Book Description
Holy Madness explores the religious phenomenon referred to as crazy wisdom -- the purposefully outrageous, conventiondestroying behavior of spiritual adepts in every great tradition, from Christian Fools for Christ through the Sufi Path of Blame, to the charismatic leaders of new religions. The author explores the core of the spiritual process through eight critical indepth cameos of holy madness in action in the lives of eight contemporaries, including Chgyam Trungpa, Bhagwan Rajneesh and Aleister Crowley. This revised and expanded edition includes a new assessment of the American guru Adi Da (formerly Da Free John) and the psychopathology of blind faith, using the example of Shoko Asahara (founder of Japan's infamous terrorist sect AUM). The author offers guidelines for choosing a wise, enlightened guide or guru, and tips for avoiding the exploitative.
Customer Reviews:
Holy Madness-Wisdom Teachers.......2007-01-15
I bought two copies of this book- one to lend out and one as a christmas gift. It is a book which has been well researched and written.It explores the subject of those master teachers who use outrageous methods to bring those they meet to enlightenment. There is a long tradition in every culture of these types of teachers. They teach singularity in a unique way. They take your mind beyond the concepts of good and evil-beyond judgment of yourself and others. This book presents a comprehensive overview of these teachers and their methods.
Book Description
In 1583 in Vienna, a 16-year-old girl suffered stomach cramps. A team of Jesuits exorcized her for eight weeks. The priests announced that they had expelled 12,652 demons from her, demons that her grandmother had kept as flies in glass jars. The grandmother was tortured into confessing that she was a witch who had engaged in sex with Satan. She was then burned at the stake. This was one of perhaps one million such executions during three centuries of witch-hunts.
In 1989 in Moradabad, India, a pig caused hundreds of people to kill one another when the animal walked through a Muslim holy ground. Muslims, who think pigs are an embodiment of Satan, accused Hindus of driving the pig into the sacred spot. Members of both faiths went on a rampage, stabbing and clubbing. The pig riot spread to a dozen cities and left two hundred dead.
A squad of armed Islamic zealots raided a Christian church at Behawalpur, Pakistan, on October 28, 2001, killing the minister, fourteen worshipers, and the church's police guard.
It is said that there is never enough religion in the world to make people love one another--just enough to make them hate one another. Incendiary blends of fundamentalist religion, politics, nationalism, and ethnic zealotry engender countless examples of atrocity in the name of faith and orthodoxy. If anything, religious persecution is more savage now than ever before in the history of mankind.
HOLY HORRORS chronicles the grim spectrum of religious persecution from ancient times to the present. Fully illustrated with drawings, woodcuts, and photographs, the book recounts such historic religious persecution as the Crusades, the Islamic jihads, the Catholic wars against heretics, the Inquisition, witch-hunts, and the Reformation. It also chronicles modern-day atrocities, including the Holocaust, the seemingly insoluble Catholic-Protestant schism in Northern Ireland, religious tribalism in Lebanon, and the barbaric cruelty of the theocracy in Iran.
Customer Reviews:
Very interesting, but could have been much better.......2005-12-22
I wasn't a religious man before I read Holy Horrors.
I never became religious reading it.
And one thing's for sure; I'm definitely not religious after having finished it.
Because I doubt that I've ever - despite having a degree in religious studies - read a book which made the entire phenomenon of religion, no matter during what era, in what culture, and what particular faith, look worse than this. Author James A. Haught writes in a way that makes him look like a militant atheist (and even if he's not then I doubt he'll ever be welcome in a church), and it's not a very happy reading.
On page after page, paragraph after paragraph, numerous examples are given where the most horrible of crimes, murder, torture, hatred and more have been carried out in the name of religion. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism; most faiths out there are made to look like the most vicious of philosophies. Mankind's ability to simply annihilate his fellow man apparently has no limits whatsoever, and worst of all: it's all true.
