Kajira of Gor

Average customer rating:

a little overdone

Kajira of Gor

For Gor lovers, juicy slavery scenes

Kajira of Gor
John Norman
Manufacturer: DAW
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Slave Girl of Gor

Dancer of Gor

Players of Gor

Renegades of Gor

Witness of Gor

ASIN: 0879978074

Customer Reviews:

a little overdone.......2005-08-28

At this point I am reading the rest of the Gor novels simply to be able to say that I finished the series. Don't get me wrong, the eroticism of submission has been well (and HEAVILY) illustrated, but if I see one more woman tricked into slavery, saying she was a slave all along masquerading as a free woman, another comment on how ALL women are slaves and not truely happy unless at the feet of a man, I would happily throw these books all out. Norman is certainly entitled to his philosophy, and I have much respect for the women who chose to model a lifestyle after him (with submissive tendencies myself), but isn't there a point where you are just beating the proverbial dead horse to an even bloodier pulp?

Also, please tell me how many people have actually read the portions of the story where he describes a game of Kaissa or the measurements of the war ships. I've been able to skip several sections of these books without losing out on any of the story.

Kajira of Gor.......2004-12-21

John Normans Counter-Earth of Gor is nearly as detailed, maybe more detailed, than Middle-Earth. But you can't really compare them, because they're not even quite in the same genre.

Like Middle-Earth, Gor is full of strange creatures and unique yet Earth-like landscape, but unlike Middle-Earth, it's not the animals that are interesting, it's the humans.

Kajira of Gor is told from the point of view of an Earth "Barbarian" named Tiffany Collins. An ordinary woman of unusual beauty ('Slave curves' is a term often used in the book) who finds herself first treated like a slave bu strangers in her oun appartment, and the next minute Tatrix of Corcius, or Queen of a city on Gor.

SPOILER ALERT! Don't read any further if you don't want me to spoil it!

Although she has authority over life and death in the city and even has a slavegirl under her oun direct command, she is treated like a slave by a han who I gather is like her Visere.
And Susan who serves her, herself a Barbarian, is actually ouned by that man, and has simply been told to serve the Tatrix and instruct her to be more Gorean.

But all this is just part of a conspiracy. courcius is at war with Ar, aparantly courcius is loseing the war and, if the true Tatrix were found, she would be taken to Ar like a slave and then impaled. so they found some stupid Earth purfume counder sales girl who looks a bit like the Tatrix and made her parade around the city without a veil (Freewomen on Gor wear veils, and for a Tyraness being recognizeable is particularly dangerous.)

tiffany only saw the true Tatrix momentarially, she was veiled but otherwize disguised as a slave, and Tiffany was basically left there as a decoy as Ar stormed the tower while the true Tatrix escapes as a slave.

That's only the first fiew chapters.

I would reccomend the works of John Norman to men and women.

it's a very erotic book about submission and arousal, and the connection thereof. on Gor, the 60's never happened. The American civil war never happened. Hell, the Industrial Revolution never happened. The result is that Gorean men are true men and Gorean women are true women (except for Freewomen, who are just cloaked bitches who treat slavegirls badly just because they're jealous.)

I think I could learn a thing or two from gorean men. I don't think I could be as rude as them, and I would hesitate to harm let alone whip a girl (unless she told me she was a masachist) but I could definitely be as strong as them and I could stand and walk like them, i liked the way Tiffany described the Visere, "Asif a lion had assumed human form".

I think women could learn a thing or two from Kajira, too. not so much just to submit to men. It's not just about pleaseing men, it's about fullfilling your oun desires.
slavegirls also tend to actually say exactly what they mean litterally "I beg for love" for example. Women are much better mind readers than men, but the one thing they can't read for themselves is that we aren't.
One point in the story personally struck home for me. at one point she figured out that there's two ways to please a man; one is to do stuff for him, the other is to simply let him do stuff to you. And I think she figured out, also, that her involuntary reaction to what he was doing was partly what pleased him the most. it's the latter that's more important, I think. Women could also learn from Gorean Slavegirls how to articulate their desires to their husbands/boyfreinds. If after reading a Gor book you still can't tell him what your turnons are, just hand him the book and let him read it.

