Search results for ""katabasis""

The death of the fearsome Ögedei Khan has brought the Mongol invasion of the West to an abrupt halt. Exhausted, plagued by uncertainty and self-doubt, and reeling from betrayal by one of their own, the surviving Shield-Brethren struggle across a frozen, shattered wasteland to return home after their desperate battle in Mongolia. Their mission is complete—Christendom has been saved—but new and terrible questions haunt each member of the company: Are they heroes or villains? Or just pawns in a larger game, trapped in a world gone mad in the wake of the unspeakable devastation visited upon it by the Mongol horde? And most poignant of all, where—and what—is “home” now, and what will be their place in the world they fought to defend? Katabasis, a new novel in the acclaimed Foreworld Saga, follows the survivors as they struggle to confront their own fears and decide who they truly are—and whom they will ultimately serve.

Read more less

Connects the magical practice of theurgy to the time of Homer. First defined by the second century Chaldean Oracles, theurgy is an ancient magic practice whereby practitioners divinized the soul and achieved mystical union with a deity, the Demiurge, or the One. In this detailed study, P. D. Newman pushes the roots of theurgy all the way back before the time of Homer. He shows how the Chaldean Oracles were not only written in Homeric Greek but also in dactylic hexameter, the same meter as the epics of Homer. Linking the Greek shamanic practices of the late Archaic period with the theurgic rites of late antiquity, the author explains how both anabasis, soul ascent, and katabasis, soul descent, can be considered varieties of shamanic soul flight and how these practices existed in ancient Greek culture prior to the influx of shamanic influence from Thrace and the Hyperborean North. The author explores the many theurgic themes and symbolic events in the Odyssey and the Iliad, including the famous journey of Odysseus to Hades and the incident of the funeral pyre of Patroclus. He presents a close analysis of On the Cave of the Nymphs, Porphyry’s commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, as well as a detailed look at Proclus’s symbolic reading of Homer’s Iliad, showing how both of these Neoplatonists describe the philosophical theory and the technical ritual praxis of theurgy. Using the Chaldean Oracles as a case study, Newman examines in detail the methods of telestikē, a form of theurgic statue animation, linking this practice to ancient Egyptian and Greek traditions as well as theurgic techniques to divinize the soul. Revealing how the theurgic arts are far older than the second century, Newman’s study not only examines the philosophical theory of theurgy but also the actual ritual practices of the theurgists, as described in their own words.

Read more less