Octavia, Daughter of God

Octavia, Daughter of God
Author: Jane Shaw
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2011-10-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300176155

DIVThe little-known story of the charismatic, utopian leader Octavia and her devoted followers in the interwar years/div

Octavia, Daughter of God

Octavia, Daughter of God
Author: Jane Shaw
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2011-10-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300180632

The little-known story of the charismatic, utopian leader Octavia and her devoted followers in the interwar yearsIn 1919, in the wake of the upheaval of World War I, a remarkable group of English women came up with their own solution to the world's grief: a new religion. At the heart of the Panacea Society was a charismatic and autocratic leader, a vicar's widow named Mabel Bartlrop. Her followers called her Octavia, and they believed that she was the daughter of God, sent to build the New Jerusalem in Bedford.When the last living members of the Panacea Society revealed to historian Jane Shaw their immense and painstakingly preserved archives, she began to reconstruct the story of a close-knit utopian community that grew to include seventy residents, thousands of followers, and an international healing ministry reaching 130,000 people. Shaw offers a detailed portrait of Octavia and describes the faith of her devoted followers who believed they would never die. Vividly told, by turns funny and tragic, Octavia, Daughter of God is about a moment at the advent of modernity, when a generation of newly empowered women tried to re-make Christianity in their own image, offering a fascinating window into the anxieties and hopes of the interwar years.

Octavia Boone's Big Questions About Life, the Universe, and Everything

Octavia Boone's Big Questions About Life, the Universe, and Everything
Author: Rebecca Rupp
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2012-04-24
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0763659843

After her parents find clashing answers to life’s big questions, it’s time for Octavia to make some choices of her own in this poignant, funny, thought-provoking novel. (Ages 9-12) Octavia’s best friend, Andrew, wants to know why time runs forward instead of backward, or if it’s possible to talk to an alien jellyfish. Octavia has much bigger questions on her mind: Why do bad things happen, like Hurricane Katrina and 9/11? What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? Octavia’s artist father, Boone, is convinced that Henry David Thoreau holds the key. Meanwhile, her mother, Ray, has always been seeking the larger meaning of life--until now. Not only have Octavia’s parents come up with different answers to the big questions, but their answers are threatening to tear her family apart. Could it be that some questions are too big to have just one answer? Could it be that the universe is far wider than Octavia’s--or perhaps anyone’s--views of it?

Personal Religion and Spiritual Healing

Personal Religion and Spiritual Healing
Author: Alastair Lockhart
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2019-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1438472854

A unique historical study of the personal nature of religion, spirituality, and healing in the twentieth century based on the letters of ordinary people from around the world. The Panacea Society was a small religious community of women that was established in England in the early twentieth century. They followed the early nineteenth-century mystic Joanna Southcott, as well other emerging spiritual movements of the day, and developed a remarkable spiritual healing practice that spread around the world. Based on the thousands of letters held in the Society’s healing archive, which were sent by ordinary people from around the world, Alastair Lockhart offers a detailed study of the religious ideas of religious seekers from the 1920s to the 1970s. Focusing on Great Britain, Finland, Jamaica, and the US, Lockhart provides unique insight into the personal nature of spirituality in recent times and how ancient and modern spiritual strands were harnessed to the needs of late-modern spiritual seekers. This book addresses debates about the complexity and meaning of the rise or decline of religion in the twentieth century and the processes involved in the formation of popular nontraditional spiritualities. It informs our understanding of global and transnational religions and recent forms of spiritual healing. “This is a comprehensive history of the Society from its origins to World War II—and includes a chapter on the healing—and is foundational for work in this field.” — Jane Shaw, author of Octavia, Daughter of God: The Story of a Female Messiah and Her Followers

Parable of the Sower

Parable of the Sower
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2023-03-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1538765497

This acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from an award-winning author "pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale" and includes a foreword by N. K. Jemisin (John Green, New York Times). When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.

