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The Virago Book Of Witches
by Shahrukh HusainA collection of more than fifty stories about witches from around the world. There are tales of banshees, crones and beauties in disguise from China, Siberia, the Caribbean, Armenia, Portugal and Australia. The characters featured include Italy's Witch Bea-Witch, Lilith, Kali, and Twitti Glyn Hec. Alluring women, enchantresses, wise old ladies and bewitching women: they are all here and ready to haunt, entice, possess, transform, challenge - and sometimes even to help.
Viral: How Social Networking Is Poised to Ignite Revival
by Leonard SweetThe gospel is nothing without relationship. And no one gets it like the Google Generation. God came to earth to invite us, personally, into a relationship. And while Christians at times downplay relationships, the social-media generation is completely sold on the idea. In Viral, Leonard Sweet says Christians need to learn about connecting with others from the experts--those who can't seem to stop texting, IM-ing, tweeting, and updating their Facebook statuses. What would happen, he asks, if Christians devoted less attention to strategies and statistics and paid more attention to pursuing relationships? The current generation is driven by a God-given desire to know others and to be known by others. Most of them, in seeking to connect in meaningful ways, have found a place of belonging that is outside the organized church. Why not bring the two together? Those who are sold out to relationships can teach Christians how to be better friends to people who need God. At the same time, members of the social-media generation can learn how to follow their desire for belonging, straight into the arms of God. It's time for relationship to be restored to the heart of the gospel. And when that happens, can revival be far behind? End-of-Chapter Interactives Included
Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series #50)
by Ed Stetzer Warren BirdThis groundbreaking guide reveals successful strategies for multiplying the impact of new church congregations. Based on a national, cross-denominational study commissioned by Leadership Network, Viral Churches explores the best practices in church multiplication movements, as well as the common threads among them. A hands-on resource, Viral Churches offers the fresh vision and critical perspectives essential as a catalyst for today's church planting leaders. Authors Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird draw from their own experiences as well as the insights of numerous church planting leaders. Filled with illustrative success stories, this important book reveals how to plant churches that multiply into a movement. Each chapter highlights a different point on such issues as keeping the focus on evangelism; recruiting, assessing, and deploying planters; increasing the survivability of new churches; using a multisite strategy effectively; funding; overcoming obstacles; facing challenges ahead; and many more.
Viral Churches: Helping Church Planters Become Movement Makers (Jossey-Bass Leadership Network Series #50)
by Ed Stetzer Warren BirdThis groundbreaking guide reveals successful strategies for multiplying the impact of new church congregations. Based on a national, cross-denominational study commissioned by Leadership Network, Viral Churches explores the best practices in church multiplication movements, as well as the common threads among them. A hands-on resource, Viral Churches offers the fresh vision and critical perspectives essential as a catalyst for today's church planting leaders. Authors Ed Stetzer and Warren Bird draw from their own experiences as well as the insights of numerous church planting leaders. Filled with illustrative success stories, this important book reveals how to plant churches that multiply into a movement. Each chapter highlights a different point on such issues as keeping the focus on evangelism; recruiting, assessing, and deploying planters; increasing the survivability of new churches; using a multisite strategy effectively; funding; overcoming obstacles; facing challenges ahead; and many more.
Viral Jesus: Recovering the Contagious Power of the Gospel
by Ross RohdeBy returning to what we once had…We can recover what we once enjoyed. In the early centuries Christianity was an explosive, viral movement that spread by word of mouth. Persecution could not stop it. In fact, it often helped to spread it. But today, the gospel is no longer spreading like wildfire throughout the Western world. Slowly, Christianity has morphed into something much different…a stable institutionalized religion that no longer grips us with the excitement and spirituality of the early years. Ross Rohde believes that this excitement and passion can be recaptured. In Viral Jesus he uses examples from the Bible and today to explore how we can return to our roots and once again enjoy the excitement, simple spirituality, and explosive growth of early Christianity.
La Virgen de Guadalupe
by María Luz GómezAparecieron las rosas, y en la tilma la imagen de la Virgen. Trata del Imperio azteca; del descubrimiento de América; de la conquista de México por Hernán Cortés; de las apariciones de la Virgen de Guadalupe al indio Juan Diego; del Virreinato; y, tras una época de mayor o menor enemistad, de la paz entre españoles y aztecas. Por último, de la canonización de Juan Diego por el Papa San Juan Pablo II.
