Inventing Afterlives

Why is belief in an afterlife so persistent across times and cultures? And how can it coexist with disbelief in an afterlife? Most modern thinkers hold that afterlife belief serves such important psychological and social purposes as consoling survivors, enforcing morality, dispensing justice, or giving life meaning. Yet the earliest, and some more recent, afterlives strikingly fail to satisfy those needs. In Inventing Afterlives, Regina M. Janes proposes a new theory of the origins of the hereafter rooted in the question that a dead body raises: where has the life gone? Humans then and now, in communities and as individuals, ponder what they would want or experience were they in that body. From this endlessly recurring situation, afterlife narratives develop in all their complexity, variety, and ingenuity. Exploring afterlives from Egypt to Sumer, among Jews, Greeks, and Romans, to Christianity’s advent and Islam’s rise, Janes reveals how little concern ancient afterlives had with morality. In south and east Asia, karmic rebirth makes morality self-enforcing and raises a new problem: how to stop re-dying. The British enlightenment, Janes argues, invented the now widespread wish-fulfilling afterlife and illustrates how afterlives change. She also considers the surprising afterlife of afterlives among modern artists and writers who no longer believe in worlds beyond this one. Drawing on a variety of religious traditions; contemporary literature and film; primatology; cognitive science; and evolutionary psychology, Janes shows that in asking what happens after we die, we define the worlds we inhabit and the values by which we live.

WINNER OF THE SOMERSET MAUGHAM AWARD NBCC AWARD FINALIST WINNER OF THE 2017 SLIGHTLY FOXED BEST FIRST BIOGRAPHY PRIZE Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, Spectator and Observer Angela Carter’s life was as unconventional as anything in her fiction. Through her fearlessly original and inventive books, including The Bloody Chamber and Nights at the Circus, she became an icon to a generation and one of the most acclaimed English writers of the last hundred years. This is her first full and authorised biography. Edmund Gordon uncovers Carter’s life story – from a young woman trying to write in a tiny bedsit in Tokyo, to one of the most important and daring writers of her day. From a life full of adventure sprang work so fantastic, dazzling and seductive that it permanently changed and reinvigorated British literature. This is the story of how Angela Carter invented herself. 'An exemplary piece of work... Everyone should read it' Spectator

From the epic saga of the Buendía family in One Hundred Years of Solitude to the enduring passion of Love in the Time of Cholera to the exploration of tyranny in The Autumn of the Patriarch, Gabriel García Márquez has built a literary world that continues to captivate millions of readers across the world. His writings entrance modern audiences with their dreamlike yet trenchant insights into universal issues of the human condition such as love, revenge, old age, death, fate, power, and justice. A Nobel Laureate in 1982, he contributed to the global popularity of the Latin American Boom during the second half of the 20th century and had a profound impact on writers worldwide, including Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, and Haruki Murakami. The Oxford Handbook of Gabriel García Márquez brings together world experts on the Colombian writer to present a comprehensive English-language examination of his life, oeuvre, and legacy--the first such work since his death in 2014. Edited by Latin American literature authorities Gene H. Bell-Villada and Ignacio López-Calvo, the volume paints a rich and nuanced portrait of "Gabo." It incorporates ongoing critical approaches such as feminism, ecocriticism, Marxism, and ethnic studies, while elucidating key aspects of his work, such as his Caribbean-Colombian background; his use of magical realism, myth, and folklore; and his left-wing political views. Thirty-two wide-ranging chapters cover the bulk of the author's writings-both major and minor, early and late, long and short-as well as his involvement with film. They also discuss his unique prose style, highlighting how music shaped his literary art. The Handbook gives unprecedented attention to the global influence of García Márquez-on established canons, on the Global South, on imaginative writing in South Asia, China, Japan, and throughout Africa and the Arab world. This is the first book that places the Colombian writer within that wider context, celebrating his importance both as a Latin American author and as a global phenomenon.

