Damned Women

Damned Women PDF Author: Elizabeth Reis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501713337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In her analysis of the cultural construction of gender in early America, Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches. In negotiating their beliefs about the devil's powers, both women and men embedded womanhood in the discourse of depravity.Puritan ministers insisted that women and men were equal in the sight of God, with both sexes equally capable of cleaving to Christ or to the devil. Nevertheless, Reis explains, womanhood and evil were inextricably linked in the minds and hearts of seventeenth-century New England Puritans. Women and men feared hell equally but Puritan culture encouraged women to believe it was their vile natures that would take them there rather than the particular sins they might have committed.Following the Salem witchcraft trials, Reis argues, Puritans' understanding of sin and the devil changed. Ministers and laity conceived of a Satan who tempted sinners and presided physically over hell, rather than one who possessed souls in the living world. Women and men became increasingly confident of their redemption, although women more than men continued to imagine themselves as essentially corrupt, even after the Great Awakening.

Damned Women

Damned Women PDF Author: Elizabeth Reis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501713337
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In her analysis of the cultural construction of gender in early America, Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches. In negotiating their beliefs about the devil's powers, both women and men embedded womanhood in the discourse of depravity.Puritan ministers insisted that women and men were equal in the sight of God, with both sexes equally capable of cleaving to Christ or to the devil. Nevertheless, Reis explains, womanhood and evil were inextricably linked in the minds and hearts of seventeenth-century New England Puritans. Women and men feared hell equally but Puritan culture encouraged women to believe it was their vile natures that would take them there rather than the particular sins they might have committed.Following the Salem witchcraft trials, Reis argues, Puritans' understanding of sin and the devil changed. Ministers and laity conceived of a Satan who tempted sinners and presided physically over hell, rather than one who possessed souls in the living world. Women and men became increasingly confident of their redemption, although women more than men continued to imagine themselves as essentially corrupt, even after the Great Awakening.

The Book of the Damned

The Book of the Damned PDF Author: Charles Fort
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1613106424
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
"Time travel, UFOs, mysterious planets, stigmata, rock-throwing poltergeists, huge footprints, bizarre rains of fish and frogs-nearly a century after Charles Fort's Book of the Damned was originally published, the strange phenomenon presented in this book remains largely unexplained by modern science. Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you"--Taken from Good Reads website.

The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Earth

The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Earth PDF Author: Joshua Aaron Roberson
Publisher: Lockwood Press
ISBN: 1937040259
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 595

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Book Description
Collections of scenes and texts designated variously as the "Book of the Earth," "Creation of the Solar Disc," and "Book of Aker" were inscribed on the walls of royal sarcophagus chambers throughout Egypt's Ramessid period (Dynasties 19-20). This material illustrated discrete episodes from the nocturnal voyage of the sun god, which functioned as a model for the resurrection of the deceased king. These earliest "Books of the Earth" employed mostly ad hoc arrangements of scenes, united by shared elements of iconography, an overarching, bipartite symmetry of composition, and their frequent pairing with representations of the double sky overhead. From the Twenty-First Dynasty and later, selections of programmatic tableaux were adapted for use in private mortuary contexts, often in conjunction with innovative or previously unattested annotations. The present study collects and analyzes all currently known Book of the Earth material, including discussions of iconography, grammar, orthography, and architectural setting.

The War of the Angels

The War of the Angels PDF Author: Jesús Ariel Aguirre
Publisher: Editorial Autores de Argentina
ISBN: 9878741613
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 692

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Book Description
A mysterious object has been stolen from the British Museum. A group of religious fanatics intends to use it to give life to an evil creature, using an old lost language, that of angels. Adams, a young priest, together with the old chaplain Martin, will seek the help of Professor Thomas Dee, who knows Enochian, a language created by his great-great-grandfather John Dee. In search of a forbidden book, they will begin this adventure that will take them through Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Russia, Turkey, Mexico and Antarctica itself. Following in the footsteps of Lovecraft and his Myths, they will seek the answer in the Necronomicon and other Grimoires that will teach them to close the evil portal. They will come across characters like Nostradamus, Rasputin, Alice Crowley, Van Gogh and Merlin. They will also delve into the mysteries of Kabbalah and Alchemy. They will analyze the Crusades, the Holy Inquisition, the Cathars and the Essenes. Only the Angels will be able to help them with their difficult mission that will take them through great libraries and unveil the mystery of the great Cathedrals.

Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America

Envisioning Others: Race, Color, and the Visual in Iberia and Latin America PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004302158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Envisioning Others offers a multidisciplinary view of the relationship between race and visual culture in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world, from the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal to colonial Peru and Colombia, post-Independence Mexico, and the pre-Emancipation United States. Contributed by specialists in Latin American and Iberian art history, literature, history, and cultural studies, its ten chapters take a transnational view of what ‘race’ meant, and how visual culture supported and shaped this meaning, within the Ibero-American sphere from the late Middle Ages to the modern era. Case studies and regionally-focused essays are balanced by historiographical and theoretical offerings for a fresh perspective that challenges the reader to discern broad intersections of race, color, and the visual throughout the Iberian world. Contributors are Beatriz Balanta, Charlene Villaseñor Black, Larissa Brewer-García, Ananda Cohen Suarez, Elisa Foster, Grace Harpster, Ilona Katzew, Matilde Mateo, Mey-Yen Moriuchi, and Erin Kathleen Rowe.

The Army of the Undead: Alternate Reality

The Army of the Undead: Alternate Reality PDF Author: Ronald Wintrick
Publisher: Ronald Wintrick
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
Favel's lower half fell away, kicking and thrashing, rolling across the cobblestones, then somehow managed its feet. A black gush of blood poured out of Favel's upper half, which still clung to the soldier, still feasting on the soldier's face. The man still screamed. His knife still plunged into Favel impotently. The soldier who had chopped Favel in half stepped back in horrific incomprehension. The look on his face would have taken tomes to describe. Then he spewed his guts in an explosive convulsion that sprayed over the two struggling men, but neither seemed to notice. At the last moment the soldier's head turned in time to notice the approach of the pair of legs. He swung his sword and chopped down through the hips and separated the two legs, which fell away from one another but continued to struggle on. When he came upon the first combatants, the Necromancers were nowhere to be seen. There was heavy fighting but the men seemed to be slowly overwhelming the Ignacian, fighting in a Line Formation where they could more easily bring their swords and axes into service. The men were steadily falling back, but that was only so that they did not have to walk among the fallen body parts of the enemy, which continued to fight even when cleaved to individual pieces. A legless torso would clamber forward and attempt to climb a man, and would have to be chopped away. When one of their own fell, the men turned and chopped their own comrade to pieces, even if he was not completely dead. The merest scratch by one of the Ignacian was a death sentence that arrived only minutes later, and as gruesome as it might seem to chop apart your own comrades, it was a duty that had to be done. The men continued to fall back, but the Ignacian were taking a heavy toll. The now tireless team pulling the woman's wagon followed them like lost dogs, but the woman and her children leaped out onto the first unwary humans they encountered. It was an amusing game to watch the Ignacian tear into the helpless people. There were many variations of the game. Kill one among a family and watch as the others rush to see what is wrong. Kill the child in the mother's arms and watch laughing as it rips off the breast it was feeding on. They rode into the city, killing and killing as they went, the chain reaction now unstoppable. Moruv nodded uncertainly. Since when did the Warlord make inspections of his land? Since when did he go anywhere without an armed escort? A sizable one at that! Who was the tall stranger with him? Moruv had the strangest sensation while looking at him that his face had wavered and rippled! Ridiculous of course, but after yesterday's events, Moruv was looking at the world with an entirely new viewpoint, one in which previously impossible things had just become the possible. He was sure that nothing could now surprise him, but he was wrong. The Ignacian poured forward over the lip of the trench, the front rows just falling in as their uncoordinated movements tumbled them forward. Some tried to step in, or jump down, but they could not accomplish anything so complicated. They continued to march forward into the opening until they had filled the trench and then their comrades walked over their bodies, into the bristling pikes. When he reached their point of origin, the westernmost end of the Big Wood's Road, and found that the Ignacian element had not yet reached the fortifications which had been erected there, he floated over the unknowing Army and the Sisters arrayed there to defend their breastworks and watched the Ignacian finish closing the short distance to the waiting Army. Lives would certainly be lost this day but Lester needed to see what kind of a defense the flesh and blood soldiers would be able to pose against their undead adversaries. His timing had been nearly perfect and he did not have to wait long. Daghula and the rest of the Necromancers were all alike in that regard- they thought they were too good to bow and grovel before their true Master! Malton was not impeded by such arrogant shortcomings. He knew and understood Sheitan's superiority. When that eventual day came he would grovel happily, in blissful acceptance of his fate, at the Master's feet. The Master would be pleased with him. He would pet him and croon to him as Malton groveled. No. Malton did not fear that eventual day. Not in the least. She was on the field of battle. All around her raged unceasing combat, men and women, even children, battling the undead Ignacian, and every time one of the living fell, mortally wounded, he rose immediately as one of the enemy, to strike down those he had just stood with, his loved ones, his own family. Jana was fighting with her short sword and Casting Wizard's Fire but there was little room in the melee for the use of it without fear of hitting the living. For as far as she could see, in every direction, there was nothing but the heaving bodies of those engaged in mortal combat, then the old woman's eyes seemed to withdraw and Jana reeled away. Cloudless and as bright as any night could hope to be under the brilliance of the billions of stars above, Daghula cast an illusion which made him invisible then drew the great Black Sword which Sheitan himself had given him, buried within the heart of a great volcanic rock which even his spells had been unable