Traces of Troinovantum by Robert Shaw
Description
Traces of Troinovantum uncovers the London you were never taught about in school – a hidden city beneath the Romans, and beneath our own assumptions.
We are told that London began as a Roman trading post on an empty swamp. This book politely takes that story, turns it upside down, and shakes the coins out of its pockets. Drawing on the Museum of London’s own archaeological records, it shows there were roads, roundhouses, a monumental stone temple and massive defensive walls here long before the legions marched in 43 AD. The Romans did not build on a blank canvas – they built on top of someone else’s story.
That buried story is Troinovantum, “New Troy”, remembered in ancient British chronicles as the first great settlement on the Thames. From the Brut Tysilio to Julius Caesar’s own reports, from forgotten Celtic law codes to a vast pre-Roman cathedral on Tower Hill, Traces of Troinovantum pieces together a picture of a sophisticated, literate, stubbornly independent Britain that refused to fit Roman or later English stereotypes.
Along the way we meet Druids and charioteers who gave Caesar nightmares, rebel emperors from Britain who briefly ruled Rome, and scholars like Tolkien and Flinders Petrie who quietly preserved traces of this other history. We also look hard at why so much of it was erased: imperial propaganda, Norman class politics, and a long tradition of painting the “Celts” as colourful but clueless.
Part detective story, part historical road trip, part love letter to an older Britain still hiding in our place-names and DNA, this book invites readers to walk London’s streets with new eyes. Once you’ve seen Troinovantum flickering beneath Londinium and modern London, it is very hard to unsee it.
If you like this, you might also like:
Initiation into Dream Mysteries by Sarah Janes
£14.99
Invoking Mnemosyne--Greek goddess of memory and eloquence, daughter of Heaven and Earth, mother of the Muses, and archetypal deity of the Asklepion dream temple tradition--this book initiates you into full dream consciousness, offering a lucid-dreaming ritual experience in the spirit of the Mystery Schools of antiquity. Explaining how a conscious dream life is essential for self-discovery, deep integration, and healing, lucid-dreaming instructor Sarah Janes presents exercises, techniques, and initiations to help you explore the inner depths of your psyche. These realms, accessible through dreams, can help you to form a better understanding of who you are.
Sharing her more than a decade of research on Sleep Temples and Mystery Schools of the Esoteric Tradition, Sarah explores the evolution of imagination, memory, and consciousness throughout the ages and proposes that dreams have been fundamental in the creation and development of culture. Dreams play an important role in ancestor worship, afterlife beliefs, animism, religion, and wisdom traditions. Sarah reveals how dreams offer us an opportunity to remember and directly experience our divinity, to transcend the limitations of our mortality and enter timeless, imaginal realms.
Employing the power of story to affect the mind and lay down new neural pathways--as if one were really living the story--Sarah begins each initiatory chapter with a psychodramatic narrative. Using symbolism and powerful imagery, these stories help you generate the perfect dreams for each stage in the initiation. And by becoming a better dreamer, you can make better, more aware decisions in your waking life.
The Red Shepherd by Samuel David
£65.00
Myth would inform us that Dumuzid was merely the effete, hapless shepherd god who invoked the anger of his wife, Inanna, and became little more than a footnote in myth.
Erotic poetry; liturgical texts and hymns; magical formulae, however, indicate something greater. In such texts, we find that Dumuzid is more than a mere pastoral deity standing guard over the sheepfold. He appears as a king; high priest; warrior; captain of the host and commander of chariots; a god who stands at the gates of Heaven, possesses a throne upon the Earth, and is seated beside Ereškigal, the great queen of the Underworld.
Wholly informed by academic sources and personally applied praxis, The Red Shepherd: Towards a New Image of Dumuzid includes relevant myths and mythopoetic lacunae texts; transliterated liturgical compositions written by the author; ritual texts inspired by historical source material.
Through this book, Samuel David invites you to enter into the presence of the god of both the living and the dead whose name and power are the breath of life which quickens the child in the womb; the eroticism of the virile lover; the psychopomp who leads ghosts in his train; the intercessor who takes the burden sickness and disease from his supplicants.
Constellation Myths by Eratosthenes, Hyginus and Aratus
£10.99
This translation brings together the later summaries from Eratosthenes' lost handbook with a guide to astronomy compiled by Hyginus, librarian to Augustus. Together with Aratus's astronomical poem the Phaenomena, these texts provide a complete collection of Greek astral myths; imaginative and picturesque, they also offer an intriguing insight into ancient science and culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe.
Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.