Here are 100 books that Holy Blood, Holy Grail fans have personally recommended if you like
Holy Blood, Holy Grail.
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Writing is in my blood – my grandmother wrote poetry, my mother writes novels, and over the last twenty-plus years I’ve written just about everything (and now I teach writing at my local university). I’ve loved stories for as long as I can remember. While my fiction career may be newly revived, I spent over 20 years as a pop culture commentator, poking at the minutia of the stories I love. I think stories may be one of the most important things in our culture – they inspire us, they brighten our day, they bring us to tears, and sometimes when we are lost they show us the way.
This will be one of my more controversial picks – there are plenty of people who disagree with Campbell as a folklorist, a mythographer, and with his depiction of the Hero’s Journey. But, what is important about Campbell is his exploration of whythe elements that appear in stories have the impact they do on our psyche, and how they fit together. One may not agree with all of Campbell’s conclusions, but I don’t think there’s a writer out there who won’t benefit from his exploration of the subject. I know I did.
Joseph Campbell's classic cross-cultural study of the hero's journey has inspired millions and opened up new areas of research and exploration. Originally published in 1949, the book hit the New York Times best-seller list in 1988 when it became the subject of The Power of Myth, a PBS television special. The first popular work to combine the spiritual and psychological insights of modern psychoanalysis with the archetypes of world mythology, the book creates a roadmap for navigating the frustrating path of contemporary life. Examining heroic myths in the light of modern psychology, it considers not only the patterns and stages…
Graeme Davis has been fascinated by myth and folklore ever since he saw Ray Harryhausen’s creatures in Jason and the Argonauts as a child. While studying archaeology at Durham University, he became far too involved with a new game called Dungeons & Dragons and went on to a career in fantasy games. He has written game sourcebooks on various ancient cultures and their myths, and worked as a researcher and consultant on multiple video games with historical and mythological settings.
This short book takes a deep dive into the nature of mythology and its relationship to the human mind. As well as the mythologies of past civilizations, Leeming examines modern-day myths and cultural beliefs and shows how myths are living and evolving things that serve a human need to understand the universe. If you have ever wondered what makes a myth a myth, or why everyone seems to have them, this book has some interesting answers.
Joseph Campbell wrote that mythology is "the wonderful song of the soul's high adventure." In Myth, David Leeming considers the role this "wonderful song" has to play in a world increasingly dependent on scientific and technical information. Exploring classic works such as the Song of Songs, the Tao Te Ching, the Rg Veda, the New Testament, and the Indonesian myth of Hainuwele, Myth reveals the cultural energies that ancient "mythmakers" sought to corral in their creations. Leeming argues that myths are, by definition, evolving creations that live on in the work of modern-day "mythmakers" such as W.B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf,…
As a university historian and archaeologist my focus has been the Early Middle Ages. In the 1990s I wrote several books about the fifth and sixth centuries which barely mentioned Arthur but popular histories and films based on his story just kept coming, so I decided to look again at his story and work out how and why it developed as it did. I have published three well-received books on the subject, each of which builds on the one before, plus articles that have been invited to be included in edited volumes. I disagree with much in the five books above but collectively they reflect the debate across my lifetime. It is a great debate, I hope you enjoy it.
Geoffrey’s History of the Kings is the work that picked Arthur up from the somewhat obscure backwater of Welsh story-telling and launched him onto the European stage, in the process creating a story that had an enormous influence on how the insular past was understood across the rest of the Middle Ages. Geoffrey was writing for the new Norman elite, who welcomed a view of the past which downplayed the Anglo-Saxons and centred instead on their rivals for control of ancient Britain, the Britons. He based his magnificent new work on the Historia Brittonum, a set of Welsh genealogies and various stories, all of which he embroidered from his own fertile imagination to construct a complex vision of insular history no closer to what had really happened than modern works such as Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.
But by tapping into political and cultural needs in…
This imaginative history of the Britons, written in the twelfth century, is the first work to recount the woes of Lear and the glittering career of Arthur. It rapidly became a bestseller in the British Isles and Francophone Europe, with over 200 manuscripts surviving. Here, an authoritative version of the text is presented with a facing translation, prepared especially for the volume. It also contains a full introduction and notes.
MICHAEL REEVEis Kennedy Professor of Latin Emeritus at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge; Dr NEIL WRIGHT is a Senior Language Teaching Officer at the Faculty of History, University…
Graeme Davis has been fascinated by myth and folklore ever since he saw Ray Harryhausen’s creatures in Jason and the Argonauts as a child. While studying archaeology at Durham University, he became far too involved with a new game called Dungeons & Dragons and went on to a career in fantasy games. He has written game sourcebooks on various ancient cultures and their myths, and worked as a researcher and consultant on multiple video games with historical and mythological settings.
