeth, eat your breakfast, and clean under your bed. The truth has been hidden for centuries, but the time of mystery is over. Grab a flashlight! Get under cover! It's time for ... The Secret Knowledge of Grown-Ups! The Second File
Naturalist Craig Childs's "utterly memorable and fantastic" study of the desert's dangerous beauty is based on years of adventures in the deserts of the American West (Washington Post). Like the highest mountain peaks, deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to the most seasoned explorers. Craig Childs, who has spent years in the deserts of the American West as an adventurer, a river guide, and a field instructor in natural history, has developed a keen appreciation for these forbidding landscapes: their beauty, their wonder, and especially their paradoxes. His extraordinary treks through arid lands in search of water are an astonishing revelation of the natural world at its most extreme. "Utterly memorable and fantastic...Certainly no reader will ever see the desert in the same way again." —Suzannah Lessard, Washington Post
A lost musical masterpiece is at the heart of this gripping intellectual mystery by award-winning writer Andrew Crumey. In 1913 composer Pierre Klauer envisages marriage to his sweetheart and fame for his new work, The Secret Knowledge. Then tragedy strikes. A century later, concert pianist David Conroy hopes the rediscovered score might revive his own flagging career. Music, history, politics and philosophy become intertwined in a multi-layered story that spans a century. Revolutionary agitators, Holocaust refugees and sixties student protesters are counterpointed with artists and entrepreneurs in our own age of austerity. All play their part in revealing the shocking truth that Conroy must finally face the real meaning of The Secret Knowledge. it s a clever book, and funny, and thought-provoking; it mixes a whodunnit with the intellectual japes of Umberto Eco, and (not surprisingly for Crumey, who s a highly trained physicist) a bunch of quantum references. It s the sort of book that has you constantly flipping back through the chapters to check connections and coincidences; that makes you nod furiously once you figure something out. And, by the end, you want to start over again as fast as possible to see if you ve properly understood it Bookmunch"
David Mamet has been a controversial, defining force in nearly every creative endeavor-now he turns his attention to politics. In recent years, David Mamet realized that the so-called mainstream media outlets he relied on were irredeemably biased, peddling a hypocritical and deeply flawed worldview. In 2008 Mamet wrote a hugely controversial op-ed for the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'", in which he methodically attacked liberal beliefs, eviscerating them as efficiently as he did Method acting in his bestselling book True and False. Now Mamet employs his trademark intellectual force and vigor to take on all the key political issues of our times, from religion to political correctness to global warming. The legendary playwright, author, director, and filmmaker pulls no punches in his art or in his politics. And as a former liberal who woke up, Mamet will win over an entirely new audience of others who have grown irate over America's current direction.
Throughout the course of our history, a secret few have sought to acquire profound occult knowledge which reveals the inner truth of our existence. From the Mystery cults of Ancient Greece to the Persian knowledge of astrology, Secret Wisdom is an exhilarating exploration of two and a half millennia of occult practices. Learn about the hidden messages in Renaissance art, the alchemy practices of Issac Newton and secret societies which passed on spiritual rites including the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Theosophists and the Golden Dawn. New light is shone on well-known historical figures and the part they played in the global quest for divine understanding including: • John Dee, Elizabeth I's magician • Aleister Crowley, the English occultist • Poets William Blake and William Butler Yeats • Dante, the Italian writer and philosopher Featuring photographs and illustrations which breath life into ancient beliefs, this book is a marvelous journey to discover the most arcane of wisdom.