La virgen del cerro: María Livia y el milagro de la fe
by Juan TerranovaEste es el primer libro que relata la aparición de la virgen en Salta yla crónica de las peregrinaciones hasta el cerro y la fascinantehistoria de vida de María Livia e incontables testimonios de fe,milagros y bendiciones. A mediados de 1990, María Livia Galliano de Obeid, un ama de casasalteña con tres hijos, comienza a escuchar una voz. Es la Virgen Maríaque le habla y le pide que le erija un santuario en un cerro.Actualmente miles de peregrinos de la Argentina y el mundo viajan cadasábado a Tres Cerritos, Salta, para recibir la Oración de Intercesión enla que María Livia, con solo apoyarles su mano en el hombro, los hacecaer de espaldas.Juan Terranova narra la aparición de la Virgen en Salta y examina losdetalles de un acontecimiento tan masivo como secreto. La Virgen delCerro presenta así un recorrido por el camino de la mayor manifestaciónde fe vivida en la Argentina durante los últimos años.
VIRGEN DEL CERRO, LA (EBOOK)
by Juan TerranovaA mediados de 1990, María Livia Galliano de Obeid, un ama de casa salteña con tres hijos, comienza a escuchar una voz. Es la Virgen María que le habla y le pide que le erija un santuario en un cerro. Actualmente miles de peregrinos de la Argentina y el mundo viajan cada sábado a Tres Cerritos, Salta, para recibir la Oración de Intercesión en la que María Livia, con sólo apoyarles su mano en el hombro, los hace caer de espaldas. La Virgen del Cerro es el primer libro que retrata seriamente este fenómeno. Pero es también la crónica de las peregrinaciones hasta el cerro de las apariciones y la fascinante historia de vida de María Livia y de incontables testimonios de fe, milagros y bendiciones recibidas. Juan Terranova narra la aparición de la Virgen en Salta y examina los detalles de un acontecimiento tan masivo como secreto. La Virgen del Cerro presenta así un recorrido por el camino de la mayor manifestación de fe vivida en la Argentina durante los últimos años.
Virgin
by F. Paul WilsonAn international thriller about the search for Mary, the mother of Jesus, from the New York Times–bestselling author of the Repairman Jack novels. During the Gulf War in 1991, an ancient scroll is found in the Negev Desert of southern Israel. Years later, scientists declare it a fake, but an American nun believes it will lead her to the resting place of the Virgin Mary. What she finds seems to possess miraculous healing powers that attract believers and skeptics from across the globe. She also draws the attention of a mysterious Israeli Shin Bet officer determined to retrieve the remains of &“The Mother&” at any cost. And that is only the beginning . . . Previously published under the pseudonym Mary Elizabeth Murphy.
The Virgin and the Grail: Origins of a Legend
by Joseph Ward GoeringSome fifty years before Chrétien de Troyes wrote what is probably the first and certainly the most influential story of the Holy Grail, images of the Virgin Mary with a simple but radiant bowl (called a "grail" in local dialect) appeared in churches in the Spanish Pyrenees. In this fascinating book, Joseph Goering explores the links between these sacred images and the origins of one of the West's most enduring legends. While tracing the early history of the grail, Goering looks back to the Pyrenean religious paintings and argues that they were the original inspiration of the grail legend. He explains how storytellers in northern France could have learned of these paintings and how the enigmatic "grail" in the hands of the Virgin came to form the centerpiece of a story about a knight in King Arthur's court. Part of the allure of the grail, Goering argues, was that neither Chrétien nor his audience knew exactly what it represented or why it was so important. And out of the attempts to answer those questions the literature of the Holy Grail was born.
The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion)
by Thomas ArentzenAccording to legend, the Virgin appeared one Christmas Eve to an artless young man standing in one of Constantinople's most famous Marian shrines. She offered him a scroll of papyrus with the injunction that he swallow it, and following the Virgin's command, he did so. Immediately his voice turned sweet and gentle as he spontaneously intoned his hymn "The Virgin today gives birth." So was born the career of Romanos the Melodist (ca. 485-560), one of the greatest liturgical poets of Byzantium, author of at least sixty long hymns, or kontakia, that were chanted during the night vigils preceding major feasts and festivals.In The Virgin in Song, Thomas Arentzen explores the characterization of Mary in these kontakia and the ways in which the kontakia echoed the cult of the Virgin. He focuses on three key moments in her story as marked in the liturgical calendar: her encounter with Gabriel at the Annunciation, her child's birth at Christmas, and the death of her son on Good Friday. Consistently, Arentzen contends, Romanos counters expectations by shifting emphasis away from Christ himself to focus on Mary—as the subject of the erotic gaze, as a breastfeeding figure of abundance and fertility, and finally as an authoritatively vocal woman who conveys the secrets of her son and the joys of the resurrection.Through his hymns, Romanos inspired an affective relationship between Mary and his audience, bringing the human and the holy into dialogue. By plumbing her emotional depths, the poet traces her process of understanding as she apprehends the mysteries that she embodies. By giving her a powerful voice, he grants subjectivity to a maiden who becomes a mediator. Romanos shaped a figure, Arentzen argues, who related intimately to her flock in a formative period of Christian orthodoxy.