The human race have a tendency to show its very worst sides whenever a religious conflict appear, and to all of you who happen to believe that contemporary man has learned his lesson by now, Haught has a simple answer: Wrong. Religiously inspired murder, torture, and public executions still happen all the time all over the world.
However, Holy Horrors isn't a brilliant book, unfortunately. Because since its focus is exclusively on all the murder, blood, and gore, it simplifies what's really quite complex issues. Reality isn't as black and white as Haught makes it out to be, and even though it's both well-written and very interesting with its many illustrations, the end result still comes out as somewhat sloppy. Due to its many illustrations and large print, the total amount of text isn't very large, and obviously things like the Reformation and the witch-hunts of Europe cannot be dealt with in just a few pages.
Sure, all the blood and gore are truly awful, and all of you who see religion as something good and beautiful will have to think again, but since Holy Horrors never really dig deep into the topic the reader will remain unsatisfied.
I know I did, despite the fact that I liked what Haught had to say and how he said it.
I was not impressed.......2005-11-01
First off, let me say that I am an atheist and feel that religion is the most destructive human invention ever devised. Therefore, I was looking forward to reading this book. But for me it was rather disappointing.
As I was reading the book, I felt as though I was reading a student's term paper. The author covers numerous religious groups or time periods but in a very superficial manner. As a couple of reviewers already mentioned, the book is only 234 pages (243 with the biblio), 24 of those are full page illustrations (I know, the cover states "An Illustrated History") and the pages have unusually wide margins. In fact, the size of the margins was the first thing I noticed when I started to read the book. It's almost as though Haught didn't have enough material to fill enough pages to warrant publication. But even from what material is in the book, it is obvious that this book could have much longer and more detailed, giving it a more scholarly presentation.
Personally, I think that if an author is going to write about a controversial subject, it needs to be backed up with properly referenced facts. This book does not even come close. There is a section at the end of the book that the author calls a Bibliography but then he writes, "The following is a selected reading list, by topic." So does that mean that the books listed were used by the author as references or are some of these books just recommendations? It is rather difficult to tell because Haught uses no footnote notation. He repeatedly presents statements as fact, including historical information and figures (as in the number of deaths). He also has many direct quotes that have no reference. For example, the cover of the book highlights one corner and states, "Includes the 9-11-01 terrorist attack..." Within the text Haught includes a lengthy quote that is a translation of some of the writings found in the highjackers' notebooks in order to make the point that the 9-11 attackers were able to carry out their mission due to religious zeal - which I happen to agree with. But where did he get these quotes. I don't think he translated the notebooks themselves! Other quotes may state, "So and so said,..." but then there is no reference in the Bibliography to match up with the speaker. In addition, even if a reader was interested in following up with one of the recommended books, a significant number of them are 25 to over 100 years old. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but as some Amamzon customers may know, it's sometimes difficult to obtain a book that's over 10 or 15 years old - let alone the book titles listed as recommendations. Maybe others feel that I'm nitpicking but whenever I'm reading a book of non-fiction (especially a book that is historical, scientific or political) I look at the references to see where the author got his/her information.
I'm giving the book three stars because I feel that this is an important topic and I'm glad that author wrote about it. As he states in the book (p. 235), "As far as can be ascertained, no previous book has surveyed the phenomenon of religious homicide ["homicide" - I like that] in its entirety." I just wish the book was more thorough and that it backed up its information with better references.
Good, but..........2005-04-23
...I was a little disappointed to receive a rather slim book (234 pages), when Amazon described it as being 661 pages. I was expecting a more scholarly work, but this is a good introduction to the subject. Someone needs to write a more in-depth book on this important topic.
not bad.......2004-11-30
if you like, i recommend reading something by c.s. lewis. great stuff to read
The crimes of religion.......2004-01-25
Very well written. Direct and to the point. Shows how religious beliefs are used as acts of violence against others of different faiths. Great read for the beginner or novice.
