Great Tradition

The 10 enlightening (and often humorous) lectures of Medieval Myths and Mysteries will show you how far from the “dark” times of legend these centuries were. Uncover the facts about the Knights Templar. Reveal the truth behind the tales of legendary creatures like the Questing Beast and the unicorn. Trace the events of the Black Death and the ways it altered the world in its wake, and much more. With Professor Armstrong, you will dig deep into the ways that later generations reshaped the narrative of the medieval years and perpetuated the myths.

In this landmark work, Foster examines the foundations of Christian experience, growth, and renewal found in six historical movements: contemplative, holiness, charismatic, social justice, evangelical, and incarnational. Using profiles of biblical and modern characters who exemplify these traditions, he offers suggestions on how to integrate them into your daily life and challenges you to lead a more authentic Christian experience.

A single purpose lies at the heart of all the great religious traditions: awakening to the astonishing reality of the true nature of ourselves and the universe. At the same time, through centuries of cultural accretion and focus on myth and ritual as ends in themselves, this core insight has become obscured. Here Ken Wilber provides a path for reenvisioning a religion of the future that acknowledges the evolution of humanity in every realm while remaining faithful to that original spiritual vision.

Funerary rituals show us what people thought about mortality; how they felt about loss; what they believed came next. From Roman cremations and graveside feasts, to deviant burials with heads rearranged, from richly furnished Anglo Saxon graves to the first Christian burial grounds in Wales, Buried provides an alternative history of the first millennium in Britain.

In November 2017, an international team of more than 30 scientists published the results of their two-year-long Great Pyramid research project in the journal Nature. Using an advanced imaging technique known as muon radiography, three groups working independently from each other discovered a massive, previously unknown space within the Great Pyramid of Giza. Mainstream Egyptologists suggest that the “Big Void” is simply a stress-relieving device for the Grand Gallery. But, as Scott Creighton reveals, ancient Coptic Egyptian texts describe exactly what the Big Void is.

The golden traditions of Christmas—gifts, wreaths, stockings, carols, mistletoe, and more—infuse your celebration of the season with meaning and glowing memories. And, in ways you may not realize, they also point you to the birth of Christ. Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas reveals the people, places, and events that shaped the best-loved customs of this merriest of holidays.

Soaked in mist and old magic, Storyland tells a history of Britain and the politics of its people through medieval eyes. Grounded in research, related as fiction, it begins before the Great Flood, with a troop of African giants quarrying stones. Later, the first migrants enter the Atlantic, calling themselves the Scoti and Britons, followed by the English and the Normans, crossing the North Sea.

Journeying alongside scholars, spies and saints, from western Europe to the Far East and the Antipodes, this is no ordinary travel guide. From profane pilgrim badges and Venetian laxatives to encounters with bandits and trysts with mysterious medieval witches, this book mixes fact and folklore to offer an entertaining encyclopaedia of wondrous stories and peoples. Offering a vivid and unforgettable insight into how medieval people understood their world, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages blurs the distinction between real and imagined places.

The year 2012 marked the birth of a new cycle of time that will last for the next 26,000 years. In charge of such birth is the Great Mother, the eternal source of all creation. She is calling on the feminine within us all to create a world worthy of the next seven generations and begin an era of peace, abundance, and spiritual evolution. To birth this new world, we must release our hold on old destructive patterns and instead embrace the divine feminine qualities of intuition, powerful creativity, and rhythmic renewal.

The mysteries of the Black Madonna can be traced to pre-Christian times, to the ancient devotion to Isis, the Earth Goddess, and the African Mother, to the era when God was not only female but also black. Sacred sites of the Black Madonna are still revered in Italy, and, as Alessandra Belloni reveals, the shamanic healing traditions of the Black Madonna are still alive today and just as powerful as they were millennia ago. Sharing her more than 35 years of research and fieldwork at sacred sites, Belloni takes you on a mystical pilgrimage of empowerment, initiation, and transformation.

In this initiatory guide to the hermetic art of alchemy, artist Marlene Seven Bremner reveals how the alchemical opus, the Great Work, offers a practical means for liberating the authentic creator within and attaining gnosis, or true self-knowledge. Exploring the connections between Surrealism and alchemy, as well as the rich and complicated symbolism of alchemical art, Bremner elucidates how both Surrealism and alchemy seek to unfetter the imagination and dissolve the boundaries between dream and reality, thus reconciling the conscious and unconscious minds.

The British have a relationship with their food that is unlike that of any other country. Once something that was never discussed in polite company, it is now something with which the nation is obsessed. But are we at last developing a food culture or are we just going through the motions? Eating for England is an entertaining, detailed, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek observation of the British and their food, their cooking, their eating, and how they behave in restaurants.

In Wild, Amy Jeffs journeys—on foot and through medieval texts—from landscapes of desolation to hope, offering the listener an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. The seven chapters, entitled Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe, Paradise, open with fiction and close with reflection. They blend reflections of travels through fen, forest and cave, with retelling of medieval texts that offer rich depictions of the natural world.

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.

The Holy Grail, the kingdom of Camelot, the Knights of the Round Table, and the magical sword Excalibur are all key ingredients of the legends surrounding King Arthur. But who was he really, where did he come from, and how much of what we read about him in stories that date back to the Dark Ages is true? So far, historians have failed to show that King Arthur really existed at all, and for a good reason—they have been looking in the wrong place. In this book, Alistair Moffat shatters all existing assumptions about Britain's most enigmatic hero.

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.

Right now, a Galactic Super Wave is dramatically raising the vibratory rate of our planet and everyone on it. As Bob Frissell explains, in order to catch this wave of ascension and survive and thrive during the coming Great Awakening, we must undergo a personal transformation to raise our vibration and align with the Higher Self within each of us. Frissell explores the forces working to advance our planetary ascent into higher consciousness—as well as those seeking to block it.

The legend of King Arthur and his castle Camelot has gripped people’s imagination for centuries. In this classic study, drawing upon myriad sources both literary and historical, the world’s leading Arthurian scholar Geoffrey Ashe digs deep into the important 12th century chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth to trace the origins of the myth. Through brilliant historical detective work, he shows that much of Monmouth's history, which sets out to describe fifth-century Britain, was based on fact.

Baffled by Buddhism? Confused by Catholicism? Mystified by Mysticism? World Religions can lift the cloud surrounding the main faiths of the world. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Buddhism and many more key faiths are explained clearly; providing detailed insight into the key practices and figures of each religion, this is perfect for those beginning their exploration into faith, or for those just needing a quick reference tool. World Religions details the beliefs from modern Scientology to the world's oldest faith - Zoroastrianism - and everything in between.

The book shines a light into the hidden corners of Britain's history, exploring medieval ghost villages, former architectural masterpieces, the purported resting place of Anne Boleyn's heart, England's Atlantis, God's Gift, a German war cemetery, the hamlet of Lost in Aberdeenshire, the old Welsh railway run on seven different forms of power and a missing fort in County Down. It also explains just how Britain used to be connected to mainland Europe.