You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
For the first time in English, Benebell Wen reveals the rich history and theoretical principles underlying the ancient practice of crafting Fu talismans, or magical sigils, in the Chinese Taoist tradition and gives detailed instructions for modern practitioners who would like to craft their own Fu. Fu talismans are ideograms and writings typically rendered on paper and empowered by means of invocations, ritual, and transferences of energy, or Qi. Talismans can be used for many purposes, such as strengthening or weakening personality characteristics, finding love, earning more money, or easing emotional tensions in the home. The Tao of Craft shows how metaphysical energy can be harnessed to a...
“Luminous and detailed, this is an encyclopedic treasure trove that now renders the gods and goddesses of Eastern lore accessible to the West.” —Benebell Wen, author of Holistic Tarot China is an immense land with a history spanning thousands of years, and its needs and problems are perhaps too many for a single deity to watch over. This book begins to explore the veritable army of gods, immortals, and deities to whom the Chinese have turned for help, support, and intervention—not just in the annals of history but also in the bustling modern world. From Kuan Yin to Chairman Mao offers fascinating insight into the complex interweaving of China’s main religions and folklore and the w...
Winner, 2023 William James Book Award, American Psychological Association Division 1 in General Psychology Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice—or can our beliefs help change our luck? What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of c...
Most people would look at Taoism as a religion per se. If one is not familiar with Taoism, one would be surprised that the concepts of feng-shui, astrology, geography, traditional medicine, Yin-Yang and many others influencing modern western cultures are, in fact, Taoism concepts! Others had ideas of Taoism steeped in rituals, branded as superstitious and even looked at it with apprehension. It is quite understandable as the concepts and culture of Taoism hardly cross the path of the Western world. Taoism remains deeply rooted in the Far East and its propagation to the world is rather slow and lethargic. A Simple Approach to Taoism - of Gods and Deities and together with A Simple Approach to...
Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy is the first book in any Western language to explore the composition, language, thought, and early history of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents), one of the pillars of the Chinese textual, intellectual, and political tradition. In examining the text from multiple disciplinary and intellectual perspectives, Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy challenges the traditional accounts of the nature and formation of the Shangshu and its individual chapters. As it analyzes in detail the central ideas and precepts given voice in the text, it further recasts the Shangshu as a collection of dynamic cultural products that expressed and shaped the political and intellectual discourses of different times and communities. Contributors are: Joachim Gentz, Yegor Grebnev, Magnus Ribbing Gren, Michael Hunter, Martin Kern, Maria Khayutina, Robin McNeal, Dirk Meyer, Yuri Pines, Charles Sanft, David Schaberg, Kai Vogelsang.
Ernst Boerschmann was the most influential foreign architectural researcher in China in the first half of the twentieth century. This book concerns his three-year research expedition through the Chinese Empire (1906–1909). He was the first Westerner to systematically document China’s religious architecture, returning from his travels with thousands of photographs, sketches, and architectural surveys. His six major publications leading up to 1931, described here alongside the reactions they caused, were milestones on the path to formal study of Chinese architectural history, long before Chinese academics themselves began to take interest in the subject in the 1930s.
She was just a university teacher who had no power or authority to do as he pleased, but never in her wildest dreams would she imagine that the husband her mother had chosen for her would be unable to speak humanly. The wedding night was over, how could he return the goods? "If it's not possible, then so be it. In any case, her interest in sex isn't particularly strong!" "Zhao Si Luo, I've taken a fancy to you. I don't mind if you get married." Shen Shaoyang was used to controlling everything, including her feelings. He only wanted her ...
Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy. It was not his war. The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives—even the Emperor himself—against Imperial orders. But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier. On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe starts down a path that can only end in fire. He flees his father and a future as a torturer only to be left stranded on a strange, backwater world. Forced to fight as a gladiator and navigate the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, Hadrian must fight a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.
Portrait of a Community examines emerging kinship structures as embedded in the social and cultural history of a river valley in a central coastal Fujian province from the ninth through thirteenth centuries. The book demonstrates how cultural innovation often begins at a local level.