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The Appalachian Legend of the Wizard Clip: America's First Poltergeist (The History Press)
by Michael KishbucherIn the early 1790s, a Lutheran family in Appalachia fell victim to a menacing spirit that Lutheran, Methodist and Episcopal clergy as well as Folk magic practitioners failed to remove. The entity, which came to be known as the Wizard Clip, was said to cut or slice anything made of cloth or leather. Was it a ghost or a demon? After years of torment, the deeply Protestant family finally found respite from a seemingly impossible ally, a Catholic exorcist. This legend has eerie parallels to lore of ghosts and witches from the Old World as well as the early American Republic. As American religious leaders sought to find a place for their congregations in a post-Revolutionary time of enlightened secularism, tales like these helped churches define themselves, and this particular story was used to distinguish Catholic supernaturalism from later spiritualism. Author Michael Kishbucher tells a spooky and incredibly compelling story that shines a light on the region's religious history.
The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost
by Peter ManseauA story of faith and fraud in post–Civil War America, told through the lens of a photographer who claimed he could capture images of the dead. In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America&’s imagination. A &“spirit photographer,&” William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation: The affluent and influential came calling, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who arrived at his studio in disguise amidst rumors of séances in the White House. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges, starring P. T. Barnum for the prosecution, to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation. And even then, the judge sided with the defense, suggesting no one would ever solve the mystery of his spirit photography. This forgotten puzzle offers a vivid snapshot of America at a crossroads in its history, a nation in thrall to new technology while clinging desperately to belief. An NPR Best Book of 2017 &“A rare work of historical nonfiction that is both studious and just plain entertaining.&”—Publishers Weekly, Top Ten Books of 2017 &“An exceptional story.&”—Errol Morris, New York Times Book Review&“Manseau has become the foremost chronicler of the deep American desire to believe in the weird, the strange, and the oddly wonderful.&”—Jeff Sharlet, New York Times–bestselling author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power
The Applause of Heaven: Discover the Secret to a Truly Satisfying Life (The\bestseller Collection)
by Max LucadoIt comes from God and it is within your reach ... The applause of heaven.<P><P> A joy that can't be quenched? A peace that can't be broken? A happiness that can't be threatened?<P> There is such a joy. It is a sacred delight, a holy gladness. You can't open your Bible without reading about it. You can't live a truly satisfying life without it. And it's nearer than you think.<P> Jesus describes that sacred delight in the astonishing mountain message we now call the Beatitudes. And Max Lucado, in this classic exploration of enduring joy, shows you how this familiar but revolutionary prescription for living can bless your life beyond your wildest imagining.<P> Imagine God doing what gods would do only in your wildest dreams -- wearing diapers, riding donkeys, washing feet, dozing in storms -- dying for you mistakes. Imagine having God as your pinch-hitter, you lawyer, your dad, you biggest fan, and you best friend. Imagine having the King of kings in your cheering section and hearing the applause of heaven ring out ... just for you.<P> But don't just imagine it. Open your heart to it -- the heavenly joy of knowing the God who delights in you.
The Apple Branch: A Path to Celtic Ritual
by Alexei KondratievAlexei Kondratiev combines the history, folklore, and language of the Celtic world in a unique guide for understanding its spirituality. He explores the myths, legends, and cultural figures, from Brigit to King Arthur, and he explains how the ancient Celtic religion survives in the context of modern Christianity.
