Reviews
The Book on Palo:
The Wisdom of Don Demetrio, Baba Raul Canizares
(Original Publications, 2002, $21.95)
Reviewed by Sven Davisson
Buy Now From Ashé Devotional Giftshoppe
Baba
Raul Canizares received initiation into the mysteries of the Afro-Cuban
spiritual practice known as Palo Monte while still a young boy living
in Cuba. Canizares, whose palo name is Tata Camposanto Medianoche, received
this empowerment from Demetrio Gomez (1874-1968) who lived in the city
of Guanabacoa where for almost fifty years he led one of the most potent
and influential Palo houses in Cuba.
Demetrio’s student Paco kept his mentor’s notebooks and Canizares was able to access these in preparing this work. He also had access to unpublished material by Andres Petit, founder of the Kimbisa faction of Palo. Canizares has chosen an interesting and powerful method of writing creating this work. Half the book is written in the first-person and that personally referential I is the voice of Don Demetrio himself. Canizares states in his introduction, “it will be Demetrio’s voice you will hear, channeled through mine.”
This is one of the few books on the Palo tradition in English. I know from personal communications with the author, that this book was truly a labor of love—a project that he put a tremendous amount of energy into over the last few years of his life. The final product of his hard work is nothing less that the definitive book on Palo. He goes much farther than one would expect in a volume such as this detailing practices, providing complete mambos (chants), various plants & their uses, and sigils for the deities. He gives the reader a fascinating description of the making of a nganga—the ceremonial cauldron at the heart of the Palero’s practice.
In addition to being a Palero and Santero, Canizares was a scholar. His earlier Cuban Santeria is already a classic in the field of Afro-Caribbean religious studies. Echoing a similar rational as that given by the Dalai Lama when asked about revealing previous secret tantras to the general public, Canizares states that his reason for publishing such a detailed book on a secret tradition is both to preserve it from being lost and to protect it from being corrupted by greed and sensationalism.
Canizares does not shy away from discussing openly aspects of the religion which will most likely be troubling to some readers. Most markedly among them is the topic of animal sacrifice—an important aspect of many of the African descended new world faiths. It should be noted that the ritual taking of animal life has a long and ancient connection with the practice of religion and is still an important part of several of the world’s “big five” religions. The U.S. Supreme Court has even ruled on the constitutionality of animal sacrifice and religious practice in a landmark case involving a Santerian church in Florida. This said, Canizares approaches the use of animals in a manner that is both unapologetic and non-sensational.
There are many photographs included with the book, including images of Canizares involved in actual initiation ceremonies—“scratching.” Many of the images stand alone as works of art-photography that are as evocative as they are explanatory. The images of the various nganga are really extraordinarily powerful.
Baba passed way in December of 2002 and this is his last book, published just months before his death. It stands alongside Cuban Santeria: Walking with the Night as one of his best works. The Book on Palo is an invaluable contribution to the study of American religion. It should be a part of the library of anyone interested in comparative religion—regardless of their own faith.
The Ninth Arch, Kenneth Grant
(Starfire Publishing, 2002. Available from Mandrake of Oxford)
Available from Mandrake of Oxford www.mandrake.uk.net
‘Can you in good conscience
recommend The Ninth Arch to
someone who is only familiar with some of the early work of Grant? That
is, is the new book comprehensible to a neophyte of Grant’s work or should
I resume investigation elsewhere in his canon, in the improbable event
that copies can be found? I’ve read AC
and the Hidden God and part of The
Magical Revival.
Umm good question. I regard
myself as a child of the first trilogy, Cults
of the Shadow, Magical Revival
and Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God. I never really expected the second trilogy to even
appear - Nightside of Eden, Outside the Circles of Time and Hecate’s Fountain; and I never even looked at the third trilogy, Outer Gateways,
The Mauve Zone and now The Ninth
Arch. So perhaps I am a bit of a guinea pig and give it
a go. I was surprised how intriguing the Ninth Arch can be. I found it, to use KG’s own words ‘a rush of mephitic air from
the unsealed depths’, a ‘Kamsin blast.’ truly something different in a
word of publishing mediocrity.
‘The
Ninth Arch is an ancient Masonic concept relating to the legend of the
three Grand Masters engaged upon the erection of King Solomon’s Temples.