Amazon.com
In Holy Madness, Adam Zamoyski has written a history of revolutions, and of the romantic and sometimes ridiculous revolutionaries who inspired them. But because revolution was so ubiquitous an activity in the 19th century, what he has actually produced is a comprehensive account of Western civilization from 1776 to 1871. Inspired by the American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789), the whole of Europe, and large portions of the rest of the world, was regularly convulsed by the urge to fashion Utopia on Earth. Zamoyski manages to flesh out these events with well-chosen detail and a fine sense of the touching comic-heroics they often entailed, as well as the bloodletting and the horror. As a historian of Poland, Zamoyski untangles the many uprisings in Eastern Europe with particular aplomb, but his account of France is also adept, with a vivid portrayal of the idealism of the Paris Commune, overthrown in 1871.
Holy Madness advances a particular argument: that the century of revolutionary upheaval was the direct result of the waning of religion as a universal human-value system. Post-Enlightenment men and women turned to the ecstasies of patriotism and revolution to fill the void left by belief in God, hoping to construct a paradise on Earth rather than wait for one in heaven. According to this thesis, revolution was a new theology: "The theology may have been shaky, but the new religion did have a god. That god was the sovereign nation, whose service was the highest calling, as countless revolutionary catechisms pointed out." It's an ingenious line, worked through thoroughly, although it doesn't explain everything--for instance, why Britain was almost entirely free of revolutionary upset during the same period. But this is thought-provoking and well-made historical writing. --Adam Roberts, Amazon.co.uk
Book Description
"Entertaining and thought-provoking." (Times Literary Supplement)
"Zamoyski skillfully brings together all the strains of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century nationalism, from the American Revolution to the Paris Commune, showing how quasi-religious idealism prepared the way for both fascism and communism. . . . A stimulating and finely written book." (Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad)
From the first shots of the American Revolution in 1776 to the last agony of the Paris Commune in 1871, Adam Zamoyski recreates an era when determined men and women were willing to die for the cause of an idealized nation, and who transformed the society of Europe and its colonies. Moving fluidly through the history of the tumultuous years that embraced the American and French revolutions, the Irish Rebellion, the Polish uprisings, the liberation of South America, and the Italian Risorgimento, Holy Madness captures the passion of revolutionary figures who were caught up in the fervor of the nationalist crusade, while exposing the dangerous fallacies of their idealism.
Customer Reviews:
How Love of Country came to replace Love of God.......2007-07-19
That is Zamoyski's premise: as the Enlightenment loosened the Church's hold on the minds of the intellectual classes in Europe it was replaced for some by a mystic, fanatical love of "country." The entire concept of belonging to a country, of having loyalty to a country, of dying for a country was something of a novelty in 18th century Europe. While people may have been willing to fight an enemy to defend their personal home they idea of having a bond with countrymen - people you have never and would never see - was almost unthinkable in, say, the 14th century. The word "madness" in the title is deliberate. Zamoyski shows that this love of country all to often went over the edge of fanaticism and incorporated many of the worst excesses of religion that the Enlightenment disavowed. In some respects Zamoyski is offering a countering theory to Schama's Citizens in which faith in Science and Progress unleashed the excesses of revolution.
This was the second book I read by Zamoyski (The Last King of Poland was the first) and like the first book this is not a quick read. It requires attention. Zamoyski's chapters in this book often start out slow making the book grind to a near halt on occasion. If you enjoy European History and a distinctive POV stick with it, this book is worth your time.