This is an early example of mythology being used for a deliberate purpose: in this case, the promotion of Christian chivalric virtue. Full of dreamlike images and allegories, it also had a great influence on early fantasy writing, even if those creating early fantasy tales had never read it. And then, of course, there’s Monty Python.
Composed by an unknown author in early thirteenth-century France, The Quest of the Holy Grail is a fusion of Arthurian legend and Christian symbolism, reinterpreting ancient Celtic myth as a profound spiritual fable. It recounts the quest of the knights of Camelot - the simple Perceval, the thoughtful Bors, the rash Gawain, the weak Lancelot and the saintly Galahad - as they journey through danger and temptation to reach the elusive Holy Grail. But only one of them is judged worthy to see the mysteries within the sacred vessel, and look upon the ineffable. Enfused with tragic grandeur and an…
Our history is spoken through the voice of the conqueror – notably white male. My work seeks to balance our narratives through insight from women’s perspectives. I support my creative writing with extensive research in history, archeology, and myths, and include in situ interpretations of the relevant landscape. There are many truths to be told, not simply one ordained story and I wish to shine the light on stories that have been hidden and/or silenced. The themed series title, Women Unveiled, pertains to this.
Mary Magdalene is a central character in my novel. Aside from researching the folklore in the south of France and reading Mary’s Gospel discovered at Nag Hammadi, I needed to delve into contemporary writings of this historical and maligned woman.
I read many academic articles, essays, and books on Mary Magdalene, notably Karen King’s bookThe Gospel of Mary of Magdala, which could have just as easily been my third pick. I selected Cynthia Boudreault’s book as I appreciated the application of her reasoning and intuition. Her writing was accessible without being laden with religious overtones.
The author of The Wisdom Jesus takes readers on a journey to discover the real Mary Magdalene—and finds a powerful, ancient model for 21st-century spirituality
Mary Magdalene is one of the most influential symbols in the history of Christianity—yet, if you look in the Bible, you’ll find only a handful of verses that speak of her. How did she become such a compelling saint in the face of such paltry evidence?
In her effort to answer that question, Cynthia Bourgeault examines the Bible, church tradition, art, legend, and newly discovered texts to see what’s there. She then applies her own…
Our history is spoken through the voice of the conqueror – notably white male. My work seeks to balance our narratives through insight from women’s perspectives. I support my creative writing with extensive research in history, archeology, and myths, and include in situ interpretations of the relevant landscape. There are many truths to be told, not simply one ordained story and I wish to shine the light on stories that have been hidden and/or silenced. The themed series title, Women Unveiled, pertains to this.
The Gospel of Mary is often interpreted as a Gnostic text. Gnosis is mystical and esoteric and refers to knowledge based on personal experience with the divine. It is an inward ‘knowing,’ and I was interested in interweaving a psychological approach. This book dived into spiritual aspects in an exploration of the soul’s journey and the spiritual heights attained from a psychological position and was instrumental in some components of Sara’s personal development. My character Sara is a messenger for Persephone, and I used this book to examine the deeper, mythical meanings of how our wounds can become the source of spiritual grace.
The Search for the Beloved, one of the most important books written on the creative and inventive mind, explains the theories that helped form the foundation of the human potential movement. In what has been called “an intellectual and spiritual feast,” Jean Houston explores the nature of spiritual yearning and teaches readers how to facilitate a personal quest by focusing on the four aspects of Sacred Psychology—the Great Wound, the Mythic Journey of Transformation, the Discovery of the Larger Story, and the Union with the Beloved of the Soul.
W. B. Yeats wrote, “There is but one history and that…
Our history is spoken through the voice of the conqueror – notably white male. My work seeks to balance our narratives through insight from women’s perspectives. I support my creative writing with extensive research in history, archeology, and myths, and include in situ interpretations of the relevant landscape. There are many truths to be told, not simply one ordained story and I wish to shine the light on stories that have been hidden and/or silenced. The themed series title, Women Unveiled, pertains to this.
This book provided a great opportunity for me to step outside of my entitled white Caucasian colonial skin and read the lived experience of someone who was treated as an ‘Other’ and who, when returning to his community, undertook and shared (through his book) his Initiations. I incorporated aspects of his shamanic experience with books on the Eleusian Mysteries (rituals for Demeter and Persephone), as well as interviews with women who had undergone shamanic experiences – both here in Australia with Indigenous elders and in South America.