After it was completed, the three deposited therein those things which
were important to the craft, such as the arc of the covenant, a pot of
manna, the rod of Aaron, the book of the law etc.’ Inscribed about it
was the lost or unutterable Word.’ The purpose of Grant’s book is to explain
this mystery and reveal the word.
The
heart of Grant’s book is a 924 verse Book of the Spider, a mystical text
channeled to Grants New-Isis Lodge in the 1950s. Around this sutra, Grant
weaves almost six hundred pages of comment, mainly in the form of mini
essays. It sounds an unpromising structure but it really works and is
well suited to the lucid dreamers or to use Grant’s parlance, the inhabitants
of the mauve zone to whom this books is addressed. Having no acquaintance
with Grant’s earlier work might actually make this book even more evocative.
There were some very obscure sections that would only really make sense
if I totally entered into Grant’s system, but there were many comments
that seemed to throw light on almost any style of magick.
After
all it is the books central thesis that something out there is trying
to tell us something using a whole variety of mediums and modes of communication.
Crowley, he tells us,, ‘with prophetic acumen [ ] presaged the massive
interest in alien phenomena which erupted soon after his death and which
was caused by Kenneth Arnold’s ‘flying saucer’ sighting [in 1947]. Whatever
one’s attitude to such phenomena - positive, negative or indifferent -
there is no just denial of the fact that the wave initiated an era of
psychomythology unparalleled since man conceived the idea of the ‘gods’·.
unless, therefore, we are to write off the entire ‘myth’ as an unprecedented
mass delusion, we have to accept the fact that something approaching a
seemingly new and inexplicable nature began slowly and insidiously to
disturb the world in the year 1947.’. (p xix)
Acting
on the assumptions that ‘Many a true word spoken in jest’; ‘the ‘ritualists
of the New Isis Lodge utilized certain novels and stories as other magicians
might use paintings or musical compositions to effect perichoresis and
astral encounters’ xxxvi. Apart from the usually occult litany, H P Lovecraft,
Algernon Blackwood et al Grant primary source is Richard Marsh’s novel
The Beetle which contains the only published account known [to Grant]
of the Children of Isis who emerge in the channelled text in rather startling
form.
I
haven’t read Marsh’s novel but guess that Grant’s reworking of it is likely
to be far more evocative. Really Grant’s books are a new artform what
I have in the past called ‘auto-romance’. I picked it up near the end
of the day, not expecting a factual hit, although there are some fascinating
facts here somewhere - but more as a collective grimoire. I take a little
snort and am then primed to enter the mauve zone. Here’s a little taster.
The oracle
31-2
below the tunnels of the spider hanging athwart the network of alleys
choked in the mud, the sand of the Mokkatam hills.
The comment
The
spider is here symbolic of the web of alleys that existed at the time
Crowley received from Aiwass “The threefold book of the Law”, not far
distant from the Mokkatam hills. This verse sets the scene for a series
of events concerning the Children of Isis, of whose activities a fragmentary
account was given in fictional form by Richard March writing in the 1890s.
It is assumed that he was oblivious of the actuality of the events he
described. It may not be so easy to assume that he was not an indirect
descendant of that Obed Marsh of who Lovecraft writes in The Shadow over
Innsmouth. It is also not impossible that he was related to Dr. Phineas
March Black, a great uncle of the present commentator. Details of Dr.
Black’s mysterious life are given in Against the Light, which contains
much information relevant to this Book OKBISh. Note that the present verse
constitutes verse Thirty-One of the Books as a whole.’
Kenneth
Grant’s numerology may be suspect, his historical sources unreliable,
but his poetical intuition is strangely prescient. I may not want to be
part of the only true order but I can’t help admiring his eclecticism,
his culture, his generosity towards other artists and writers. So this
book is really a triumphal arch - the final act from a highly creative
magician and writer who has done more than any other living adept to explicate
Crowley’s magical universe and to initiate us all into some very sinister
mysteries.