Satanism is a complex phenomenon that has often been the source of controversy across social and rhetorical contexts. Some consider it the root of all evil. Others see it as a childish form of rebellion or as a misapplication of serious esoteric beliefs and practices. Still others consider it a specific religion or philosophy that serves as a form of personal and collective identity. In The Invention of Satanism, three experts explore Satanism as a contemporary movement that is in continuous dialogue with popular culture, and which provides a breeding ground for other new religious movements. By shifting the focus from mythology to meaning-making, this book examines the invention of Satanism among self-declared religious Satanists. Like all ideologists and believers, Satanists incorporate, borrow, and modify elements from other traditions; the authors investigate how traditional folklore and prior strands of occultism were synthesized by Anton LaVey in his founding of the Church of Satan and creation of the Satanic Bible. Later chapters discuss contemporary Satanist subcultures, demonstrating how Satanism continues to reinvent itself despite its brief history as an organized phenomenon. There are now numerous forms of Satanism with distinctive interpretations of what being a Satanist entails, with some of these new versions deviating more from the historical "mainstream" than others. In this fascinating account of a seemingly arcane and often-feared movement, Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen demonstrate that the invention of Satanism is an ongoing, ever-evolving process.

In this perceptive and intriguing book, Bremmer takes a fresh look at the major developments in the Western imagination of the afterlife, from the ancient Greeks to the modern near-death experience.

This collection of essays explores the impact of Jesus within and beyond Christianity, including his many afterlives in literature and the arts, social justice and world religions during the past two thousand years and especially in the present global context. This first volume focuses on selected historical afterlives of Jesus, including the Pantokrator of Byzantium and the Aryan Jesus of Nazi Germany. This collection is not an exercise in Christian apologetics, nor is it an interfaith project--except in the sense that many of the contributors are from a Christian context of some kind, while others are from other contexts. The contributors include scholars in relevant fields, as well as religious practitioners reflecting on Jesus in their own cultural and religious settings. While the essays are original work that is grounded in critical scholarship, reflective practice, or both, they are expressed in nontechnical language so the information is accessible to intelligent nonspecialists.

Joe Posnanski enters the colorful world of Harry Houdini and his legions of devoted fans to explore the illusionist’s impact on global culture—and why his legacy endures to this day. Nearly a century after Harry Houdini died on Halloween in 1926, he feels as modern and alive as ever. The name Houdini still leaps to mind whenever we witness a daring escape. The baby who frees herself from her crib? Houdini. The dog who vanishes and reappears in the neighbor’s garden? Houdini. Every generation produces new disciples of the magician, from household names in magic like David Copperfield and David Blaine to countless other followers whose lives have been transformed by the power of Houdini. In rural Pennsylvania, a thirteen-year-old girl finds the courage to leave a violent home after learning that Houdini ran away to join the circus; she eventually becomes the first female magician to saw a man in half on television. In Australia, an eight-year-old boy with a learning impediment feels worthless until he sees an old poster of Houdini advertising “Nothing on earth can hold Houdini prisoner,” and begins his path to becoming that nation’s most popular magician. In California, an actor and Vietnam War veteran finds purpose in his life by uncovering the secrets of his hero. But the unique phenomenon of Houdini was always more than his death-defying stunts or his ability to escape handcuffs and straitjackets. It is also about the power of imagination and self-invention. His incredible transformation from Ehrich Weiss, humble Hungarian immigrant and rabbi’s son, into the self-named Harry Houdini has won him a slice of immortality. No one has withstood the test of time quite like Houdini. Fueled by Posnanski’s personal obsession with the magician—and magic itself—The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini is a poignant odyssey of discovery, blending biography, memoir, and first-person reporting to trace Houdini’s metamorphosis into an iconic figure who has inspired millions.

What happens on the other side of life? Author Bruce Moen continues to bring us evidence that physical death is just a momentary event in our eternal consciousness as he explores life after death in this, the third book in his Exploring the Afterlife series. Using groundbreaking techniques developed by Robert A. Monroe--author of the classic Journeys out of the Body and founder of The Monroe Institute--Moen projects himself out of his body to travel beyond death into new realms of existence. His travels allow him to access knowledge available only to out-of-body explorers. With Moen, you will journey to the center of the Earth, develop a unique understanding of how astrology really works, and even make contact with extraterrestrials. But more fascinating--and empowering--is his glimpse of the community of souls, his explorations of nonphysical environments, and his growing understanding of what he has witnessed. Read Voyages in the Afterlife: Charting Unknown Territory and learn, along with Bruce Moen, the nature of the cosmos and our place in it.