From the Holy Mountain

From the Holy Mountain PDF Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307948927
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
In the spring of A.D. 587, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist embarked on a remarkable expedition across the entire Byzantine world, traveling from the shores of Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide and inspiration, the acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple retraces the footsteps of these two monks, providing along the way a moving elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and to the people who are struggling to keep its flame alive. The result is Dalrymple’s unsurpassed masterpiece: a beautifully written travelogue, at once rich and scholarly, moving and courageous, overflowing with vivid characters and hugely topical insights into the history, spirituality and the fractured politics of the Middle East.

From the Holy Mountain

From the Holy Mountain PDF Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307948927
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 504

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Book Description
In the spring of A.D. 587, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist embarked on a remarkable expedition across the entire Byzantine world, traveling from the shores of Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide and inspiration, the acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple retraces the footsteps of these two monks, providing along the way a moving elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and to the people who are struggling to keep its flame alive. The result is Dalrymple’s unsurpassed masterpiece: a beautifully written travelogue, at once rich and scholarly, moving and courageous, overflowing with vivid characters and hugely topical insights into the history, spirituality and the fractured politics of the Middle East.

Things of the Hidden God

Things of the Hidden God PDF Author: Christopher Merrill
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1498292526
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
"If I had learned anything during the war, it was that our walk in the sun is brief, and so I resolved to wander from monastery to monastery, a sojourner in the world of last things." So poet and journalist Christopher Merrill tells us near the beginning of this gripping account of the transforming pilgrimages he made to Mount Athos, in Greece, in the aftermath of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. "It was time for me to come to terms with the way my life had turned out: the love I had squandered, the misgivings I had about my vocation and my faith, the dread I felt at every turn." In despair and longing to end his spiritual desolation, Merrill became one of a handful of visitors permitted entry to Mount Athos--a mysterious land that for more than a thousand years has been the secret heart of the Eastern Orthodox Church. There, amid the beautiful terrain, the ancient rhythms, and the spiritual rigor of this holy place, he found a haven. As Merrill's story unfolds, we, too, hike the rough trails of Athos, exploring a place and a way of life scarcely altered since medieval times. We share encounters with monks and spiritual seekers; visit Athos's twenty monasteries, where exquisite art treasures are sequestered; make our way to lonely hermitages that clutch the cliffs above the sea. Like Merrill, we come to consider existence in a new and different light. Part journal of personal discovery, part meditation upon the history and traditions of the contemplative life, Things of the Hidden God takes us where the temporal and the eternal intersect, where community and solitude coexist, and where centuries-old practices offer insight for how to live today.

Journey to the Holy Mountain

Journey to the Holy Mountain PDF Author: Christopher Merrill
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780007119011
Category : Athos (Greece)
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Centred around three journeys to Mount Athos, one of the most important places in Orthodox Christianity, this is both a travel book and a journey of self-discovery in a world beset by violence and fear. Mount Athos is the spiritual home of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and for more than ten centuries this monastic community in northern Greece has been a centre for contemplative life, a staging ground for mystical visions and teachings, and a watch tower for Byzantium. A world unto itself, which has existed almost unchanged since medieval times, the theocratic state of Athos is a spiritual haven which stands in dramatic counterpoint to the contemporary world. Even time is calculated differently here - Athos rejects the Julian calendar and clocks are reset every day to Byzantine time - midnight falls at sunset. Christopher Merrill travelled to Mount Athos in search of spiritual renewal and a vision of eternity.

Hiking the Holy Mountain

Hiking the Holy Mountain PDF Author: John McKinney
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780934161688
Category : Hiking
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description


The Station

The Station PDF Author: Robert Byron
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857718207
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In 1927, at the age of 22, Robert Byron journeyed to Athos with his friends and embarked on an adventure whose influence would remain with him for the rest of his life. Mount Athos, the spiritual heart of Eastern Orthodox Monasticism, is perhaps the most sacred and mysterious place in Greece: an autonomous state, where no woman can set foot, which has its own calendar and its own time. This ruggedly beautiful peninsula in Macedonia boasts a history that stretches back to Herodotus and has been a sanctuary from the earliest days of Christianity, through the Byzantine and Ottoman eras, two world wars and up to the present day. Through compelling descriptions of the monks of Athos, their daily lives and the treasures held in their monasteries, Byron illuminates an ancient and enigmatic world, long shrouded from the eyes of outsiders. Published nine years before his classic The Road to Oxiana, The Station reveals the roots of a fascination with the Byzantine world that would become refined in Byron's later writings and establish him as one of the pre-eminent writers of his generation.

Inherit the Holy Mountain

Inherit the Holy Mountain PDF Author: Mark Stoll
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019023086X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Inherit the Holy Mountain puts religion at the center of the history of American environmentalism rather than at its margins, demonstrating how religion provided environmentalists with content, direction, and tone for the environmental causes they espoused.