The Apple of His Eye: Converts from Islam in the Reign of Louis IX (Jews, Christians, And Muslims From The Ancient To The Modern World Ser. #4)
by William Chester JordanThe thirteenth century brought new urgency to Catholic efforts to convert non-Christians, and no Catholic ruler was more dedicated to this undertaking than King Louis IX of France. His military expeditions against Islam are well documented, but there was also a peaceful side to his encounter with the Muslim world, one that has received little attention until now. This splendid book shines new light on the king’s program to induce Muslims—the “apple of his eye”—to voluntarily convert to Christianity and resettle in France. It recovers a forgotten but important episode in the history of the Crusades while providing a rare window into the fraught experiences of the converts themselves.William Chester Jordan transforms our understanding of medieval Christian-Muslim relations by telling the stories of the Muslims who came to France to live as Christians. Under what circumstances did they willingly convert? How successfully did they assimilate into French society? What forms of resistance did they employ? In examining questions like these, Jordan weaves a richly detailed portrait of a dazzling yet violent age whose lessons still resonate today.Until now, scholars have dismissed historical accounts of the king’s peaceful conversion of Muslims as hagiographical and therefore untrustworthy. Jordan takes these narratives seriously—and uncovers archival evidence to back them up. He brings his findings marvelously to life in this succinct and compelling book, setting them in the context of the Seventh Crusade and the universalizing Catholic impulse to convert the world.
The Appointment: A Novel
by Katharina VolckmerFor readers of Ottessa Moshfegh and Han Kang, a whip-smart, darkly funny, and subversive debut novel in which a woman on the verge of major change addresses her doctor in a stream of consciousness narrative.In a well-appointed examination in London, a young woman unburdens herself to a certain Dr. Seligman. Though she can barely see above his head, she holds forth about her life and desires, her struggles with her sexuality and identity. Born and raised in Germany, she has been living in London for several years, determined to break free from her family origins and her haunted homeland. But the recent death of her grandfather, and an unexpected inheritance, make it clear that you cannot easily outrun your own shame, whether it be physical, familial, historical, national, or all of the above. Or can you? With Dr. Seligman&’s help, our narrator will find out. In a monologue that is both deliciously dark and subversively funny, she takes us on a wide-ranging journey from Hitler-centered sexual fantasies and overbearing mothers to the medicinal properties of squirrel tails and the notion that anatomical changes can serve as historical reparation. The Appointment is an audacious debut novel by an explosive new international literary voice, challenging all of our notions of what is fluid and what is fixed, and the myriad ways we seek to make peace with others and ourselves in the 21st century.
The Apprentice's Masterpiece: A Story of Medieval Spain
by Melanie LittleFifteenth-century Spain had a society in which Jews, Muslims and Christians coexisted. But under the zealous Christian Queen Isabella, the country abruptly became one of the most murderously intolerant places on Earth.
The Appropriation of Religion in Southeast Asia and Beyond
by Michel PicardThis volume investigates various processes by which world religions become localized, as well as how local traditions in Southeast Asia and Melanesia become universalized. In the name of modernity and progress, the contemporary Southeast Asian states tend to press their populations to have a 'religion,' claiming that their local, indigenous practices and traditions do not constitute religion. Authors analyze this 'religionization,' addressing how local people appropriate religion as a category to define some of their practices as differentiated from others, whether they want to have a religion or are constrained to demonstrate that they profess one. Thus, 'religion' is what is regarded as such by these local actors, which might not correspond to what counts as religion for the observer. Furthermore, local actors do not always concur regarding what their religion is about, as religion is a contested issue. In consequence, each of the case studies in this volume purposes to elucidate what gets identified and legitimized as 'religion', by whom, for what purpose, and under what political conditions.
The Approval Fix: How to Break Free From People-Pleasing
by Joyce MeyerWhen we hear the word addiction, we tend to think of unbreakable habits involving drugs or alcohol. But many people struggle each day with a different kind of addiction: a deep need for the approval of others. Their unquenchable thirst for love and acceptance often causes people to suffer in relationships, give up on their dreams, and even forfeit their destinies. The key to breaking free from approval addiction, and the people-pleasing that goes along with it, is to understand and embrace the love of God and others and to be able to love yourself.In The Approval Fix, best-selling author Joyce Meyer offers the practical insights and lessons necessary to find freedom from the need for approval. Anyone who wants to enjoy life and build healthy relationships, but struggles to feel accepted, will benefit immensely from this book, which is full of proven principles from Meyer's years of experience helping people find freedom in many areas of their lives.