The Cosmic Tribe Tarot,
Stevee Postman
reviewed by Sven Davisson
It
is impossible to describe in words how wonderful and enchanting and innovative
Stevee Postman’s tarot is, so I will begin straight off by giving the
URL for Mr. Postman’s website. www.stevee.com Get yourself there and check the cards out for yourself! The Cosmic
Tribe Tarot stands apart from the handful of other “postmodern” tarot
decks that have come out in the past several years. Each card shows an attention to artistic detail that is more often
than not lacking in other thematic decks. Each card is a singular work of art, infused with beauty, light,
fun and a spiritually charged eroticism.
The ethereal beauty of the naked form dances through the various
cards. This is not the body neutered
by an “Golden Age” earthy naturalness; this is, instead, the postmodern
body, equally sensual and sexual, sometimes comfortable, sometimes comforting,
and sometimes aggressively threatening.
This is the body of the magician who has recreated him or herself
and reclaimed the Godhead. This
is the technoshaman body: tattooed,
pierced and in your face.
A quality of energy runs through the cards like lightning or electricity. Postman has developed his own meta-symbolism
that plays throughout: eyes, lotuses, butterflies, fairies, serpents and
stars. The Devil is an image of
Pan dancing through the greenery, Death is Kali-ma dancing through flame
a gigantic mouth gaping across the stomach, the Tower is a flaming tower
of televisions. It is truly a
testament to Mr. Postman’s abilities that the digital manipulations that
underlie all the cards never obscure the images.
Each card possesses a unity and none look as if they were a mere
collage. Also of note: the deck includes three different
versions of the Lovers card: male+male, female+female and female+male.
The
text of the accompanying book by Eric Ganther works very well with the
deck. The writing style is playful and draws one
into each card with a clear descriptive analysis and helpful divinatory
meaning. Ganther manages to do
this without becoming didactic or taking away from the imagery by heavy-handed
over interpretation.
The Way of Mystery. Magick, Mysticism & Self-Transcendence,
Nema
Reviewed by Jan Fries (Mandrake
Speaks)
In
the early eighties, Kenneth Grant amazed the occult establishment by publishing
a book (Outside the Circles of Time) that was based
to a major extent on the visions and experiences of a hitherto unknown initiate
called Sorror Andahadna, or more briefly, Nema. Nemaâs experiences provided
a silver key and much needed counterweight to the better known current of
Horus, her work being the pre-shadowing, but also the manifestation of the
elusive and all-inclusive current of Maat. Nema was channeling Maat, the
ancient Egyptian goddess of truth, balance and justice. All of these are
subtle and sometimes elusive concepts that seemed a lot more difficult to
understand than the more simple seeming formula of Horus, the falcon-headed
god of will, force and focused activity. Many Thelemites who felt comfortable
with the Horus current found it hard to comprehend Maat, who was always
dancing around the focus of their awareness, visible and invisible at once,
comprehensible by paradox and enigmatic to the point where reason gives
way to laughter. Where the prophet of Horus, Aleister Crowley, offered a
number of almost straightforward stratagems of yoga and ritual magick, Nema’s
manifestation of Maat seemed cryptic as it was so simple, refined and essentially
self-focused. The two approaches to the magick of the Nu Aeon balanced,
but only for a handful of dedicated researchers who developed their own
methods of blending and manifesting the twinned approach in courageous subjectivity.
It
was not until 1995 that a full book called
Maat Magick appeared, a much needed work that offered a full program
of experiences leading to self-initiation in a system that was guaranteed
to destroy itself upon fulfillment. Nema’s first book seemed a simple
system of things that can be done, it’s deep and artistic subtlety remained
hidden to the more casual readers, and indeed to all who did not bother
to do the exercises and find their own approach to Maat, Truth, in and
through their own true will. Maat, however, was not to be confined to
a single approach. Eight years later I am delighted to see that another
manifestation of the current has appeared which balances the dynamic doing
of the first volume with a more subtle approach.
The Way of Mystery, originally
entitled Wings of Rapture, provides
a counterweight to the first volume by offering initiation into the way
of mystery, or mysticism, as you might call it.
What
is mysticism? The concept may or may not appeal to you, depending on what
you have learned to associate with this subject. Most people in modern
magick seem to believe that mysticism means “doing without.” The publisher,
Llewellyn, obviously subscribed to the popular and totally misleading
idea that mysticism is something practiced by doddering elders who have
given up on life and decided to transcend the world, the flesh and the
devil, as they are not up to them any more. If you see the cover of the
book, you will understand what I mean. Instead of making use of the brilliant
and illuminating paintings of the author, the publisher decided to cater
to the public opinion, and printed a picture of a monk who might have
come from a cheese advertisement.
