This travel and pilgrimage guidebook is meant primarily for Buddhists or those interested in Buddhism who wish to explore Sri Lanka’s rich cultural and spiritual heritage. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the island, the author weaves together archaeological findings, art history and the stories and legends of the Buddhist tradition to bring to life thirty-three places of religious significance.

Will the 'Alala ever return to the wild? A bird sacred to Hawaiians and a member of the raven family, the 'Alala today survives only in captivity. How the species once flourished, how it has been driven to near-extinction, and how people struggled to save it, is the gripping story of Seeking the Sacred Raven. For years, author Mark Jerome Walters has tracked the sacred bird's role in Hawaiian culture and the indomitable 'Alala's sad decline. Trekking through Hawaii's rain forests high on Mauna Loa, talking with biologists, landowners, and government officials, he has woven an epic tale of missed opportunities and the best intentions gone awry. A species that once numbered in the thousands is now limited to about 50 captive birds. Seeking the Sacred Raven is as much about people and culture as it is about failed policies. From the ancient Polynesians who first settled the island, to Captain Cook in the 18th century, to would-be saviors of the 'Alala in the 1990s, individuals with conflicting passions and priorities have shaped Hawaii and the fate of this dwindling cloud-forest species. Walters captures brilliantly the internecine politics among private landowners, scientists, environmental groups, individuals and government agencies battling over the bird's habitat and protection. It's only one species, only one bird, but Seeking the Sacred Raven illustrates vividly the many dimensions of species loss, for the human as well as non-human world.

The definitive reference book on Ireland's cultural and religious heritage. Ireland has one of the finest cultural heritages and a standard reference book combining the related subjects of folklore, myth, legend and romance is long overdue. There are 350 substantial entries, in alphabetical order from Abán, a 6th-century saint, to Weather, all with full references to sources, a synopsis of relevant stories, and discussion of their origin, nature and development. These are complimented by a genre-list of material under various headings, such as Mythical Lore, Fianna Cycle, Ulster Cycle, King Cycles, Peoples and Traditions, Religious Lore, and Folk Custom and Belief. There is also a wealth of genealogical detail, indicating how historical and social circumstances have influenced the growth and spread of Irish lore. DAITHI O HOGAIN, Associate Professor of Irish Folklore at University College Dublin, was an international authority on folklore and traditional literature.

"This book interweaves spiritual quest, travel, memoir, history, theological reflection, cultural analysis, and personal introspection"--Jacket.

While shipwrecked on the island of Pala, Will Farnaby, a disenchanted journalist, discovers a utopian society that has flourished for the past 120 years. Although he at first disregards the possibility of an ideal society, as Farnaby spends time with the people of Pala his ideas about humanity change. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

Sacred kingship has been the core political form, in small-scale societies and in vast empires, for much of world history. This collaborative and interdisciplinary book recasts the relationship between religion and politics by exploring this institution in long-term and global comparative perspective. Editors A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern present a theoretical framework for understanding sacred kingship, which leading scholars reflect on and respond to in a series of essays. They distinguish between two separate but complementary religious tendencies, immanentism and transcendentalism, which mold kings into divinized or righteous rulers, respectively. Whereas immanence demands priestly and cosmic rites from kings to sustain the flourishing of life, transcendence turns the focus to salvation and subordinates rulers to higher ethical objectives. Secular modernity does not end the struggle between immanence and transcendence—flourishing and righteousness—but only displaces it from kings onto nations and individuals. After an essay by Marshall Sahlins that ranges from the Pacific to the Arctic, the book contains chapters on religion and kingship in settings as far-flung as ancient Egypt, classical Greece, medieval Islam, Mughal India, modern European drama, and ISIS. Sacred Kingship in World History sheds new light on how religion has constructed rulership, with implications spanning global history, religious studies, political theory, and anthropology.

