Departing from the political economy perspective taken by the vast majority of volumes devoted to Mesoamerican obsidian, Obsidian Reflections is an examination of obsidian's sociocultural dimensions—particularly in regard to Mesoamerican world view, religion, and belief systems. Exploring the materiality of this volcanic glass rather than only its functionality, this book considers the interplay among people, obsidian, and meaning and how these relationships shaped patterns of procurement, exchange, and use. An international group of scholars hailing from Belize, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United States provides a variety of case studies from Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. The authors draw on archaeological, iconographic, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric data to examine obsidian as a touchstone for cultural meaning, including references to sacrificial precepts, powerful deities, landscape, warfare, social relations, and fertility. Obsidian Reflections underscores the necessity of understanding obsidian from within its cultural context—the perspective of the indigenous people of Mesoamerica. It will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists as well as students and scholars of lithic studies and material culture.

Departing from the political economy perspective taken by the vast majority of volumes devoted to Mesoamerican obsidian, Obsidian Reflections is an examination of obsidian's sociocultural dimensions—particularly in regard to Mesoamerican world view, religion, and belief systems. Exploring the materiality of this volcanic glass rather than only its functionality, this book considers the interplay among people, obsidian, and meaning and how these relationships shaped patterns of procurement, exchange, and use. An international group of scholars hailing from Belize, France, Japan, Mexico, and the United States provides a variety of case studies from Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. The authors draw on archaeological, iconographic, ethnographic, and ethnohistoric data to examine obsidian as a touchstone for cultural meaning, including references to sacrificial precepts, powerful deities, landscape, warfare, social relations, and fertility. Obsidian Reflections underscores the necessity of understanding obsidian from within its cultural context—the perspective of the indigenous people of Mesoamerica. It will be of great interest to Mesoamericanists as well as students and scholars of lithic studies and material culture.

Does the future meet the past, or does the past meet the future? Olivia Adam shall endeavor to discover that answer while trying to stay alive in this historic incident. Her normal career-oriented life is flipped upside down after stumbling into an antique shop and found herself thrusted over 200 years in the past. A ransom demand and near-deadly poisoning have her wondering if she will have the opportunity to find her answers. The idyllic vacation she had planned cast away as a noble lord plays with her heartstrings, attempting to lure her into a forbidden love. Olivia finds herself on a deadly adventure that has her precariously tiptoeing a fine line between two worlds that have collided in the most stunning way. Will she ever return home, or has destiny chosen her path for her in this electrifying tale we can all ponder does a mirror reflection really tell-all?

Jungian Reflections on Systemic Racism is a unique contribution of Jungian analysts and analysts-in-training who provide individual perspectives and approaches to promoting greater inclusivity in analytical theory, training and practice. This book examines issues of racism through intrapsychic, interpersonal, and archetypal lenses. Drawing from the specificity and ingenuity of Jungian psychoanalysis, the authors provide personal narratives, clinical vignettes, and theoretical perspectives that exemplify ways of comprehending and furthering the work of anti-racism. The editors assert that without deeper exploration of our theories, distinguishing between the theory itself and the theorist’s unconscious biases, our clinical paradigms unconsciously align and thus perhaps promote an attitude of white supremacy in psychoanalytic training programs and practices. Without claiming to reflect the official view of any particular psychoanalytic community, it utilizes Jung’s analytic paradigm to offer insight into the dynamics of the cultural complex of racism from a depth psychological perspective. Jungian Reflections on Systemic Racism is an important resource for psychoanalytic students, trainees, supervisors, and practitioners, as well as for clinicians, medical professionals, social workers, mental health professionals, sociologists, and anyone interested in the wide impact of the unscientific construct of 'race’.

Spirituality has consistently been present in the political and cultural counternarratives of Chicanx literature. Calling the Soul Back focuses on the embodied aspects of a spirituality integrating body, mind, and soul. Centering the relationship between embodiment and literary narrative, Christina Garcia Lopez shows narrative as healing work through which writers and readers ritually call back the soul—one’s unique immaterial essence—into union with the body, counteracting the wounding fragmentation that emerged out of colonization and imperialism. These readings feature both underanalyzed and more popular works by pivotal writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, and Rudolfo Anaya, in addition to works by less commonly acknowledged authors. Calling the Soul Back explores the spiritual and ancestral knowledge offered in narratives of bodies in trauma, bodies engaged in ritual, grieving bodies, bodies immersed in and becoming part of nature, and dreaming bodies. Reading across narrative nonfiction, performative monologue, short fiction, fables, illustrated children’s books, and a novel, Garcia Lopez asks how these narratives draw on the embodied intersections of ways of knowing and being to shift readers’ consciousness regarding relationships to space, time, and natural environments. Using an interdisciplinary approach, Calling the Soul Back draws on literary and Chicanx studies scholars as well as those in religious studies, feminist studies, sociology, environmental studies, philosophy, and Indigenous studies, to reveal narrative’s healing potential to bring the soul into balance with the body and mind.

The Harrington curse goes back a few generations and affected the Harrington family in a big way, it was said that Annabelle Harrington went missing and cursed three mirrors before she disappeared. The mirrors were discovered in an attic and each given to three members of the family, it was then that horrific events took place that led to death itself. Horrible visions and blood curdling screams took place in Harrington Manor. Emma an owner of one of the mirrors, was a descendant of Annabelle's Husband John Harrington who was Lord of the Manor and the first member of the family to be cursed. John discovered that Annabelle was having an affair with the artist Ralph Bedford, so he pursued and murdered him. Annabelle went missing after discovering that she was pregnant by Ralph, it is there that the strange story begins, dare you read on! A number of crime investigators from Criminal World magazine are assigned to investigate the unusual activities of these mirrors and what lies between the deaths of one of inheritors -Gladys Harrington. One such reporter called Samantha King is desperately trying to sort her own life out and believes the answer could come from her trip to Scotland on a dangerous search for the mystery of the mirrors.

Uto-Aztecan iconic practices are primarily conditioned by the consciousness of the snake as a death-dealing power, and as such, an animal that displays the deepest fears and anxieties of the individual. The attempt to study a snake simulacrum thus constitutes the basic objective of this volume. A long, all-embracing iconicity of snakes and related snake motifs are evident in different cultural expressions ranging from rock art templates to other cultural artifacts like basketry, pottery, temple architecture and sculptural motifs. Uto-Aztecan iconography demonstrates a symbolic memorial order of emotional valences, as well as the negotiations with death and a belief in rebirth, just as the skin-shedding snake reptile manifests in its life cycle.