Author: Peter Lamborn Wilson
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868915
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
The Rig Veda, written in India about 1500BC, praises a holy plant called Soma, which is sacrificed and consumed, granting the drinker an experience of enlightenment and ecstasy. The late Gordon Wasson identified Soma as a "magic mushroom," Amanita muscaria, and he and his followers discovered that such Indo-Europeans as the ancient Greeks, Iranians and Norse had also used a Soma-type plant. In Ploughing the Clouds Peter Lamborn Wilson investigates the probability of a Soma cult in ancient Ireland, tracing clues in Irish (and other Celtic) lore. By comparing Celtic folktales, romances, epics and topographic lore with the Rig Veda, he uncovers the Irish branch of the great Indo-European tradition of psychedelic (or "entheogenic") shamanism, and even reconstructs some of its secret rituals. He uses this comparative material to illuminate the deep meaning of the Soma-function in all cultures: the entheogenic origin of "poetic frenzy," the link between intoxication and inspiration.
Ploughing the Clouds
Author: Peter Lamborn Wilson
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868915
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
The Rig Veda, written in India about 1500BC, praises a holy plant called Soma, which is sacrificed and consumed, granting the drinker an experience of enlightenment and ecstasy. The late Gordon Wasson identified Soma as a "magic mushroom," Amanita muscaria, and he and his followers discovered that such Indo-Europeans as the ancient Greeks, Iranians and Norse had also used a Soma-type plant. In Ploughing the Clouds Peter Lamborn Wilson investigates the probability of a Soma cult in ancient Ireland, tracing clues in Irish (and other Celtic) lore. By comparing Celtic folktales, romances, epics and topographic lore with the Rig Veda, he uncovers the Irish branch of the great Indo-European tradition of psychedelic (or "entheogenic") shamanism, and even reconstructs some of its secret rituals. He uses this comparative material to illuminate the deep meaning of the Soma-function in all cultures: the entheogenic origin of "poetic frenzy," the link between intoxication and inspiration.
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868915
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
The Rig Veda, written in India about 1500BC, praises a holy plant called Soma, which is sacrificed and consumed, granting the drinker an experience of enlightenment and ecstasy. The late Gordon Wasson identified Soma as a "magic mushroom," Amanita muscaria, and he and his followers discovered that such Indo-Europeans as the ancient Greeks, Iranians and Norse had also used a Soma-type plant. In Ploughing the Clouds Peter Lamborn Wilson investigates the probability of a Soma cult in ancient Ireland, tracing clues in Irish (and other Celtic) lore. By comparing Celtic folktales, romances, epics and topographic lore with the Rig Veda, he uncovers the Irish branch of the great Indo-European tradition of psychedelic (or "entheogenic") shamanism, and even reconstructs some of its secret rituals. He uses this comparative material to illuminate the deep meaning of the Soma-function in all cultures: the entheogenic origin of "poetic frenzy," the link between intoxication and inspiration.
The Theory of Clouds
Author: Stéphane Audeguy
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780151014286
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
The novel tells the story of Akira Kumo, a retired couturier living in Paris, owner of the world's largest collection of books about clouds, and Virginie Latour, whom Kumo hires to help catalogue his library. While they work he tells her the story behind three figures in particular, all British, all obsessed by clouds: Luke Howard, a real-life Quaker who in 1802 wrote the first treatise classifying clouds (we still use it today); a painter named Carmichael, clearly based on John Constable, one of the most famous cloud painters of all time, and a fictional amateur meteorologist named Richard Abercrombie, who aspires to write the definitive book on cloud description, which would come to be known in cloud circles as the Abercrombie Protocol. Kumo sends Virginie Latour to London to buy the Protocol. By the end of the novel, we learn the Protocol's great secret; we understand what binds these men together; and and we learn that Kumo himself is a survivor of the Hiroshima blast, in whose cloud his family vanished.
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780151014286
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
The novel tells the story of Akira Kumo, a retired couturier living in Paris, owner of the world's largest collection of books about clouds, and Virginie Latour, whom Kumo hires to help catalogue his library. While they work he tells her the story behind three figures in particular, all British, all obsessed by clouds: Luke Howard, a real-life Quaker who in 1802 wrote the first treatise classifying clouds (we still use it today); a painter named Carmichael, clearly based on John Constable, one of the most famous cloud painters of all time, and a fictional amateur meteorologist named Richard Abercrombie, who aspires to write the definitive book on cloud description, which would come to be known in cloud circles as the Abercrombie Protocol. Kumo sends Virginie Latour to London to buy the Protocol. By the end of the novel, we learn the Protocol's great secret; we understand what binds these men together; and and we learn that Kumo himself is a survivor of the Hiroshima blast, in whose cloud his family vanished.