China's Holy Mountain

China's Holy Mountain PDF Author: Christoph Baumer
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
ISBN: 9781848857001
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Rising from Shanxi Province like a three-dimensional mandala, the soaring peaks of Wutai Shan ('Five-terrace Mountain') have inspired pilgrims and travellers for almost two millennia. A striking terrain of towering emerald forests, wraith-like mists and crenellated ridges, this consecrated and secluded site is said to be the spiritual home of Wenshu Pusa, Bodhisattva of Wisdom. It is one of the most venerable and important Buddhist sanctuaries in China, yet still remains relatively little known in the West. Christoph Baumer has travelled extensively in the Wutai Shan region, and here offers the first comprehensive account of the cradle of Chinese Buddhism. In his remarkable new travelogue, 300 luminous photographs capture the unique spirituality of the 60 monasteries which straddle the complex. Charting festivals, rituals, pilgrimages and the daily life of the monks, abbots and abbesses, 'China's Holy Mountain' is both a splendid introduction to the history of Buddhism in East Asia and an evocative and lavishly-illustrated gazetteer of the monasteries and sacred artefacts themselves. It will be an indispensable resource for students of Asian religion and philosophy, with further appeal to general readers.

The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky

The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky PDF Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1594778817
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Jodorowsky’s memoirs of his experiences with Master Takata and the group of wisewomen--magiciennes--who influenced his spiritual growth • Reveals Jodorowsky turning the same unsparing spiritual vision seen in El Topo to his own spiritual quest • Shows how the author’s spiritual insight and progress was catalyzed repeatedly by wisewoman shamans and healers In 1970, John Lennon introduced to the world Alejandro Jodorowsky and the movie, El Topo, that he wrote, starred in, and directed. The movie and its author instantly became a counterculture icon. The New York Times said the film “demands to be seen,” and Newsweek called it “An Extraordinary Movie!” But that was only the beginning of the story and the controversy of El Topo, and the journey of its brilliant creator. His spiritual quest began with the Japanese master Ejo Takata, the man who introduced him to the practice of meditation, Zen Buddhism, and the wisdom of the koans. Yet in this autobiographical account of his spiritual journey, Jodorowsky reveals that it was a small group of wisewomen, far removed from the world of Buddhism, who initiated him and taught him how to put the wisdom he had learned from his master into practice. At the direction of Takata, Jodorowsky became a student of the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, thus beginning a journey in which vital spiritual lessons were transmitted to him by various women who were masters of their particular crafts. These women included Doña Magdalena, who taught him “initiatic” or spiritual massage; the powerful Mexican actress known as La Tigresa (the “tigress”); and Reyna D’Assia, daughter of the famed spiritual teacher G. I. Gurdjieff. Other important wisewomen on Jodorowsky’s spiritual path include María Sabina, the priestess of the sacred mushrooms; the healer Pachita; and the Chilean singer Violeta Parra. The teachings of these women enabled him to discard the emotional armor that was hindering his advancement on the path of spiritual awareness and enlightenment.

Where the Bird Sings Best

Where the Bird Sings Best PDF Author: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Publisher: Restless Books
ISBN: 1632060078
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 541

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Book Description
The magnum opus from Alejandro Jodorowsky—director of The Holy Mountain, star of Jodorowsky’s Dune, spiritual guru behind Psychomagic and The Way of Tarot, innovator behind classic comics The Incal and Metabarons, and legend of Latin American literature. There has never been an artist like the polymathic Chilean director, author, and mystic Alejandro Jodorowsky. For eight decades, he has blazed new trails across a dazzling variety of creative fields. While his psychedelic, visionary films have been celebrated by the likes of John Lennon, Marina Abramovic, and Kanye West, his novels—praised throughout Latin America in the same breath as those of Gabriel García Márquez—have remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Until now. Where the Bird Sings Best tells the fantastic story of the Jodorowskys’ emigration from Ukraine to Chile amidst the political and cultural upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like One Hundred Years of Solitude, Jodorowsky’s book transforms family history into heroic legend: incestuous beekeepers hide their crime with a living cloak of bees, a czar fakes his own death to live as a hermit amongst the animals, a devout grandfather confides only in the ghost of a wise rabbi, a transgender ballerina with a voracious sexual appetite holds a would-be saint in thrall. Kaleidoscopic, exhilarating, and erotic, Where the Bird Sings Best expands the classic immigration story to mythic proportions. Praise “This epic family saga, reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude in structure and breadth, reads at a breakneck pace. Though ostensibly a novelization of the author's own family history, it is a raucous carnival of the surreal, mystical, and grotesque.” —Publishers Weekly "A man whose life has been defined by cosmic ambitions." —The New York Times Magazine "A great eccentric original....A legendary man of many trades.” —Roger Ebert For more information on Alejandro Jodorowsky, please visit www.restlessbooks.com/alejandro-jodorowsky

Counsels from the Holy Mountain

Counsels from the Holy Mountain PDF Author: Elder Ephraim
Publisher: St Anthonys Greek Orth Monastery
ISBN: 9780966700039
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
This treasury of personal counsels and homilies given by Elder Ephraim clearly delineates the Patristic path to sanctification. In "Counsels from the Holy Mountain" he gives advise on every aspect of the spiritual struggle with insight acquired from his experience as a monk for more than fifty years and as the spiritual father of thousands of clergy, monastics, and laymen.