Ambitious scholiasts, men of a small sub-race born but yesterday, and one of the latest issues of the Aryan stock, took upon themselves to overturn the religious thought of the world, and succeeded. For nearly two thousand years they impressed thinking Humanity with the belief in the existence of Satan. Plato merged the history of Atlantis, which covered several million years, into one event which he located on one small island about the size of Ireland, whereas the priests spoke of Atlantis as a continent vast as all Asia and Libya put together. The statements of Herodotus that the Atlantes who were vegetarians, whose sleep was never disturbed by dreams, and who cursed the sun because his excessive heat scorched and tormented them, are all based on moral and psychic facts and not on physiological disturbance. Atlas is the old continents of Lemuria and Atlantis, combined and personified in one symbol. He supports the sacred islands and continents on its shoulders. The poets attribute to Atlas a superior wisdom and a thorough acquaintance with the depths of the ocean because both Lemuria and Atlantis bore races instructed by divine masters; and both were transferred to the bottom of the seas, where they now slumber until their next reappearance above the waters. The feet of Atlas tread the earth while his shoulders support the celestial vault, an allusion to the gigantic peaks of the Lemurian and Atlantean continents. Proud Atlas, having sunk one third of its size into the waters, its two parts remained as a heirloom of Atlantis. Atlas and the Teneriffe Peak, now two of the dwarfed relics of the lost continents, were thrice as lofty during the day of Lemuria and twice as high in that of Atlantis. Alchemy had its birth-place in Atlantis during the Fourth Race, and had only its renaissance in Egypt. So secret was the knowledge of the last islands of Atlantis, on account of the superhuman powers possessed by its inhabitants (the last direct descendants of Divine Kings) that to divulge its whereabouts and existence was punished by death. To the uninitiated profane the dead letter was religion, and interpretation a sacrilege. Dead letter could neither edify nor uplift him. But to initiated philosopher Hesiod’s Theogony is as historical as any history can be. Poseidon-Neptune, the grandson of Ouranos, is the Hindu Idaspati, and identical with Narayana, the mover in (not on) the waters. Ouranos was the first astronomical teacher of men because he is one of the seven Dhyani-Chohans overseeing that second race. Ouranos gave birth to the Saturnian Titans of the Third Race, and it is they who mutilated him. For when creation by divine will was superseded by physical procreation, they needed Ouranos no more. Poseidon-Neptune and Nereus, who fathered the Nereids, are one: the former is the ruler or spirit of Atlantis before the beginning of its submersion; the latter, after. Poseidon is the titanic strength of the living race; Nereus, its spirit reincarnated in the subsequent Fifth or Aryan Race. Poseidon is of the earth earthy, strong and self-asserting, sensual, jealous, and vindictive, because he symbolises the spirit of the Atlantean Race that lives above the surface of the seas and which is composed of giants, the children of Eurymedon, the race that fathered Polyphemus and the one-eyed Cyclopes. The key to the mysteries of the Christian as well as of the Grecian Theogonies and Sciences, is the Secret Doctrine of the prehistoric nations. The standing army of Atlantis is given as upwards of a million men; its navy as 1,200 ships plus 240,000 men. Such statements are quite inapplicable to Poseidonis, a small island state of about the size of Ireland! Ethnologically, the seven daughters of Atlas or Atlantides are the seven sub-races, as they are credited with having married gods and having become mothers of famous heroes, the founders of many nations and cities. Astronomically, the Atlantides have become the seven Pleiades. Esoterically, the two are connected with the destinies of nations, as shaped by past events according to Karmic law. The Secret Doctrine shows that the founders of the Root-Races have all been connected with the Polar Star. The Aryan race was born and developed in the far north, however, after the sinking of Atlantis its tribes emigrated south into Asia. Hence Prometheus is son of Asia, and Deukalion, his son, the Greek Noah. Cyclopes, the beloved priests of Apollo, were the last three sub-races of the northern race, the Lemurians. The single