n dir="ltr" xstyle="font-family: tahoma">1-The Unknown She:
Eight Faces of an Emerging Consciousness
Editorial
Reviews
(from Publishers weekly)
:
This book-in which eight practitioners from the world's mystical traditions speak about their understanding and experience of women's spiritual consciousness-is not for beginners. Neither mysticism nor women's religious experience is easy to write about using standard-issue conceptualizations and vocabulary. So Hart, a student of Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism, wisely lets her subjects do their own talking. Whole blocks of speech are transcribed, surrounded by bits of description of the speakers and their settings. This is good insofar as these generally little-known spiritual teachers are given a platform; it is bad when what they say is occasionally so mind-bending that it requires more elaboration than is provided ("I would just have to sit down and the energy would take me," one interviewee says). It's especially remarkable that a number of these women live everyday lives as wives and mothers; indeed, the book's highest achievement is in making domesticity and mysticism compatible. That said, the inclusion of Andrew Harvey to speak about Christian feminine mystic wisdom somewhat undermines the book's method. Harvey may be Oxford-educated and articulate, but he is not able to speak from an experiential perspective, as do the seven women contributors. Still, for serious students of mystical traditions and women's spirituality, this challenging book offers rewards not found in more conventional works.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
Is there a mystical consciousness particularly natural to women? And if so, how is it influencing the spiritual evolution of our world?
To answer these questions, Hilary Hart traveled across the globe meeting with contemporary mystics from a variety of traditions including Lakota Sioux, Sufism, Buddhism, West-African shamanism, and Christianity. The revelations of feminine wisdom offered through these encounters are not conceptual teachings, but vivid examples of lived spirituality expressed sometimes through simple ways of being, sometimes through profound mystical experiences.
Through such teachers as Sobonfu Some, Ani Tenzin Palmo, Andrew Harvey, and Lynn Barron, Hart introduces readers to a mystical consciousness of oneness, a dimension of pure being that is relational and organic, non-hierarchical and essentially nourishing. This living energy, the Unknown She, as one contributor calls it, is a new and also ancient consciousness of love, a "luminous darkness" that longs to help us evolve into a responsible and nurturing relationship to each other and all creation. Hart shows us that if women are to know this energy and take this step into spiritual maturity they must leave behind fear, anger, and patterns of victimization that inhibit them from living who they really are – not for their own sake but for the sake of our universal evolution.
From simple instructions on how to access one's intuition, to esoteric descriptions of guiding love from the dimension of absolute emptiness into the world of creation, The Unknown She moves from practical to profound with ease, wisdom, and humor. Hart's contributors offer revealing insights into such subjects as how men and women's spirituality differs, the importance of women's creative power in their own spiritual evolution and the evolution of our world, and practical ways for us all to access feminine power and wisdom in traditionally male-dominated spiritual systems.
About the Author
Hilary Hart lives in Northern California where she works as a writer and an editor. She is a student of both Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism. The Unknown She is her first book.
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2- The Door in the Sky:
Coomaraswamy on Myth and MeaningPub Date: 11/1/97
Publisher:Princeton University Press
Format: Paper, 256pp.
Reader's Catalog
Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was a pioneering figure in Indian art history and social thought whose work is reminiscent of William Morris's. This volume gathers together the author's writings on myth drawn from his Metaphysics and Traditional Art and Symbolism. "There are many who consider Coomaraswamy as one of the great seminal minds of this century...This selection of papers should go into every library"--Times of London
Publisher
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was a pioneer in Indian art history and in the cultural confrontation of East and West. A scholar in the tradition of the great Indian grammarians and philosophers, an art historian convinced that the ultimate value of art transcends history, and a social thinker influenced by William Morris, Coomaraswamy was a unique figure whose works provide virtually a complete education in themselves. Finding a universal tradition in past cultures ranging from the Hellenic and Christian to the Indian, Islamic, and Chinese, he collated his ideas and symbols of ancient wisdom into the sometimes complex, always rewarding pattern of essays. The Door in the Sky is a collection of the author's writings on myth drawn from his Metaphysics and Traditional Art and Symbolism, both originally published in Bollingen Series. These essays were written while Coomaraswamy was curator in the department of Asiatic Art of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where he built the first large collection of Indian art in theUnited States."Coomaraswamy's essays [give] us a view of his scholarship and brilliant insight."--Joseph Campbell"There are many who consider Coomaraswamy as one of the great seminal minds of this century.... This selection of his papers should go into every library."--Kathleen Raine, The [London] Times
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
List of Abbreviations and Short Titles
List of Works by A.K. Coomaraswamy Cited in this Volume
Mind and Myth
Svayamatrrna: Janua Coeli
Imitation, Expression, and Participation
Atmayajna: Self-Sacrifice
A Figure of Speech or a Figure of Thought?
