Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World by Juliette Harrisson (ed)
Description
Antiquarian / Second Hand
Published: Routledge, Abingdon 2019
Condition: Very good. Illustrated boards instead of dust jacket. Minor damage on top of back cover. Binding firm, pages clean and unmarked.
"Human beings have speculated about whether or not there is life after death, and if so, what form that life might take, for centuries. What did people in the ancient world think the next life would hold, and did they imagine there was a chance for a relationship between the living and the dead? How did people in the ancient world keep their dead loved ones alive through memory, and were they afraid the dead might return and haunt the living in another form? What sort of afterlife did the ancient Greeks and Romans imagine for themselves? This volume explores these questions and more.
While individual representations of the afterlife have often been examined, few studies have taken a more general view of ideas about the afterlife circulating in the ancient world. By drawing together current research from international scholars on archaeological evidence for afterlife belief, chiefly from funerary sites, together with studies of works of literature, this volume provides a broader overview of ancient ideas about the afterlife than has so far been available.
Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World explores these key questions through a series of wide-ranging studies, taking in ghosts, demons, dreams, cosmology, and the mutilation of corpses along the way, offering a valuable resource to those studying all aspects of death in the ancient world"
If you like this, you might also like:
From the Inferno to Zos (3 volume set) by Anthony Naylor (ed), F. W. Letchford & W. Wallace (text)
£750.00
The Secrets of the Kaula Circle by Elizabeth Sharpe
£79.99
Antiquarian / Second Hand
First US edition hardcover, limited to 500 hand-numbered copies. Quality red cloth with gilt Sri Yantra design on upper board, and gilt titling to spine.
Condition: Fine, unread copy. Dustwrapper protected with plastic sleeve which itself has some minor marks, but both dustwrapper as well as interior pristine condition.
The Secrets of the Kaula Circle was not only one of the first books to introduce the secret Indian rituals associated with the Kaula or "Tantric" family to a Western audience, but it was also almost certainly the first book of its kind to be written by a woman. Elizabeth Sharpe was already well known for her studies and translations on Indian history and religions, but chose to write of the Kaula path as a novel, perhaps as it allowed her more dramatic effect, and in part at least she wanted it to serve as a warning, particularly to women, not to be drawn into the web of practice that she described. Her misgivings had been heightened by the apparent adoption of some of the practices by Western occultists, notably Aleister Crowley, whose person and activities she described in most unflattering terms. Although The Secrets of the Kaula Circle did not achieve a wide circulation, a copy did find its way into the hands of "the Beast, " who professed outrage at the thinly-veiled and unflattering portrait of himself, and considered suing the author. This Teitan Press edition of The Secrets of the Kaula Circle includes the complete text of the original 1936 edition, along with a new index, and an Introduction by Dr. David Templeman.
Scales of the Serpent by Edward Gauntlett
out of stock - £70.00
Antiquarian / Second Hand
First edition limited to 400 copies. Published by Von Zos, 2017.
Deep blue cloth, custom endpapers designed by the author, sewn binding, dustjacket.
Condition: Fine, unread copy. Dustwrapper has some minor marks, but interior is completely unmarked.
Scales of the Serpent draws its primary inspiration from Kenneth Grant’s Nightside of Eden and the exploration of those realms analogous to what Michael Bertiaux refers to as Universe B.
book comprises the sigils of the cells of the qliphoth from Liber CCXXXI (with commentary) presented in a form intended to facilitate meditation and visionary work in accessing the back of the Tree of Life, the nightside, which prior to Grant’s work had been ignored or denied.
A separate and substantial text explores threads leading towards the void which is the gateway to the reverse of the Tree, that noumenal nothing of which the phenomenal something is but the illusory reversed reflection, and gives some indications as to the methods employed and routes taken by earlier explorers, intentionally or otherwise.
These particular threads have been picked up and followed as a result of the author’s workings within the Ordo Typhonis and, more specifically, within the Lamal Lodge.