This
is exactly the sort of mysticism which you will not find in Nema’s brilliant
book. Mysticism is not for senile recluses;
The Way of Mystery is for people who are very much alive and enjoy
it. This is a book of magick, discovery and self-exploration. It focuses
on aspects of magick which are conveniently forgottenÊ by the result-hungry
and shows that mystery is the counterweight to magick. Where magick is
the weaving of illusions (maya), mystery is the freedom to transcend them.
To use a simple metaphor, we could propose that mystery means going up
the Tree (or the spine, if you prefer Kundalini yoga), a process that
means leaving the limitations and confines of everyday life, everyday
consciousness and everyday belief in reality, in a process of continuous
refinement and simplification. Mystery is very much being yourself, once
you have come to understand how all-inclusive Self has ever been. Magick
is coming down the Tree again, bringing change and transformed awareness
into the world of phenomena. More simply, you have to get out before you
can come back again. Most modern magickians desire to work change in this
world, but unless they embrace mystery, there is little chance that they
will get out far enough to come back again with a laugh, a word, and a
fire in their eyes that will set the world aflame. Where medieval mystics
practiced abasement and denial to the point of stupidity, Nema’s Way of Mystery means adventure, rapture
and the wild joy that comes from meeting the Forgotten Ones, unfolding
Self in its totality and doing will in ways that are far beyond Crowley’s
modest achievements. This is a very practical book. Its center is You,
and as you read, do and discover, you will find that there can be no magick
without mystery, and no mystery without magick, as the twinned forces
shape the flow of evolution. For the beginner,
The Way of Mystery offers a system of excellent and useful practices
that work in shaping awareness and identity to transform the personality
into a stream-lined vehicle of True Will. The experienced mage will find
some of the practices familiar, and be delighted to discover the depth
and subtlety that is woven into the seeming simplicity. Nema is a very
methodical and well-organized philosopher, behind each of her lines you
can discern a lifetime of courageous self-exploration that is well worth
contemplating in depth. For the advanced adept,
The Way of Mystery is one of those rare and priceless works that can
be read again and again without coming to an end of its many levels of
meaning. This is a book to explore, embrace and enjoy through a lifetime
of self-evolution.
The Edge of Certainty: Dilemmas on the Buddhist Path, Peter Fanner.
R reviewed by Prem Arun
I
was very unsuspecting when I picked up this deceptively slim volume (a scant
111 pages not include notes and index).
Peter Fenner has written an very thought provoking book.
As one progresses through the book, one finds oneself in a puzzle-box. The dilemma that Fenner is primarily concerned
with is the dichotomy between orthodox and non-orthodox Buddhist cosmology—the
question rather practice produces enlightenment or if enlightenment is already
present and therefore not producible. The
author provides a good introduction to the major Buddhist traditions—enough
of an intro to set up his juxtaposition of their diverse positions on the
question of attainment and practice. He begins the work with a good, straight-forward introduction to
the Four Noble Truths. After laying
this groundwork, he moves through the various Buddhist traditions: Thheravada,
Mahayana, Tantra, Zen, Dzogchen and Mahamudra.
One does feel two-thirds of the way through the book that you’re
reading a long introduction that, given the slender book, won’t give you
much once you arrive. Then all
of a sudden, Fenner begins breaking down the various positions, throwing
one against another. With each page he successfully pulls the ground
he just so nicely filled in on the previous page out from under you.
As one nears the conclusion (if you can call it that), you realize
that the author is playing a very deliberate mind-game with his readers.
At this point you either smile and continue where he might lead,
or put the book down with annoyance or boredom and return to the mat.
Looking back, the book itself is constructed as a practice. If one makes it to the end, the reader should come away with a shift
in their thinking—even if it is simply disrupted enough to not be capable
of “thinking” through the dilemmas at all.
The book is described as being about dilemmas of the Buddhist Path
and the entire context of its philosophical discussion is firmly rooted
in the breadth of the Buddhist schools.
Of particular note, is his nutshell sketch of Nagarjuna’s masterwork
the Mulamadhyamakakarika.