Romantic revolutionaries and the cult of the nation-state.......2005-03-03
~Holy Madness: Romantics, Patriots, and Revolutionaries, 1776-1871~ is an exploration of the ideologues and revolutionaries behind the great multitude of revolutions that befell Europe and the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Zamoyski captures the romantic idealism and quixotic fixations of oft-times crazed revolutionaries who sought heaven on earth. Enmeshed with Rousseau's blissful optimism, the revolutionaries sought to free their nation from the grip of both the church and nobility in a mass rising of peasants and bourgeoisie. They hoped to usher in a glorious new age where the nation reigned supreme. Their quasi-religious idealism invoked crude caricatures of Christian concepts of redemption. They often nostalgically and blasphemously cast their messiah as the nation or the people themselves. Zamoyski also tells the story of more moderate nationalists and revolutionaries who borrowed the idealism of the radicals, and tamed it with a desire for peaceful constitutional and political reform. The cast of characters herein is vast including Rousseau and Robespierre, Bonaparte and Bolivar, and Metternich and Mazzini. Zamoyski captures the cross-currents of the holy madness that reverbrated in violent revolutionary passions as well as harmless romantic sentimentalism and quixotic theorizing by poets and ideologues. Zamoyski takes the reader from the crescendo of the holy madness with a tale of regicide in 1793 to the short-lived Paris Commune in the 1870s. Zamoyski tacitly admits this work might be the bane of specialists (presumably on the subjects of modern Europe, revolutionaries and nationalism) in his introduction. He by his own admission is not at all methodical in its explorations. In my estimation, the book is kind of abrupt in its pronouncements and haphazard in its writing style. The author leaps from point to point without clarity or any set direction at times. On the other hand, some portions are quite stimulating.
The French Revolution was one of the more violent revolutions in this primordial rise of "holy madness." Moreover, 1789 inaugurated a multitude of revolutions, egalitarian fantasies and campaigns of bloodletting throughout Europe. In 1793, King Louis XVI submitted to the guillotine. "When the executioner held up his severed head for all to see," the crowd shouted "Vive la nation!" Quite a few disturbed people took their own lives and drowned themselves in the Seine. The spectacle they beheld was the removal of the "anointed of God" as it was the king that "gave validity to the ideological and cultural compound that was France." Zamoyski avows, "The nation had replaced the king as the sovereign and therefore as the validating element in the state." Beforehand, Europe was a vast multitude of loose confederations, kingdoms, duchies, and fiefdoms. Thus, the medieval nation (natio) was conceptualized as a compound composed of the nobles not the people.
Napoleonic France saw itself as first among the nations, the revolutionary fountainhead of liberty and equality, and cast itself as La Grande Nation. Zamoyski captures the contradictions, chauvinism and selfishness which maligned some national revolutionaries (particularly in France.) While purporting to express fraternity and sympathy for other fledging nationalists, the Napoleonic French embarked on a conquest of imperial grandeur and exploitation under the guise of liberation. With promises of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," Napoleon sequestered property and conscripted great masses of Frenchmen, Poles, and other peoples on a campaign of conquest supposedly against the corrupt old order. Decrying the aristocrats, blue-bloods, and feudal lords of the old order, Napoleon hypocritically garbed himself in the pomp and splendor of a modern-day Caesar. "The manipulation of liberated territories for France was shameless," declares Zamoyski. France hid behind revolutionary platitudes, demagoguery, and egalitarian idealism, and cast her conquests as being pure in motive. In an ironic, twist of fate, as Napoleon was busy being the continental imperator forging his New Order in Europe, nationalist sentiments grew strong, and thereafter national risings sprang throughout Europe borne out of resentment to their "French liberators." National revolutionaries grew tired of expressing solidarity with the French. Likewise, the idea of a secular imperium ostensibly under "benevolent French hegemony" didn't sit well with them. Nonetheless, the Poles found the French to be a worthy ally in liberating her from Prussian and Russian suzerainty as Zamoyski points out. Though, the Poles gave a lot of blood as their soldiers fought in Napoleon's armies and died.
