Showing titles in Customs & Traditions

In the 10 lectures of Wolves and Werewolves in History and Popular Culture, author and teacher Shannon Scott will take you around the world to explore the many ways humans have created and shared stories of wolves, shape-shifting, and lycanthropy.  

From the dark centuries of British prehistory to the ninth century AD, comes tales of giants and fairy-folk of druids and saints. From King Lear and King Arthur, to Fingal, Beowulf, Gwendolen, and Guinevere legendary characters have shaped the making of the nation. But who were they? In Mythology of the British Isles, Geoffrey Ashe explores how each of these stories are inter-connected, and how they have taken on fresh significance and meaning as historical and archaeological research has uncovered the truth behind each legend.

In this third volume of The Masks of God - Joseph Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology - the preeminent mythologist looks at the pagan religions of Greece, Rome, and the Celts, as well as the Abrahamic religions - Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Exploring the West’s shift from female-centered to male-centered mythology, Campbell examines the distinguishing characteristics and the shared root concepts of these mythologies. The Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks.

The Way of Fire and Ice reimagines Norse Paganism with mystical practices and rituals for today's world as well as tips for building community and resisting fascism. This approach to working with Norse deities and beliefs is a living, adaptable tradition, representing a strong alternative to the reconstructionist perspectives of Asatru and Heathenry.

When philosopher and traveller Will Buckingham’s partner died, he sought solace in throwing open the door to new people. Now, as we reflect on our experiences of the pandemic and its enforced separations, and as global migration figures ever more prominently in our collective future, Buckingham brings together insights from philosophy, anthropology, history and literature to explore how our traditions of meeting the other can mitigate the issues of our time.  

Myth is our wild way of telling the truth, of sharing stories that have our living earth speaking through them. There is an old insistence that we each have a twin we know nothing about. A wild, curious twin that was thrown out the window the night we were born, taking much of our energy with them. This story is a quest to find and court our wild twin, for they have something important to tell us. If there was something we were here to do in our few, brief years, we can be sure that the wild twin is holding the key.

Traditional interpretations of the creatures of the Bible have sanded down their sharp, unsavory edges, transforming them into celestial beings of glory and light—or chubby, happy cherubs. Those cherubs? They're actually hybrid guardian monsters, more closely associated with the Egyptian sphinx than with flying babies. And the seraphim? Winged serpents sent to mete out God's vengeance. Demons aren't at war with angels; they're a distinct supernatural species used by Satan and by God. The pattern is chilling. Most of these monsters aren't God's opponents—they're God's entourage.

The author of such acclaimed books as The Hero With a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth discusses the primitive roots of mythology, examining them in light of the most recent discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology.

Hidden in the margins of history books, classical literature, and thousands of years of stories, myths and legends, through to contemporary literature, TV and film, there is a diverse and other-worldly super community of queer heroes to discover, learn from, and celebrate. Queer Heroes of Myth & Legend brings to life characters who are romantic, brave, mysterious, and always fantastical. It is a magnificent celebration of queerness through the ages in all its legendary glory.

Christopher Hadley is a journalist and author. His pieces on such popular subjects as 18th-century religious tracts have appeared in The Independent, The Guardian, The Times, London Review of Books, Esquire and his local parish magazine, among many other publications. Hollow Places, an account of his search across 1,000 years of British history for the dragon-slayer Shonks, is his first history book.

Discover fascinating ancient Japanese fairy tales as well as the folk tales of the Ainu/Aino. The first book in this collection, titled Japanese Fairy Tales, was written by Iwaya Sazanami and translated by Yei Theodora Ozaki, a 20th-century translator of Japanese short stories and fairy tales. The second book in this collection is a rare one that is not usually available in audio format: Aino Folk-Tales by Basil Chamberlain, one of the most prominent British Japanologists active in Japan during the latter half of the 19th century.

Sometimes, the questions can be more interesting than the answers. The Search in Extraterrestrial Intelligence [SETI] has recently hotted up, with a whole new wave of research going to show that we will always be fascinated by what we don't understand. Was 'The Wow Signal' a radio transmission from deep space? Or was it the resonating frequency of a passing comet? Often, it can feel as if professional explainers of all stripes want to put an end to anything mysterious in life.

In 1936 anthropologist Tom Harrison, poet and journalist Charles Madge and documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings set up the Mass Observation Project. The idea was simple: ordinary people would record, in diary form, the events of their everyday lives. An estimated one million pages eventually found their way to the archive - and it soon became clear this was more than anyone could digest. Today, the diaries are stored at the University of Sussex, where, remarkably, most remain unread.

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.

At a time when we are all confronted by not one, but many crossroads in our modern lives - identity, technology, trust, politics, and a global pandemic - celebrated mythologist and wilderness guide Martin Shaw delivers Smoke Hole: three metaphors to help us understand our world, one that is assailed by the seductive promises of social media and shadowed by a health crisis that has brought loneliness and isolation to an all-time high.

In Backwoods Witchcraft, Jake Richards offers up a folksy stew of family stories, lore, omens, rituals, and conjure crafts that he learned from his great-grandmother, his grandmother, and his grandfather, a Baptist minister who Jake remembers could "rid someone of a fever with an egg or stop up the blood in a wound." The witchcraft practiced in Appalachia is very much a folk magic of place, a tradition that honors the seen and unseen beings that inhabit the land as well as the soil, roots, and plant life.

Eclipses have stunned, frightened, emboldened, and mesmerized people for thousands of years. They were recorded on ancient turtle shells discovered in the Wastes of Yin in China, on clay tablets from Mesopotamia and on the Mayan "Dresden Codex". They are mentioned in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and at least eight times in the Bible. Columbus used them to trick people, while Renaissance painter Taddeo Gaddi was blinded by one. Sorcery was banished within the Catholic Church after astrologers used an eclipse to predict a pope's death.

Rich with storytelling, history, folklore, and Marshall's own personal experiences, The Lakota Way expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and the 12 core qualities that are crucial to the Lakota way of living: bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth, and compassion.

The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India. It is of immense importance to the culture of the Indian subcontinent and is a major text of Hinduism. Its discussion of human goals (artha or 'purpose', kama or 'pleasure', dharma or 'duty' and moksha or 'liberation') takes place in a long-standing tradition, attempting to explain the relationship of the individual to society and the world (the nature of the 'self') and the workings of karma.

Christopher Hadley takes us on a lyrical journey into this past, retracing and searching for an elusive Roman road that sprang from one of the busiest road hubs in Roman Britain. His passage is not always easy. Time and nature have erased many clues; bridges rotted and whole woods grew across the route. Carters found an easier ford downstream, and people broke up its milestones to mend new paths. Year after year the heavy clay swallowed whole lengths of it; the once mighty road became a bridleway, an overgrown hollow-way, a parched mark in the soil.