Monasteries have been the locus classicus of the academic investigation of Tibetan religions. This volume seeks to balance this emphasis with an exploration of the diverse religious specialists who operate outside of the monastery in Tibet and along the Himalayan belt. The articles collected here depict Tantric professionals, visionaries, village lamas, spirit mediums, and female religious leaders whose loyalties reside in the noncelibate sphere but whose activities have had a significant impact on Tibetan religion. Using methodologies drawn from anthropological and textual scholarship, these seven essays bolster our understanding of religious practices and their performers beyond the monasteries of Central and Eastern Tibet, Bhutan, and India from historical times to the present day.

Dating back to 324 AD, when a community of monks requested a chapel to be built on the spot where they believed the Burning Bush had stood, the monastery of St. Catherine has remained an oasis of peace for centuries. Today, it is a place of international pilgrimage, housing the most extensive collection of Greek Orthodox icons in the world. Granted unprecedented access to this holy site, photographer Araldo De Luca and author Corinna Rossi take readers inside the walls of this sacred place, revealing its peerless artistic, historical, and religious legacy through superb photographs and an authoritative text that incorporates the most recent research and discoveries. Presented in a handsome slipcase and featuring a preface by Archbishop Damianos of Sinai, the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, this is a book to be cherished by art lovers and anyone interested in our historical and religious heritage.

The Monastery Treasure is the first of a series of mystery adventures taken from the memories of Gramps as he tells the Sam 'n Me tales. Gramps tells the story using the lingo of the old west and creates images you swear will take you into the adventure with them. Sam 'n Gramps start out as detectives working for the Pinkertons in Santa Fe, New Mexico and wind up setting up their own treasure hunting business. This first treasure hunt starts with Sam receiving a monastery record book that contains the secret to a treasure worth a king's ransom. Sam's Uncle Timothy found the record book years before and was never able to solve the secret to where the treasure was. Uncle Timothy promises Sam half of the treasure if he can find it. The story that surrounds that treasure hunt, and the treachery of the scoundrels involved, told through Gramps unique style of spinning a yarn, will keep you feeling you are part of the story as he tells it. That's only the beginning. There are dozens more mystery adventures and each of them takes you into greater and greater peril with Sam and Gramps and each new partner they pick up along the way. Every adventure requires them to become ever more resourceful using their growing arsenal of weapons and strangely gifted powers. Prepare yourselves for extraordinary tales that will take you into the farthest reaches of your imagination. Indeed, they will take you beyond even the wildest reaches of your imagination. Get ready now cause once ya get started yer gonna find yerself in the same whirlwind of adventures we are. Thanks for joinin us pard, lets get started. Gramps

The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai has been characterized by scholars as the most celebrated of the world's monasteries, while in the conscience of the Orthodox peoples it was and remains the most revered and longed-for focus of pilgrimage after the Holy Places. In the course of the Monastery's fifteen centuries of uninterrupted life, and despite the great difficulties faced in the midst of alien peoples, not only has St. Catherine's managed to maintain the Orthodox faith intact and provide the Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate with pre-eminent figures of Asceticism, but it also secured special privileges from the Prophet Mohammed and, at a later date, from popes of Rome and leaders of both the East and West. The Monastery thus proved itself a great spiritual hearth of Hellenism, rendering the most distinguished service to monasticism, Orthodoxy, the Church and the Greek people. At the same time, the Monastery acquired international fame as a unique centre of Byzantine icon painting. Here the specialist may study the uninterrupted development of this art from the 6th century up till the present day. Furthermore, the Monastery also developed its own Sinaitic school of icon painting with its own stylistic techniques and 'Sinaitic' subject matter. Examples of this school's work are encountered not only in icons but also in illuminated manuscripts of the calligraphic and chrysographic workshop of the Monastery's world-famous Library. The Monastery of Sinai, moreover, surrounded as it is by the fortification walls built by its founder, the Emperor Justinian, and isolated in the inhospitable desert, was through the centuries a secure haven for invaluable works of art sent from all corners of the Earth as devout offerings of the faithful. Byzantine, Post-Byzantine and Modern Greek works representing all types of ecclesiastical art make up the artistic treasures of the Monastery.

The world-famous Buddhist monastery of Alchi in Ladakh, India, is the best-preserved temple complex in the Himalayas. Proposed for inclusion in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list in 1998, the monastery's artworks reveal influences from India and Tibet across Central Asia and Iran, even as far back as Ancient Greece. Housing thousands of rare paintings and sculptures from the area dating back to the eleventh century, it provides fascinating insight into the spiritual and secular life of medieval Kashmir and Western Tibet. The Dalai Lama has authorized the publication of images of these Buddhist masterpieces for the first and only time. Beautifully photographed by Peter van Ham, the images in this volume capture the miniaturesque delicacy and broad range of color of these precious works. With essays by renowned Tibetologist Amy Heller, and a foreward by His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself, this once-in-a-lifetime volume offers fascinating new insights--including a large panorama double gate fold--into one of the most beautiful monasteries in the Himalayas.