The Cult of the Fox PDF Download

Author: Xiaofei Kang
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231133383
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
For more than five centuries the shamanistic fox cult has attracted large portions of the Chinese population and appealed to a wide range of social classes. Deemed illicit by imperial rulers and clerics and officially banned by republican and communist leaders, the fox cult has managed to survive and flourish in individual homes and community shrines throughout northern China. In this new work, the first to examine the fox cult as a vibrant popular religion, Xiaofei Kang explores the manifold meanings of the fox spirit in Chinese society. Kang describes various cult practices, activities of worship, and the exorcising of fox spirits to reveal how the Chinese people constructed their cultural and social values outside the gaze of offical power and morality.

Author: James
Publisher: Medallion Media Group
ISBN: 1605424706
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
In a future so distant that time is almost without meaning, death is defeated and immortality has been made reality through instantaneous cloning and synaptic transfer. Mankind, frustrated by the futility of timeless existence, chooses extinction. All but one man. Far removed from the known universe with only one companion, an AI named Qod, Salem Ben watches the cosmos from afar and relives the digitally reproduced lives of countless souls archived in the Soul Consortium by means of a neuroimmersive device. He hopes to discover the answer to the ultimate question: What lies beyond? But at the birth of the next universe, billions of years before the pattern of life repeats its design, Salem’s quest takes a disturbing turn. Unexplained aberrations appear among the digital souls. To hunt down their source and to continue his search for evidence of life after death, Salem endures four very different lives: Orson Roth, a serial killer in 20th-century Britain; Dominique Mancini, a spiritual medium from 16th-century Lombardy; Plantagenet Soome, a monk sent to the distant Castor’s World; and Queen Oluvia Wade, the creator of the Soul Consortium. As the mystery unfolds, Salem is confronted by a malevolent entity which threatens the future of humanity before it can begin again—and only Salem stands in the way of it breaking free.

Author: Jason Read
Publisher: Mandrake
ISBN: 9781914153075
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
According to ancient legends, thousands of years ago a mysterious being known as the Nine Tail Fox taught her devotees the secrets of witchcraft and alchemy. This witch cult survives to this day and is practiced in many Chinese and Japanese communities in relative secrecy. From her origins with the ancient Wu Shamans and the Tantric dakinis, the author explores this unique and often overlooked form of witchcraft. Learn the history of the Fox Immortal and her influence on Asian politics and history. Investigate the Tantric origins of the Fox Goddess. Learn the secret rituals from the Chinese grimoires that invoke the help and aid of the Fox Immortal as a personal magical tutor. Learn the ways of glamour and fascination taught to devotees of the Fox Temple. Investigate the mysterious tantric rites of the Tachikawa Ryu. Investigate the Mysteries of the white branch of death and the red branch of sexuality. Learn some of the many spells used by the Fox cult of witches. --------- This may be a topic wholly new to the average western reader though it will have familiar elements, after all, all true Mysteries in the true sense of the word have a common thread. Some readers may be familiar with the Lady Fox from various pop-cultural references in Japanese anime or Hong Kong movies and even video games. It is Kitsune, the fox spirit of the west that is most accessible to the average western audience. However the cultus of the Fox goes far further back than her appearance in Japan and Korea, her roots seemingly going as far back as the ancient tantric mysteries of India. I am a practitioner in the magical tradition of Taoism and it was in China that I learned the basics of the Fox Fairy as she is sometimes called. However China is a very conservative country and it seems obvious to me that a lot was implied but never spoken of, or perhaps even forgotten. I ventured into the depths of the mysteries of the Fox Lady and the path took me in many directions and through many synchronicities on that journey. While I preserve the fox tradition as passed to me, I do add some further material, also based on traditions that connect with her 'sadhana' [glossary]. I expect there will be an outcry from some Taoist and Shingon purists since in a sense I am resurrecting the heterodox Shingon cult of the Tachikawa. The logic of this decision will become clear. I am certain this is the correct move. In this way, we rise above the apparent shallowness of the Fox Temple as seen in contemporary Hong Kong for example, where the Fox Fairy has merely become a means to become a more attractive person in the world of film and music. In this book, I am giving the keys to true gnosis of the Path of the Nine-Tailed Fox.

Author: Claire Fox
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785900552
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
When you hear that now ubiquitous phrase 'I find that offensive', you know you're being told to shut up. While the terrible murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists demonstrated that those who offend can face the most brutal form of censorship, it also served only to intensify the pre-existing climate that dictates we all have to walk on eggshells to avoid saying anything offensive - or else. Indeed, competitive offence-claiming is ratcheting up well beyond religious sensibilities. So, while Islamists and feminists may seem to have little in common, they are both united in demanding retribution in the form of bans, penalties and censorship of those who hurt their feelings. But how did we become so thin-skinned? In 'I Find That Offensive!' Claire Fox addresses the possible causes of what is fast becoming known as 'Generation Snowflake' head-on (no 'safe spaces' here) in a call to toughen up, become more robust and make a virtue of the right to be offensive.