"Secret Knowledge created an international sensation when it was first published. David Hockney's theory of how the great works of Western art were created with mirrors and lenses attracted major media attention around the world and generated intense debate in the fields of science and art history. Now, in this expanded edition, Hockney takes his thesis even further, revealing for the first time new findings." "In Secret Knowledge, Hockney explains how he uncovered piece after piece of scientific and visual evidence, each one yielding further revelations about the past. With the benefit of his painter's eye, he examines the major works of art history and reveals the truth of how artists such as Caravaggio, Velazquez, van Eyck, Holbein, da Vinci, and Ingres used mirrors and lenses to help them create their famous masterpieces. For this new edition, Hockney delves still deeper into art history, disclosing the evidence that Renaissance artists also used these methods to develop perspective and chiaroscuro - radically challenging our view of how these two foundations of Western art were established." "Hundreds of paintings and drawings are reproduced and accompanied by Hockney's descriptions. His own photographs and drawings illustrate the various methods used by past artists to capture accurate likenesses and present the results they would have achieved. In addition, extracts from the many historical and modern documents he uncovered offer further intriguing evidence, while correspondence between him and an array of international experts provides an account of the remarkable story as it happened." "Secret Knowledge is not just about the lost techniques of the Old Masters. It is also about now and the future. It is about how we see, treat, and make images today, in an age of computer manipulation."--BOOK JACKET.
Secrecy and the Gods is a comparative mythological study of the human reception and treatment of divine secret knowledge in ancient Mesopotamia and biblical Israel. The human royal council was the social model for ancient ideas about divine knowledge being secret - just as human kings had secrets so too did the gods. Diviners who received this knowledge from the gods in an on-going, ad hoc manner were an essential link between the divine assembly and the human royal council for whom such knowledge was intended. Scribes eventually adapted the ad hoc divinatory means of receiving divine communications to their culturally significant texts. By discursively asserting a historical connection between themselves and unique mediators with a close divine affiliation (the apkallus and Moses), the scribes constructed myths that legitimated their texts as divine revelation and claimed these were received in history through normal scribal channels. In this manner, scribes fixed the secret of the gods permanently among humans in textualized form that valorized their own position within society. Although the origin of divine secret knowledge was rooted in a common mythological idea of the divine assembly, its treatment was quite distinct. The Mesopotamians guarded divine secret knowledge through various scribal means, including the attachment of a Geheimwissen colophon to certain tablets (treated exhaustively), whereas biblical Israel published it openly. The contrast in treatment of divine secret knowledge was directly related to different mytho-political self-understandings: Mesopotamia's imperial aspirations versus biblical Israel's vassaldom. As vassals to Yahweh, the divine imperial king, the kings of Judah and Israel as presented in the biblical material were not to formulate secret orders; they were only to obey them.
In The Secrets of Hidden Knowledge, author Prof. Ayub V. O. Ofulla presents the basic physics of life as it relates to molecular physical realities of life itself or social life as it relates to the individual. Grounded on physical, biological, and social sciences intertwined with information from ancient writings and scriptures, The Secrets of Hidden Knowledge provides the foundation to help you maintain order in your life, avoid or tackle situations that are chaotic and act as stumbling blocks, and embrace unavoidable chaotic situations and use them for innovative survival and faster progress. You can also come to understand how the basic nature of the physical universe is part and parcel of your life and realize the part of nature your life occupies and how it shapes you and your progress or failure in the world. You can successfully exist and change your attitude to live a peaceful, harmonious, and progressive life. Provocative and informative, The Secrets of Hidden Knowledge shows that ever-prevalent chaos brings failure. Thus, it is imperative to create a balance to only allow a bit of chaos to help us embrace change, conduct research, and innovate to help us progress and live more harmonious lives. This book demonstrates how we can learn from Mother Nature whose creative genius consists in nothing but perpetual ordering of chaos The book will both inform and inspire - Oliver Okoth Achila, JKUAT Scholar
Esotericism is the search for an absolute but hidden knowledge accessed through mystical vision, the mediation of higher beings, or personal experience. In Western cultural history esoteric approaches to religion have often been in conflict with - and suffered at the hands of - more established forms of religious belief and practice. 'Western Esotericism' presents a very broad and engaging history of the people and ideas which have shaped occult history from antiquity to today. Throughout the history of esotericism the dynamic of concealment and revelation has characterized the search for secret knowledge. Pursued both publically and privately, esotericism has come to influence more mainstream religious practice and culture and has significantly shaped our understanding of modernity. Today, esotericism continues to be practised by a range of both established and new religious movements. 'Western Esotericism' presents the essential guide to one of the most fascinating, provocative, and sustained of religious traditions.
