Threptus the former beggar boy has teamed up with Floridius, a soothsayer and seller of sacred chickens. Together they earn a living helping people solve problems and mysteries. In this third book of the series, it is the time of Saturnalia - when all the rules are turned upside down and chaos ensues. Threptus is enjoying the mayhem but the thunder omens are disturbing. Can Threptus help his friend matchmake and avoid the disaster threatened by the thunder omen?
The work is set on a Volga estate, and features a dreadful, scheming widow and landowner, Kabanikha, who terrorizes her meek daughter-in-law, Katerina.
Addressing the role which divination played in ancient Greek society, this volume deals with various forms of prophecy and how each was utilised and for what purpose. Chapters bring together key types of divining, such as from birds, celestial phenomena, the entrails of sacrificed animals and dreams. Oracular centres delivered prophetic pronouncements to enquirers, but in addition, there were written collections of oracles in circulation. Many books were available on how to interpret dreams, the birds and entrails, and divination as a religious phenomenon attracted the attention of many writers. Expert diviners were at the heart of Greek prophecy, whether these were Apollo’s priestesses delivering prose or verse answers to questions put to them by consultants, diviners known as manteis, who interpreted entrails and omens, the chresmologoi, who sang the many oracles circulating orally or in writing, or dream interpreters. Divination was utilised not only to foretell the future but also to ensure that the individual or state employing divination acted in accordance with that divinely prescribed future; it was employed by all and had a crucial role to play in what courses of action both states and individuals undertook. Specific attention is paid in this volume not only to the ancient written evidence, but to that of inscriptions and papyri, with emphasis placed on the iconography of Greek divination.
THE WICCAN’S DICTIONARY OF PROPHECY AND OMENS Divination—the art of obtaining knowledge of the future or of secret things—has played an important role in ancient cultures and religions as well as in modern times. It was once a method of sacred communication with the spirit world and a way to determine the will of the gods by means of visions and predictions. In the present age, divination, including astrology, palmistry, and the I Ching, continues to be a popular method of looking into the future or past, as well as revealing that which was once unknown. In fact, a large number of our contemporary customs and superstitions are remnants of the once-powerful divinatory rituals of the ancient pagan religions. The Wiccan's Dictionary of Prophecy and Omens details over two hundred methods of divination, from those used in antiquity to those in use today. It traces the history of these practices and provides examples of nearly every known divinatory art. This is an essential resource for followers of today’s Wiccan lifestyle by modern Wiccan expert Gerina Dunwich.
This is the new Latin course that you have long been waiting for! An introduction to both the Latin language and the cultural world of the Romans, it also develops English literacy skills through derivation tasks and two-way translation exercises, which promote the understanding of English as well as Latin. Cultural topics, supported by background notes, and primary sources, included for study and analysis, enable students to engage with authentic Roman history and acquire a broad understanding on which to build in future study. - Language learning is split between Core and Additional to ensure effective differentiation and flexible timetabling. - Fun and varied exercises include word identification, word manipulation, vocab acquisition / consolidation, and translation from English into Latin. - 30 words of new vocabulary in each chapter build towards a total of 360. - Vocabulary is consistently and constantly consolidated to give an unshakeable grounding for GCSE. - Clear and systematic explanations of grammar encourage steady progress. - Early use of Latin stories rather than isolated sentences build student confidence from the start. In this first volume students meet the gods and heroes of the Roman world, introduced through stories from Chapter 1 onwards, so that students can immediately read passages of Latin. From myths about the gods to stories about religious customs and festivals, this is the perfect way to learn about the religious framework of Roman daily life. The final chapter on prophecy, ending with stories of historical figures such as Caesar interpreting messages from the gods, prepares for the transition in the second volume to the world of men - and women - of ancient Rome.
The Assyro-Babylonian omen series Enūma Anu Enlil, written on seventy cuneiform tablets, bears witness to the early understanding of the mutual interactions of heaven and earth on both the physical and the religious levels. To facilitate accessibility, technical and linguistic commentaries as well as an excerpt series were compiled by the scholars of old. This ancient knowledge, which was still largely characterized by mythological concepts, was never completely abandoned, not even when the ‘calculating’ astronomy became prevalent in the first millennium B.C. The series deals in four parts with the moon, the sun, weather phenomena, and fixed stars and planets. This book offers an edition of the texts of the second half of the weather section with the accompanying material.
African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction: Threaded Visions of Memory, Community, Nature and Being is the nexus to scholarship on manifestations of Africanisms in black art and culture, particularly the scant critical works focusing on African metaphysical retentions. This study examines New World African spirituality as a syncretic dynamic of spiritual retentions and transformations that have played prominently in the literary imagination of black women writers. Beginning with the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, African Spirituality in Black Women's Fiction traces applications and transformations of African spirituality in black women's writings that culminate in the conscious and deliberate celebration of Africanity in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. The journey from Wheatley's veiled remembrances to Hurston's explicit gaze of continental Africa represents the literary journey of black women writers to represent Africa as not only a very real creative resource but also a liberating one. Hurston's icon of black female autonomy and self realization is woven from the thread work of African spiritual principles that date back to early black women's writings.
Musaicum Books presents to you a collection of the greatest horror, supernatural and gothic tales of all time: Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Théophile Gautier: Clarimonde The Mummy's Foot Richard Marsh: The Beetle H. P. Lovecraft: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward At The Mountains of Madness The Colour out of Space The Whisperer in Darkness The Dunwich Horror The Shunned House… Mary Shelley: Frankenstein The Mortal Immortal The Evil Eye… John William Polidori: The Vampyre Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart The Cask of Amontillado The Black Cat… Henry James: The Turn of the Screw The Ghostly Rental… Bram Stoker: Dracula The Jewel of Seven Stars The Lair of the White Worm… Algernon Blackwood: The Willows A Haunted Island A Case of Eavesdropping Ancient Sorceries… Gaston Leroux: The Phantom of the Opera Marjorie Bowen: Black Magic Charles Dickens: The Mystery of Edwin Drood Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles The Silver Hatchet… Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Carmilla Uncle Silas… M. R. James: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary A Thin Ghost and Others Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White The Haunted Hotel The Devil's Spectacles E. F. Benson: The Room in the Tower The Terror by Night… Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Birth Mark The House of the Seven Gables… Ambrose Bierce: Can Such Things Be? Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan The Terror… William Hope Hodgson: The House on the Borderland The Night Land M. P. Shiel: Shapes in the Fire Ralph Adams Cram: Black Spirits and White Grant Allen: The Reverend John Creedy Dr. Greatrex's Engagement… Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto William Thomas Beckford: Vathek Matthew Gregory Lewis: The Monk Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho Jane Austen: Northanger Abbey Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights Rudyard Kipling: The Phantom Rickshaw Guy de Maupassant: The Horla Jerome K. Jerome: Told After Supper…
