According to the author, ecstasy is the spiritual food that nourishes the soul. She believes that many of society's problems--anorexia, depression, violence, drug addiction--exist because people do not know how to truly experience love and ecstasy in life. With anecdotes, examples, and exercises, Bonheim shows readers how to infuse their own lives with passion.
Trance-inducing postures for shamanic journeying, initiation, healing, divination, and transformation of the soul • Provides practices from Mayan, Egyptian, African, Native American, Sumerian, and other ancient and indigenous traditions • Shows how these practices can detoxify the energy body The human need for ecstasy--the ability to be free of the limitations of ordinary consciousness--is as imperative as the need for food. Renowned anthropologist Felicitas Goodman claimed that being deprived of ecstasy was the fundamental cause of all forms of addiction. Indigenous cultures and the civilizations of antiquity were aware of this and developed specific rituals to induce and channel trance energies to detoxify and nourish the subtle body in order to experience the ecstatic reality that gives life to matter. The body postures seen in ancient art from Mayan, Egyptian, African, Native American, Sumerian, and other ancient and indigenous traditions are a doorway to inducing this kind of ecstatic trance. People who assume these postures in a ritual context are able to experience expanded and transformative states of consciousness. Following up on the groundbreaking introduction of this practice in her first book, Ecstatic Body Postures, Belinda Gore provides a new series of 20 sacred postures and exercises that allow for a deeper understanding and utilization of these shamanic practices. She shows how to use the energy awakened by these practices for healing, shapeshifting, initiations into the mysteries of death and rebirth, divination, spirit journeying, and restoring balance to the cosmic patterns disrupted by destructive human activity.
Kyra Morgan always wanted to live in the past, and now she's found a way to do just that. Whether she likes it or not. Wrapping herself in black velvet under the sweltering Southern sun, Kyra spends her summers working at the Tudor Rose Renaissance Festival, as a Lady in an imaginary royal court. She hasn't had much luck with men either and has little interest in handing over her heart again, so she immerses herself in her scholarship and the local faire where she can escape into the past and ignore the problems of the present day. Rafe Harrison is hard to ignore, however. Handsome, confident, and boorish, he is beloved by most everyone at the faire, particularly the women. Even Kyra's best friend is quick to champion him, much to Kyra's dismay. Kyra knows little about Rafe, but wisely despises his bravado, his appeal, and his slipshod reenactment methods. And when Rafe is implicated in her best friend's riding accident, she cannot forgive him for his neglect or herself for the unwelcomed sensations he stirs within her. But after tampering with a gypsy potion, Kyra suddenly finds herself and Rafe transported back to sixteenth-century England, and it is nothing like the 1500's back home. It is a dangerous time of court intrigue, French wars, and Scottish insurrection. Kyra soon finds that she must learn to trust the courage and heart of the man she reviles if they are to survive. And, more importantly, she must learn to trust her own heart as she fights for both her own and Rafe's survival upon one of the bloodiest battlefields in England‹Flodden.
Now, after so many years, the people still remember, they still hurt for the nightmares that hunt them, and every moment of everyday pray for those sins to be buried in the past. Blessed with Sin is about the consequences of the sins committed, now more than ever as the nightmares begin again, and the people want answers. One man from the past comes, brought on by different circumstances, and begins to uncover a far too deep nightmare he never thought it could be in the place he grew up.
Different blood flows in their veins--but our blood quenches their thirst. From Bram Stoker's 1897 creation of Count Dracula, portrayed as a foreign invader bent on the conquest of England, the literary vampire has symbolized the Other, whether his or her otherness arises from racial, ethnic, sexual, or species difference. Even before the bloodsucking Martians of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, however, popular fiction contained a few vampires who were members of alien species rather than supernatural undead. Even more intriguing than interplanetary invaders are humanoid and quasi-humanoid beings who have evolved to live on Earth among us, often camouflaged as our own kind. The boom in vampire fiction that began in the 1970s engendered a variety of "alien" vampires, many of them portrayed as sympathetic characters. The science fiction vampire is especially suited to the presentation of vampirism as morally neutral rather than inherently evil. Different Blood surveys the literary vampire as alien, whether extra-terrestrial or a different species evolved on Earth, from the mid-1800s to the 1990s, and analyzes the many uses to which science fiction and fantasy authors have put this theme. Their works explore issues of species, race, ecological responsibility, gender, eroticism, xenophobia, parasitism, symbiosis, intimacy, and the bridging of differences. An extensive bibliography lists dozens of novels and short stories on the "vampire as alien" theme, many of which are still in print.
This practical textbook is the most exhaustive single work in our language on the history of the interpretation of the Scriptures. So affirms Dr. Wilbur M. Smith, well-known Bible scholar. Milton S. Terry's book on 'Biblical Hermeneutics' (the science of interpretation) is conveniently divided into three main areas: Part I -- Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics Part II -- Principles of Biblical Hermeneutics Part III -- History of Biblical Interpretation This ideal standard textbook abstains from dogmatism and adheres strictly to the method of scientific and conscientious inquiry. It ranks as a classic in its field. Adapted to meet the practical needs of most students studying the Word of God, 'Biblical Hermeneutics' is a model text for interpreting the Bible.
