Persephone Unveiled

Persephone Unveiled reveals the goddess in all her guises, as the daughter of Demeter; the Queen of the Underworld; the archetypal female healer; and as a central figure in the Eleusinian Mysteries, where celebrants experienced sacred visions through secret rituals fueled by an LSD-like substance. The author examines the known details about the psychoactive agent and explores the Mysteries' influence on, and relationship to, early Christianity. Guided meditations, using active imagination techniques, help readers summon an experience with the goddess.

Sex in animals has been known for at least ten thousand years, and this knowledge was put to good use during animal domestication in the Neolithic period. In stark contrast, sex in plants wasn't discovered until the late 17th century, long after the domestication of crop plants. Even after its discovery, the "sexual theory" continued to be hotly debated and lampooned for another 150 years, pitting the "sexualists" against the "asexualists". Why was the notion of sex in plants so contentious for so long? "Flora Unveiled" is a deep history of perceptions about plant gender and sexuality, beginning in the Ice Age and ending in the middle of the nineteenth century, with the elucidation of the complete plant life cycle. Linc and Lee Taiz show that a gender bias that plants are unisexual and female (a "one-sex model") prevented the discovery of plant sex and delayed its acceptance long after the theory was definitively proven. The book explores the various sources of this gender bias, beginning with women's role as gatherers, crop domesticators, and the first farmers. In the myths and religions of the Bronze and Iron Ages, female deities were strongly identified with flowers, trees, and agricultural abundance, and during Middle Ages and Renaissance, this tradition was assimilated into Christianity in the person of Mary. The one-sex model of plants continued into the Early Modern Period, and experienced a resurgence during the eighteenth century Enlightenment and again in the nineteenth century Romantic movement. Not until Wilhelm Hofmeister demonstrated the universality of sex in the plant kingdom was the controversy over plant sex finally laid to rest. Although "Flora Unveiled" focuses on the discovery of sex in plants, the history serves as a cautionary tale of how strongly and persistently cultural biases can impede the discovery and delay the acceptance of scientific advances.

Reveals the striking parallels between indigenous cultures of the Americas and the ancient Homeric world as well as Tolkien’s Middle Earth • Explores the shamanic use of healing songs, psychoactive plants, and vision quests at the heart of the Odyssey and the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien • Examines Odysseus’s encounters with plant divinities, altered consciousness, animal shapeshifting, and sacred topography--all concepts vital to shamanism • Reveals how the Odyssey emerged precisely at the rupture between modern and primal consciousness Indigenous, shamanic ways of healing and prophecy are not foreign to the West. The native way of viewing the world--that is, understanding our cosmos as living, sentient, and interconnected--can be found hidden throughout Western literature, beginning with the very origin of the European literary tradition: Homer’s Odyssey. Weaving together the narrative traditions of the ancient Greeks and Celts, the mythopoetic work of J. R. R. Tolkien, and the voices of plant medicine healers in North and South America, the authors explore the use of healing songs, psychoactive plants, and vision quests at the heart of the Odyssey, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Tolkien’s final novella, Smith of Wootton Major. The authors examine Odysseus’s encounters with plant divinities, altered consciousness, animal shapeshifting, and sacred topography--all concepts vital to shamanism. They show the deep affinities between the healing powers of ancient bardic song and the icaros of the shamans of the Amazon rain forest, how Odysseus’s battle with Circe--wielder of narcotic plants and Mistress of Animals--follows the traditional method of negotiating with a plant ally, and how Odysseus’s journey to the land of the dead signifies the universal practice of the vision quest, a key part of shamanic initiation. Emerging precisely at the rupture between modern and primal consciousness, Homer’s work represents a window into the lost native mind of the Western world. In this way, the Odyssey as well as Tolkien’s work can be seen as an awakening and healing song to return us to our native minds and bring our disconnected souls back into harmony with the living cosmos.