The Approval Fix: How to Break Free from People Pleasing
by Joyce MeyerEverybody wants to be loved. We all need affirmation, acceptance, and approval. Let's face it: It feels good to be appreciated and admired. But when we depend on the approval of others to feel good about ourselves, it's impossible to have emotional stability or a healthy self-image. And when our value is based on how people see us rather than God's unconditional love for us, our desire for approval can become an addiction. In THE APPROVAL FIX, #1 New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer gives you practical insights that will help you learn how to accept who you are and become the unique individual God created you to be. You'll experience greater confidence, deeper emotional stability, and healthier relationships-the life you're really longing for. Today, discover the truth about God's love for you and approval of you. And enjoy the freedom to be the amazing person you can be in Him! Derived from material previously published in Approval Addiction.
The Aprentice of the past: The experience that changed a life
by Danilo H. GomesOne single experience rich in meaning was enough for Douglas to have his life transformed forever. So much is said about time travel and fixing past mistakes, but what if we could just interact with other lives instead of our own? Douglas won this strange opportunity and became involved in conversations that he never imagined having. Get to know the experience that this young man had and, who knows, have his life transformed too.
The Apricot Memoirs
by Tess GuineryWhat started as a break from Australian artist Tess Guinery&’s rapidly growing design business turned into an instinctive, playful experiment with words, colors, and sounds—and eventually into a tangible book, The Apricot Memoirs.This collection of poetry and prose, thoughtfully illustrated and printed on colored paper, is infused with grace and playfulness. It explores love, personal growth, creativity, spirituality, vulnerability, and motherhood in the art medium of words, all the while creating a rich portrait of a deeply empathetic, talented, and whimsical artist. Esoteric, mysterious, and unfailingly beautiful, The Apricot Memoirs is an invitation to dig deep, embrace the uncomfortable, and free your creativity, unbound.
The Apse Mosaic in Early Medieval Rome: Time, Network, and Repetition.
by Thunø. ErikThis book focuses on apse mosaics in Rome, which were commissioned by a series of popes between the sixth and ninth centuries CE. Through a synchronic approach that challenges current conceptions about how works of art interact with historical time, Erik Thunø proposes that the apse mosaics produce an inter-visual network that collapses their chronological succession in time into a continuous present in which the faithful join the saints in the one living body of the Church of Rome. Throughout, this book situates the apse mosaics within the broader context of viewership, the cult of relics, epigraphic tradition, and church ritual while engaging topics concerned with intercession, materiality, repetition and vision.
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
by Alan Jacobs Levi H. DowlingWhat happened to Jesus between the ages of 12 and 30? Where did he go, whom did he meet? How did Jesus increase 'in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man'? The Aquarian Gospel reveals the truth of Jesus' journey to the East and how this shaped the boy into the man.
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
by LeviThe Philosophic and Practical Basis of the Religion of the Aquarian Age of the World and of the Church Universal, Transcribed from the Book of God's Remembrances, Known as the Akashic Records, by Levi, with Introduction by Eva S. Dowling. CONTENTS: Birth and Early Life of Mary, Mother of Jesus--Birth and Infancy of John the Harbinger, and of Jesus--Education of Mary and Elizabeth in Zoan--Childhood and Early Education of John the Harbinger--Childhood and Early Education of Jesus--Life and Works of Jesus in India--Life and Works of Jesus in Tibet and Western India--Life and Works of Jesus in Persia--Life and Works of Jesus in Assyria--Life and Works of Jesus in Greece--Life and Works of Jesus in Egypt--The Council of the Seven Sages of the World--The Ministry of John the Harbinger--The Christine Ministry of Jesus--The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus--The Trial and Execution of Jesus--The Resurrection of Jesus--Materialization of the Spiritual Body of Jesus--Establishment of the Christine Church.