Author: Bill Allerton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780954837327
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Julius McEarly, in a surreal landscape of his own metaphoric inner thoughts and haphazard projections of reality, is a man on the run from a previous life. He sees himself as a Fish... but not just any Fish... A Capital Letter Fish... a Noun Fish... moonlit of the Scales and slick and agile of the Fin. In his search for Anarchy, Freedom and Love, with perhaps along the way just a little Immortality, his dearest wish is to become ordinary and rejoin The Shoal. Struggling to survive in a world where 'Normality' is under a process of constant revision, he finds his future placed in the hands of an eleven-year-old Tinker girl... whose hair is a bright conflagration upon her head, whose lies wisp her teeth like chicken feathers, and whose eyes are blacker than he ever saw on a Kipper. Enter The Fox...

Author: Michael V. Fox
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN: 9780931464386
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
This collection of studies had its origin in the Burdick-Vary Symposium of 1986, held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The symposium, sponsored jointly by the Institute for Research in the Humanities and the Hebrew Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, focused on the topic of the social role of temples in society. Participants presented the role of the temple in Sumer, Japan, the Far East, the Near East, Europe, and Meso-America. Together they sought to determine whether the temple as an institution was a single such entity, meeting fundamental human needs in similar ways throughout history, or whether the temples of various cultures are similar only in the fact that English uses the same word to refer to them.

Author: Robin Lane Fox
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 808

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Book Description
The author recreates the world from the second to the fourth century A.D., when the gods of Olympus lost their dominion, and Christianity, with the conversion of Constantine, triumphed in the Mediterranean world.

Author: Karen A. Smyers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The deity Inari has been worshipped in Japan since at least the early eighth century and today is a revered presence in such varied venues as Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, factories, theaters, private households, restaurants, beauty shops, and rice fields. Although at first glance and to its many devotees Inari worship may seem to be a unified phenomenon, it is in fact exceedingly multiple, noncodified, and noncentralized. No single regulating institution, dogma, scripture, or myth centers the practice. In this exceptionally insightful study, the author explores the worship of Inari in the context of homogeneity and diversity in Japan. The shape-shifting fox and the wish-fulfilling jewel, the main symbols of Inari, serve as interpretive metaphors to describe the simultaneously shared yet infinitely diverse meanings that cluster around the deity. That such diversity exists without the apparent knowledge of Inari worshippers is explained by the use of several communicative strategies that minimize the exchange of substantive information. Shared generalized meanings (tatemae) are articulated while private meanings and complexities (honne) are left unspoken. The appearance of unity is reinforced by a set of symbols representing fertility, change, and growth in ways that can be interpreted and understood by many individuals of various ages and occupations. The Fox and the Jewel describes the rich complexity of Inari worship in contemporary Japan. It explores questions of institutional and popular power in religion, demonstrates the ways people make religious figures personally meaningful, and documents the kinds of communicative styles that preserve the appearance of homogeneity in the face of astonishing factionalism.

Author: Reza Aslan
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0679603530
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A lucid, intelligent page-turner” (Los Angeles Times) that challenges long-held assumptions about Jesus, from the host of Believer Two thousand years ago, an itinerant Jewish preacher walked across the Galilee, gathering followers to establish what he called the “Kingdom of God.” The revolutionary movement he launched was so threatening to the established order that he was executed as a state criminal. Within decades after his death, his followers would call him God. Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most enigmatic figures by examining Jesus through the lens of the tumultuous era in which he lived. Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against the historical sources, Aslan describes a man full of conviction and passion, yet rife with contradiction. He explores the reasons the early Christian church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary. And he grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself, the mystery that is at the heart of all subsequent claims about his divinity. Zealot yields a fresh perspective on one of the greatest stories ever told even as it affirms the radical and transformative nature of Jesus’ life and mission. Praise for Zealot “Riveting . . . Aslan synthesizes Scripture and scholarship to create an original account.”—The New Yorker “Fascinatingly and convincingly drawn . . . Aslan may come as close as one can to respecting those who revere Jesus as the peace-loving, turn-the-other-cheek, true son of God depicted in modern Christianity, even as he knocks down that image.”—The Seattle Times “[Aslan’s] literary talent is as essential to the effect of Zealot as are his scholarly and journalistic chops. . . . A vivid, persuasive portrait.”—Salon “This tough-minded, deeply political book does full justice to the real Jesus, and honors him in the process.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A special and revealing work, one that believer and skeptic alike will find surprising, engaging, and original.”—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power “Compulsively readable . . . This superb work is highly recommended.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Author: Scott M. Goodall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781781085981
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Marney the Fox is a Lassie-style tale of a lone fox up against wicked humans via Watership Down and Fantastic Mr Fox. Written by the late M Scott Goodall and beautifully illustrated by John Stokes, Marney the Fox is a Tarka the Otter-style tale of a lone fox, channelling Lassie and The Fantastic Mr Fox along the way. Marney is a young fox trying to survive against the odds, from dodging blood-thirsty humans to encountering other wild animals. This is a beautifully illustrated story capturing the British countryside and wildlife in astonishing detail showcases Stokes' finest work, a masterpiece that has lain un-reprinted for decades and makes an ideal children's book and early Christmas present. * This extraordinarily beautiful book is a lost classic from children's literature and makes a perfect Christmas gift. * There is no other children's graphic novel like it, for its breathtaking rendition of the English countryside and the moving story that owes nods to Tarka the Otter in its sensitive portrayal of animals. * Never before collected. * From the new Treasury of British Comics list from Rebellion, highlighting classic British comics.