For Gor lovers, juicy slavery scenes.......1999-08-03

Having read all of the Gor books, this is one of my favorites. For those who are into the slavery angle, this has the delicious forced submission of Judy Thornton to her former rival, Elicia Nevins, who makes Judy her abject slave. Turn about is fair play when Elicia is forced to submit as well.

Average customer rating:

Kajira of Gor (Gor #19)
John Norman
Manufacturer: Daw
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000GRGMR2

Average customer rating:

Kajira of Gor. Gor #19
John Norman
Manufacturer: Star Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000M67WP8

GOR Series: Tarnsman;Outlaw;Priest Kings; Nomads; Assassin; Raiders;Captive;Hunters;Marauders;Tribesmen;Slave Girl;Beasts;Explorers;Fighting Slave;Rogue;Guardsman;Savages;Blood Brothers;Kajira;Players;Mercenaries;Dancer;Renegades;Vagabonds;Magicians

Average customer rating:

GOR Series: Tarnsman;Outlaw;Priest Kings; Nomads; Assassin; Raiders;Captive;Hunters;Marauders;Tribesmen;Slave Girl;Beasts;Explorers;Fighting Slave;Rogue;Guardsman;Savages;Blood Brothers;Kajira;Players;Mercenaries;Dancer;Renegades;Vagabonds;Magicians
John Norman
Manufacturer: Daw & Ballantine
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000TBL9EQ

Product Description

First 25 titles in the Gor (Chronicles of Counter Earth). 25 mass market paperbacks. Multiple books shipped as one item for your convenience. Save on Shipping/Handling charges.

Average customer rating:

Kajira of Gor. Gor #19
John Norman
Manufacturer: Star Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000RNQG4Y

Book Description

This founding work of the history of religions, first published in English in 1954, secured the North American reputation of the Romanian émigré-scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986). Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no less than half a dozen European languages, Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return makes both intelligible and compelling the religious expressions and activities of a wide variety of archaic and "primitive" religious cultures. While acknowledging that a return to the "archaic" is no longer possible, Eliade passionately insists on the value of understanding this view in order to enrich our contemporary imagination of what it is to be human. Jonathan Z. Smith's new introduction provides the contextual background to the book and presents a critical outline of Eliade's argument in a way that encourages readers to engage in an informed conversation with this classic text.

Customer Reviews:

Human Destiny as the Product of Consciousness.......2005-10-01

Somewhere on the cover, or in the preface, or even in the introductions to other of his many profound works in the field of comparative religious studies, one will find Eliade's famous counsel: "I consider it the most significant of my books; and when asked in what order they should be read, I always recommend beginning with The Myth of the Eternal Return." One of the enduring monuments of twentieth century academic writing, The Myth of the Eternal Return expounds Eliade's seminal ruminations on the advent of the nuclear, or post-modern era - the naissance of our capacity for apocalyptic self-annihilation - an attempt to demonstrate in analyzable terms the relation between the foundations of the contemporary psyche to the seemingly adventitious madness which actively anticipates (and even militates in favor of) an end-time, an Armageddon, a Judgment Day, if you will. Eliade thus asks the arch-question: "What can protect us from the terror of history?"
The discussion is framed within a comparison between what Eliade deems as the distinctive difference between the ancient and modern, the archaic (or primitive) and contemporary world-view. The modern envisions reality as a series of events which fulminate in a linear, progressive history - a history which had a beginning and will have an end. The ancient experiences reality as an endless, cyclic repetition of primordial acts. "... the life of archaic man (a life reduced to the repetition of archetypal acts, that is, to categories and not to events, to the unceasing rehearsal of the same primordial myths) although it takes place in time, does not bear the burden of time, does not record time's irreversibility; in other words, completely ignores what is especially characteristic and decisive in a consciousness of time. Like the mystic, like the religious man in general, the primitive lives in a continual present. (And it is in this sense that the religious man may be said to be a `primitive'; he repeats the gestures of another and, through this repetition, lives always in an atemporal present.)"
Eliade points to the centrality of the lunar cycle in the mythological fabric woven from this perspective, which, to a degree, envelops our own world-view, however linear and eschatologically determinate. "The phases of the moon - appearance, increase, wane, disappearance, followed by reappearance after three nights of darkness - have played an immense part in the elaboration of cyclical concepts. We find analogous concepts especially in the archaic apocalypses and anthropogonies; deluge or flood puts an end to an exhausted and sinful humanity, and a new regenerated humanity is born, usually from a mythical `ancestor' who escaped the catastrophe, or from a lunar animal." Regeneration of humanity is thus always implied in its destruction. In the natural imaging, like the seasons, we assure ourselves, fall and dissolution are ever succeeded by renewal. "... just as the disappearance of the moon is never final, since it is necessarily followed by a new moon, the disappearance of man is not final either; in particular, even the disappearance of an entire humanity ... is never total ..." As the modern (historical) cultures translate this concept, "this optimism can be reduced to a consciousness of the normality of the cyclical catastrophe, to the certainty that it has a meaning and, above all, that it is never final... In the `lunar perspective', the death of the individual and the periodic death of humanity are necessary, even as the three days of darkness preceding the `rebirth' of the moon are necessary. The death of the individual and the death of humanity are alike necessary for their regeneration ... what predominates in all these cosmico-mythological lunar conceptions is the cyclical occurrence of what has been before, in a word, eternal return."
Due to the fact that the modern, predominantly Western model, of consciousness, primarily informed by Hebraic/Christian-Greek (teleological) influences, perceives time as a matrix for linear progress toward eschatological fulfillment, an end (and Eliade does not hesitate to analyze with his usual acumen - and here one must highlight the amazing passage where he claims that the concept of `ekpyrosis', the destruction of the world by fire, originates in early Iranian mythology - how Islam developed within this eschatological framework), we are forced to confront what he terms "the terror of history", the assertion (often stated by zealots of various stripes as fact) that human history, itself, must end. Recognition of this shift in human consciousness, from the archaic celebration of the repetition of nativity to the modern obsession with the limitation of mortality yields enormous explanatory power. In the face of the nuclear option, we must seriously consider how far such concepts as "resurrection", "rebirth" have tangible reality, not merely a traditionally assigned or contemplatively evoked meaning, but value as real states of affairs.
"Since the `invention' of faith, in the Judeo-Christian sense of the word (= for God all is possible), the man who has left the horizon of archetypes and repetition can no longer defend himself against that terror except through the idea of God . . . Any other situation of modern man leads, in the end, to despair. It is a despair provoked not by his own human existentiality, but by his presence in a historical universe in which almost the whole of mankind lives prey to a continual terror (even if not always conscious of it) . . .
In this respect, Christianity incontestably proves to be the religion of `fallen man': and to the extent to which modern man is irremediably identified with history and progress, and to which history and progress are a fall, both implying the final abandonment of the paradise of archetypes and repetition." These are the words with which the book concludes. If all that we are is the product of all that has been thought, they deserve the closest sort of reading by every thinking being. For the final abandonment, in the fine sense and print, means no less than the final abandonment of planet earth and the evolutionary project of humanity in full.

The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History

Average customer rating:

Human Destiny as the Product of Consciousness
Ability to Recreate verses Historical Existentialism
post-modern archetypes
This book has changed my life! (really)
Still relevant

The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History
Mircea Eliade
Manufacturer: Bollingen
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Folklore & Mythology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Cosmology | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

Cosmology | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0691017778

Book Description

Customer Reviews:

Human Destiny as the Product of Consciousness.......2005-10-01

Ability to Recreate verses Historical Existentialism.......2004-07-01

.
I'm in awe over this book! It's a larger lens, a higher mountain to see religious and historical thought. Really, I am amazed at this book. 50 years after it is written and I've read hundreds of books and here I am dumb founded. Read some of the other amazon.com reviews here (some are excellent) and now I am adding to them.