Other revolutionaries like Mazzini and Metternich prophesized universal redemption through an apotheosis of nations. Their influence no doubt brought internationalism to fruition in the twentieth century, as they found common cause in the desire for national liberation and universal redemption for humanity in some unrealized New Order. Moreover, they labored in common cause with other revolutionaries throughout Europe. Profoundly anti-clerical, radically egalitarian, they set the stage for socialist and nationalist movements throughout Europe. Mazzini founded Young Italy and labored with other dispossessed nationalists throughout Europe. The quintessential Leftist, Mazzini had a vision of Italy freed from the thumb of Papal and Austrian domination, and united in fraternal brotherhood as a social democracy. Mazzini founded a National International of sorts in Switzerland in 1834, and it was formally known as Young Europe. Through its sister organizations, it sought to export national revolutions throughout Europe. Mazzini "meditated on the distant promise of universal salvation, Mazzini even contemplated the possibility that the nation might become redundant," notes Zamoyski. Mazzini was appalled at notions of rights and constitutional reform, and was more interested in organic political systems rooted in monism and exaltation of the nation and its people. He spoke he almost blasphemous terms, in declaring, "That which Christ did Humanity can do." The nation was to be a surrogate Christ, for Mazzini, and he saw Italy as a torch-bearer of a new order. Mazzini was eventually martyred for his cause. His compatriots would venerate the bullets he was shot with as holy relics. Shortly thereafter, Springtime came in 1848, and a number of revolutions were sparked throughout central and eastern Europe. These revolutions were a peculiar mixture of anti-clericalism, egalitarian socialism, collectivist folk ideology and nationalism. In that same year, Karl Marx penned his Communist Manifesto borrowing Mazzinni's internationalism while dismissing utopian socialism in favor of his own brand of scientific socialism. In Marx's eyes, the national risings of his times were but a foreshadowing of a greater proletariat rising to come.
I find the book wanting in some areas, as the earlier chapter entitled 'The American Parable' really doesn't have the desired for historicity or make the marked dichotomy that distinguishes the American war for independence from Europe's tumultuous revolutionary tradition. Some European and French Revolutionaries looked with admiration at what was achieved across the Atlantic, and saw the promise of an idyllic New World utopia in the making. They were apt to crudely caricature the so called American Revolution, and with admiration and out of ignorance many believed they were themselves emulating it and making a New World for themselves. The American Revolution had a conservative sobriety without the egalitarian fantasies. Though the American Revolution was an act of political separation, it was also a contest for the restoration of cherished Anglo-American liberties. The "American revolutionaries" didn't seek lay waste to the preexisting civil society, they had no blissful utopian optimism about the future or rosy views about human nature. Lastly, the American patriots did seek to reset the calendar to year one and make the world anew.
In précis, Zamoyski succeeds in capturing the fervor and militancy of the eighteenth and nineteenth century revolutionaries. He paints a stark picture of their internecine wars and coups, and he illustrates the consequences of the holy madness wrought out during this time. Such revolutionary vehemence paved the way for the totalitarian incarnations of twentieth-century fascism and communism. In dissecting the revolutionary "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" trinity and its application in the twentieth-century: the fascists lauded the fraternity element while the communists lauded the equality element above all. The fascists saw the nation or volk as the vehicle of deliverance. The Bolsheviks saw a self-conscious proletariat class rising as the means of salvation. Indeed, this holy madness birthed the millenarian religions of communism and fascism. These quixotic totalitarians had their own eschatology (doctrine of last things) where the elect of humanity was to obtain heaven on earth, a new millennium, but it was to only be consummated after a climatic struggle that was paid for in the "cleansing blood" of revolutionaries and dissidents alike. Fortunately, the more liberal-minded among the revolutionaries like Lafayette set the stage for political compromise, constitutional reforms, and thus calm and deliberative parliamentarian campaigns of reforming civil society.
As a Burkean conservative, I realize "our patience will achieve more than our force." This sad state of affairs in European history and elsewhere needs to be understood and studied with much prudence and not blind unflinching sympathy for the revolutionaries that progressives have (nor the utter contempt that reactionaries like de Maistre express.) There were a lot of problems with feudal Europe and the Bourbon absolutism was utterly tyrannical, but the overreaction was even more problematic as Burke surmised in his 'Reflections on the Revolution in France.' Sadly, in liberal academia, most secular humanist historians are blinded by their God of infinite progress, and their objectivity is clouded in dealing with such subject matter. Zamoyski on the other hand does a fair job at presenting the revolutionaries without getting sentimental in his affection for them. Thus, his objectivity is fairly reasonable and to be commended. Anyhow, if this sort of subject matter interests you than you might want to consider _Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith_ by former Library of Congress librarian James Billington. All things considered, this is a fairly good read but not without its weaknesses and I give it a 3.5/5.0 rating.