Pharmakon: Plato, Drug Culture, and Identity in Ancient Athens examines the emerging concern for controlling states of psychological ecstasy in the history of western thought, focusing on ancient Greece (c. 750-146 BCE), particularly the Classical Period (c. 500-336 BCE) and especially the dialogues of the Athenian philosopher Plato (427-347 BCE). Employing a diverse array of materials ranging from literature, philosophy, medicine, botany, pharmacology, religion, magic, and law, Pharmakon fundamentally reframes the conceptual context of how we read and interpret Plato's dialogues. Michael A. Rinella demonstrates how the power and truth claims of philosophy, repeatedly likened to a pharmakon, opposes itself to the cultural authority of a host of other occupations in ancient Greek society who derived their powers from, or likened their authority to, some pharmakon. These included Dionysian and Eleusinian religion, physicians and other healers, magicians and other magic workers, poets, sophists, rhetoricians, as well as others. Accessible to the general reader, yet challenging to the specialist, Pharmakon is a comprehensive examination of the place of drugs in ancient thought that will compel the reader to understand Plato in a new way.

A close examination of the relationship between media, art, and the “Electra complex” The feminist counterpart to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, Anti-Electra is a philosophy of “the girl” as a model of contemporary transgressive subjectivity. Elisabeth von Samsonow asserts that focusing on the girl’s escape from the Oedipus complex leads to a fundamental shift in our most common views on media and art. Presenting an interpretation of contemporary technics, Anti-Electra argues that technology today encompasses Electra’s gadgets and toys. According to von Samsonow, satellite drive technologies such as wireless telephones, WLAN, and GPS echo the “preoedipal constellation” that the girl specializes in. And with the help of the girl, the cartography of overlapping zones between humankind and animals, as well as between humankind and apparatuses, is redesigned through what the book holds as a “radical totemism.” Anti-Electra ultimately offers a new view on gender, the contemporary world dyed by symbolic girlism, and the (universal) girl in critical dialogue with media, ecology, and society.

A presentation of seven essential texts, central to the Hermetic Tradition, never before published together • Includes Theogony, The Homeric Hymn to Hermes, The Poem of Parmenides, The Poimandres, The Chaldean Oracles, Hymn to Isis, and On Divine Virtue, each translated from the original Greek or Latin • Presents interpretive commentary for each text to progressively weave them together historically, poetically, hermeneutically, and magically Linked to both the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, Hermes Trismegistus is credited, through legend, with thousands of mystical and philosophical writings of high standing, each reputed to be of immense antiquity. During the Renaissance, a collection of such writings known as the Corpus Hermeticum greatly inspired the thought of philosophers, alchemists, artists, poets, and even theologians. Offering new translations of seven essential Hermetic texts from their earliest source languages, Charles Stein presents them alongside introductions and interpretive commentary, revealing their hidden gems of insight, suggesting directions for practice, and progressively weaving the texts together historically, poetically, hermeneutically, and magically. The book includes translations of Hesiod’s Theogony, the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the “Poem of Parmenides,” the Poimandres from the Corpus Hermeticum, the Chaldean Oracles, “The Vision of Isis” from Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, and “On Divine Virtue” by Zosimos of Panopolis. Through his introductions and commentaries, Stein explains how the many traditions that use Hermes’s name harbor a coherent spirit whose relevance and efficacy promise to carry Hermes forward into the future. Revealing Hermes as the very principle of Mind in all its possibilities, from intellectual brilliance to the workings of the cognitive life of everyone, the author shows how these seven texts are central to a still-evolving Western tradition in which the principle of spiritual awakening is allied with the creative. Never before published together, these texts present a new vehicle for transmission of the Hermetic Genius in modern times.

John Upledger has never avoided risks, whether performing an appendectomy in the eye of a hurricane, as he did while on Coast Guard duty in the 1950s, or telling the story of his life. In Lessons Out of School, he doesn't spare himself or others, or gloss over unpleasant bits. Raised by an abusive mother, he learned detachment and the ability not to see himself as victim. The proof in these riveting tales of survival at home and on the streets of Detroit negotiating gangs and peer pressure. Along with toughness he learned to follow his curiosity, creative impulses, and love of learning, which eventually led to his pioneering of alternative medical modalities, most notably CranioSacral Therapy. At the core of each of the stories in this powerful blend of autobiography and inspirational guid—and the reason for its inclusion—is the spiritual lesson Upledger found there that he now shares with readers.

In these letters to friends and colleagues spanning around twenty years, renowned radical theologian Thomas J. J. Altizer offers a series of meditative mini-essays on religious, theological, political, and philosophical matters that are central and vital to our contemporary era.