Eliade relates two main types of persons. The archaic man and the modern. The archaic models his life on archetypes, similiar to Plato's "world of ideas," forsaking history in favor of such. He repeatedly and continually destroys all history and recreates himself in a new beginning. He does this by entering a timeless realm Eliade calls the illo tempore, a timeless and numinous death and rebirth, which he bases on cyclic events of some type.

The modern man negates all of this in favor of historicity. He measures all history and time, or the profane time, and bases his entire life on the meaning of such in present existence and all future decision making. However, without the archaic man's non-historical regenerative abilities to recreate himself in such timelessness, or in the sacred, in imitation of archetypes, the modern historical man faces extreme existential despair. But what saves the modern man from suicide and utter meaninglessness in relativism and nihilism; he joins to his historical self, either religious faith, cyclic theories, mysticism, science and philosophy.

Hegel suggests history (and all the evil in history) is never repeated and necessary for the evolution to higher ends. Only persons like Belinsky or Dostoeyski have resisted but weakly in that. Marx had made a science of history as the results of the class struggle, which ultimately fails and leaves us in our existential relativity.

So remedies are created to coincide with historical measurement, as in Nietzsche's Eternal Return,although cyclic in nature is not the Eternal Return of the Archaic man who regenerations a new beginning, but rather that of the Greek Heraclitus and Pythagorean thoughts, are the cyclic meanings needed to live a life of measured time and history apart from the archaic regenerative man of archetype models and rebirth into new beginnings. The same holds true for Oswald Spenglers biological conception of history and Heidegger's idea of historicity transcending all are what modern man must attach to his linear historical measurement.

While monotheism, the first to measure history and time encounters the timelessness of the illo tempore in the beginning of creation and in the "end" of the world or in Christianity in the second coming of the messiah. Unlike the archaic man who enters the new creation each and every time he recreates both himself and his world.

Eliade suggests that perhaps mankind will one day return to the archaic man of regeneration in repetition of rituals and meaning to cease measuring this time and enter in the timelessness, letting go of history and entering in the illo tempore.

(Archetype Non-Historical Regeneration Man)
The wind blows - but - gets continually reborn; or,
(Historical Man with Religious Faith)
Cling to your dusty mirror and hold God's hand.
(Historical Man without Religious Faith)
Or the mirror without dust would destroy the world.

And to sum it up, Archaic man had no history, repeated archetype models, destroying his past (all history) and recreating the beginning of time each year in a mystical, timeless moment in the illo tempore, all history erased. While modern man relies on history and profane time and gains either science, philosophy or religious faith to prevent him from dying in existential despair.

Now I'm reading this great book entitled, When Science Meets Religion, by Ian G. Barbour and reading of those with religious faith who conform the uncertainties of quantum physics with a God who controls such acausual events. Seeing this through Eliade's lens, I see this as an historical man's attempt to join religious faith to his history and science in order to prevent him from existential despair in the terror of history. For the archaic man none of this is needed, as he will erase all history, re-creating the beginning of time reborn in the timeless moment of illo tempore, not of some future time but of the present.

And while the modern man has history and faith, he also forms minority governments to control, organized and maintains his linear history. The majority are followers, freedom is seriously limited. The archaic man has complete freedom as each time cycle or year, to erase all history, to enter in the timeless moment of the archetype of illo tempore and re-create himself and his world.

I can't say enough for this book, this only a summary of a higher mountain to see humanity.

post-modern archetypes.......2004-04-20

Reading this book, I came to acknowledge in no modern scholar's analysis is there a possibility of divergence from "politically accepted" thought. To say a primitive (someone illiterate, living bounded into archetypes) has a theory of being is highly ridiculous, especially as the author himself acknowledges primitive man's disconfort in living outside the world of archetypes. To link an archetype (which is a form of instinct, with equivalents among other higher mammals) with philosophy, and even with the highest stance of the latter (ontology) is "mentally incorrect".

These pitiful relativistic stances should be immediately ignored by a serious person. Otherwise, the influences of Jung's theories are always apparent. As always, ideas aren't bad in themselves, but their interpretation makes them a vehicle of relativism.