New history?.......2005-01-05
After stating on page 11, that Ben Franklin worked for British intelligence during the Revolutionary War the rest of this author's work is discredited.
Bracing and Breezy.......2003-06-30
Zamoyski's ambitious book is a triumph. His sweep encompasses virtually all of Europe and North and South America from the 1770s to the 1870s. His theme is the way in which radicals, nationalists and revolutionaries appropriated religious fervour, rituals and iconography for their own protean causes. We meet an amazing assortment of cranks, would-be messiahs, unfocused idealists, adventurers and imposters. Though the events it describes are sometimes quite tragic, enlivened by Zamoyski's unfailing light touch it is one of the funniest history books I have ever read.
I'm sure in a book of this scope specialist historians will find minor errors of fact; but general readers should not be deterred. Sometimes the need to simplify matters leads to some questionable interpretations. For example, I thought Zamoyski understated the extent to which the French were duped by Bismark into starting the Franco-Prussian War. I also felt he was running out a steam towards the end, so that his treatment of the Paris Commune was not as rich as one might have hoped.
As someone who has long been baffled by the need for many European and American countries constantly to rehash their foundational myths, I found Zamoyski's good humoured debunking of them hugely enjoyable.
Anyone interested in modern history should read this splendid book as a matter of urgency.
Customer Reviews:
Penetrating and impeccable........1999-05-08
This is a penetrating and impeccable book, and it's a shame that it's out of print. The author's comments above are a start at the necessary postscript addressing the controversies of the last ten years; it remains, however, a gift of rare integrity and objectivity from personal experience.
Important issues & info; misleading spiritual viewpoint........1999-02-07
This book talks about important issues but, to my mind, suffers from a terrible blindness to abuses both subtle and blatant. The author does recognize that many observers willcondemn the antinomian "shock tactics" he thinks are so valuable. He himself seems ambivalent about the more blatant abuses, but mostly he excuses them as necessary in the holy war against "concensus trance", which seems to mean any state of consciousness which opposes cosmic or "oneness" consciousness. Feuerstein's attitude seems to be that the avowed purpose of rascal gurus -- to bestow"enlightenment" on the lazy-minded -- is of such transcendant value that merely mundane ethical values are expendable. This is another version of the end justifying the means. Cult leaders are expert manipulators and "shock tactics" are useful weapons in their arsenal. One might well question the spiritual attainments of gurus who are oblivious to thepsychological reality of personal boundary violations. One might also question the motivation of self-appointed teachers who enjoy giving others "difficult lessons". Victor Frankl, the psychiatrist, learned some very difficult (and valuable) lessons from his enforced stay in the NAZI concentration camps. Are we to conclude, then, that his captors were his benefactors? It is useful to have a long recitation of the many abuses perpetrated by gurus over the years. Read them and weep, not least for the author's blindness. Let me give examples: One Zen Master gives his disciple a koan to solve. A koan is a verbal puzzle not soluable by rational thought. Its purpose in Zen ideology is to force the student to abandon reasoning, which is devalued by Zen, and snap into a state of awareness valued by Zen, namely "satori" or enlightenment. This particular koan was: "Stop the train from Tokyo." The disciple wrestled with the koan for weeks. Finally his frustration led to what I would guess was despair. In an ironic suicidal gesture, he obeyed literally the koan's injunction; he laid his body on the tracks and was killed by a train. Feuerstein's remarkable comment on this tragedy is the glimmer of hope that the poor fellow may have attained enlightenment in the seconds before the train smashed into him! No mention of the Zen Master's insensitivity to his disciple's state of mind, nor any thought that an overly brutal teaching method might be partly at fault. This is an example of valuing transcendance over worldliness, a cruel result of what Alice Miller has called "salvational ideology". It was particularly painful to read the account of a young husband whose wife was sexually seduced by the guru Adi Da, after the guru befuddled the husband by getting him drunk. The husband has a vague sense that he has been wronged, but is focused on the lesser issue of his sobriety being violated. He is still asleep to the greater violation because he is still deluded by the guru's claim to perfection and holiness. Surely the selfless guru is teaching his disciple a valuable lesson in giving up attachment [attachment to his wife, no less!] Surely that has to be the explanation, ....doesn't it? Since Feuerstein pooh-poohs the idea of mind control, he is blind to the power relationship operating here, a kind of confidence game that can lead to spiritual slavery. The guru mind-rapes the husband in order to sexually use the wife. I pray for this man's deliverance from domination by his guru, but I pity the pain and rage that will likely accompany the dawning of the truth. To his credit, Feuerstein is at least trying to grapple with the troubling manifestations of religion's incestuous and confusing love affair with obedience and authority. I believe his worldview suffers from the hidden dualism so well explained by Kramer and Alstad in "The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power", which I recommend highly as a useful antidote to the present book.
