A Search For Meaning In Victorian Religion

Author : Jeffrey D. Lavoie
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2014-11-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781611461855

Get Book

A Search for Meaning in Victorian Religion by Jeffrey D. Lavoie Pdf

Christian mystic, astrologer, and spiritualist, Charles Carleton Massey (1838–1905) underwent an eclectic spiritual journey that resulted in a series of articles, letters, and booklets that have largely been neglected by modern society. Massey was a child of privilege formally trained as a barrister of law at the Westminster School and the son of the English Minister of Finance for India. He devoted his life to solving the metaphysical mysteries of existence leading him into the world of religious philosophy that placed him in the middle of a crossroads between Victorian science, religion, and philosophy. Beginning his journey as a Spiritualist, Massey continued on a course that brought him into the Theosophical Society, eventually becoming the founding president of its British branch, going through the ranks of the Society of Psychical Research and ultimately into his final role as a Christian mystic. This indispensable work combines Massey’s collected writings with never before published letters organized topically in order to define Massey’s unique world-view for a new generation of readers. This book covers a range of topics from the “nature of God” to the “microcosm and macrocosm” to “Satanism” and “reincarnation” all the while allowing the reader a rare glimpse into Victorian England and the social and religious issues of this time period. The recollections recorded in this book though written over a hundred years ago, are dealt with in such a simple yet profound way that remain relevant to modern spiritual seekers of all types.

Author : Jeffrey D. Lavoie
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 169 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2021-09-28
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783030850500

Get Book

Laurence Oliphant (1829–1888) and The Household by Jeffrey D. Lavoie Pdf

This book explores the religious teachings of best-selling Victorian author and former Member of Parliament, Laurence Oliphant (1829–1888). While several biographies have been written on his captivating life, the stage of his life when Oliphant first established ‘The Household' commune has, until now, been largely unexplored. This book focuses on this later stage of his life, exploring Oliphant’s religious teachings. Additionally, this study incorporates a newly discovered archive, which reveals many behind-the-scenes details of The Household's teachings. Jeffrey D. Lavoie shows that Oliphant provided a unique interpretation of sexuality from a mystical Christian perspective, which opposed the restrictive contemporaneous “Victorian morality."

Author : John Bliss
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 247 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2023-07-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781527520394

Get Book

The Racialization of the Occult in Nineteenth Century British Literature by John Bliss Pdf

This book focuses on the representation of the practitioner of the occult in mid to late nineteenth-century British literature. The occult was a source of emotional support and scientific curiosity during this time of change and uncertainty because it seemed to offer answers to both spiritual and scientific questions through measurable, albeit unconventional, means. However, the occult was also viewed as a threat to British society, an assault on it values, and a fundamental danger to emerging scientific enterprise. By examining the ways in which the occult and its practitioners are represented in British novels from 1850-1900, this book traces the ways that the novels commented on, participated in, and contributed to the racialization of the occult that occurred throughout the nineteenth century in Britain. The representations of the occult characters in these novels interpreted and transmitted the social, political, economic, and scientific discourses about race in the nineteenth century to the reading public, as well as participating in the discourse surrounding race and the occult.

Author : Adrian Mackinder
Publisher : Pen and Sword History
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 2024-04-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781399082587

Get Book

Death and the Victorians by Adrian Mackinder Pdf

From spooky stories and real-life ghost hunting, to shows about murder and serial killers, we are fascinated by death - and we owe these modern obsessions to the Victorian age. Death and the Victorians explores a period in history when the search for the truth about what lies beyond our mortal realm was matched only by the imagination and invention used to find it. Walk among London’s festering graveyards, where the dead were literally rising from the grave. Visit the Paris Morgue, where thousands flocked to view the spectacle of death every single day. Lift the veil on how spirits were invited into the home, secret societies taught ways to survive death, and the latest science and technology was applied to provide proof of the afterlife. Find out why the Victorian era is considered the golden age of the ghost story, exemplified by tales from the likes of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oscar Wilde and Henry James. Discover how the birth of the popular press nurtured our taste for murder and that Jack the Ripper was actually a work of pure Gothic horror fiction crafted by cynical Victorian newspapermen. Death and the Victorians exposes the darker side of the nineteenth century, a time when the living were inventing incredible ways to connect with the dead that endure to this day.

