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"Far more than a dry hagiographical account of the lives of saints, this entertaining and authoritative dictionary breathes life into its subjects and is as browsable as it is informative.
First published in 1978, the Oxford Dictionary of Saints offers more than 1,700 fascinating and informative entries covering the lives, cults, and artistic associations of saints from around the world, from the famous to the obscure, the rich to the poor, and the academic to the uneducated. From all walks of life and from all periods of history and from around the world, the wide varieties of personalities and achievements of the canonized are reflected. An updated introduction explains the steps towards becoming a saint,...>>
"There are very few accounts of the afterlife across the period from Homer to Dante. Most traditional studies approach the classical afterlife from the point of view of its "evolution" towards the Christian afterlife. This book tries to do something different: to explore afterlife narratives in spatial terms and to situate this tradition within the ambit of a fundamental need in human psychology for the synthesis of soul (or "self") and universe.
Drawing on the works of Homer, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, and Dante, among others, as well as on modern works on psychology, cartography, and music theory, Mapping the Afterlife argues that the topography of the afterlife in the Greek and Roman tradition, and in...>>
"The ancient world of Egypt, Greece, and Rome was home to a set of magical and spiritual technologies, called theurgy, that unite the practice of magic with the aims of religion. Theurgy, or "godwork," is the art of creating a stronger bond between the theurgist and his or her deities. The results of this stronger bond were imminently practical: stronger magic, more meaningful existence, and a better life. With the fall of Rome, these techniques faded into obscurity, and many of them were lost forever.
This book revives, restores, and reinvents these practices for a contemporary pagan or magical practitioner. A mixture of scholarly research and examination of source texts and daring experimentation and extrapolation...>>
"During the Middle Ages, the Western world translated the incredible Arabic scientific corpus and imported it into Western culture: Arabic philosophy, optics, and physics, as well as alchemy, astrology, and talismanic magic. The line between the scientific and the magical was blurred. According to popular lore, magicians of the Middle Ages were trained in the art of magic in "magician schools" located in various metropolitan areas, such as Naples, Athens, and Toledo. It was common knowledge that magic was learned and that cities had schools designed to teach the dark arts. The Spanish city of Toledo, for example, was so renowned for its magic training schools that "the art of Toledo" was synonymous with...>>