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
by Levi DowlingThis visionary text professes to tell the complete story of Jesus' life, including the "lost" years, during which he traveled and studied in Tibet, Egypt, India, Persia, and Greece. First published in 1908, this mystical work is the cornerstone of a Christian denomination, the Aquarian Christine Church Universal, and it offers intriguing, controversial assertions about Christ's message.Jesus was conceived by a human father, author Levi Dowling states, and by effort and prayer rendered himself a fit vessel for "the Christ" -- the model for human existence and ultimate salvation. Dowling, who devoted forty years of preparation to the task of transcribing this volume's contents from original Akashic records, further asserts the reality of reincarnation and its culmination in the perfection of the human soul. Tracing Jesus' life from his birth in Bethlehem to his ascension from the Mount of Olives, Dowling offers complete details concerning the savior's years among monks, wise men, and seers throughout the Orient. Readers with an interest in occult lore and the history of religion will find this remarkable volume a source of endless fascination.
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
by Levi H. DowlingActually published in 1908, Dowling asserted that he had transcribed this work from Akashic records, which gave a detailed account of the life of Jesus. The title was derived from an age determined by constellations, adding an astrological meaning with an appellation that indicated the Age of Aquarius. The Aquarian Gospel has been deemed an apocryphal work, despite the fact that it was written and published recently, noticeably later than most other works of the same nature. It does have in common with such writings an account of the entire life of Jesus in 182 chapters, beginning with the early life of his mother Mary and going through his death and Resurrection, concluding with Pentecost and the foundation of the Christian Church. Though controversial and considered to contain inaccuracies, Dowling's work does make claims of a comforting nature, such as the assertion that 'No soul is ever abandoned by God. ' with that and other reassuring claims, the Aquarian Gospel has tentatively taken its place amid other works of religious literature.
The Aquarian Shaman: Walking the Spiral Path of Transformation
by Linda Star Wolf• Shares shamanic practices, rituals, ceremonies, and wisdom to help you reintroduce magic into everyday life and awaken the Aquarian Shaman within• Explains major components of shamanic practice, including totem animals, spirit teachers, personal altars, medicine wheels, the power of song and dance, and the use of sacred objects and sacred circles• Explores the shamanic realm of imagination and techniques to access it, including Shamanic Breathwork and spirit journeyingAre you hearing a persistent inner calling to wake up and remember who you really are? Are you ready to be reborn into shamanic consciousness and awaken as an elemental being, fully connected to life and nature?Presenting a guidebook to walking the spiral path of transformation, shamanic teacher Linda Star Wolf shares ancient shamanic practices, rituals, ceremonies, and wisdom to help you reintroduce magic and enchantment into everyday life, create your own &“shamanic medicine chest,&” and awaken the Aquarian Shaman within.Describing how to recover the magical sensibility and innate awareness that most of us leave behind in childhood, Star Wolf shares essential shamanic techniques, including the Shamanic Healing Initiatory Process and Shamanic Breathwork. She discusses the power of the imagination, showing how imagination is actually a liminal realm rooted in the cellular records of our body through which we can journey to other worlds and connect with our ancestors.This Aquarian guidebook will help you not only awaken to shamanic consciousness but also cultivate more love, inner awareness, and personal power as you walk the spiral path of transformation.