Maliodoma Patrice Some was born in a Dagara Village, however he was soon to be abducted to a Jesuit school, where he remained for the next fifteen years, being harshly indoctrinated into european ways of thought and worship. The story tells of his return to his people, his hard initiation back into those people, which lead to his desire to convey their knowledge to the world. Of Water and the Spirit is the result of that desire; it is a sharing of living African traditions, offered in compassion for those struggling with our contemporary crisis of the spirit.
Our history is spoken through the voice of the conqueror – notably white male. My work seeks to balance our narratives through insight from women’s perspectives. I support my creative writing with extensive research in history, archeology, and myths, and include in situ interpretations of the relevant landscape. There are many truths to be told, not simply one ordained story and I wish to shine the light on stories that have been hidden and/or silenced. The themed series title, Women Unveiled, pertains to this.
I chose this book for its interesting exploration of spiritual resurrections that were common throughout ancient civilizations including the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greek, Persian, and Indians. Silva says these mystical rituals lead initiates (including Plato and Socrates) onto a path of self-empowerment and spiritual awakening. Silva includes the gnostic teachings practiced by the Cathars, who claimed the literal resurrection of Jesus was a lie, and were persecuted by the Church to suppress such gospel teachings by Mary Magdalene and Phillip.
“Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error,” states the once banned Gospel of Philip. For centuries, every esoteric and Gnostic sect was aware that the literal interpretation of the resurrection of Christ promoted by the Church was a fraud. And with good reason: thousands of years before Jesus, initiates from Egypt and China to Celtic Britain and North America practiced a mystical ritual, and its adepts — from Zoroaster to Plato —regarded the experience as the pinnacle of spiritual development: a life-altering awakening that disclosed insights into the nature of reality and the self.…
I’m an associate professor in medieval history at Nottingham Trent University. My interest in the military orders began over twenty years ago with a very simple question – why? Jesus’ teaching to my mind clearly does not condone the use of lethal violence, so how did medieval Christians come to think that holy war warfare could ever be acceptable in the eyes of God? From this underlying question (which I still don’t feel I’ve satisfactorily answered!) emerged a curiosity about the military orders, who so epitomized crusading ideology. I began to ask wider questions such as: who supported the orders? How did they view people of other faiths? Why were the Templars put on Trial?
Arguably the most famous event in the Templars’ history was their trial in the early fourteenth century, when King Philip IV of France levelled an array of charges against the order—most notably the accusation of heresy. Malcolm Barber’s The Trial of the Templarsworks through the events of the Templar Trial in granular detail, offering a deep and thought-provoking history of the event itself and the wider developments and powerful agendas which shaped its course.
Malcolm Barber's classic The Trial of the Templars recounts the dramatic demise of this elite military force in the fourteenth century. Having fought against Islam in the crusades in the East for nearly two centuries, in October 1307 the members of this respected Order were arrested on the order of Philip IV, King of France and charged with serious heresies, including homosexuality and the denial of Christ. Finding resonances between the fourteenth-century trial and contemporary events, Barber's classic account endeavours to tackle the unresolved controversies surrounding the consequences of the trial and includes discussions in the context of new work…
As my father was a keen amateur historian, family holidays always involved visits to medieval castles, abbeys, and Roman antiquities, but it wasn’t until I’d finished a University history degree and started training as an accountant that I encountered the Templars. Reading a primary source from the Third Crusade, I found the medieval author praised the Templars – yet few modern histories mentioned them, or, if they did mention the Templars, they claimed they were unpopular. My curiosity led me to undertake a PhD on medieval attitudes towards the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights, and eventually to a university post and a professional career in medieval history, writing history books focused on primary sources.
Alain Demurger is the world’s leading expert on the French Templars during the trial of the Order.
This book, originally published as La Persécution des Templiers Journal(1307–1314), narrates the events of the Templars’ trial as they unfolded day by day, allowing readers to follow the twists and turns in proceedings. I confess that I read the French edition of this book, but I’m sure that the English version is just as compelling!
Alain Demurger has also written an excellent history of the Templars and assembled a reference guide to all the Templars in France during the trial – but these are not available in English.
The definitive account of history's most infamous trial, following the doomed Order of the Knights Templar from scandal to suppression.
The trial of the Knights Templar is one of the most infamous in history. Accused of heresy by the king of France, the Templars were arrested and imprisoned, had their goods seized and their monasteries ransacked. Under brutal interrogation and torture, many made shocking confessions: denial of Christ, desecration of the Cross, sex acts, and more.
This narrative follows the everyday reality of the trial, from the early days of scandal and scheming in 1305, via torture, imprisonment and the…
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