The Virgin Mary across Cultures: Devotion among Costa Rican Catholic and Finnish Orthodox Women
by Elina VuolaThis book examines women’s relationship to the Virgin Mary in two different cultural and religious contexts, and compares how these relationships have been analyzed and explained on a theological and a sociological level. The figure of the Virgin Mary is a divisive one in our modern culture. To some, she appears to be a symbol of religious oppression, while to others, she is a constant comfort and even an inspiration towards empowerment. Drawing on the author’s own ethnographic research among Catholic Costa Rican women and Orthodox Finnish women, this study relates their experiences with Mary to the folklore and popular religion materials present in each culture. The book combines not only different social and religious frameworks but also takes a critical look at ways in which feminists have (mis)interpreted the meaning of Mary for women. It therefore combines theological and ethnographic methods in order to create a feminist Marian theology that is particularly attentive to women’s lived religious practices and theological thinking. This study provides a unique ethnographically informed insight into women’s religious interactions with Mary. As such, it will be of great interest to those researching in religious studies and theology, gender studies, Latin American studies, anthropology of religion, and folklore studies.
The Virgin Mary Conspiracy: The True Father of Christ and the Tomb of the Virgin
by Graham PhillipsA convincing and cogent argument refuting the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Church dogma and revealing the true father of Jesus• Provides historical and archaeological evidence of a tomb of the Virgin Mary• Introduces the theory that Jesus's father was Antipater, son of HerodWhat became of the Virgin Mary after the Crucifixion is one of the greatest mysteries of the Bible. Although it appears nowhere in the Bible, the belief in the Assumption-Mary's bodily ascension into heaven-is accepted by many Christians as historical fact. Some, however, believe that Mary died naturally and was buried in a tomb in Jerusalem's Valley of Jehosaphat. Others say that her final resting place was in the Roman ruins of Ephesus in Asia Minor.In 1950 Giovanni Benedetti, an archaeologist attached to the Vatican museum, found a fourth-century manuscript indicating that Mary had been smuggled out of Palestine to an island off the west coast of Britain. According to Benedetti's findings, England's first Bishop, St. Augustine, discovered Mary's tomb there in A.D. 597. The reigning pope, Gregory the Great, forbade St. Augustine to speak of this, initiating a conspiracy of silence that lasted 1,400 years. Similarly, as Benedetti was about to publish his findings, he was instructed by the Vatican to discontinue his research. Soon after, the Roman Catholic Church declared the Assumption dogma.In The Virgin Mary Conspiracy Graham Phillips unravels the truth behind this centuries-old ecclesiastical cover-up and discovers what may be Mary's final resting place. During his extensive research Phillips also discovered another controversial theory revealing that Jesus was the son of Antipater, the son of Herod, and therefore the true heir to Herod's throne, thus explaining his title of "King of the Jews."
The Virgin Mary's Got Nits: A Christmas Anthology
by Gervase PhinnA touching and hilarious gift book of poetry and prose on the subject of children and Christmas from the Yorkshire school inspector and bestselling author of the Dales series and Little Village School series.
Virgin Mother Goddesses of Antiquity
by Marguerite RigogliosoThis study of various female deities of Graeco-Roman antiquity is the first to provide evidence that primary goddesses were conceived of as virgin mothers in the earliest layers of their cults. By taking feminist analysis of divinities further, this book provides a fresh angle on our understanding of these deities.