Another arm chair psychoanalytic viewpoint expressed.......1998-04-28
The author seemed to be analyzing the subject matter from a seemingly armchair analytic point of view rather than allowing the reader to explore the odd behavior of these spiritual individuals and come to our own conclusions. I would have preferred not to have the author pose his hypothesis as to why these individuals do what they do in that who is he to judge such "crazy behavior" if he himself is not "Enlightened"!
Product Description
Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas is a groundbreaking examination of the art and legends of some of the most colorful characters in South Asian and Himalayan civilization. With contributions by ten of the most prominent scholars in the field, this catalog provides both a survey of the topic of mah?siddhas (Sanskrit, mah? meaning great and siddha meaning accomplished one) in art as well as essays on particular aspects of the theme, including literary, religious, sociological, and anthropological dimensions.
These mahasiddhas were instrumental in transmitting tantric Buddhism from India to the Himalayas between the seventh and eleventh centuries. Their legends are filled with miracles and eccentric behavior, which in the end is interpreted as not mere indulgence or insanity but the wisdom of direct religious, mystic experience.
At the heart of the enduring appeal of these saintly tricksters are stories told in prose and in poetry. Vivid and entertaining, the tales told here are set in palaces and huts, in villages and fields, and on the road. They tell of great frustrations and wonderful epiphanies, of the ordinary and the extraordinary expressed in compelling visual imagery.
The catalog provides a survey of the format of mahasiddha art, the contexts and purposes for which the art was originally made. It features complete sets of paintings and sculptures in some cases reconstituting groups that have been dispersed into different Western museum collections. More than a hundred works of art are included, from Indian miniatures to contemporary photographs of ascetics, from Nepalese clay sculptures to Tibetan woodblock prints, palm-leaf manuscripts and lifesize bronze sculpture. The various works are compared with art still surviving in situ to give a wide view of this important and charismatic type of religious teacher, one that inspired generations of artists.
Average customer rating:
- A Story From 100 Years Ago...With A Message For Today
- Fascinating Read
- Holy Rollers Rocks
- An incredible, painstaking reconstruction
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Holy Rollers: Murder and Madness in Oregon's Love Cult
Theresa McCracken , and
Robert B. Blodgett
Manufacturer: Caxton Press
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ASIN: 0870044249 |
Book Description
This is a story that has the elements often found in modern novels - sex, mass insanity, the ddownfall of prominent families, murder, and sensational court trials.
But this story is all true... and it happened a century ago.
Corvallis, Oregon leaders weren't terribly impressed with the Salvation Army dropout who appeared in the community in the early 1900s and announced plans to start a new church. While Edmund Creffiel may have been unremarkable in the eyes of the city fathers, he became something else to many of the city mothers and daughters.