The Edge of Certainty
is, however, a work that would prove fascinating to a much larger set
of spiritual seekers. He provides
enough of the foundation to set up his discussions, without the necessity,
on the part of the reader, to bring a large amount of pre-knowledge to
the table.
Tankhem:
meditations on tantrik and Egyptian magick and the mysteries of Seth,
the great dragon,
Mogg Morgan
(Mandrake of Oxford, 2003, e-book, or £5 or $8.00)
I purchased a copy of the first
edition of Mogg Morgan’s Sexual
Magick over a decade ago in a small bookshop in Oxford. To this day, I vividly remember the shop and the little bridge over
which I had to walk to reach that particular street. Without exaggeration, Morgan’s earlier book
Sexual Magick defined a significant portion
of my earlier spiritual life. His
innovative and, dare I say, groundbreaking theories set me on a course
which I still walk today. This
current book Tankhem is a superb
practical follow-up to Sexual Magick
building on the theories and hypothesises which he began in the previous
work. He draws a tremendous amount
of varied, but surprising cohesive, material into this book. It is above all else a explication of a particularly
interesting subset of ancient Egyptian mythology set in the midst of a
very practical, modern construst. He
calls this magickal cosmology “Setanism” as it focuses on the Egyptian
god Set (or Seth), a member of one of the earliest divine families (Abydos)
of the Egyptian pantheon.
Morgan addresses some touchy areas including a pointed analysis
of both LaVey’s Church of Satan and it’s more esoteric offshoot the Temple
of Set. He asks pointed questions about the mythic
basis of thelema (the religion founded by Aleister Crowley soon after
the turn of the last century). Morgan
ties in long explications of tantra vis a vis Egyptian magick, modern
sexual magick, the Erotic Landscape, the visionary experiments of W.B.
Yeats and more.
The heart of the work is a detailed and systematic meditative exploration
of the temple built by Seti I at Abydos.
His walk-through description is as much a guided magickal exercise
as it is a descriptive analysis of the temple and its metaphysical significance. The most controversial aspect of the work is
his discussions of thelema and its relation to Setian metaphysics. He proposes that Awaiss is equitable to Set
(a notion supported by Crowley’s own writings) and that Liber Samech is
in fact an invocation of Set. For
Morgan, an aeon presided over by Horus alone with be untenable. He instead proposes a thelemic cosmology with a joint rule of Horus
and Set—something that is very much supported in the early Egyptian myths,
where the pharaoh ruled by “the Horus and the Set.”
Even as a self-described “amateur Egyptologist” Morgan does a superb
job with this both difficult and arcane material.
I highly recommend this work and hope that it gets a wider distribution
within (and without) the greater magickal community.
This edition is described as a beta version, but I would not wait
for a final edition before purchasing it.
The book is available as a PDF from Mandrake of Oxford.
Ayurveda: The Mantra of Niramaya
Interactive CD-Rom on the ancient system of Indian Medicine.
(Recommended price 20 Euros. Available from Mandrake of Oxford.)
Reviewed in Mandrake Speaks
This is quite a useful introduction to the Ayurvedic medical system covering all possible aspects of interest - history, personalities, pharmacology, philosophy, basic principles and therapies. I found it a relatively trustworthy and informative guide to material that can so often be the field of 'nationalistic' history and mythmaking. Illustrated with beautiful modern renditions of traditional images. But it is just that - introductory - the section on pharmacology, for example listed and illustrated a great many interesting medicaments but I would have liked a little more detail. I really appreciated the biographies of several seminal medics. On the whole, if you like the medium of CD ROM, which apparently many students at Gujerat's Ayurvedic University do, then this product is pretty good. It could pehaps do with a better index and perhaps the interactive aspect could allow some kind of self analysis of body types etc. But otherwise recommended.
new & notable
America IV: The
Man Comes Around, Johnny Cash
(America, 2002, $16.98)
Thankfully,
as the old saying goes, reports of his death were greatly exaggerated.
But who would have thought that two years into the next century one
would have a new Cash album. His
voice is not that of “Ring of Fire” or even “Fulson Prison Blues,” but this
is still the Man In Black—if anything more dark and brooding than ever.
