This volume investigates ""alternative"" spiritualities that increasingly cater for the mainstream within the secularized society of Norway, making Norwegian-based research available to international scholarship. It looks at New Age both in a restricted (sensu stricto) and a wide sense (sensu lato), focusing mainly on the period from the mid-1990s and onwards, with a particular emphasis on developments after the turn of the century. Few, if any, of the ideas and practices discussed in this book are homegrown or uniquely Norwegian, but local soil and climate still matters, as habitats for particular growths and developments. Globalizing currents are here shaped and molded by local religious history and contemporary religio-political systems, along with random incidences, such as the setting up of an angel-business by the princess Märtha Louise. The position of Lutheran Protestantism as ""national religion"" particularly impacts on the development and perception of religious competitors.

Product Description: A major, perhaps the major, focus of early research on New Religious Movements (NRMs) was on the people who joined. Most of the field's pioneer researchers were sociologists. However, the profile of NRM members had changed substantially by the twenty-first century - changes largely missed because the great majority of current NRM specialists are not quantitatively oriented...read more

Product Description: This anthology brings together leading scholars in the field of New Religious Movements to critically investigate the role of sexuality in some of the most well-known new religious movements.

Product Description: In recent years there has been a renewed interest in textbooks, partly because they have maintained their position as an important genre. Not too many years ago - and perhaps currently as well - many considered textbooks outdated or archaic compared with technological advances such as the Internet and different kinds of educational software...read more

Product Description: The Order of Christ Sophia (OCS) is a small New Religion which, in the short span of eight years, has evoked intense controversy. An unusual synthesis of traditional Catholicism, esoteric cosmology, and psychology, the OCS already has centers in a dozen major cities in the United States...read more

Product Description: Exploring the fascinating world of dreams, this comprehensive reference examines more than 250 dreamrelated topics, from art to history to science, including how factors such as selfhealing, ESP, literature, religion, sex, cognition and memory, and medical conditions can all have an effect on dreams...read more

Product Description: Book by

Explores how angels have been portrayed in the mythology, literature, art, religion, folklore, and architecture of ancient, contemporary and pop cultures

Product Description: De una u otra manera. los ángeles han estado siempre presentes en la imaginación popular desde tiempos inmemoriales. y desde luego se ha escrito un sinfín de libros acerca de ellos; no obstante. pocos de manera detenida y organizada...read more

Product Description: In October 1994, fifty-three members of the Order of the Solar Temple in Switzerland and Québec were murdered or committed suicide. This incident and two later group suicides in subsequent years played a pivotal role in inflaming the cult controversy in Europe, influencing the public to support harsher actions against non-traditional religions...read more

Product Description: In the public imagination Satanism is associated with bizarre rituals, perverse hedonistic lifestyles, heavy metal music, immature adolescents acting out, horror movies, and rumors of ritual abuse. But what are the facts behind the urban legends and the "moral panics" that periodically sweep the country regarding this countercultural phenomenon? This authoritative reference work gathers together scholarly studies of Satanism and original source material, focusing on two major aspects—organized religious Satanism and the Satanic Ritual Abuse hoax that was prevalent in the 1980s and early 1990s...read more

Product Description: This A-Z encyclopaedia provides a comprehensive examination of human rights with 600 illustrated entries by experts in the field. It offers country-by-country approach to this issue with entries on torture, slavery, asylum, genocide, hostages, imprisonment, and freedom of the press...read more