When Creffield and his "Holy Roller" religious cult made headlines in Oregon in 1903, it was page-one news throughout the country. Yet few people in Oregon and Washington today have heard Creffield's name or his incredible story. And the descendants of the people who were involved still refuse to talk about those events of 100 years ago.
Customer Reviews:
A Story From 100 Years Ago...With A Message For Today.......2003-08-25
It happened a hundred years ago. But it could be happening right now. "Holy Rollers; Murder and Madness in Oregon's Love Cult" can be read and appreciated on many levels. On the surface, it's a great true crime potboiler, filled with religion, sex and murder. But its also a cautionary tale about the vulnerability of seemingly normal, well-adjusted people to the seductions of mass insanity. Whether it's Edmund Creffeld in 1905, Adolph Hitler in 1933 or Jim Jones in 1978, we've seen it happen again and again. In fact, the story in this book has a peculiar kind of resonance in that one of the key locations--Waldport, Oregon, also was the place where the Heaven's Gate cult held its first public gathering.
Edmund Creffeld was a Salvation Army dropout who arrived in Corvallis, Oregon in 1900 to start a new church. Within a few short years, he had persuaded some of the community's leading citizens--primarily of the female gender--to join his cult of madness. They literally practiced "holy rolling," sometimes turning themselves over and over for hours and hours at a time, becoming all the more caught up in the cult of Creffeld's strange personality. Creffeld was tarred and feathered (really!) and run out of town. That didn't stop him, nor did a stretch in the state prison. His ultimate, violent end seems almost foreordained.
T. McCracken and Robert Blodgett have combined their talents to produce an amazing story. Thanks to exhaustive research in newspapers and other contemporary sources, they're able to re-create the wild ride of Creffeld and his cult in vivid, day-to-day detail. I finished the book in a single sitting; I predict you will, too.--William C. Hall
Fascinating Read.......2003-06-10
This was definitely a page-turner! I live in this area. So, it was interesting to imagine that this went on right here! I had never heard about it, and I have lived here for the last 25 years. Makes me want to examine all the houses and areas they went to.
The book is written with a newspaper sensationalism kind of feel, but that shouldn't bother you too much.
Holy Rollers Rocks.......2002-10-23
The authors give us a true account, set in "the good old days", showing us that murderous cults didn't start with the Manson family, and religious fanatacism isn't an import nurtured only in foreign lands. Immediate and enthralling as any real crime story currently on the shelves or TV, this page-turning ride has just the right amount of wry, observational wit to balance the horrors. I loved it.
An incredible, painstaking reconstruction.......2002-05-12
Collaboratively researched and written by T. McCracken and Robert B. Blodgett, Holy Rollers: Murder And Madness In Oregon's Love Cult is the "truth is stranger than fiction" story of the "Holy Roller" religious cult that made brutal newspaper headlines in 1903. It all began when Salvation Army dropout Edmund Creffield arrived in Corvallis, Oregon and founded a new "church". The city fathers were less than impressed -- but not so their wives and daughters! A century later, descendants of the people involved in the macabre events of Creffield's Holy Roller Cult still refuse to discuss what happened. Holy Rollers is an incredible, painstaking reconstruction and revealing expose that create a gripping book that offers especial insight into the dark side of mass psychology, religious hysteria, and unbridled charismatic religious authority.
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HOLY MADNESS
ROB LINROTHE
Manufacturer: SERINDIA PUBLICATIONS, INC.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N5GTL6 |
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Holy Madness
Manufacturer: Orion Publishing Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Holy Madness
Adam Zamoyski
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Books:
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- Insects: Their Natural History and Diversity: With a Photographic Guide to Insects of Eastern North America
- Inside Hitler's Germany: A Documentary History of Life in the Third Reich (Modern History)
- Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language
- Jack London : Novels and Stories : Call of the Wild / White Fang / The Sea-Wolf / Klondike and Other Stories (Library of America)
- Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels
- Karl Marx: Selected Writings
- LATITUDE ZERO: TALES OF THE EQUATOR
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