Author: Karen MuttonPublisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 1948803569
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Subterranean Realms
Author: Karen MuttonPublisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 1948803569
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Subterranean Realms is a unique book that surveys underground and rock cut structures created in the past. It is the third book in Mutton’s trilogy on mysterious realms, the others being Sunken Realms and Water Realms. We know who built some of these astonishing and mysterious structures, but others were built by unknown civilizations in prehistory for reasons that are debated among researchers. Some subterranean structures may have been built for initiation ceremonies or perhaps for acoustic reasons, or both. Mutton discusses such interesting sites as: Derinkuyu, an underground city in Cappadocia, Turkey that housed 20,000 people; Roman catacombs of Domitilla; Palermo Capuchin catacombs; Alexandria catacombs; Paris catacombs; Maltese hypogeum; Rock-cut structures of Petra; Treasury of Atreus, Mycenae; Elephanta Caves, India; Lalibela, Ethiopia; Tarquinia Etruscan necropolis; Hallstatt salt mine; Beijing air raid shelters; Japanese high command Okinawa tunnels; more. There are tons of illustrations in this fascinating book!
Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms
Author: Bob CurranPublisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
ISBN: 1601639597
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 272
There are places that turn up in literature or in film—mystical and legendary places whose names may be familiar but about which we know little. We nod knowingly at the reference, but are often left wondering about places such as Atlantis, the lost land overwhelmed by the sea, or El Dorado, the fabulous city that vanished somewhere in the South American jungles. Other names are more evocative—Mount Olympus, the Garden of Eden, the mystic Isle of Avalon, and Davy Jones' Locker. But did such places actually exist and if so, where were they, and what really happened? What are the traditions and legends associated with them? In the fascinating new book, Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms, historian Dr. Bob Curran sets out to find the answers by journeying to the far-flung corners of the world and to the outer reaches of human imagination.
They Would Be Gods
Author: Anthony K. ForwoodPublisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1257373625
Category : Curiosities and wonders
Languages : en
Pages : 446
New York Underground
Author: Julia SolisPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000101304
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296
Did alligators ever really live in New York's sewers? What's it like to explore the old aqueducts beneath the city? How many levels are beneath Grand Central Station? And how exactly did the pneumatic tube system that New York's post offices used to employ work? In this richly illustrated historical tour of New York's vast underground systems, Julia Solis answers all these questions and much, much more. New York Underground takes readers through ingenious criminal escape routes, abandoned subway stations, and dark crypts beneath lower Manhattan to expose the city's basic anatomy. While the city is justly famous for what lies above ground, its underground passages are equally legendary and tell us just as much about how the city works.
Between Science and Fiction
Author: Hanjo BerressemPublisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 364390228X
Category : CD-ROMs
Languages : en
Pages : 355
The idea that the Earth is hollow has inspired both the world of science and the world of fiction. As a scientific concept, this notion has informed the works of Edmond Halley and Leonhard Euler. As a literary conceit, it can be found in the works of Dante and E.A. Poe; in novels by Jules Verne, Arno Schmidt, Thomas Pynchon, and Mark Z. Danielewski; and in comics, films, and computer games. This collection addresses both the scientific and the aesthetic aspects of the "Hollow Earth," with essays that range from medieval literature to afrofuturism. (Series: n-1 | work - science - medium - Vol. 5)
The Enigmas of History
Author: Alan BakerPublisher: Random House
ISBN: 1780577540
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 101
History is replete with unanswered questions regarding our own past and that of the world in which we live. Some of these questions are mere curiosities; others are of the profoundest importance to our cultural identity and have a serious bearing on our future. Each self-contained chapter in The Enigmas of History covers a particular mystery, ranging across the globe and throughout history: from Atlantis to the Amazons; from the Ark of the Covenant to the enigma of the Black Madonnas; and from the weird mystery of Spring-heeled Jack to visions of the Virgin Mary. Among the topics explored are: • The strange history of the Dogon tribe of Mali in West Africa, who believe that they were visited in the distant past by amphibious beings from another star • The legend of the lost Himalayan kingdom of Shambhala • The mystery of the crystal skulls • The enigma of the indecipherable Voynich manuscript The Enigmas of History is an entertaining, informative compendium of strange events and weird encounters with the unexplained. It is packed with information on historical mysteries, puzzles and bewildering discoveries, and will intrigue the historian and general reader alike.
