The Rise Of The Goddess

How much would you sacrifice to free the one you love from a dark curse of evil and hate? Your destiny? Your existence? Everything? FINALIST - BOOK AWARD - PAGE TURNER AWARDS 2021 In a world older than time, a portal stirs from its long slumber. From out of its cerulean mists, the warship of the scion of darkness and destroyer of worlds emerges. With its gods long gone, Elati is a world ripe for the taking. Marduk intends to take it all. Corrupted by Marduk's devices, Sethi succumbs to the grip of evil. A brutal, merciless commander, he oppresses the kingdoms of Elati, his violence awakening a weapon of the deepest darkness. Poisoned by lies and tainted by hate, he thirsts for its power to obliterate the light of the one he once loved beyond all reason. Desperate to reprieve Sethi from his corruption, Istara pursues her last hope, risking everything to retrieve powerful artifacts of Thoth's, her light her only defense against the growing darkness-and the one determined to annihilate her. Bound by love and driven by duty, Urhi-Teshub reaches the threshold of his destiny, where he faces the horrifying price he must pay to protect Istara. And at the heart of an abandoned island of gods, surrounded by an endless storm, an eternal tower awaits. Caught in the crosshairs of a primordial war for supremacy, Sethi and Istara must face each other one final time. Darkness and light. Enemies. Lovers. Gods. The Rise of the Goddess is the final book in the Transcendence series.

This book explores the rise of the Great Goddess by focusing on the development of saakti (creative energy), maya (objective illusion), and prakr(materiality) from Vedic times to the late Puranic period, clarifying how these principles became central to her theology.

An innovative and multidimensional account of translocal religious practice, this sophisticated study, the first of its kind for Vietnam, blurs disciplinary boundaries and disrupts preconceived images of Vietnamese society.

The depth and breadth of this series is not widely appreciated. At the core of the work is the timeless interplay between good and evil that has bedevilled mankind throughout his history and is developed at the physical, religious and psychological levels. During the unfolding of the story, the method of delivery alters from reported fact as the legend to favour mental imagery when events are reported in parallel as though they relate either to the legend or occur in the mind. The intention of the author is to hit that special chord at the end where the reader yearns for Debden, the main character, to be real. She is obliged to rise in stature both in terms of her physical powers and intellectually from a protected childhood. Her powers are incredible and without any known limit and so advanced that she must learn, not only what they are, but how best to use them without guidance. Despite this, her responsibilities are also beyond comprehension for she has jurisdiction over the entire Earth. Soon however, it is clear that even this is well within her capabilities and she is soon beyond even the higher gods in intellectual brilliance and highest magic. But despite it all, our heroine is a paradox of the most brilliant star that humankind will follow anywhere and self-reproach, and on whom pressure is unrelenting. The breaking point is never far below the surface and she continuously sails close to the wind. This story is developed over a canvas of many centuries and is forged robustly in terms of scale and action but with great sensitivity with respect to the key characters. Several parallel threads run through the work and there are many sub-plots. Three of them in order of importanceare as follows: the vulnerability of Debden, the early loss of her husband, for whom she is destined to search desperately for several centuries and thirdly, the consequences of immortality on relationships and the weariness of experience. But there are others and some are extremely pressing emotionally. The aRise of a Goddessa presents a great richness of landscapes and weathers. Wonderful kingdoms are described not only on the surface but deep beneath the Earth and in distant galaxies in a manner that is bold and expansive in nature. The raging battles of epic magnitude take place in these environments and Debdenas abilities take her into other times and dimensions. The story fuses our common knowledge of the weakness of man and imagination using a tale that passes from past to future and concludes in the furnace heat of the Pillars of Creation in the Eagle nebula, where Debden fights, on behalf of mankind, for the continuation of life itself.

This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind.

"This comprehensive text, highly acclaimed as the premier sourcebook on goddesses, introduces students of religion to the various manifestations and complex nature of the goddess. Often a stranger to contemporary devotees of monotheistic religions, the goddess forces the recognition of female power, which can transform deeply held beliefs. The recent renewed interest in goddesses and the rise of feminist scholarship are addressed in this well-chosen collection of essays, written by an international group of scholars. The book elucidates the diverse religious cultures and periods of history in which goddesses have played an important role by providing examples of ancient and modern goddesses in Eastern and Western religious traditions, in major world and tribal religions, and in living religions and those no longer practiced."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Coburn provides a fresh and careful translation from the Sanskrit of this fifteen-hundred-year-old text. Drawing on field work and literary evidence, he illuminates the process by which the Devī-Māhātmya has attracted a vast number of commentaries and has become the best known Goddess-text in modern India, deeply embedded in the ritual of Goddess worship (especially in Tantra). Coburn answers the following questions among others: Is this document "scripture?" How is it that this text mediates the presence of the Goddess? What can we make of contemporary emphasis on oral recitation of the text rather than study of its written form? One comes away from Coburn's work with a sense of the historical integrity or wholeness of an extremely important religious development centered on a "text." The interaction between the text and later philosophical and religious developments such as those found in Advaita Vedanta and Tantra is quite illuminating. Relevant here are the issues of the writtenness and orality/aurality of 'scripture,' and the various ways by which a deposit of holy words such as the Devī-Māhātmya becomes effective, powerful, and inspirational in the lives of those who hold it sacred.