Guest guest Posted December 8, 2005 Report Share Posted December 8, 2005 Anyone read this book: The Goddess in India The first exhaustive collection of goddess mythologies from India. ..Explores the evolution of goddess worship in India over 4,000 years. ..Stunning color photographs illustrate many stories of goddess lore never before available in one collection. from: http://www.innertraditions.com/Product.jmdx?action=displayDetail&id=529 Seems interesting. Lars Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 8, 2005 Report Share Posted December 8, 2005 Hi Lars: This book is basically a reworked, rearranged, Westernized version of "Devi, the Mother Goddess: An Introduction," by the same author, which appears on our Shakti Sadhana reading list at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/17SX2T24MNOH1/103- 3357508-4283035?%5Fencoding=UTF8 "Devi, the Mother Goddess: An Introduction" is a really useful guide - - but it was published in India, for Indians, and possibly Inner Traditions feared it assumed more prior knowledge of the topic than most Western readers would likely bring to the table. If so, I disagree: Any interested, moderately educated general reader could pick up "Devi" and totally enjoy it. "The Goddess in India," on the other hand is based on a "reorganization principle" that strikes me as regrettably forced and artificial. The nature of this artifice is revealed in the book's subtitle, "Five Faces of the Eternal Feminine" -- where do these "Five Faces" appear in the Hindu Shakta tradition? Unless I'll missed something big, they appear precisely nowhere. I mean, I may have been miseducated, but I've never understood Sri Chakra as having a circle for "Dancing Nymphs," a circle for "Goddesses with Unbound Hair," and I guess a kind of non-smoker's section for the so-called "Cult of Chastity." Apparently, neither did the author, since he mentioned *none* of these oddball categories in "Devi: An Introduction." My guess, and I hope I am wrong, is that Inner Traditions decided that there was not a sufficient audience for an authentic Hindu presentation on the subject, and therefore dreamed up these so- called "Faces of the Feminine" to appeal to New Agers and Pagans and "fit in" more easily to the more vague and nebulous "Goddess" cults of the West. In doing so, they left us with a pretty enough book to look at, but one that is *far* inferior to the original "Devi, the Mother Goddess: An Introduction" as a reliable guide to the actual Hindu tradition. DB , Lars Hedström <lars@2...> wrote: > > Anyone read this book: > > The Goddess in India > > The first exhaustive collection of goddess mythologies from India. > > .Explores the evolution of goddess worship in India over 4,000 years. > > .Stunning color photographs illustrate many stories of goddess lore never before available in one collection. > > from: > > http://www.innertraditions.com/Product.jmdx? action=displayDetail&id=529 > > Seems interesting. > > Lars > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted December 8, 2005 Report Share Posted December 8, 2005 Thank you very much for that answer Devi Bhakta. The reason why the book semed intresting to me was due to the fact that the author was from india. I ofcourse prefer the original. Regards Lars Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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