Sacred Drift
Author: Peter Lamborn Wilson
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868907
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
Peter Lamborn Wilson proposes a set of heresies, a culture of resistance, that dispels the false image of Islam as monolithic, puritan, and two-dimensional. Here is the story of the African-American noble Drew Ali, the founder of “Black Islam” in this country, and of the violent end of his struggle for “love, truth, peace, freedom, and justice.” Another essay deals with Satan and “Satanism” in Esoteric Islam; and another offers a scathing critique of “Authority” and sexual misery in modern Puritanist Islam. “The Anti-caliph” evokes a hot mix of Ibn Arabi’s tantric mysticism and the revolutionary teachings of the “Assassins.” The title essay, “Sacred Drift,” roves through the history and poetics of Sufi travel, from Ibn Khaldun to Rimbaud in Abyssinia to the Situationists. A “Romantic” view of Islam is taken to radical extremes; the exotic may not be “True,” but it’s certainly a relief from academic propaganda and the obscene banality of simulation. "This is my brand of Islam: insurrectionary, elegant, dangerous, suffused with light – a search for poetic facts, a donation from and to the tradition of spiritual anarchy." —Hakim Bey "Peter Lamborn Wilson, in his book Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam, offers an interesting window into the early evolution of Islamic ideas among African Americans." —Abbas Milani, New Republic Peter Lamborn Wilson lives in New York and works for Semiotext(e) magazine, Pacifica Radio, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. A long decade in the Orient (1968-1981) inspires his writing, including The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry and Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy. He also investigates Celtic psychoactive plants in his book Ploughing the Clouds which is also published by City Lights Publishers.
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 0872868907
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188
Book Description
Peter Lamborn Wilson proposes a set of heresies, a culture of resistance, that dispels the false image of Islam as monolithic, puritan, and two-dimensional. Here is the story of the African-American noble Drew Ali, the founder of “Black Islam” in this country, and of the violent end of his struggle for “love, truth, peace, freedom, and justice.” Another essay deals with Satan and “Satanism” in Esoteric Islam; and another offers a scathing critique of “Authority” and sexual misery in modern Puritanist Islam. “The Anti-caliph” evokes a hot mix of Ibn Arabi’s tantric mysticism and the revolutionary teachings of the “Assassins.” The title essay, “Sacred Drift,” roves through the history and poetics of Sufi travel, from Ibn Khaldun to Rimbaud in Abyssinia to the Situationists. A “Romantic” view of Islam is taken to radical extremes; the exotic may not be “True,” but it’s certainly a relief from academic propaganda and the obscene banality of simulation. "This is my brand of Islam: insurrectionary, elegant, dangerous, suffused with light – a search for poetic facts, a donation from and to the tradition of spiritual anarchy." —Hakim Bey "Peter Lamborn Wilson, in his book Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam, offers an interesting window into the early evolution of Islamic ideas among African Americans." —Abbas Milani, New Republic Peter Lamborn Wilson lives in New York and works for Semiotext(e) magazine, Pacifica Radio, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. A long decade in the Orient (1968-1981) inspires his writing, including The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry and Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy. He also investigates Celtic psychoactive plants in his book Ploughing the Clouds which is also published by City Lights Publishers.
Cross Worlds
Author: Anne Waldman
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566893593
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
Cross Words refers to cultural hybrids, trans-cultural alliances, and associations. This fascinating compendium documents—in essays, conversations, and socratic raps—the vital work poets perform when they write across borders. Anne Waldman is the author of more than forty collections of poetry, the editor of numerous anthologies, and, for The Iovis Trilogy, the winner of the Shelley Memorial Award and the USA PEN Center Award for Poetry. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Laura E. Wright is a poet, translator, and librarian. With Anne Waldman, she co-edited Beats at Naropa (Coffee House Press, 2009).
Publisher: Coffee House Press
ISBN: 1566893593
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 369
Book Description
Cross Words refers to cultural hybrids, trans-cultural alliances, and associations. This fascinating compendium documents—in essays, conversations, and socratic raps—the vital work poets perform when they write across borders. Anne Waldman is the author of more than forty collections of poetry, the editor of numerous anthologies, and, for The Iovis Trilogy, the winner of the Shelley Memorial Award and the USA PEN Center Award for Poetry. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Laura E. Wright is a poet, translator, and librarian. With Anne Waldman, she co-edited Beats at Naropa (Coffee House Press, 2009).
The Invention of Clouds
Author: Richard Hamblyn
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312420017
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Presents the story of Luke Howard, an ameteur meterologist, and his groundbreaking work that began with naming and classifying clouds.
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312420017
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306
Book Description
Presents the story of Luke Howard, an ameteur meterologist, and his groundbreaking work that began with naming and classifying clouds.
Plough, Sword, and Book
Author: Ernest Gellner
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226287025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Elucidates and argues for the author's concept of human history from the past to the present.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226287025
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
Elucidates and argues for the author's concept of human history from the past to the present.
Pharmako/Poeia
Author: Dale Pendell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781556438875
Category : Botany, Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Pharmako poeia: plant powers, poisons, and herbcraft focuses on familiar psychoactive plant-derived substances and related synthetics, ranging from the licit (tobacco, alcohol) to the illicit (cannabis, opium) and the exotic (absinthe, salvia divinorum, nitrous oxide)"--Provided by publisher.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781556438875
Category : Botany, Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Pharmako poeia: plant powers, poisons, and herbcraft focuses on familiar psychoactive plant-derived substances and related synthetics, ranging from the licit (tobacco, alcohol) to the illicit (cannabis, opium) and the exotic (absinthe, salvia divinorum, nitrous oxide)"--Provided by publisher.
