"George MacDonald's Lilith (1895) is among the most popular and profound fantasy novels of the Romantic era. This is the first book-length study of this important literary work. The selections function in working dialogue with one another, driven by the central idea of liminality in fantasy literature, and bring to light new scholarship on Lilith"--Provided by publisher.
Lilith is an adventure beyond belief showing the battle between Darkness and Light. In this eternal battle, two karmically linked magicians vie for mastery of the world. Their battleground is the Tree of Life on the Qabalah's astral plane. This battle continues throughout the aeons, and in every lifetime they must face their greatest foe, the Arch-Demon Lilith. Lilith Queen of Demons, Queen of the Night, embodiment of lust . . . and a force no mortal could hope to contain. Malak Adept of the White School of Magick and a formidable young warrior—but he has forgotten the power he once possessed in his other incarnations on the Plane of Enya. Unless he can command the strength to defeat Dethen, Enya and those he loves are doomed. Dethen Malak's karmic twin and an adept of the Black School of Magick. He is ruled by an obsession to crush the Dark One who created the world. To destroy the Tree of Life, he would dare anything — he would even summon the Queen of Demons herself . . . Lena Creature of joy and beauty and Malak's soul mate for three incarnations. But in trying to save Malak from his destiny, she burdens him with a terrible choice—a choice that may shatter his faith in the Light forever. When a demon's howling appetite for human souls breaches the barrier between worlds, will her lust consume the light itself? Find out when you read Lilith by D. A. Heeley.
From the Seattle Art Museum to an evening refuge from the heat of the Sonoran desert, from a church overlooking Ho'okena Bay, Hawaii to Israel's Judean wilderness, from the classroom to the synagogue to the community center, from contemporary to ancient thought to the text of the Bible itself, Re-Imagining Eve and Adam has drawn its inspiration from unexpected sources, compelling the reader to not only re-imagine, but remember and reclaim the legacies of Eve, Lilith, Sarah, Leah, Lot's daughters, Micah's mother, Mrs. Job, Vashti, Susanna, Dinah, Tamar and the Levite's Concubine. It is for the reader to decide what is a delectable Re-imagining, a desired Remembering, or a palatable Reclaiming.
"The book of Lilith tells the real story of creation. Lilith is the first human to be given a soul by God following a thirteen billion year process of mechanical, soulless evolution. Her job is to give souls to all things and awaken them to the Watcher that watches the watcher, watching the world. The first person she grants a soul to is Adam, who is given a job of his own: to invent the definition of sin, create a moral sense in a world that utterly lacks one, and hence bring about the rule of law in a compassionate society. Unfortunately, Adam has a hard time accepting the fact that he was given his soul second, instead of first, and by Lilith, not God. The conflict this engenders leads to the destruction of Eden, the creation of Eve, and a voyage of self-discovery that spans a world"--P. [4] of cover.
In part a sequel to his earlier Death and Fantasy, William Gray’s Fantasy, Art and Life: Essays on George MacDonald, Robert Louis Stevenson and Other Fantasy Writers examines the ways in which “Life” in its various senses is affirmed, explored and enhanced through the work of the creative imagination, especially in fantasy literature. The discussion includes a range of fantasy writers, but focuses chiefly on two writers of the Victorian period, George MacDonald and Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Scottish (and particularly Calvinist) backgrounds deeply affected their engagement with what MacDonald called “The Fantastic Imagination.”
In a fascinating excursion through the history of her myth, Siegmund Hurwitz presents and interprets the ancient dark-winged goddess Lilith, also known as ’the first Eve.’ The author’s extraordinarily meticulous study of the original sources brings to light a striking figure long lost from our awareness, yet highly relevant to a psychological understanding of today’s evolving masculine and feminine identities. Case material from his analytical practice imbeds Lilith in the everyday problems of contemporary life. That an unbridled life-urge which refuses to be assimilated lies behind depression… seems to me to be a new and important discovery. By combining the experience of a contemporary man with this historical material, Siegmund Hurwitz sheds new light on both. -- From the Foreword by Marie-Louise von Franz
An ancient vampire, beautiful beyond words, a vulnerable young man drawn to her by a power beyond his understanding, two desperate parents searching across the world for the son they love -- these are the riveting, unexpected elements of Whitley Strieber's extraordinary new novel. Lilith, the ages-old mother of the dying race of vampires, has been forced to come out of her cave deep in the Egyptian desert in search of food -- human blood. But she knows nothing about the modern world. She can't drive a car, rent a room, turn on a TV. She struggles to New York, penniless, vulnerable, and starving, protected only by her beauty and her power to capture men with desire...especially certain very special men. The instant she sees young Ian Ward, she knows that he is part vampire himself. She knows that Ian, if he ever tastes human blood, will belong to her forever. And she needs him desperately, to help her survive and live in this harsh new world of jets and credit cards and guns. She sets out on a campaign of seduction -- as sensuous as it is terrifying -- to touch human blood to Ian's lips, which will then become for him a drug a thousand times more addictive than heroin. Ian's father, Paul Ward, part vampire turned expert and obsessive hunter of vampires, knows that if the blood transforms Ian, Paul will have to kill his own son. The titanic conflict between father and son and seductress, hunter and hunted and huntress, comes to its surprise conclusion in the secret chambers beneath the great pyramids, where the hidden truths of all human history are stored. From its beginning in the dark back alleys of Cairo to its totally unexpected ending, Lilith's Dream draws the reader down seductive new paths of discovery, into places where no novel has ever before. With Lilith's Dream Whitley Strieber has created a vampire so original and a story so new that he has virtually invented a new genre.
The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension describes the development and proliferation of the idea of higher dimensional space in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. An idea from mathematics that was appropriated by occultist thought, it emerged in the fin de siècle as a staple of genre fiction and influenced a number of important Modernist writers and artists. Providing a context for thinking of space in dimensional terms, the volume describes an active interplay between self-fashioning disciplines and a key moment in the popularisation of science. It offers new research into spiritualism and the Theosophical Society and studies a series of curious hybrid texts. Examining works by Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, H.G. Wells, Henry James, H. P. Lovecraft, and others, the volume explores how new theories of the possibilities of time and space influenced fiction writers of the period, and how literature shaped, and was in turn shaped by, the reconfiguration of imaginative space occasioned by the n-dimensional turn. A timely study of the interplay between philosophy, literature, culture, and mathematics, it offers a rich resource for readers interested in nineteenth century literature, Modernist studies, science fiction, and gothic scholarship.
