Ancient Memories

In ancient, pre-literate cultures across the globe, tribal elders had encyclopedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across a landscape, identify the stars in the sky, and recite the history of their people. Yet today, most of us struggle to memorize more than a short poem. Using traditional Aboriginal Australian song lines as a starting point, Dr. Lynne Kelly has since identified the powerful memory technique used by our ancestors and indigenous people around the world.

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics and government.

Losing someone we love is never easy, but the Orthodox Church provides a wealth of resources that help us to bear it. Chaplain and bereavement coordinator Sarah Byrne-Martelli draws on these theological, scriptural, and liturgical resources, as well as the collected experience of a variety of people undergoing grief and loss, to provide a kind of road map to the grieving process. Included in the book is a guide to an eight-week bereavement curriculum that can be used in a group or on one’s own.

In the past the elders had encyclopaedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across the landscape and the stars in the sky, too. Yet most of us struggle to memorise more than a short poem. Using traditional Aboriginal Australian songlines as the key, Lynne Kelly has identified the powerful memory technique used by indigenous people around the world.

Distraction isn't a new problem. We're also not the first to complain about how hard it is to concentrate. Early Christian monks beat us to it. They had given up everything to focus on God, yet they still struggled to keep the demons of distraction at bay. But rather than surrender to the meandering of their minds, they developed powerful strategies to improve their attention and engagement. How to Focus is an inviting collection of their strikingly relatable insights and advice—frank, funny, sympathetic, and psychologically sophisticated.

The seventh of Joan Grant's Far Memory novels, So Moses Was Born, is set in Egypt, in the time just before the birth of Moses. The story is a familiar one: Found in the bulrushes, Moses's upbringing in the court of Egypt gave him the influence and power to set the Israelites free. Joan Grant enlarges the picture by depicting the events that led up to the discovery of the baby Moses, convincingly portraying the man she believed was his father, Ramoses II, through the words of his reclusive half-brother Nebunefer.

The Night the Star Appeared: Memories of the Myrrh Magi In a time when the heavens spoke and the stars guided the wise, one man’s journey would change the course of history. Step into the sandals of Mazdak, a revered Magi from ancient Persia, as he embarks on a divine quest that leads him to the humble manger in Bethlehem. Guided by prophecy, dreams, and the angel Gabriel, Mazdak brings a gift of myrrh—a symbol of both mortality and divinity—to the newborn king. But this journey is more than a quest to honor a child. It is a pilgrimage of the soul, filled with challenges, revelations,...

The world of ancestral healing opens up possibilities for mind, body, soul, and spirit wellness you’ve never imagined. The Ancestors Within offers a collection of life-changing experts’ stories and practical tools in the field of ancestral healing so you can understand what’s possible and experience improved health, wealth, and happiness.

Lucina of Greece was orphaned at a young age and brought up by foster parents. Now aged 13, she is sent to be educated by her philosopher guardian in the place he calls Elysium. There, she finds herself the only female in a masculine world: While she proves herself an intellectual equal, she cannot accept the rigidity of the scientific skepticism that disallows her intuition, psychic talents, and capacity for love.

The fourth of Joan Grant's Far Memory novels, Lord of the Horizon, the sequel to Eyes of Horus, is set in Egypt at the close of the dark XIth dynasty and is a profound commentary on the power of fear and the unlimited ability of light to shatter it. Lord of the Horizon is the story of Ra-ab Hotep, heir to the Nomarch of the Oryx. Ra-ab is 21 as the story begins. The dawn for which Ra-ab and the Watchers of the Horizon fought in Eyes of Horus has come, but to "Send Fear into Exile", as the Watchers' password promised, proves difficult.

When the rabbis composed the Mishnah in the late second or early third century C.E., the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed for more than a century. Why, then, do the Temple and its ritual feature so prominently in the Mishnah? Against the view that the rabbis were reacting directly to the destruction and asserting that nothing had changed, Naftali S. Cohn argues that the memory of the Temple served a political function for the rabbis in their own time.