The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity (Music Culture)
by Thomas Burkhalter, Kay Dickinson, and Benjamin J. HarbertThe first in-depth study of diverse and radical innovation in Arab music From jazz trumpeters drawing on the noises of warfare in Beirut to female heavy metallers in Alexandria, the Arab culture offers a wealth of exciting, challenging, and diverse musics. The essays in this collection investigate the plethora of compositional and improvisational techniques, performance styles, political motivations, professional trainings, and inter-continental collaborations that claim the mantle of "innovation" within Arab and Arab diaspora music. While most books on Middle Eastern music-making focus on notions of tradition and regionally specific genres, The Arab Avant Garde presents a radically hybrid and globally dialectic set of practices. Engaging the "avant-garde"—a term with Eurocentric resonances—this anthology disturbs that presumed exclusivity, drawing on and challenging a growing body of literature about alternative modernities. Chapters delve into genres and modes as diverse as jazz, musical theatre, improvisation, hip hop, and heavy metal as performed in countries like Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and the United States. Focusing on multiple ways in which the "Arab avant-garde" becomes manifest, this anthology brings together international writers with eclectic disciplinary trainings—practicing musicians, area studies specialists, ethnomusicologists, and scholars of popular culture and media. Contributors include Sami W. Asmar, Michael Khoury, Saed Muhssin, Marina Peterson, Kamran Rastegar, Caroline Rooney, and Shayna Silverstein, as well as the editors.
The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860–1910
by Stephen SheehiThe first history of indigenous photography in the Middle EastThe birth of photography coincided with the expansion of European imperialism in the Middle East, and some of the medium's earliest images are Orientalist pictures taken by Europeans in such places as Cairo and Jerusalem—photographs that have long shaped and distorted the Western visual imagination of the region. But the Middle East had many of its own photographers, collectors, and patrons. In this book, Stephen Sheehi presents a groundbreaking new account of early photography in the Arab world.The Arab Imago concentrates primarily on studio portraits by Arab and Armenian photographers in the late Ottoman Empire. Examining previously known studios such as Abdullah Frères, Pascal Sébah, Garabed Krikorian, and Khalil Raad, the book also provides the first account of other pioneers such as Georges and Louis Saboungi, the Kova Brothers, Muhammad Sadiq Bey, and Ibrahim Rif'at Pasha—as well as the first detailed look at early photographs of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. In addition, the book explores indigenous photography manuals and albums, newspapers, scientific journals, and fiction.Featuring extensive previously unpublished images, The Arab Imago shows how native photography played an essential role in the creation of modern Arab societies in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon before the First World War. At the same time, the book overturns Eurocentric and Orientalist understandings of indigenous photography and challenges previous histories of the medium.
The Arab Spring and Arab Thaw: Unfinished Revolutions and the Quest for Democracy
by John DavisWhat were the unifying principles or strategies that governed the protest movements that swept the Middle East and North Africa in the spring of 2011? Who were the protestors and how did the different authoritarian regimes respond to them? How did regional and international institutions react to a region in turmoil? The Arab Spring and Arab Thaw; Unfinished Revolutions and the Quest for Democracy addresses these questions by examining a range of successful and unsuccessful protest strategies and counter revolutionary tactics employed by protestors and autocratic regimes. Contributors explore the reactions of the USA, EU and Arab League to events in the region and provide insight as to the gendered dimensions of the struggle along with the ethnic and tribal divisions that continue to impact the post-revolt period. By addressing these critical queries the book demonstrate how the Arab Spring has evolved into a protracted Arab Thaw that continues to profoundly affect regional and international politics.
The Arab Winter: A Tragedy
by Noah FeldmanWhy the conventional wisdom about the Arab Spring is wrongThe Arab Spring promised to end dictatorship and bring self-government to people across the Middle East. Yet everywhere except Tunisia it led to either renewed dictatorship, civil war, extremist terror, or all three. In The Arab Winter, Noah Feldman argues that the Arab Spring was nevertheless not an unmitigated failure, much less an inevitable one. Rather, it was a noble, tragic series of events in which, for the first time in recent Middle Eastern history, Arabic-speaking peoples took free, collective political action as they sought to achieve self-determination.Focusing on the Egyptian revolution and counterrevolution, the Syrian civil war, the rise and fall of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and the Tunisian struggle toward Islamic constitutionalism, Feldman provides an original account of the political consequences of the Arab Spring, including the reaffirmation of pan-Arab identity, the devastation of Arab nationalisms, and the death of political Islam with the collapse of ISIS. He also challenges commentators who say that the Arab Spring was never truly transformative, that Arab popular self-determination was a mirage, and even that Arabs or Muslims are less capable of democracy than other peoples.Above all, The Arab Winter shows that we must not let the tragic outcome of the Arab Spring disguise its inherent human worth. People whose political lives had been determined from the outside tried, and for a time succeeded, in making politics for themselves. That this did not result in constitutional democracy or a better life for most of those affected doesn't mean the effort didn't matter. To the contrary, it matters for history—and it matters for the future.