The Nature of Buddhist Art
An Indian Temple: The Kandarya Mahadeo
Literary Symbolism
The Symbolism of the Dome
Index
n dir="ltr" xstyle="font-family: tahoma">3- History of Religious Ideas:
From Muhammad to the Age of Reformsn dir="ltr" xstyle="font-size: 10.0pt; font-family: tahoma"> Eliade, Mircea
1988/03 - University of Chicago Press
This third volume by the "historian of religions, who died in April 1986, . . . examines the later developments of Jewish thought, the spread of Christianity, and the rise and diffusion of Islam. . . . {It concludes with a} bibliographical analysis, 'Present Position of Studies.'" (Libr J) Annotated chapter bibliographies. Index. Originally published in France in 1983.For volume one see BRD 1979.
The Reader's Catalog
A monumental work, one of the crowning achievements of the great Romanian scholar who died in 1986. In these three volumes Eliade traces religious development from prehistory to the Reformation.
This volume completes the immensely learned three-volume A History of Religious Ideas. Eliade examines the movement of Jewish thought out of ancientEurasia, the Christian transformation of the Mediterranean area andEurope, and the rise and diffusion of Islam from approximately the sixth through the seventeenth centuries.
T.M. Paucelik - Choice
Eliade's many years of learned research and scholarship are distilled forthe literature student (graduate and upper-division undergraduate) of religion. His special insight and emphasis, as might be expected, is more on the influence and integration into religious history of the phenomena of 'heterodoxies, heresies, mythologies, and popular practices such as sorcery, alchemy, and esotericism.'. . . {This is a} veritable encyclopedia of information. . . . Very readable translation. Highly recommended for all scholars and any serious student of religion.
A.M. Piatigorsky - The Times Literary Supplement
Is it possible, as Eliade maintains, to treat a 'historic and historical'religion in terms of eternal, ahistorical patterns, structures and tendencies? . . . From Eliade's own point of view his methodology is, as it were, scientific, whereas from mine it derives from his religious position. . . . It is inthe later chapters (which have nothing to do with Christianity) that Eliade is most in his element, and where his insights are, as usual, brilliant and penetrating.
Library Journal
This third volume by the preeminent historian of religions, who died in April 1986, concludes his masterly survey of the field. The arrangement of the volumes is roughly chronological. This volume examines the later developments of Jewish thought, the spread of Christianity, and the rise and diffusion of Islam. Like the other two volumes, it reflects the author's interest in folk beliefs, heresies, and cults of secret wisdom. It concludes with a long and extremely useful bibliographical analysis, ``Present Position of Studies.'' As the crowning achievement to an unparalleled scholarly career this series of books represents a valuable synthesis for specialists and generalists alike. Paul E. Muller-Ortega, Religious Studies Dept., Michigan State Univ., East Lansing
Harry B. Partin - The Christian Century
How does one write a history of religious ideas? Eliade chose to focus on moments and movements in which religious creativity has found expression. He gives attention not only to the major religions but also to less familiar religious creations. Eliade has been most insightful, influential and, one could add, most interesting when writing about the latter. The present volume is no exception. While he presents the religious creativity of Luther, Calvin and other Reformers clearly, he is at his best when writing about, say, Meister Echart, popular piety, pre-Christian survivals, and the vogue of Hermetism before and after the Reformation. . . . {The author has} contributed immeasurably to our understanding of the nature and varieties of religious experience.
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4-The Myth of the Eternal Return:
Or, Cosmos and History Eliade, Mircea
Pub. Date: 04/91
Publisher:
Binding: Trade Paper, 162pp.
Book Description
This essay on humanity's experience of history and its interpretation begins with a study of the traditional or mythological view and concludes with a comparative estimate of modern historiological approaches.
Annotation
This book deals with the mythologies and religious philosophies of the cosmic cycle of the ages.
The Reader's Catalog Description
An influential study of history and mythical time; using Eastern European folk materials, Eliade traces the transmutation of historical events into myths.
The Reader's Catalog about the Author
Born in Bucharest, educated in Calcutta, and a professor at the Sorbonne before settling at theUniversity of Chicago, Eliade was considered the foremost authority on religion in the world. He was also an original writer of fiction and short stories, blending philosophy, mythology, fantasy, and personal narrative.