Author : Christine Ferguson,Andrew Radford
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2017-12-15
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781351168304

Get Book

The Occult Imagination in Britain, 1875-1947 by Christine Ferguson,Andrew Radford Pdf

Between 1875 and 1947, a period bookended, respectively, by the founding of the Theosophical Society and the death of notorious occultist celebrity Aleister Crowley, Britain experienced an unparalleled efflorescence of engagement with unusual occult schema and supernatural phenomena such as astral travel, ritual magic, and reincarnationism. Reflecting the signal array of responses by authors, artists, actors, impresarios and popular entertainers to questions of esoteric spirituality and belief, this interdisciplinary collection demonstrates the enormous interest in the occult during a time typically associated with the rise of secularization and scientific innovation. The contributors describe how the occult realm functions as a turbulent conceptual and affective space, shifting between poles of faith and doubt, the sacrosanct and the profane, the endemic and the exotic, the forensic and the fetishistic. Here, occultism emerges as a practice and epistemology that decisively shapes the literary enterprises of writers such as Dion Fortune and Arthur Machen, artists such as Pamela Colman Smith, and revivalists such as Rolf Gardiner

Author : Julie Melnyk
Publisher : Praeger
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2008-03-30
Category : History
ISBN : UOM:39015076144560

Get Book

Victorian Religion by Julie Melnyk Pdf

Religion permeated almost every aspect of Victorian life and culture, from Parliamentary politics to issues of marriage and sexuality, from class relations to literature and the life of the imagination. In order to understand Victorian culture and writings, modern readers need to understand Victorian religion in its public and its private aspects. But much in Victorian religious life can be baffling for modern readers. The sheer diversity of Victorian religious experience is one source of confusion. Also, doctrinal disputes and discoveries in science or textual criticism that loomed so large for Victorian Christians are now hard for most people to appreciate. The Anglican Church, its hierarchy, and its enormous range of ecclesiastical titles open up further opportunities for confusion. Here, Melnyk offers a lively, thorough introduction to Victorian religious life, including the period between 1828 and 1901. Making sense of the diversity of religious thought and experience in Victorian Britain, she provides readers with a clear understanding of its role in the family and for the individual, the community, and society at large. This entertaining, readable introduction to Victorian religious life and controversies is ideal for anyone interested in Victorian life, literature, and culture.

Author : Mike A. Zuber
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2021-10-06
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN : 9780190073060

Get Book

Spiritual Alchemy by Mike A. Zuber Pdf

Most professional historians see the relationship between pre-modern and modern alchemy as one of discontinuity and contrast. Mike A. Zuber challenges this dominant understanding and explores aspects of alchemy that have been neglected by recent work in the history of science. The predominant focus on the scientific aspect of alchemy, such as laboratory experiment, practical techniques, and material ingredients, argues Zuber, marginalizes the things that render alchemy so fascinating: its rich and vivid imagery, reliance on the medium of manuscript, and complicated relationship with religion. Spiritual Alchemy traces the early-modern antecedents of modern alchemy through generations of followers of Jacob Boehme, the cobbler and theosopher of Görlitz. As Boehme's disciples down the generations -- including the Silesian nobleman Abraham von Franckenberg and the London-based German immigrant Dionysius Andreas Freher, among others -- studied his writings, they drew on his spiritual alchemy, adapted it, and communicated it to their contemporaries. Spiritual alchemy combines traditional elements of alchemical literature with Christian mysticism. Defying the boundaries between science and religion, this combination was transmitted from Görlitz ultimately to England. In 1850, it inspired a young woman, later known as Mary Anne Atwood, to write her Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, usually seen as the first modern interpretation of alchemy. Drawing extensively on manuscript or otherwise obscure sources, Zuber documents continuity between pre-modern and modern forms of alchemy while exploring this hybrid phenomenon.

Author : Margaret Craddock Huff,Ann Kirkus Wetherilt
Publisher : McGraw-Hill Companies
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2004-09-01
Category : Religion.
ISBN : 0072862173

Get Book

Religion by Margaret Craddock Huff,Ann Kirkus Wetherilt Pdf

Author : John Edwards,Peter R. Hobson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 197 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2019-07-12
Category : Education
ISBN : 9781317958079

Get Book

Religious Education in a Pluralist Society by John Edwards,Peter R. Hobson Pdf

Religious education in liberal pluralist societies such as the UK, the USA, and Australian underwent radical change in the 1980s and 1990s, with a major shift towards multi-faith, educationally oriented programmes. This has meant significant modifications to both the content and the methodology of religious-education courses and to the way they are conceived of and taught in schools and universities. One important implication of this change for the teaching and study of religion today is the need for a philosophical dimension that deals with issues such as the truth status of religious statements and the moral acceptability of religious claims. This dimension is often insufficiently developed; this lack is made more critical by the multiple competing truth claims of various religions, giving rise to such contentious problems as the growth of fundamentalism, increasing religious intolerance and conflict, and differences of opinion on central moral problems such as birth control, abortion and euthanasia. This text attempts to provide the philosophical underpinning that the study and teaching of religion in modern societies requires.

