Radical Ecstasy

For millennia, seekers have used physical and emotional extremes to achieve transcendence and exaltation. Today, many BDSM and leather practitioners are discovering the potential of SM practice to reach personal, interpersonal and spiritual goals. In Radical Ecstasy, bestselling BDSM/sexuality authors Easton and Hardy document their own journeys into the transcendent realm of kink. With their trademark frankness and humor, they share their own stories and philosophies. They also share techniques that have worked for them - techniques which combine tantric breathing, visualization and movement with a combined half-century of BDSM experience - to create states of transcendence during solo and partnered sexual and BDSM practice. As outrageously revolutionary as any sex book published in the last decade, Radical Ecstasy sets the stage for the new millennium in BDSM and sacred-sex practices - a "must" for any kink, tantra, pagan or sacred-sex practitioner. "Amazingly mindful exploration of that which cannot be easily put into words... the ecstatic experience from sex to sadomasochism, from trance to intuition to archetypes and spiritual awakening. Totally real and personal. Not a 'how to' but a nurturing 'can do' book." - Fakir Musafar, father of the modern primitive movement. "Progressive, deliciously honest, and HOT HOT HOT! Dossie and Janet ask difficult questions about the nature of sex, intimacy and ecstasy, then they actually manage to answer the questions, plus turn us on when they do. These two erotically gifted women have a way with words - and sex. They raise the bar on erotic writing and sex education to new heights. I'm in awe." - Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., prostitute/porn star turned sex guru/sexologist "Fascinating, heartfelt, honest, real stories of the heart/spirit/energy connection experienced in the passionate rituals of intimate consensual power play. These two courageous women write brilliantly of how erotic energies connect us with the big love we all seek from the source." - Cleo Dubois, educator, ritualist, video producer/star

Written by the world's leading experts on MDMA, "Ecstasy: The Complete Guide" takes the first unbiased look at the risks and the benefits of this unique drug, including the science of how it works; its promise as a treatment for depression, post-traumatic stress disorders, and other mental illnesses; and how to minimize the risks of use.

Decades on from independence the role of Mau Mau still excites argument and controversy, not least in Kenya itself.

When it comes to crime, everyone seems to take evil seriously as an explanatory concept - except criminologists. This book asks why, and why not, through exploring a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to evil from the perspectives of theology, philosophy, literary and cultural studies, and the social sciences.

Within the past twenty years, contemporary Pagan leaders, progressive Christian and Goddess theologians, advocates for queer and BDSM communities, and therapeutic bodyworkers have all begun to speak forcefully about the sacredness of the body and of touch. Many assert that the erotic is a divinely transformative force, both for personal development and for social change. Although "the erotic" includes sexuality, it is not limited to it; access to connected nonsexual touch is as profound a need as that for sexual freedom and health. In this book, Christine Hoff Kraemer brings together an academic background in religious studies and theology with lived experience as a professional bodyworker and contemporary Pagan practitioner. Arguing that the erotic is a powerful moral force that can ground a system of ethics, Kraemer integrates approaches from queer theology, therapeutic bodywork, and sexual minority advocacy into a contemporary Pagan religious framework. Addressing itself to liberal religious people of many faiths, Eros and Touch from a Pagan Perspective approaches the right to pleasure as a social justice issue and proposes a sacramental practice of mindful, consensual touch.

A.J. Tomlinson (1865-1943) ranks among the leading figures of the early Pentecostal movement, and like so many of his cohorts, he was as complex as he was colorful. Arriving in Appalachia as a home missionary determined to uplift and evangelize poor mountain whites, he stayed to become the co-founder and chief architect of the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) and the Church of God of Prophecy, which together with their minor offspring now constitute the third-largest denominational family within American Pentecostalism. R.G. Robins's biography recreates the world in which Tomlinson operated, and through his story offers a new understanding of the origins of the Pentecostal movement. Scholars have tended to view Pentecostalism as merely one among many anti-modernist movements of the early twentieth century. Robins argues that this is a misreading of the movement's origins-the result of projecting the modernist/fundamentalist controversy of the 1920s back onto the earlier religious landscape. Seeking to return the story of Pentecostalism to its proper historical context, Robins suggests that Pentecostalism should rightly be seen as an outgrowth of the radical holiness movement of the late nineteenth century. He argues that, far from being anti-modern, Pentecostals tended to embrace modernity. Pentecostal modernism, however, was a working class or "plainfolk" phenomenon, and it is the plainfolk character of the movement that has led so many scholars to mislabel it as anti-modern or fundamentalist. Through the compelling narrative of Tomlinson's life story, Robins sheds new light on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American religion, and provides a more refined lens through which to view the religious dynamics of our own day. v

This is the first systematic and thorough study of mysticism or contemplation in these three seventeenth-century poets and in three modern writers. It not only clarifies the very confused issue of mysticism in seventeenth-century poetry but also connects seventeenth-century poets with modern literature and science through the contemplative tradition; from the Bible and Plato and Church fathers and important mystics of the Middle Ages through Renaissance and modern contemplatives. The transformative and redemptive power of contemplative poetry or "holy writing" (regardless of genre or discipline) is prominent throughout the book, and the relevance, indeed the vital necessity, of such poetry and of the living contemplative tradition to our apocalyptic modern world is discussed in the last chapter. In this chapter, attention is given to modern science, especially to the new physics, and to philosophical and mystical writings of eminent scientists.

In this lively ethnography, Weiss studies the pansexual BDSM community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Weiss finds that BDSM practice is not as transgressive as the participants imagine, nor is it simply reinforcing of older forms of social domination. Instead she shows how fantasy play depends on pre-existing social hierarchies, even as it also participates in a commodification of desires.