Daughter of Gods and Shadows

Daughter of Gods and Shadows
Author: Jayde Brooks
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2015-02-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250036739

Eden Reid is not interested in prophesy. The problem is that a doozy of a prophesy is bearing down on her. Such is the case when you're a twenty-four-year-old from Brooklyn, New York who is about to discover she is an ancient god. A truly powerful one. And with power comes problems. A truly formidable demon is gunning for her; a zombie-like pandemic is spreading across the country, creating creatures who are hungry for flesh, fast on their feet and clever; and there is the mysterious, handsome stranger with powers of his own who claims to have been her lover from a time and a life that Eden cannot remember. He promises to help awaken her powers for the upcoming war. A war where there is only one prize: survival...in Daughter of Gods and Shadows from debut author Jayde Brooks.

Parable of the Talents

Parable of the Talents
Author: Octavia E. Butler
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 1998
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781888363814

Parable of the Talents celebrates the classic Butlerian themes of alienation and transcendence, violence and spirituality, slavery and freedom, separation and community, to astonishing effect, in the shockingly familiar, broken world of 2032. Long awaited, Parable of the Talents is the continuation of the travails of Lauren Olamina, the heroine of 1994's Nebula-Prize finalist, bestselling Parable of the Sower. Parable of the Talents is told in the voice of Lauren Olamina's daughter&...from whom she has been separated for most of the girl's life&...with sections in the form of Lauren's journal. Against a background of a war-torn continent, and with a far-right religious crusader in the office of the U.S. presidency, this is a book about a society whose very fabric has been torn asunder, and where the basic physical and emotional needs of people seem almost impossible to meet.

Something She Can Feel

Something She Can Feel
Author: Grace Octavia
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2011-05-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0758273843

For a woman with her future all mapped out, life's about to go in a whole new direction. . . Tuscaloosa, Alabama, may not be glamorous, but for Journey Cash, the small Southern town has always been enough. She has a loving husband, a great family, and she brings the house down at church with her beautiful, thunderous singing voice. But Journey wonders if her years as an obedient preacher's daughter have kept her from living the life she is meant to live. . . When Dame, one of her former students, comes to visit after striking it big as a rap star, Journey gets a taste of the fast-lane life that has passed her by. Dame is exciting, unpredictable, and sexy, and Journey is ready to trade in her seemingly perfect existence to simply feel one thing that's real. Soon, she finds herself running from everything in her world into the arms of Dame—and the ride of her life. . . "This wonderful book holds your attention from beginning to end. There are surprises at every turn, and no detail is left unexplained. . .This book will inspire you to take charge of your own life." --Romantic Times

Miracles in Enlightenment England

Miracles in Enlightenment England
Author: Jane Shaw
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780300112726

The Enlightenment, considered an age of rationalism, is not normally associated with miracles. In this intriguing book, however, Jane Shaw presents accounts of inscrutable miracles that occurred to ordinary worshippers in early modern England. She considers the reactions of intellectuals, scientists, and physicians to these miraculous events and through them explores the relations between popular and elite culture of the time. Miraculous events in England between the 1650s and the 1750s were experienced mainly not by Catholics, but by Protestants. The book looks at the political and social context of these events as well as interpretations and explanations of them by scientists, the Court, and the Church, as well as by preachers, pamphleteers, friends, and neighbors. Shaw links the lived religion of the time to intellectual history and amends the hitherto received view. The religious practice of ordinary people was as crucial to the development of Enlightenment thought as the philosophical and theological writings of the elite.

The History of a Modern Millennial Movement

The History of a Modern Millennial Movement
Author: Jane Shaw
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2017-05-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1786731908

A feverish expectation of the end of the world seems an unlikely accompaniment to middle-class respectability. But it was precisely her interest in millennial thinking that led Jane Shaw to a group of genteel terraced townhouses in the English county town of Bedford. Inside their unassuming grey-brick exteriors Shaw found something extraordinary. For here, within the 'Ark', lived two members of the Panacea Society, last survivors of the remaining Southcottian prophetic communities in Britain. And these individuals were the heirs to a rich archive charting not just their own apocalyptic sect, but also the histories of the many groups and their leaders who from the early nineteenth century onwards had followed the beliefs of the self-styled prophetess and prospective mother of the Messiah ('Shiloh'), Joanna Southcott, who died in 1814. Placing its subjects in a global context, this is the first book to explore the religious thinking of all the Southcottians. It reveals a transnational movement with striking and innovative ideas: not just about prophecy and the coming apocalypse, but also about politics, gender, class and authority. The volume will sell to scholars and students of religion and cultural studies as well as social history.