The Virgin of El Barrio: Marian Apparitions, Catholic Evangelizing, and Mexican American Activism (Qualitative Studies in Religion #4)
by Kristy Nabhan-WarrenIn 1998, a Mexican American woman named Estela Ruiz began seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in south Phoenix. The apparitions and messages spurred the creation of Mary’s Ministries, a Catholic evangelizing group, and its sister organization, ESPIRITU, which focuses on community-based initiatives and social justice for Latinos/as.Based on ten years of participant observation and in-depth interviews, The Virgin of El Barrio traces the spiritual transformation of Ruiz, the development of the community that has sprung up around her, and the international expansion of their message. Their organizations blend popular and official Catholicism as well as evangelical Protestant styles of praise and worship, shedding light on Catholic responses to the tensions between popular and official piety and the needs of Mexican Americans.
The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion (American Lives)
by Sonja LivingstonWith organized religion becoming increasingly divisive and politicized and Americans abandoning their pews in droves, it’s easy to question aspects of traditional spirituality and devotion. In response to this shifting landscape, Sonja Livingston undertakes a variety of expeditions—from a mobile confessional in Cajun Country to a eucharistic procession in Galway, Ireland, to the Death and Marigolds Parade in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Mass in a county jail on Thanksgiving Day—to better understand devotion in her own life.The Virgin of Prince Street chronicles her quest, offering an intimate and unusually candid view into Livingston’s relationship with the swiftly changing Catholic Church and into her own changing heart. Ultimately, Livingston’s meditations on quirky rituals and fading traditions thoughtfully and dynamically interrogate traditional elements of sacramental devotion, especially as they relate to concepts of religion, relationships, and the sacred.
Virgin Sacrifice in Classical Art: Women, Agency, and the Trojan War (Routledge Research in Gender and Art)
by Anthony F. MangieriThe Trojan War begins and ends with the sacrifice of a virgin princess. The gruesome killing of a woman must have captivated ancient people because the myth of the sacrificial virgin resonates powerfully in the arts of ancient Greece and Rome. Most scholars agree that the Greeks and Romans did not practice human sacrifice, so why then do the myths of virgin sacrifice appear persistently in art and literature for over a millennium? Virgin Sacrifice in Classical Art: Women, Agency, and the Trojan War seeks to answer this question.This book tells the stories of the sacrificial maidens in order to help the reader discover the meanings bound up in these myths for historical people. In exploring the representations of Iphigeneia and Polyxena in Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art, this book offers a broader cultural history that reveals what people in the ancient world were seeking in these stories. The result is an interdisciplinary study that offers new interpretations on the meaning of the sacrificial virgin as a cultural and ideological construction. This is the first book-length study of virgin sacrifice in ancient art and the first to provide an interpretive framework within which to understand its imagery.
Virgin Territory
by James LecesneVirgin Territory explores the power of faith and our need to believe in miracles. Sixteen-year-old Dylan Flack is uprooted from his cozy life in New York City by the death of his mother of cancer the night before 9/ll. He finds himself transplanted to Jupiter, Florida, and in the chaos of the move discovers that his father has lost their treasured collection of family photos. Dylan feels that he has begun to lose the memory of his mother's face, and without access to those pictures of their past together, each day stretches darkly into a future without hope. Enter: the Virgin Club, a nomadic group of trailer kids whose mostly single parents drag them all over the country in search of sightings of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although not looking for membership in any club, Dylan falls in love with their leader, Angela, who believes that change occurs in direct proportion to desire and the willingness to take risks. In a series of misadventures and brushes with the law in what Dylan comes to think of as "virgin territory," she teaches Dylan to risk a future without his favorite parent. Miraculously his newfound courage leads to a long overdue confession from his father that brings them closer together and catapults Dylan into a future that holds more promise.
Virgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity (Christianity in Late Antiquity #13)
by Julia Kelto LillisWomen's virginity held tremendous significance in early Christianity and the Mediterranean world. Early Christian thinkers developed diverse definitions of virginity and understood its bodily aspects in surprising, often nonanatomical ways. Eventually Christians took part in a cross-cultural shift toward viewing virginity as something that could be perceived in women's sex organs. Treating virginity as anatomical brought both benefits and costs. By charting this change and situating it in the larger landscape of ancient thought, Virgin Territory illuminates unrecognized differences among early Christian sources and historicizes problematic ideas about women's bodies that still persist today.