According to Eliade, the archaic man lives in a world of archetypes and cyclical past, while for the "fallen" man of modern civilizations archetypes no longer exist and time is linear. This is obviously incorrect. His very idea that "we should respect other peoples cultures and not judge others as primitive" is an ALWAYS recurrent mindless ARCHETYPE of Post-Modern ages.

This book has changed my life! (really).......2004-04-19

When I first became aquainted with the thought of Mircea Eliade it was through this book. It really changed the way I looked at the world.

The basic Eliade's idea that majority of basic beliefs of human beings about the world do not correspond to the reality but are merely inherited from the religious tradition of our ethnical group is the greatest insight that revolutionized my personal philosophy. After all, how many of our believes are unconsciously shaped by Judeo-Christian dogma? - not only the idea of history as having the beginning and the end which is analyzed in this book, but other ideas as well, such as the idea of death. We think it is bad to die. Why we think so? Because of our belief in soul and its death or possibility of suffering in hell. Tribals share with us the survival instinct which is basic for all mammals but aside from that they are not distressed by the idea of death because they believe that they return back to Mother Earth. Prove them wrong! After all we all come from the matter of this planet in material sense and return to it again, having lived our lives. To believe in the eternal return is more logical than to believe in some entity called "soul" which is separated from the body "once and for all" after death.

This is just a single thought on my part.
After reading this book, those of you who are ready to accept its ideas will undoubtly have more thoughts about the validity of our common-sense beliefs about reality.

Even if scientific materialism is true this is no great reason for pessimism - we are who we think we are!

Still relevant.......2003-12-27

This book was written in 1949. In the Preface he says that he considers it his most important work. I think not; I think he was being disingenuous or modest and was concerned about "history," the book having been written only 4 years after WWII. Nevertheless I think it is an important work of his and probably the best to read for an introduction to his thought, which is still surprisingly fresh after more than 50 years.

This is a short book, only 162 pages. Each page, however, is packed with ideas and meaning. Eliade tries to show the differences between what he calls "archaic" or "traditional" man and the man of modern societies, primarily Western; those being that archaic man's behavior is governed by myths and archetypes and a cyclical, or cosmic, view of time, whereas modern man, for the most part, is governed only by himself and his own ability to "make" history, and therefore has a linear, or historical, view of time, a position that is without any "transcendant" models, myths, or archetypes. He also attempts to show the emptiness of various historicisic philosphies, such as those by Dilthey, Heidegger, Croce, Gasset. I think Eliade is still worth hearing, and in fact was one of the great minds and encyclopediasts of the 20th century. If the reader is interested in myth, the philosophy of history, phenomenology, ethnology, and theology, or even just the idea of transhistorical ideas or meaning in life, Eliade is a must read. "The Myth of the Eternal Return" is a good starting point for Eliade, followed by "The Sacred and The Profane."

Average customer rating:
Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return
Eliade. Mircea
Manufacturer: Harper Torchbooks / the Bollingen Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000L380GW

Average customer rating:
Cosmos and History : The Myth of the Eternal Return
Mircea Eliade
Manufacturer: Harper Torchbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Similar Items:

Mythologies

ASIN: B000H0Y2H0

Average customer rating:
Cosmos and History: the Myth of the Eternal Return
Mircea Eliade
Manufacturer: Harper & Row
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NPRM0I

Average customer rating:
Cosmos and history; the myth of the eternal return
Mircea Eliade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00005VPH6

Average customer rating:
THE MYTH OF THE ETERNAL RETURN OR COSMOS AND HISTORY

Manufacturer: Harper Torchbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HF1OL2

Average customer rating:
Cosmos and History The Myth of The Eternal Return

Manufacturer: Harper & Brothers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I8BRYW

Average customer rating:
THE MYTH OF THE ETERNAL RETURN OR, COSMOS AND HISTORY

Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HKPLHA

Average customer rating:
Cosmos and History Myth of the Eternal Return
Mircea Eliade
Manufacturer: Harper
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NVXCCY

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books