Huna is the word adopted by Max Freedom Long (1890–1971) in 1936 to describe his theory of metaphysics. Long cited what he believed to be the spiritual practices of the ancient Hawaiian kahunas (priests) as inspiration; however, contemporary scholars consider the system to be his invention designed through a mixture of a variety of spiritual practices from various cultures, with roots in New Thought and Theosophy, rather than in traditional Hawaiian beliefs. Huna is part of a New Age [non-Hawaiian] movement.
Beacon Press is an American left-wing non-profit book publisher. Founded in 1854 by the American Unitarian Association, it is currently a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association. It is known for publishing authors such as James Baldwin and Viktor Frankl, as well as The Pentagon Papers.
Ben Okri is a Nigerian-British poet and novelist. Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post-colonial traditions, and has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez. In 1991, Okri won the Booker Prize with his novel The Famished Road.
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European folklore and gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft. Weird fiction often attempts to inspire awe as well as fear in response to its fictional creations, causing commentators like Miéville to paraphrase Goethe in saying that weird fiction evokes a sense of the numinous. Although "weird fiction" has been chiefly used as a historical description for works through the 1930s, it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, under the labels of New Weird and Slipstream, which continues into the 21st century.
Ascended masters in the Ascended Master Teachings of a number of movements in the theosophical tradition are held to be spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans, but who have undergone a series of spiritual transformations originally called initiations.
Autobiography of a Yogi is an autobiography of Paramahansa Yogananda first published in 1946.
Paul Brunton is the pen name of Raphael Hurst, a British author of spiritual books. He is best known as one of the early popularizers of Neo-Hindu spiritualism in western esotericism, notably via his bestselling A Search in Secret India (1934) which has been translated into over 20 languages.
Djwal Khul, is believed by some Theosophists and others to be a Tibetan disciple in "The Ageless Wisdom" esoteric tradition. The texts describe him as a member of the 'Spiritual Hierarchy', or 'Brotherhood', of Mahatmas, one of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, defined as the spiritual guides of mankind and teachers of ancient cosmological, metaphysical, and esoteric principles that form the origin of all the world's great philosophies, mythologies and spiritual traditions. According to Theosophical writings, Djwal Khul is said to work on furthering the spiritual evolution of our planet through the teachings offered in the 24 books by Alice Bailey of Esoteric Teachings published by The Lucis Trust ; he is said to have telepathically transmitted the teachings to Bailey and is thus regarded by her followers as the communications director of the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom.
The Famished Road is a novel by Nigerian author Ben Okri, the first book in a trilogy that continues with Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998). Published in London in 1991 by Jonathan Cape, the story of The Famished Road follows Azaro, an abiku or spirit child, living in an unnamed African, most likely Nigerian, city. The novel employs a unique narrative style incorporating the spirit world with the "real" world in what some have classified as animist realism. Others have labelled the book African traditional religion realism, while still others choose simply to call the novel fantasy literature. The book exploits the belief in the coexistence of the spiritual and material worlds that is a defining aspect of traditional African life.
Wildside Press is an independent publishing company in Cabin John, Maryland, United States. It was founded in 1989 by John Betancourt and Kim Betancourt. While the press was originally conceived as a publisher of speculative fiction in both trade and limited editions, its focus has broadened since then, both in content and format.
Ernest Egerton Wood was a noted English yogi, theosophist, Sanskrit scholar, and author of numerous books, including Concentration – An Approach to Meditation, Yoga and The Pinnacle of Indian Thought (1967).
Brian Bates is former chairman of Psychology at the University of Sussex. He is currently the Director of the Medical Psychology Project at the Department of Psychology at University of Sussex in England. He is a visiting professor at the University of Brighton. He is known as the author of books on the shamanic wisdom of Anglo-Saxon England, and for his related course on "Shamanic Consciousness". He has also taught and directed at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
World Wisdom is an independent American publishing company established in 1980 in Bloomington, Indiana. World Wisdom publishes religious and philosophical texts, including the work of authors such as Frithjof Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Titus Burckhardt, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Joseph Epes Brown, Paul Goble, Swami Ramdas, Samdhong Rinpoche, William Stoddart, and Martin Lings.
Villard, also known as Villard Books, is a publishing imprint of Random House, one of the largest publishing companies in the world, owned by Bertelsmann since 1998 and grouped in Penguin Random House since 2013. It was founded in 1983. Villard began as an independent imprint of Random House and is currently a sub-imprint of Ballantine Books, itself an imprint of Random House. It was named after a Stanford White brownstone mansion on Madison Avenue that was the home of Random House for twenty years.
The Great White Brotherhood, in belief systems akin to Theosophy and New Age, are said to be perfected beings of great power who spread spiritual teachings through selected humans. The members of the Brotherhood may be known as the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, the Ascended Masters, the Church Invisible, or simply as the Hierarchy. The first person to talk about them in the West was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Theosophy), after she and other people claimed to have received messages from them. These included Helena Roerich, Aleister Crowley, Alice A. Bailey, Guy Ballard, Geraldine Innocente, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Bob Sanders, and Benjamin Creme.
Vera Dorothea Stanley Alder was an English portrait painter and mystic. She wrote several books and pamphlets on self-help and spirituality. She founded the World Guardian Fellowship.
Jackson Gregory was an American teacher, journalist, and writer.
B. Kojo Laing or Bernard Kojo Laing was a Ghanaian novelist and poet, whose writing is characterised by its hybridity, whereby he uses Ghanaian Pidgin English and vernacular languages alongside standard English. His first two novels in particular – Search Sweet Country (1986) and Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) – were praised for their linguistic originality, both books including glossaries that feature the author's neologisms as well as Ghanaian words.
Charles Kingston O'Mahony, who wrote as Charles Kingston, was an Irish journalist and author in England during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction of the 1920s and 30s. Many of his novels were set in London, including a seven book series featuring the fictional detective Chief Inspector Wake of Scotland Yard. His work has been described as more competent than cutting-edge, but showing a clear familiarity with the criminal underworld in London.
Theodora Wilson Wilson was a British writer and pacifist. She was a founding member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Her "quaint" reputation as a writer changed when she published her 1916 science fiction novel The Last Weapon, A Vision, whose anti-war message led to its being banned.
