Books like The idea of the holy by Rudolf Otto

A young man's struggle with faith and redemption in America's heartland of the 1930s and 1940s.

A thematic presentation of the role of religion in human society, from traditional cultures to the modern world. Arranged into three main fields of enquiry – religious experience and its expression; conceptual aspects of religion; and religion in society – this study draws from all major religious traditions in the world, as well as a variety of non-religious disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, and sociology. Originally published as "[The Phenomenon of Religion - A Thematic Approach][1]" in 1999. [1]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2396388W/The_phenomenon_of_religion

At Balgrummo Lodging, a great decaying house near Edinburgh, gather the grotesque members, old and young, of a curious society. Given names from the poems of T. S. Eliot, they are the disciples of Mr. Apollinax, possessor of occult powers. He has promised his followers an intensity of experience they never had known before-a kind of immortality to be attained in a mystical "timeless moment" of transcendant sensation. This rite is to be performed on Ash Wednesday, in the "Purgatory" that lives beneath Balgrummo Lodging: a pre-Christian and medieval maze sealed at the Pope's order in the sixteenth century. In this subterranean realm, to which ancient legends of diabolism cling, Apollinax will proclaim himself Lord of Time—with attendant horrors. Yet has Apollinax underestimated the sardonic old being called Archvicar Gerontion, once " a brutal and licentious soldier," who is present at the Lodging as Apollinax's necromancer? Has Apollinax left out of his reckoning a dead man of power, the last Lord Balgrummo, perhaps lingering with his murderous axe in the hollow dark?

"States of spirit possession, in which believers feel themselves to be "possessed" by the deity and raised to a new plane of existence, are found in almost all known religions. From Dionysiac cults to Haitiam voodoo, Christian and Sufi mysticism to shamanic ritual, the rapture and frenzy of ecstatic experience forms an iconic expression of faith in all its devastating power and unpredictability. Ecstatic Religion has, since its first appearance in 1971, became the classic investigative study of these puzzling phenomena. Exploring the social and political significance of spiritual ecstasy and possession, it concerns the distinct types of functions of mystical experience--in particular, the differences between powerful male-dominated possession cults which reinforce established morality and power, and marginal, renegade ecstatics expressing forms of protest on behalf of the oppressed, especially women"--Publisher description.

For the non-Muslim, Mecca is the most forbidden of Holy Cities - and yet, in many ways it is the best known. Muslim historians and geographers have studied it, and countless pilgrims and travelers - many of them European Christians in disguise - have left behind lively and well-publicized accounts of life in Mecca and its associated shrine-city of Medina, where the Prophet lies buried. The stories of all these figures, holy men and heathens alike, come together in this book to offer a remarkable literary portrait of the city's traditions and urban life and of the surrounding area. Closely following the publication of F. E. Peters's The Hajj (Princeton, 1994), which describes the perilous pilgrimage to Mecca from the travelers' perspectives, this collection of writings and commentary completes the historical travelogue. . The accounts begin with the Muslims themselves, in the patriarchal age of Abraham and Ishmael, and trace the sometimes glorious and sometimes sad history of Islam's central shrine down to the last Grand Sharif of Mecca, Husayn ibn Ali, whose fragile kingdom was overtaken by the House of Sa'ud in 1926. Because of chronic flooding and constant rebuilding, there is little or no material evidence for the early history of Islam's holy cities. By assembling, analyzing, and fashioning these literary accounts of Mecca, however, F. E. Peters supplies us with a vivid sense of place and human interaction, much as he did in his widely acclaimed Jerusalem (Princeton, 1985).

Schleiermacher's addresses on religion to the cultured critics of his time comprise one of those rare works of literature that masterfully initiate an epoch but long continue to realize an influence far transcending their original effect. They comprise a masterpiece not only of personal testimony but of intelligent witness to that which is most lasting and fundamental, though often most elusive and difficult to achieve, in human life and culture. Religion presumable constitutes the most important set of relationships that can be cultivated in a person. Yet religion is often the most readily misunderstood and maligned. Schleiermacher's aim in these addresses is to penetrate the excrescences and the corruptions of so-called religion to reach its vital heart so as to clarify what religion essentially is, to suggest how it is to be found, to consider how it may be cultivated, and perhaps also to stimulate a responding chord of sensitively and devotion among his hearers. He is not trying to put something over on anyone. In tolerant, open-hearted response to familiar attitudes he is simply replying, again and again: "Is the situation really what you say? Consider this!" Or: "Yes, you are entirely correct, but that is not religion. You are looking in the wrong place." Or: "You are moving in the right direction but in the wrong way."

En este pequeño gran clásico, considerado por National Review como uno de los cien mejores ensayos del siglo XX, C.S. Lewis desarrolla una concisa pero intensa reflexión sobre la sociedad, la naturaleza y los grandes retos educativos de nuestro tiempo. Con su prosa genial y aguda, el autor de Las crónicas de Narnia lleva a cabo una de las mejores defensas de la objetividad de la ley natural y de la moralidad que se hayan escrito, al tiempo que advierte contra las inhumanas consecuencias de eliminarlas de la familia, la escuela y la civilización. Escrito en 1943, se trata, en definitiva, de un texto sorprendentemente profético, que aporta uno de los diagnósticos más lúcidos y certeros sobre lo que sucede en la sociedad actual.