to dislodge; he had chipped the rock away by hand to expose the hungry blade, this direct Channel to the Lower Plane and Sheitan himself. He drew it now and felt it quiver in his hand, as if it were a thing alive unto itself, but it was not, it merely conveyed the hunger of its Master. For those who it consumed there could be no salvation, their souls sent directly to the Lower Plane, no matter what life they lived while here. "It was the Wizard Timan! He attacked me in Specter Form!" Nimian snarled. Everything unknown in life became clear after death when the soul's unlimited ability to comprehend was released from its limiting physical bonds. It would also make the torments of Hell that much more acute. "It be." Old Woman said. She had been called Old Woman for so long that she had completely forgotten her given name. She had bounced Hirren, their hot tempered King, on her knees when he was but a babe as she had bounced Hirren's father before him, and his father before him, and even beyond that, though her memory no longer served her well enough to remember just exactly how long she had been alive. The days just continued to pass and she continued to move through them. She was Old Woman. "The Balance," Marea emphasized, "is contingent upon toil and struggle. The future depends on Right and Justice, but Righteousness must come to its own as must Discord and Rebellion. The day will come, eventually, when Discord and Rebellion must finally cease to exist, but that cessation must be brought about by the hand of man. This is our world, and if we wish to keep the Good which is within it, we will have to fight for it. Excerpts; -"You don’t think the war in Parce will reach us here, do you, mum?" Timan asked, not really knowing what he expected, but in no way expecting the reaction she did have. The smile fell from her lips, the joy left her eyes, and clouds of sorrow seemed to cross her countenance. .......... -"Those who came through here last week claimed to be fleeing an Army of the Undead. An Army of the Undead led by a Necromancer they called Daghula Ichorious." "Not led," Marea corrected, "but forced through Evil spells from their very graves to rise and do the Necromancer’s bidding. They do not follow willingly. No one rises from their grave willingly." "You speak of it as if you know of such things!" Timan said, causing his mother to blanch slightly, as if this were a subject she had not wanted raised. Not ever. "Your mother was not always a farmer’s wife and a mother. She was once a very well-known Sorceress of not inconsiderable Power!" Jarod said, a small smile now twisting his lips, and something else was there, as well. A certain deference Timan had never noticed before but now that he had noticed it, realized it had always been there. He had always thought highly of his parent’s relationship, which was of a much more equal nature than some of the other Prairie folk, and now he seemed to understand why and also to have a new respect for his father. It would take a special man to marry a woman who possessed Power enough to overpower him if they should ever come to arguing. Timan was old enough to understand how difficult that would be for most men, but not, apparently, his father. .......... Timan immediately felt the spell coursing through his veins, throbbing like an additional heartbeat, a heartbeat that thrummed in tune with spoken words that held no conscious meaning, beating at his temples, pounding at his temples, and then he was no longer in his own body. He seemed to leap out of it and into the air, faster than he could have ever moved in his physical body, where such rapid acceleration would have ripped him apart at the seams. As he hurtled away he had just enough time to look back over his shoulder (he still seemed to be in his physical form) and watch . . . himself . . . be left far behind. This might be what it would be like to die, except that he would not be able to return after his brief sojourn. "Absolutely." Kenry said, and before Timan knew what was happening he was snatched from his seat and thrown roughly to the ground. Kenry turned back to Marea as Timan scrambled to his feet. "You understand I will not coddle him. I will do him no favors if I coddle him." Marea began to speak quietly under her breath. Had she spoken aloud Jarod still wouldn’t have understood her. She was speaking the Old Tongue. The language of Power which, if the oral histories were correct, could not be translated into any other language, the ancient meanings of the words so long lost in time that their present counterparts could not be discerned. Marea believed, possibly, with several dozen lifetimes available in which to research and experiment, the task could be completed, but the only way to live much beyond the normal span was to trade away your soul to Sheitan, the evil god of the Lower Realm, and if you did that, Sheitan would have demands that precluded using your time for your own purposes. Such Wizards who gave themselves to Sheitan were called Necromancers and through their unholy union with the God of the Lower Realms were able to perform many spells normal Wizards were not, including the ability to raise the dead. "What have you done!" Jarod exclaimed, running down the steps to challenge the man, who flinched back before the now greenly glowing blade and Jarod’s fury. "I’ve done nothing! What mean you, man?" "It’s not him." Marea interjected, coming down to stand beside her husband. "It’s the residue on the blade." The stranger’s eyes snapped down to the blade hanging from his belt. A look that contained both horror and revulsion and a dawning realization of just what this might mean. "I didn’t know! I swear! I cleaned the blade!" He was now nearly hysterical. Children in both the wagons broke out crying and looks of horror spread across the faces of everyone else not crying but old enough or smart enough to understand what this could mean. "It means you have probably carried the spell of the Necromancer with you!" Marea said. "Hurry and remove your scabbard. It must be purified. Quickly now man!" She added as he stood there a moment longer, stupefied. The child was in its crib, where it had been before the attack and where it had been tossed back into after it made its transformation and was no longer palatable to whatever had been eating it. Its left arm had been ripped raggedly away from the shoulder, the right at the elbow, as if two somethings had been in a tug of war with it to obtain it. Its stomach and inner organs were missing, as well as a ragged chunk from its face. Yet it was on its feet and trying to climb the high walls of its crib as if those wounds were of no more than a passing inconvenience. They were, however, enough of an inconvenience that even with its Evil strength, it could not free itself. It smiled up at Timan angelically.