Washing Our Hands in the Clouds
Author: Bo Petersen
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611175526
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
In Washing Our Hands in the Clouds, Bo Petersen masterfully crafts a reflection on the Civil War, emancipation, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement in the personal story of how it affected one man's life in a specific South Carolina locale. Petersen's accomplishment is that, in studying the Pee Dee region of Dillon and Marion Counties, he illuminates those issues throughout the Deep South. Through conversations with Joe Williams, his family, and acquaintances, white and black, Petersen merges the Williams family history back to Joe's great-great-grandfather, Scipio Williams, with the lives and fortunes of four generations of South Carolinians—black and white. Scipio, the family progenitor, was a man free in spirit and action before the Civil War destroyed chattel slavery. Scipio was a free black farmer who worked land that he owned in the Pee Dee before and after the war and during the worst days of Jim Crow white supremacy. Petersen uses the Williams family genealogy, neighborhood, and, most important, their farmlands to understand Pee Dee and South Carolina history from the 1860s to the present. In his research he discovers historical currents that run deeper than events—currents of agriculture, land ownership, and allegiance to native soil—and transcend the march of time and carry the Williams family through slavery, war, Jim Crow, and economic dislocation to today's stories of Joe Williams. In gathering what Petersen describes as a collection of front porch stories, he also writes a history of what matters most to this family and this locale. The resulting narrative is surprising, unconventional, and true for all families in all places. In Dillon County, tobacco production followed cotton farming. Old-time logging coexisted with textile factories. Jim Crow gave way to uncertain prospects of racial harmony. Those were monumental changes of circumstance, but they did not change human character. Washing Our Hands in the Clouds is a history of human character, of life that endures outside of the restraints of time. To understand this phenomenon is to realize that both Scipio and Joe and the generations between them wash their hands in the timeless clouds of South Carolina's sky.
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611175526
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
In Washing Our Hands in the Clouds, Bo Petersen masterfully crafts a reflection on the Civil War, emancipation, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement in the personal story of how it affected one man's life in a specific South Carolina locale. Petersen's accomplishment is that, in studying the Pee Dee region of Dillon and Marion Counties, he illuminates those issues throughout the Deep South. Through conversations with Joe Williams, his family, and acquaintances, white and black, Petersen merges the Williams family history back to Joe's great-great-grandfather, Scipio Williams, with the lives and fortunes of four generations of South Carolinians—black and white. Scipio, the family progenitor, was a man free in spirit and action before the Civil War destroyed chattel slavery. Scipio was a free black farmer who worked land that he owned in the Pee Dee before and after the war and during the worst days of Jim Crow white supremacy. Petersen uses the Williams family genealogy, neighborhood, and, most important, their farmlands to understand Pee Dee and South Carolina history from the 1860s to the present. In his research he discovers historical currents that run deeper than events—currents of agriculture, land ownership, and allegiance to native soil—and transcend the march of time and carry the Williams family through slavery, war, Jim Crow, and economic dislocation to today's stories of Joe Williams. In gathering what Petersen describes as a collection of front porch stories, he also writes a history of what matters most to this family and this locale. The resulting narrative is surprising, unconventional, and true for all families in all places. In Dillon County, tobacco production followed cotton farming. Old-time logging coexisted with textile factories. Jim Crow gave way to uncertain prospects of racial harmony. Those were monumental changes of circumstance, but they did not change human character. Washing Our Hands in the Clouds is a history of human character, of life that endures outside of the restraints of time. To understand this phenomenon is to realize that both Scipio and Joe and the generations between them wash their hands in the timeless clouds of South Carolina's sky.
Bring Up the Bodies
Author: Hilary Mantel
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1429947659
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 446
Book Description
The sequel to Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Bring Up the Bodies delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn. The basis for the TV show on BBC and PBS Masterpiece starring Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head? Named a top 10 Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The Washington Post
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1429947659
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 446
Book Description
The sequel to Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Bring Up the Bodies delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn. The basis for the TV show on BBC and PBS Masterpiece starring Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head? Named a top 10 Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The Washington Post
Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life
Author: Jack Santino
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870498138
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
However, the essays in this volume also suggest that there is something ironic and unsettling about the immense popularity of a holiday whose main images are of death, evil, and the grotesque. Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life is a unique contribution that questions our concepts of religiosity and spirituality while contributing to our understanding of Halloween as a rich and diverse reflection of our society's past, present, and future identity.
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870498138
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
However, the essays in this volume also suggest that there is something ironic and unsettling about the immense popularity of a holiday whose main images are of death, evil, and the grotesque. Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life is a unique contribution that questions our concepts of religiosity and spirituality while contributing to our understanding of Halloween as a rich and diverse reflection of our society's past, present, and future identity.