Author : Roy M. MacLeod,Philip F. Rehbock
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Page : 562 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 1994-01-01
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0824816137

Get Book

Darwin's Laboratory by Roy M. MacLeod,Philip F. Rehbock Pdf

No scientific traveler was more influenced by the Pacific than Charles Darwin, and his legacy in the region remains unparalleled. Yet the extent of the Pacific's impact on the thought of Darwin and those who followed him has not been sufficiently grasped. In this volume of essays, sixteen scholars explore the many dimensions - biological, geological, anthropological, social, and political - of Darwinism in the Pacific. Fired by Darwinian ideas, nineteenth-century naturalists within and around the Pacific rim worked to further Darwin's programs in their own research: in Seattle, conchologist P. Brooks Randolph; in Honolulu, evolutionist John Thomas Gulick; in Adelaide, botanist Richard Schomburgk; and in Malaysia, biogeographer Alfred Russel Wallace. Lesser-known enthusiasts furnished Darwin with fresh material and replied to his endless inquiries, while young aspiring biologists from Cambridge tested Darwinian ideas directly in the "laboratory" of the Pacific. But the implications of Darwinism for the understanding of human nature and history turned it into a public theory as well as a scientific one. Anthropologists, geographers, missionaries, politicians, and social commentators - from Australia to Japan - all found ways to adapt Darwinism to their own agendas. Darwin's Laboratory demonstrates the variety and richness of Darwinian ideas in the Pacific and, in so doing, shows how the region functioned as a testing ground for the theory of evolution. Further, it illustrates how Darwinian ideas and their European contexts helped invent and define the particular conception we have of the Pacific. Both the general reader and the specialist will find controversy, illumination, and entertainment in this, the first book to probe the extent of Darwinism and Darwinian thinking in the Pacific.

Author : Robert M. Polhemus
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2024-06-15
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 8210379456XXX

Get Book

The Changing World of Anthony Trollope by Robert M. Polhemus Pdf

Author : Gerald Parsons,John Wolffe
Publisher : Manchester University Press
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1988
Category : Great Britain
ISBN : 0719051843

Get Book

Religion in Victorian Britain by Gerald Parsons,John Wolffe Pdf

Provides an expansion of the first four volumes, containing both specially written essays and a related compilation of primary sources, drawn from the writings of the day. The text explores the wider context of religion in Victorian Britain, both in relation to the development of the Empire and its consequences. The introduction sets the scene and also provides an overview of scholarship on Victorian religion in the years since the first four volumes were published in 1988.

Author : Leonard Elliott Elliott-Binns
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 1946
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:186746850

Get Book

Religion in the Victorian Era by Leonard Elliott Elliott-Binns Pdf

Author : John S. Haller
Publisher : University Alabama Press
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9780817320539

Get Book

Fictions of Certitude by John S. Haller Pdf

The search for belief and meaning among nineteenth-century intellectuals The nineteenth century's explosion of scientific theories and new technologies undermined many deep-seated beliefs that had long formed the basis of Western society, making it impossible for many to retain the unconditional faith of their forebears. A myriad of discoveries--including Faraday's electromagnetic induction, Joule's law of conservation of energy, Pasteur's germ theory, Darwin's and Wallace's theories of evolution by natural selection, and Planck's work on quantum theory--shattered conventional understandings of the world that had been dictated by traditional religious teachings and philosophical systems for centuries. Fictions of Certitude: Science, Faith, and the Search for Meaning, 1840-1920 investigates the fin de siècle search for truth and meaning in a world that had been radically transformed. John S. Haller Jr. examines the moral and philosophical journeys of nine European and American intellectuals who sought deeper understanding amid such paradigmatic upheaval. Auguste Comte, John Henry Newman, Herbert Spencer, Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Fiske, William James, Lester Frank Ward, and Paul Carus all belonged to an age in which one world was passing, while another world that was both astounding and threatening was rising to take its place. For Haller, what makes the work of these nine thinkers worthy of examination is how they strove in different ways to find certitude and belief in the face of an epochal sea change. Some found ways to reconceptualize a world in which God and nature coexist. For others, the challenge was to discern meaning in a world in which no higher power or purpose can be found. As explained by D. H. Myer, "The later Victorians were perhaps the last generation among English-speaking intellectuals able to believe that man was capable of understanding his universe, just as they were the first generation collectively to suspect that he never would."

Author : Joshua A. Hicks,Clay Routledge
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2013-05-27
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9789400765276

Get Book

The Experience of Meaning in Life by Joshua A. Hicks,Clay Routledge Pdf

This book offers an in-depth exploration of the burgeoning field of meaning in life in the psychological sciences, covering conceptual and methodological issues, core psychological mechanisms, environmental, cognitive and personality variables and more.