Death of a Pilgrim

Death of a Pilgrim PDF Author: David Dickinson
Publisher: Soho Press
ISBN: 1569476950
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Praise for the Lord Powerscourt series: “Excellent.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Dickinson textures his canvas with historical detail as thick as the oil paint on one of his favorite paintings by Turner.”—Kirkus Reviews 1905. A pilgrim is killed in Le Puy-en-Velay, France, and Lord Francis Powerscourt is summoned to investigate. More deaths plague pilgrims traveling to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, before Powerscourt solves the murders. David Dickinson has an honors degree in classics from Cambridge. He is a BBC editor and the author of eight mysteries in the Lord Powerscourt series. He lives in Barnes, West London, United Kingdom. From the Hardcover edition.

A Dictionary of Islam Being a Cyclopaedia of the Doctrines

A Dictionary of Islam Being a Cyclopaedia of the Doctrines PDF Author: Hughes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 768

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Book Description


Imagining the Medieval Afterlife

Imagining the Medieval Afterlife PDF Author: Richard Matthew Pollard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316832465
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Where do we go after we die? This book traces how the European Middle Ages offered distinctive answers to this universal question, evolving from Antiquity through to the sixteenth century, to reflect a variety of problems and developments. Focussing on texts describing visions of the afterlife, alongside art and theology, this volume explores heaven, hell, and purgatory as they were imagined across Europe, as well as by noted authors including Gregory the Great and Dante. A cross-disciplinary team of contributors including historians, literary scholars, classicists, art historians and theologians offer not only a fascinating sketch of both medieval perceptions and the wide scholarship on this question: they also provide a much-needed new perspective. Where the twelfth century was once the 'high point' of the medieval afterlife, the essays here show that the afterlives of the early and later Middle Ages were far more important and imaginative than we once thought.

A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages

A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages PDF Author: Emanuele Conte
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350079278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In 500, the legal order in Europe was structured around ancient customs, social practices and feudal values. By 1500, the effects of demographic change, new methods of farming and economic expansion had transformed the social and political landscape and had wrought radical change upon legal practices and systems throughout Western Europe. A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages explores this change and the rich and varied encounters between Christianity and Roman legal thought which shaped the period. Evolving from a combination of religious norms, local customs, secular legislations, and Roman jurisprudence, medieval law came to define an order that promoted new forms of individual and social representation, fostered the political renewal that heralded the transition from feudalism to the Early Modern state and contributed to the diffusion of a common legal language. Drawing upon a wealth of textual and visual sources, A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of justice, constitution, codes, agreements, arguments, property and possession, wrongs, and the legal profession.