Pure Pagan

Pure Pagan
Author:
Publisher: Modern Library
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0307431649

“For there is indeed something we can call the spirit of ancient Greece–a carefully tuned voice that speaks out of the grave with astonishing clarity and grace , a distinctive voice that, taken as a whole, is like no other voice that has ever sung on this earth.” –BURTON RAFFEL, from his Preface For centuries, the poetry of Homer, Aristophanes, Sophocles, Sappho, and Archilochus has served as one of our primary means of connecting with the wholly vanished world of ancient Greece. But the works of numerous other great and prolific poets–Alkaios, Meleager, and Simonides, to name a few–are rarely translated into English , and are largely unknown to modern readers. In Pure Pagan, award-winning translator Burton Raffel brings these and many other wise and witty ancient Greek writers to an English-speaking audience for the first time, in full poetic flower. Their humorous and philosophical ruminations create a vivid portrait of everyday life in ancient Greece –and they are phenomenally lovely as well. In short, sharp bursts of song, these two-thousand-year-old poems speak about the timeless matters of everyday life: Wine (Wine is the medicine / To call for, the best medicine / To drink deep, deep) History (Not us: no. / It began with our fathers, / I’ve heard). Movers and shakers (If a man shakes loose stones / To make a wall with / Stones may fall on his head / Instead) Old age (Old age is a debt we like to be owed / Not one we like to collect) Frankness (Speak / As you please / And hear what can never / Please). There are also wonderful epigrams (Take what you have while you have it: you’ll lose it soon enough. / A single summer turns a kid into a shaggy goat) and epitaphs (Here I lie, beneath this stone, the famous woman who untied her belt for only one man). The entrancing beauty, humor, and piercing clarity of these poems will draw readers into the Greeks’ journeys to foreign lands, their bacchanalian parties and ferocious battles, as well as into the more intimate settings of their kitchens and bedrooms. The poetry of Pure Pagan reveals the ancient Greeks’ dreams, their sense of humor, sorrows, triumphs, and their most deeply held values, fleshing out our understanding of and appreciation for this fascinating civilization and its artistic legacy.

Pure Pagan

Pure Pagan
Author: Burton Raffel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 120
Release: 2004
Genre: Poetry
ISBN:

While we learn a great deal about ancient Greece from writers like Homer, Aristophanes, and Sappho, Raffel goes on to say, our picture is sadly incomplete until we read the poetry of such lesser-known greats as Alkaios, Callimachos, and Simonides.

Paganism

Paganism
Author: River Higginbotham
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2013-05-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0738717037

A comprehensive guide to a growing religious movement If you want to study Paganism in more detail, this book is the place to start. Based on a course in Paganism that the authors have taught for more than a decade, it is full of exercises, meditations, and discussion questions for group or individual study. This book presents the basic fundamentals of Paganism. It explores what Pagans are like; how the Pagan sacred year is arranged; what Pagans do in ritual; what magick is; and what Pagans believe about God, worship, human nature, and ethics. For those who are exploring their own spirituality, or who want a good book to give to non-Pagan family and friends A hands-on learning tool with magickal workings, meditations, discussion questions, and journal exercises Offers in-depth discussion of ethics and magick

Pagan's Crusade

Pagan's Crusade
Author: Catherine Jinks
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2003
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9780763620196

In twelth-century Jerusalem, orphaned sixteen-year-old Pagan is assigned to work for Lord Roland, a Templar knight, as Saladin's armies close in on the Holy City.

Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature

Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature
Author: Moshe Blidstein
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 019879195X

This study examines how early Christian writers drew on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions to develop their own ideas about purity, purification, defilement, and disgust.

Pagans and Christians in the City

Pagans and Christians in the City
Author: Steven D. Smith
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2018-11-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1467451487

Traditionalist Christians who oppose same-sex marriage and other cultural developments in the United States wonder why they are being forced to bracket their beliefs in order to participate in public life. This situation is not new, says Steven D. Smith: Christians two thousand years ago faced very similar challenges. Picking up poet T. S. Eliot’s World War II–era thesis that the future of the West would be determined by a contest between Christianity and “modern paganism,” Smith argues in this book that today’s culture wars can be seen as a reprise of the basic antagonism that pitted pagans against Christians in the Roman Empire. Smith’s Pagans and Christians in the City looks at that historical conflict and explores how the same competing ideas continue to clash today. All of us, Smith shows, have much to learn by observing how patterns from ancient history are reemerging in today’s most controversial issues.

Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe

Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe
Author: Kaarina Aitamurto
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2014-10-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317544617

The resurgence of religiosity in post-communist Europe has been widely noted, but the full spectrum of religious practice in the diverse countries of Central and Eastern Europe has been effectively hidden behind the region's range of languages and cultures. This volume presents an overview of one of the most notable developments in the region, the rise of Pagan and "Native Faith" movements. Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe brings together scholars from across the region to present both systematic country overviews - of Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, and Ukraine - as well as essays exploring specific themes such as racism and the internet. The volume will be of interest to scholars of new religious movements especially those looking for a more comprehensive picture of contemporary paganism beyond the English-speaking world.