eye stands for the all-penetrating spiritual eye, which atrophied when their pastoral life evolved into the sensual culture of the Atlanteans, only to be replaced by the outward-looking eyes of lust and greed. Odysseus-Ulysses belongs to the cycle of the heroes of the Atlantean Fourth Race. His adventure with the pastoral giants is an allegory of the gradual passage from the Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the sophisticated culture and physical proclivities of the Atlanteans. That other allegory, which makes Apollo kill the Cyclops to avenge the death of his son Asklepios (by Zeus with a lightning bolt fashioned by Cyclopes) refers to the Hyperborean Arimaspian Cyclopes, the last race endowed with the Wisdom-eye. In his occult aspect, Apollo is patron of Number Seven. Cosmically and astronomically, he is the Sun personified. Psychically and spiritually, his significance is far more important. The Greeks naturalised the gods they “borrowed” and made Hellenes of them, and the moderns helped them. To make a difference between Lemuria and Atlantis, the ancient writers referred to the latter as the northern or Hyperborean Atlantis, and to the former as the Southern one. Geologically, Leto-Latona is the Hyperborean Continent and its Race. The quarrel of Latona with Niobe, the Atlantean race, allegorizes the history of the two continents. Latona-Lemuria is transformed into Niobe-Atlantis, over which her son Apollo, or the Sun, reigns with an iron rod, truly, since Herodotus makes the Atlantes curse his too great heat. The Lemuro-Atlantean, is the first physical race, though the third and the fourth in number. The Lemurians, as also the early Atlanteans, were divided into two opposing fraternities, the Sons of Darkness, and the Sons of Light. There were terrible battles between the two. The island of Delos, the Asteria of the Greek mythology, was never in Greece, a country which, in its day, was not yet in existence, not even in its molecular form. Diodorus Siculus and Pliny place Delos in the Northern seas. One calls it royal; the other, the royal island of gods. Because the divine dynasties of the kings of Atlantis proceeded from that place. Occult records and linguistic evidence indicate that gods, religious beliefs, and myths have all come from the north, which was also the cradle of physical man. The Hyperboreans, the Cimmerians, the Arimaspoi, and the Scythians were descendants of the last Atlantean sub-races. But they were neither known to, nor communicating with, the Greeks. The Pelasgians, a remnant of an Atlantean sub-race, were certainly one of the root-races of future Greece. Noah’s Deluge is astronomical and allegorical but not mythical. However, the allegory about the antediluvian giants and their achievements in sorcery is no myth. Poseidon is not only the personation of the spirit and race of Atlantis, but also of the vices of the Nephilim giants of Genesis. The bestiality of the Satyrs was real, not allegorical. Esoteric records show these hairy Satyrs to be the last descendants of those Lemuro-Atlantean races, which begot children on female animals, of species now long extinct. They paid a very heavy price for their unnatural union. The whole globe is convulsed periodically; and has been so convulsed, since the appearance of the First Race, four times. Yet, though the whole face of the earth was transformed thereby each time, the conformation of the Arctic and Antarctic poles has but little altered. Continents perish in turn by fire and water: either through earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, or by sinking and the great displacement of waters. The three “imprisoned” polar giants, Briareus, Kottos, and Gyges, are three polar lands which have changed form several times, at each new cataclysm or disappearance of one continent to make room for another. When lesser gods and titans rebelled against Zeus, he hurled Lemuria amid thunder and lightning to the bottom of the seas, so as to make room for Atlantis, which was to be submerged and perish in its turn. The geological upheaval and deluge of Thessaly was a repetition on a small scale of the great cataclysm; and remaining impressed on the memory of the Greeks, was merged by them into, and confused with, the general fate of Atlantis. All continents are formed from North to South. And the tallest men are those in Northern countries, while the smallest are Southern Asiatics. Thus also the giants of Atlantis, as well as the Titans of Hesiod, are all Northerners.