This is Cash the story-teller, now a voice scratched and broken with
life, age and illness. It is precisely
this wizened, flawed sound that lends dramatic poignancy to the songs on
this album. Cash continues his innovative
and unexpected choice of songs and collaborators, begun with volume one
of this series American Recordings
(1994). In addition to his own songs
which include the title track and an updated “Give My Love to Rose,” he’s
recorded a very surprising selection of material: Trent Reznor’s “Hurt,”
Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Sting’s “I Hung My Head,” Depeche
Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” Lennon and McCartney’s “In My Life” as well as
classics like “First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Danny Boy” and Hank Williams
“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Don
Henley joins Cash to sing on Henley’s “Deperado.”
Nick Cave duets on “I’m So Lonesome” and June and Rose sing along
on “We’ll Meet Again.” Despite the
eclectic selection of music and collaborators, this album comes together
as a whole each song deftly blending to the next.
Cash takes each of the diverse pieces and makes them uniquely his
own, so that one can easily forget that they are the same number performed
by the Beatles, Simon and Gardunkel or Sting.
We can be thankful that the world never righted itself enough to
allow Cash to put on that suit of white.
Cruelty Without
Beauty, Soft Cell
(Cooking Vinyl, 2002, $16.98)
2002
also saw a new album from Soft Cell—the first original studio release in
18 years. The synth-pop duo remembered
best for their cover of the northern soul ballad “Tainted Love” and “Memorabilia”
(widely considered to be the prototypic techno album) has returned with
a fresh and innovative album. This is not surprising, since in the almost
two decade hiatus singer Marc Almond and partner Dave Ball have been busy. Almond has had a varied career spanning more
than 20 albums, four record companies and a repertoire including songs about
masturbation, Judy Garland and English translations of Jacques Brel and
Charles Aznavour. Ball’s collaboration
The Grid is still a powerful, behind-the-scenes influence on modern dance
and techno. Unlike many of their
compatriots riding the eighties “vintage” revival, Ball and Almond have
produced a new album of fresh material, rather than simply attempting to
replicate a sound that may have made the famous but is now dated and derivative.
Balls production and arrangement stands out from the current crop
of formulaic pop, slower and without the requisite, repetitive, canned backbeat. Almond allows his whit and a dash of camp to come through in his
lyrics which he accomplishes their delivery with the agility of comfortable
music veteran. Almond sings in “Last
Chance” In a city lost in time/Somewhere sordid and sublime/We met over a gin
and lime/One rainy evening/Survivors clinging to the mast. The familiar characters of vintage Soft Cell
are all present, the prostitute, the fallen star, the sex-addict, the down-and-out
and morally bankrupt, just now they have reached middle age. “In Whatever
It Takes” Almond croons, I tried meditation/Crystal
therapy/Colonic irrigation/Didn't agree with me/Road rage and new age/Just
tricks of the mind/The onset of middle age/Is all that I find.
Yoga: Science of the Soul, Osho.
This work is actually a selection from Osho’s multi-volume discourse series on the yoga sutras of Patanjali Yoga: The Alpha and Omega. The series has been out of print for some time and the republication of Osho’s insights on yoga, even in selected form, is a welcome return.
The Big Bang,
the Buddha, and the Baby Boom:
The Spiritual Experiments of My Generation, Wes “Scoop” Nisker
(HaperSanFrancisco, April 2003, Cloth, $24.95)
The author of Crazy Wisdom chronicles his wide-ranging search for spiritual bliss—a long, strange trip that takes him from Bob Dylan to Ram Dass and all the points in between.
Doomed Megalopolis
DVD
(ADV Films, $29.95)
Finally
Hiroshi Aramata’s classic supernatural anime is available on DVD.
This two DVD set includes all four episodes of this epic: The
Haunting of Tokyo, The Fall of Tokyo, The Gods of Tokyo and The Battle for Tokyo. In his drive to conquer Tokyo, the powerful
sorcerer Kato awakens Masakato, the city’s guardian. Kato’s diabolical plan which involves the corruption of an unsuspecting,
innocent woman, results in the near destruction of the entire city.
A small band of unlikely heroes are, of course, the only thing that
stand between Kato and the realization of his plans.
Doomed Megalopolis is a dark and complex saga of good versus evil,
depravity and redemption. Chilling, mysterious and miraculous.
Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, I.M. Lewis
States of spirit possession, in which believers feel themselves to be “possessed” by the deity and raised to a new plane of existence, are found in almost all known religions. From Dionysiac cults to Haitian voodoo, Christian and Sufi mysticism to shamanic ritual, the rapture and frenzy of ecstatic experience forms an iconic expression of faith in all its devastating power and unpredictability. Third edition, originally printed 1971.
Samurai Zen: The
Warrior Koans, Trevor Leggett
(Routledge, 2003, $14.95)
For centuries, the Zen Buddhist masters used koans—riddles that test the inadequacy of logic—to train samurai in the art of patience, precision, and practicality, hallmarks of Asia’s supreme warriors. Zen expert Trevor Leggett gathers 100 of these medieval Japanese interviews rescued from secret temples of the 13th century. These early koans are unusually pure and vivid. For unscholarly warriors, the masters created instant koans from incidents of everyday life—a broken teacup, a water jar, a cloth. The pupils could reply with a poem, brush strokes, a song or a line from the No drama. The resulting koans are rich in simple, powerful images that meld the serenity of Zen with the mental steel of the samurai warrior.
Sethian Gnosticism
and the Platonic Tradition, J.D. Turner
(Peeters, Belgium, 2002, 80 Euros)
No less than eleven of the fifty-three treatises of the Nag Hammadi Library fit the designation ‘Sethian Gnostic.’ They reveal the existence of a hitherto unrecognized religious competitor of early Christianity. With its own roots in second temple Judaism and in various first and second century sectarian baptismal movements, Sethian Gnosticism is now the earliest form of Gnosticism for which we possess a great deal of textual evidence. Like the Christian school of Valentinus (120-160 CE) and his followers—which it seems to antedate—Sethianism not only allied itself with the early Christian movement, but was also vitally indebted to the (Middle) Platonism of the first three centuries, even to the point that several of its heological treatises became the subject of scrutiny in Plotinus’ third century Roman seminars.
Accordingly, Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition is divided into five sections: an introductory discussion of the scholarly attempts to characterize the relation of Gnosticism and Platonism, followed by three main sections: Part One, an analysis and history of Sethian literature, mythology, and ritual practice in its pre-Christian, Christian, and post-Christian phases; Part Two, a survey of the development of Platonic metaphysics from Plato to Theodore of Asine; and Part Three, an extensive analysis of the four Platonizing Sethian treatises and their implication for the history and development of Middle and Neoplatonic metaphysics. The final section offers a concluding overview of the Sethian religion.
The Ethiopian
Jewish Exodus: Narratives of the Migrational Journey to Isreal, 1977-1985,
Gadi BenEzer
(Routledge, 2002, Cloth, $95.00)
Between 1977 and 1985, some 20,000 Ethiopian Jews left their homes in Ethiopia and embarked on a secret and highly traumatic exodus to Israel. Due to various political circumstances they had to leave their homes in haste, go a long way on foot through unknown country, and stay for a period of one or two years in refugee campes, until they were brought to Israel. The difficult condition of the journey included racial tensions, attacks of bandits, night travel over mountains, incarceration, illness and death. A fifth group did not survive the journey.
Secular Steeples:
Popular Culture and the Religious Imagination, Conrad Ostwalt
(Trinity Press, 2003, $27.00)
In this provocative volume, Conrad Ostwalt challenges assumptions and presents fresh ideas about the relationship between religion and secular culture. Organized religion may no longer dominate culture, but predictions of its demise in a secularized society—from the Enlightenment to the “secular city” of the 1960’s—have not been borne out, he says. However, religious institutions face significant new challenges because of the transitions they have made in a world where they do not set the agenda.
Poems of Hanshan,
Translated by Peter Hobson
(Altamira Press, 2003, $19.95)
Hanshan, which means Cold Mountain, was the pseudonym adopted by an unknown poet who lived in China as a hermit twelve hundred years ago. The poems collected under his name have had an immense impact worldwide, especially among Zen Buddhists, and have been translated into many languages. Peter Hobson’s translation of more than a hundred of the poems, almost all of which are published for the first time in this volume, brings those qualities of timelessness, poetic diction and engaging rhythm that do justice to the concepts and language of the original.