Virgin Whore
by Emma Maggie SolbergIn Virgin Whore, Emma Maggie Solberg uncovers a surprisingly prevalent theme in late English medieval literature and culture: the celebration of the Virgin Mary’s sexuality. Although history is narrated as a progressive loss of innocence, the Madonna has grown purer with each passing century. Looking to a period before the idea of her purity and virginity had ossified, Solberg uncovers depictions and interpretations of Mary, discernible in jokes and insults, icons and rituals, prayers and revelations, allegories and typologies—and in late medieval vernacular biblical drama.More unmistakable than any cultural artifact from late medieval England, these biblical plays do not exclusively interpret Mary and her virginity as fragile. In a collection of plays known as the N-Town manuscript, Mary is represented not only as virgin and mother but as virgin and promiscuous adulteress, dallying with the Trinity, the archangel Gabriel, and mortals in kaleidoscopic erotic combinations. Mary’s "virginity" signifies invulnerability rather than fragility, redemption rather than renunciation, and merciful license rather than ascetic discipline. Taking the ancient slander that Mary conceived Jesus in sin as cause for joyful laughter, the N-Town plays make a virtue of those accusations: through bawdy yet divine comedy, she redeems and exalts the crime.By revealing the presence of this promiscuous Virgin in early English drama and late medieval literature and culture—in dirty jokes told by Boccaccio and Chaucer, Malory’s Arthurian romances, and the double entendres of the allegorical Mystic Hunt of the Unicorn—Solberg provides a new understanding of Marian traditions.
Virginia Weddings: Three Romances Persevere in the Commonwealth (Heartsong Novella Collection)
by Lauralee BlissWill Secrets and Mystery Stifle Love?Daphne Elliot has refused new romance ever since her first love died in a lumber mill accident forty years ago. An eager coworker tries to unite Daphne with a farmer named Jack, but she soon discovers that her suitor has a cloudy past. Will that past destroy them or lead them to love? Connie Ortiz gets more than she bargained for when she buys an old cuckoo clock at a yard sale. Strange people begin entering her life, offering to buy the clock for exorbitant sums or urging Connie to keep the clock at all cost. Connie’s handsome boss, Lance Adams, finds the whole situation intriguing and Connie even more intriguing. Can love resolve this mystery? Debbie Reilly longs for a love and a place to belong. Working with the elderly at a health care facility, she meets Neil Jenson who routinely visits his grandma Elvina. He soon discovers a family secret he never knew. Can Debbie help Neil straighten out the mess? Or will the mystery of Neil’s past destroy his hope for a wonderful future?
Virginia's Legendary Santa Trains
by Donna Strother Deekens Doug RiddellBeginning in the 1950s, department stores around the Commonwealth teamed up with rail lines to create a magical Christmas adventure: the Santa Train. Delight-filled children from Richmond and Alexandria to Roanoke flocked to see and ride the trains sponsored by Miller & Rhoads, Cox's Department Store, J.C. Penney and many others. These majestic trains rode the rails across Virginia with old Saint Nick himself. Join railroad author Doug Riddell and former Miller & Rhoads Snow Queen Donna Strother Deekens as they recount heartwarming memories of Christmases past and chronicle the history of Virginia's Kris Kringle trains.
The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World
by Deanna A. ThompsonWe live in a wired world where 24/7 digital connectivity is increasingly the norm. Christian megachurch communities often embrace this reality wholeheartedly while more traditional churches often seem hesitant and overwhelmed by the need for an interactive website, a Facebook page and a twitter feed. This book accepts digital connectivity as our reality, but presents a vision of how faith communities can utilize technology to better be the body of Christ to those who are hurting while also helping followers of Christ think critically about the limits of our digital attachments. This book begins with a conversion story of a non-cell phone owning, non-Facebook using religion professor judgmental of the ability of digital tools to enhance relationships. A stage IV cancer diagnosis later, in the midst of being held up by virtual communities of support, a conversion occurs: this religion professor benefits in embodied ways from virtual sources and wants to convert others to the reality that the body of Christ can and does exist virtually and makes embodied difference in the lives of those who are hurting. The book neither uncritically embraces nor rejects the constant digital connectivity present in our lives. Rather it calls on the church to a) recognize ways in which digital social networks already enact the virtual body of Christ; b) tap into and expand how Christ is being experienced virtually; c) embrace thoughtfully the material effects of our new augmented reality, and c) influence utilization of technology that minimizes distraction and maximizes attentiveness toward God and the world God loves.
Virtual Government
by Alex ConstantineCIA Mind Control Operations in America Written and researched by the author of 'Psychic Dictatorship in the USA,' this new work explores the use of mind control techniques by the CIA.