Abraham Joshua Heschel was a Polish-American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was a leader in the civil rights movement.
The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi.
Spiritual evolution, also called higher evolution, is the idea that the mind or spirit, in analogy to biological evolution, collectively evolves from a simple form dominated by nature, to a higher form dominated by the spiritual or divine. It is differentiated from the "lower" or biological evolution.
Vril: The Power of the Coming Race, originally published as The Coming Race, is a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, published anonymously in 1871.
James Redfield is an American writer, lecturer, screenwriter, and film producer. He is notable for his 1993 novel The Celestine Prophecy.
Mayanism is a non-codified eclectic collection of New Age beliefs, influenced in part by Pre-Columbian Maya mythology and some folk beliefs of the modern Maya peoples.
The Historian is the 2005 debut novel of American author Elizabeth Kostova. The plot blends the history and folklore of Vlad Țepeș and his fictional equivalent Count Dracula. Kostova's father told her stories about Dracula when she was a child, and later in life she was inspired to turn the experience into a novel. She worked on the book for ten years and then sold it within a few months to Little, Brown and Company, which bought it for US$2 million.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church had its roots in the Millerite movement of the 1830s to the 1840s, during the period of the Second Great Awakening, and was officially founded in 1863. Prominent figures in the early church included Hiram Edson, Ellen G. White, her husband James Springer White, Joseph Bates, and J. N. Andrews. Over the ensuing decades the church expanded from its original base in New England to become an international organization. Significant developments such the reviews initiated by evangelicals Donald Barnhouse and Walter Martin, in the 20th century led to its recognition as a Christian denomination.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a Sufi mystic and lineage successor in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is an extensive lecturer and author of several books about Sufism, mysticism, dreamwork and spirituality.
The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision is the second novel in the Celestine Series, beginning with The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield. It was published in 1996.
The White Castle is a novel by Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk.
The Secret of Shambhala: In Search of the Eleventh Insight is the third book in The Celestine Prophecy series by James Redfield.
In the Book of Mormon, Zenock is a prophet who predates the events of the book's main plot and whose prophecies and statements are recorded upon brass plates possessed by the Nephites. Nephite prophets quote or paraphrase Zenock several times in the course of the narrative.
The Birthgrave is a 1975 science fantasy novel by British author Tanith Lee. The novel was Lee's first published novel for adults, and also the first novel in The Birthgrave Trilogy. Inspired by Lee's own personal dreams from her early twenties, the story follows a nameless protagonist through various towns on a journey to discover who she really is and what she is capable of. The Birthgrave received mostly positive reviews and was nominated for the 1975 Nebula Award for best novel.
The Celestine Prophecy is a 2006 American film directed by Armand Mastroianni and starring Matthew Settle, Thomas Kretschmann, and Sarah Wayne Callies. The film is based on James Redfield's best-selling novel of the same name. Because the book sold over 23 million copies since its publication and has thus become one of the best-selling books of all time, Redfield had expected the film to be a success. However, the film was widely panned by critics and was a box office failure, with a total worldwide gross of $1.5 million.
Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It was Palahniuk's first published novel, and follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. The protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups, after his doctor remarks that insomnia is not "real suffering" and that he should find out what it is really like to suffer. The protagonist then meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.
The Return of the Prodigal Son is an oil painting by Rembrandt, part of the collection of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. It is among the Dutch master's final works, likely completed within two years of his death in 1669 . Depicting the moment of the prodigal son's return to his father in the Biblical parable, it is a renowned work described by art historian Kenneth Clark as "a picture which those who have seen the original in St. Petersburg may be forgiven for claiming as the greatest picture ever painted".
Propinquity is a 1986 novel by Australian author/journalist John Macgregor. The manuscript won the Adelaide Festival Biennial Award for Literature; the novel was short-listed for The Age Book of the Year. Its author was compared by critics with PG Wodehouse, Don DeLillo, Julian Barnes, Umberto Eco, and Australian Nobellist Patrick White. Despite its critical success, the collapse of the original publisher meant that Propinquity did not reach a wide audience, although in 2013 it was released on Amazon as a Kindle e-book and a CreateSpace print-on-demand paperback.
Visionary fiction is a fiction genre with New Age or mind, body, spirit themes and perspectives, including consciousness expansion, spirituality, mysticism, and parapsychology. It is sometimes classed as a subtype of speculative fiction. Examples include the novels The Celestine ProphecyThe Alchemist, and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah. The Book Industry Study Group's BISAC subject heading FIC039000 is "FICTION / Visionary & Metaphysical".
John Michael Greer is an American writer and druid who writes on ecological overshoot, ecological economics, appropriate technology, oil depletion, societal collapse, ecocentrism, pantheism, and the occult.