The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond (Religion, Culture, and Public Life #39)
by Bashir Bashir Leila FarsakhNineteenth-century Europe turned the political status of its Jewish communities into the “Jewish Question,” as both Christianity and rising forms of nationalism viewed Jews as the ultimate other. With the onset of Zionism, this “question” migrated to Palestine and intensified under British colonial rule and in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Zionism’s attempt to solve the “Jewish Question” created what came to be known as the “Arab Question,” which concerned the presence and rights of the Arab population in Palestine. For the most part, however, Jewish settlers denied or dismissed the question they created, to the detriment of both Arabs and Jews in Palestine and elsewhere.This book brings together leading scholars to consider how these two questions are entangled historically and in the present day. It offers critical analyses of Arab engagements with the question of Jewish rights alongside Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish considerations of Palestinian identity and political rights. Together, the essays show that the Arab and Jewish questions, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which they have become subsumed, belong to the same thorny history. Despite their major differences, the historical Jewish and Arab questions are about the political rights of oppressed groups and their inclusion within exclusionary political communities—a question that continues to foment tensions in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. Shedding new light on the intricate relationships among Orientalism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, colonialism, and the impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book reveals the inseparability of Arab and Jewish struggles for self-determination and political equality.Contributors include Gil Anidjar, Brian Klug, Amal Ghazal, Ella Shohat, Hakem Al-Rustom, Hillel Cohen, Yuval Evri, Derek Penslar, Jacqueline Rose, Moshe Behar, Maram Masarwi, and the editors, Bashir Bashir and Leila Farsakh.
The Arabic Historical Tradition & the Early Islamic Conquests: Folklore, Tribal Lore, Holy War
by Boaz ShoshanThe early Arab conquests pose a considerable challenge to modern-day historians. The earliest historical written tradition emerges only after the second half of the eighth century- over one hundred years removed from the events it contends to describe, and was undoubtedly influenced by the motives and interpretations of its authors. Indeed, when speaking or writing about the past, fact was not the only, nor even the prime, concern of Muslims of old. The Arabic Historic Tradition and the Early Islamic Conquests presents a thorough examination of Arabic narratives on the early Islamic conquests. It uncovers the influence of contemporary ideology, examining recurring fictive motifs and evaluating the reasons behind their use. Folklore and tribal traditions are evident throughout the narratives, which aimed to promote individual, tribal and regional fame through describing military prowess in the battles for the spread of Islam. Common tropes are encountered across the materials, which all serve a central theme; the moral superiority of the Muslims, which destined them to victory in God’s plan. Offering a key to the state of mind and agenda of early Muslim writers, this critical reading of Arabic texts would be of great interest to students and scholars of early Arabic History and Literature, as well as a general resource for Middle Eastern History.
The Arabs
by Eugene RoganTo American observers, the Arab world often seems little more than a distant battleground characterized by religious zealotry and political chaos. Years of tone-deaf US policies have left the region powerless to control its own destiny-playing into a longstanding sense of shame and impotence for a once-mighty people. In this definitive account, preeminent historian Eugene Rogan traces five centuries of Arab history, from the Ottoman conquests through the British and French colonial periods and up to the present age of unipolar American hegemony. The Arab world is now more acutely aware than ever of its own vulnerability, and this sense of subjection carries with it vast geopolitical consequences. Drawing from Arab sources little known to Western readers, Rogan’sThe Arabswill transform our understanding of the past, present, and future of one of the world’s most tumultuous regions.