Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Other Religions, Practices & Sacred Texts

Why have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe's history. The witch came to prominence - and often a painful death - in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early modern state.

Composed more than 2,000 years ago, the Dao de jing (Tao Te Ching) set forth an alternative vision of reality in a world torn apart by violence and betrayal. Second only to the Bible, this timeless classic is one of the world's most revered inspirational books. Daoism offers a comprehensive view of experience grounded in a full understanding of the wonders hidden in the ordinary.

Sands Hall chronicles her slow yet willing absorption into the Church of Scientology. Her time in the Church, the 1980s, includes the secretive illness and death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and the ascension of David Miscavige. Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion - what she found intriguing and useful - and how she came to confront its darker sides.

Brother Lawrence decided that he needed to concentrate on a simple idea: loving God in whatever he did. The Practice of the Presence of God is a record of the conversations and letters exchanged between Brother Lawrence and people in his community, who came to him for advice once they noticed his passionate living for God.

Confucius knew all about life and told us how to behave, but we can't find out precisely what he was up to. His well-meaning platitudes, quaint maxims, and quasi-enigmatic anecdotes combined to produce an ideal philosophy for civil servants. It would appear that his aim was to turn his pupils into good government officials, but his teachings succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, providing rules of conduct and spiritual fodder for more than two thousand years.

This is a book of guidance for life's journey rooted in the wisdom of ancient China. Best-selling author Deng Ming-Dao provides key poetic lines that distill the essence of Taoism, organizing them in the form of a journey. The material here is drawn from three sources: The Tao Te Ching, The Yijing, and 300 Tang Poems.

"The North" is simultaneously a location, a direction, and a mystical concept. Although this concept has ancient roots in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales, it continues to resonate today within modern culture. McIntosh leads listeners through the magical and spiritual history of the North, as well as its modern manifestations, as documented through physical records, such as runestones and megaliths, but also through mythology and lore. This mythic conception of a powerful, mysterious Northern civilization was known to the Greeks as "Hyberborea" - the "Land Beyond the North Wind".

From the heights of sacred sexuality to the depths of human foible, they ultimately have to choose: surrender to this love or shrink back to mediocrity, work through their emotional baggage or flee the connection, open to the next portal of possibility or postpone it until the next lifetime. Shaped and reshaped in love's cosmic kiln, Sarah and Lowen become a symbol of our own longing for wholeness in the presence of another.

Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939), an educated and well-known Sioux, saw both sides of the great divide between Indians and whites, and he wrote 11 books attempting to reconcile the two cultures. This book is his illumination of Indian spiritual beliefs and practices. A convert to Christianity, Eastman never lost his sense of the wholeness and beauty of the Indian's relation to his existence and to the natural world.

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Vatican Diaries comes a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how the Vatican investigates claims of miraculous events. Apocalyptic prophecies and miraculous apparitions are headline-grabbing events that often put the Catholic Church's doctrine of "rational faith" at odds with the passion of its more zealous followers. To some, these claims teeter on the edge of absurdity. Others see them as evidence of a private connection with God.

When a massive wildfire surrounded Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, five monks risked their lives to save it. A gripping narrative as well as a portrait of the Zen path and the ways of wildfire, Fire Monks reveals what it means to meet a crisis with full presence of mind.

In the autumn of 2000, Hope Edelman was a woman adrift, questioning her marriage, her profession, and her place in the larger world. Into her stagnant routine dropped Dodo, her three-year-old daughter Maya's curiously disruptive imaginary friend. Worried about how to handle Dodo's apparent hold on their daughter, she and her husband made the unlikely choice to take Maya to healers in Belize, hoping that a shaman might help them banish Dodo, and all he represented, from their lives.

Follow the life of Piyanah, daughter of a clairvoyant Indian mother, in Scarlet Feather. Piyanah demanded new freedom and an end to her tribe's sexual segregation and brutality. Trained and educated with the young braves, she develops strength and courage, and soon she will succeed the tribal chief that is if she can at last overcome a series of ordeals which prove her worthy of the Scarlet Feather. This book in the author's Far Memory series brings to life the intriguing experiences of an extraordinary an early Native American.

So, you think you could be a witch? Take your first steps on your magical pathway in which you will learn what real witches do and don't do. Enter a realm of magic gently and enchantingly, where you will learn to awaken your natural ability to explore and learn this craft.

In this work, David C. Downing explores the breadth of Lewis's writing, introducing us to the context of Christian mysticism in Lewis's day and the writers who most influenced him. Lewis's critique of mysticism is instructive to us in this day of eclectic religious thought. Exploring Lewis's sense of the mystical can help us safeguard ourselves from false mysticism, even as it opens the way to a full experience of God's presence - the "region of awe."