Gold Medal IPPY Winner in Religious Fiction Finalist in the novel/fiction category of the Next Generation Indie Book Award Winner: Best Religious Fiction, International Book Award 2017 2017 USA Best Book Awards Finalist in Fiction: Religious 2017 International Book Awards Winner in Fiction: Religious The Divine Shekinah seeks deliverance from exile to heal a world desperately in need of Her wisdom. Her chosen mission keeper, three generations of kabbalists from places as diverse as a 19th century shtetl and modern day Israel/Palestine, must grapple with profound injustices and the shadows of humanity. If they choose the path of righteousness, love, and forgiveness, Her light can return to the world. Will the mission succeed? Will the divine feminine return to the world? The Shekinah calls to all of us to find our own way to ‘knit the world back together.’

There is perhaps no greater constant in religious intuition and experience than the presence of light. In spiritual traditions East and West, light is not only ubiquitous but something that assumes strikingly similar forms in altogether different historical and cultural settings. This study examines light as an aspect of religiously valued experiences and its entailments for mystical theology, philosophy, politics, and religious art. The essays in this volume make an important contribution to religious studies by proposing that it is misleading to conceive of religious experience in terms of an irreconcilable dichotomy between universality and cultural construction. An esteemed group of contributors, representing the study of Asian and Western religious traditions from a range of disciplinary perspectives, suggests that attention to various forms of divine radiance shows that there is indeed a range of principles that, if not universal, are nevertheless very widely occurring and amenable to fruitful comparative inquiry. What results is a work of enormous scope, demonstrating compelling cross-connections that will be of value to scholars of comparative religions, mysticism, and the relationship between art and the sacred. Contributors: * Catherine B. Asher * Raoul Birnbaum * Sarah Iles Johnston * Matthew T. Kapstein * Andrew Louth * Paul E. Muller-Ortega * Elliot R. Wolfson * Mimi Hall Yiengpruksawan * Hossein Ziai

A comprehensive treatment of visionary experience in some of the main texts of Jewish mysticism, this book reveals the overwhelmingly visual nature of religious experience in Jewish spirituality from antiquity through the late Middle Ages. Using phenomenological and critical historical tools, Wolfson examines Jewish mystical texts from late antiquity, pre-kabbalistic sources from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, and twelfth- and thirteenth-century kabbalistic literature. His work demonstrates that the sense of sight assumes an epistemic priority in these writings, reflecting and building upon those scriptural passages that affirm the visual nature of revelatory experience. Moreover, the author reveals an androcentric eroticism in the scopic mentality of Jewish mystics, which placed the externalized and representable form, the phallus, at the center of the visual encounter. In the visionary experience, as Wolfson describes it, imagination serves a primary function, transmuting sensory data and rational concepts into symbols of those things beyond sense and reason. In this view, the experience of a vision is inseparable from the process of interpretation. Fundamentally challenging the conventional distinction between experience and exegesis, revelation and interpretation, Wolfson argues that for the mystics themselves, the study of texts occasioned a visual experience of the divine located in the imagination of the mystical interpreter. Thus he shows how Jewish mystics preserved the invisible transcendence of God without doing away with the visual dimension of belief.

While lecturing in Orvieto, Italy, this year, Matthew Fox encountered the powerful fresco of the Antichrist painted in the Cathedral at the outset of the 16th century by Luca Signorelli. He portrays the Antichrist in the context of his day and culture. This archetype reminds us of the dark side of humanity and politics. Fox’s creative and critical eye turns it into a searing device for examining the deep stakes in the 2024 election.

LISTEN TO ITS RHYTHMS WITH AN OPEN HEART The Book of the Holy Light reveals the nature of God in the form of the Son of God. The first chapter, The Testament of the Holy Light of God, opens the framework of existence in the body of God revealing the nature of light in the embrace of unity. The book continues with The Testament of the Son of God inviting the children of light to return home to the inner space of God. The next chapter, The Twelve Transformations of the Holy Light of God, awakens the inner transformations of consciousness transmuting the children of light into the body of God. Next, The Trans-portal Matrix of Divine Grace describes the inter-connecting matrix of consciousness binding the children of light in the body of God. The book continues with The Dimensions of Light opening the multi-dimensional universe to the children of God. The next chapter, The Forms of Ascending Light, triggers the mechanisms of ascension in the consciousness of the child of light. Finally, The Circle of Ascending Light weaves a tapestry of light around the children of God connecting them to the body of God. "This is the story of light told through revelation. To appreciate it fully you must set aside your intellect and, like poetry, listen to its rhythms with an open heart." Tony Ellis, award winning poet and author of There is Wisdom in Walnuts

Journeying up the Mountain is the captivating story of a group of spiritual seekers discovering they are incarnate souls called to travel through higher realms, called to find the most revered teacher. Ammaji, the celestial guide, is living at the top of the world, surrounded by an eternal sunrise ready to lead the sacred path. She introduces the ten Wisdom Goddesses described in ancient Hindu texts. Through a series of otherworldly events, meditations and initiations the Tantric Goddesses impart their innermost secrets that have been hidden from the world for eons. Ultimately they free us from our karmic burdens and empower us with divine attributes that support our spiritual progress to enlightenment. We discover each Goddess is a part of our own being. In a spiritual backdrop of immense landscapes, glaciers, rivers, and starlit nights, our awareness is lifted into the wisdom of our true nature, the deep sky of our heart, our immortal self.

This volume offers patristic comment on the first half of the second article of the Nicene Creed, concerning the person of Christ. Readers will gain insight into the history and substance of what the early church believed about Jesus as the God-Man.