Ancient Spirituality

The ancient Hebrew prophet Daniel lived in the fifth century BC and accurately predicted the history of the nation of Israel from 536 BC to AD 1948. Commentary from the ancient rabbis and the first century church reveals how the messianic rabbis and the disciples of the apostles interpreted his prophecies.

This explosive work of history unearths clues that finally demonstrate the truth about one of the world's great religions: that it was born out of the conflict between the Romans and messianic Jews who fought a bitter war with each other during the first century. The Romans employed a tactic they routinely used to conquer and absorb other nations: they grafted their imperial rule onto the religion of the conquered.

This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia.

Written between A.D. 413 and 426, The City of God is one of the great cornerstones in the history of Christian thought, a book which is vital to the understanding of modern Western society. Augustine originally intended it to be an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire, which had occurred just three years earlier. Indeed, Augustine produced a great amount of evidence to prove that paganism was responsible for this event. However, by the time the work was finished, the book had taken on a larger theme.

Following up on the first volume, The Atheist Handbook to the Old Testament: Volume 2 takes up the challenge of providing a clear and useful guide to those wanting a better understanding of the Old Testament, including its cultural and historical background, as well as discussions on contentious topics like violence and genocide, and whether the Exodus was a real historical event. Volume two also covers the narrative of the Old Testament, from the conquest to the divided monarchy, and a brief history of Egypt to help situate the biblical text within agreed historical events.

Sitchin shows that the end is anchored in the events of the beginning, and once you learn of this beginning, it is possible to foretell the future. In The End of Days, a masterwork that required 30 years of additional research, Sitchin presents compelling new evidence that the past is the future - that mankind and its planet Earth are subject to a predetermined cyclical celestial time.

This book contains several prophecies from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It discusses fragments of Essene commentaries regarding both the major and the minor prophets in addition to Essene commentary on other prophecies from the Bible. This book also contains fragments of non-biblical prophecy books (manuscripts from the School of the Prophets) along with the Essene commentary on these works.

This is a collection of 18 essays on a variety of occult-themed topics, covering the full spectrum of classic esoteric and related subjects, which include Hermeticism, alchemy, magic, the Kabbalah, ancient wisdom and philosophy, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, and spiritualism, by some of the most notable and prominent names in the history of those subjects.

The most popular occult work of the twentieth century The Kybalion has long fascinated readers and listeners with its exploration of hermetic wisdom. Credited to the mysterious Three Initiates, The Kybalion is an esoteric classic that has remained popular since its initial publication in 1908...

The I Ching, or Book of Change, has been consulted through the ages, in both China and the West, for answers to fundamental questions about the world and our place in it. The oldest extant book of divination, it dates back 3,000 years to ancient shamanistic practices involving the ritual preparation of the shoulder bones of oxen. From this early form of communication with the other world, it has become the Chinese spiritual book par excellence.

In this book, we will explore Gnosticism and the Divine Feminine through the lens of two great Gnostic texts. We will see the influence of Gnosticism and how their idea of the Divine Feminine effected orthodox or mainstream Christianity. The treatise of Eugnostos the Blessed (50-150 AD) and the gospel called The Sophia of Jesus Christ (50-200 AD) are presented together in a single volume, due to their close and undeniable connection.

Violence in the Old Testament has long been a stumbling block for Christians and skeptics alike. God Is a Man of War offers a fresh interpretation of Old Testament accounts of violence, by exploring them through the twofold lens of Orthodox tradition and historical context. Father Stephen De Young examines what these difficult passages reveal about the nature of Christ and His creation, bearing witness to a world filled not only with pain and suffering - often of human making - but also with the love of God.

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

In the classic Ancient Aliens and Other Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, Otto Binder takes us inside the world of ancient astronauts, using real science to make the case for their existence. Binder describes a cavalcade of astounding discoveries and superhuman accomplishments, such as: the 12,000-year-old stone disks discovered in China that describe the landing of spaceships; and the disappearance of the planet Vulcan, once familiar to 19th-century astronomers but now vanished without a trace.

This groundbreaking study traces one of archaeology's most remarkable discoveries: how fragmentary manuscripts found in Palestinian caves and Central Asian ruins belong to the same ancient text—revealing unprecedented evidence of religious transmission across vast cultural boundaries.

Each year after Pascha, the Orthodox Church celebrates the Holy Myrrhbearers, who cared for Jesus’s body after He was crucified. But myrrhbearing has a broader definition; it can serve as a metaphor for the practical, incarnate love to which Christ calls His followers. In The Art of Myrrhbearing, author Elissa Bjeletich Davis explores the lives of myrrhbearing saints in Scripture and throughout the life of the Church, offering questions for reflection. By following the lead of saints, we can learn to embrace a simple and profound way of life in communion with Christ and with others.

Demons, jinn, possession, sinister artifacts, and gruesome archaeological discoveries haunt this new book by Dr. Heather Lynn. Evil Archaeology investigates the archaeological record for artifacts and evidence of evil entities, revealing how demons from the ancient world may be dwelling among us. It also looks at the history and lore behind real relics believed to be haunted and includes historical accounts of demonic possession that go as far back as King Solomon invoking demons to help him build his famed temple.

For us to perceive any of the worlds that exist beside our own, not only do we have to covet them but we need to have sufficient energy to seize them. In this revolutionary book, Carlos Castaneda offers listeners the key to this energetic conditioning for the first time, revealing a series of body positions and physical movements that enabled various sorcerers to navigate their own sorceric journeys. By sharing this wisdom, Carlos Castaneda makes it possible for listeners to travel to some of these other realms, which are as real, unique, absolute, and engulfing as our own world.

How did human societies scale up from small, tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods" - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization are one and the same, and answer each other.

In response to popular demand, Patrick Henry Reardon explores redemption and salvation through the lens of Scripture, patristics, and liturgics, as well as through history, philosophy, language, literature, and psychology. He brings all these perspectives together to show how the whole of Christ’s work—from Incarnation to Ascension—accomplishes the “at-one-ment” of God with man.