World Religions
Author: Thomas A. RobinsonPublisher: Baker Academic
ISBN: 1441219722
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 526
This masterful survey of world religions presents a clear and concise portrait of the history, beliefs, and practices of Eastern and Western religions. The new edition contains added material and has been revised throughout. The authors, both respected scholars of world religions, have over fifty years of combined teaching experience. Their book is accessibly written for introductory classes, can be easily adapted for one- or two-semester courses, and presents a neutral approach for broad classroom use. Pedagogical aids include further reading suggestions, photographs, sidebars, and pronunciation guides. An 800-question bank of multiple-choice test questions is available to professors through Baker Academic's Textbook eSources.
The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva
Author: Shi ZhiruPublisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824864832
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329
In modern Chinese Buddhism, Dizang is especially popular as the sovereign of the underworld. Often represented as a monk wearing a royal crown, Dizang helps the deceased faithful navigate the complex underworld bureaucracy, avert the punitive terrors of hell, and arrive at the happy realm of rebirth. The author is concerned with the formative period of this important Buddhist deity, before his underworldly aspect eclipses his connections to other religious expressions and at a time when the art, mythology, practices, and texts of his cult were still replete with possibilities. She begins by problematizing the reigning model of Dizang, one that proposes an evolution of gradual sinicization and increasing vulgarization of a relatively unknown Indian bodhisattva, Ksitigarbha, into a Chinese deity of the underworld. Such a model, the author argues, obscures the many-faceted personality and iconography of Dizang. Rejecting it, she deploys a broad array of materials (art, epigraphy, ritual texts, scripture, and narrative literature) to recomplexify Dizang and restore (as much as possible from the fragmented historical sources) what this figure meant to Chinese Buddhists from the sixth to tenth centuries. Rather than privilege any one genre of evidence, the author treats both material artifacts and literary works, canonical and noncanonical sources. Adopting an archaeological approach, she excavates motifs from and finds resonances across disparate genres to paint a vibrant, detailed picture of the medieval Dizang cult. Through her analysis, the cult, far from being an isolated phenomenon, is revealed as integrally woven into the entire fabric of Chinese Buddhism, functioning as a kaleidoscopic lens encompassing a multivalent religio-cultural assimilation that resists the usual bifurcation of doctrine and practice or "elite" and "popular" religion. The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva presents a fascinating wealth of material on the personality, iconography, and lore associated with the medieval Dizang. It elucidates the complex cultural, religious, and social forces shaping the florescence of this savior cult in Tang China while simultaneously addressing several broader theoretical issues that have preoccupied the field. Zhiru not only questions the use of sinicization as a lens through which to view Chinese Buddhist history, she also brings both canonical and noncanonical literature into dialogue with a body of archaeological remains that has been ignored in the study of East Asian Buddhism.
Teutonic Mythology
Author: Viktor RydbergPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Germanic peoples
Languages : en
Pages : 732
An Empire of Air and Water
Author: Siobhan CarrollPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812246780
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Planetary spaces such as the poles, the oceans, the atmosphere, and subterranean regions captured the British imperial imagination. Intangible, inhospitable, or inaccessible, these blank spaces—what Siobhan Carroll calls "atopias"—existed beyond the boundaries of known and inhabited places. The eighteenth century conceived of these geographic outliers as the natural limits of imperial expansion, but scientific and naval advances in the nineteenth century created new possibilities to know and control them. This development preoccupied British authors, who were accustomed to seeing atopic regions as otherworldly marvels in fantastical tales. Spaces that an empire could not colonize were spaces that literature might claim, as literary representations of atopias came to reflect their authors' attitudes toward the growth of the British Empire as well as the part they saw literature playing in that expansion. Siobhan Carroll interrogates the role these blank spaces played in the construction of British identity during an era of unsettling global circulations. Examining the poetry of Samuel T. Coleridge and George Gordon Byron and the prose of Sophia Lee, Mary Shelley, and Charles Dickens, as well as newspaper accounts and voyage narratives, she traces the ways Romantic and Victorian writers reconceptualized atopias as threatening or, at times, vulnerable. These textual explorations of the earth's highest reaches and secret depths shed light on persistent facets of the British global and environmental imagination that linger in the twenty-first century.
