Bøker av Patrick Harpur

Two women see something uncanny in the skies over west London in the summer of 1989.It's the summer of 1989, a time of global flux just before the collapse of the Berlin wall and of South Africa's apartheid; a time of signs and portents...Two women see something uncanny in the skies over west London.Maeve, the wife of the local vicar, finds she has lost nearly an hour of her life. In search of this lost time, she uncovers the memory of an encounter with aliens and, worse, a mysterious event from her childhood in Ireland, which she finally redeems in the underworld of an IRA-connected pub...Her husband Alistair has his own nightmare: preparations for the visit of an African bishop and his entourage for a Christian conference, whose left-wing agenda is threatened by the attendance of a famous and enigmatic nun...Meanwhile, Heather's sighting comes as a revelation that leads her, like a questing Grail knight, through strange ordeals, from a menacing cult to an alternate reality; from a mental hospital to, finally, an encounter with her own hidden depths.A companion volume to the author's critically lauded Daimonic Reality, a classic nonfiction study of otherworld journeys, The Good People is a modern fairy tale that dramatizes with wit the interweaving of revelation and delusion, the natural and the supernatural, worldliness and sanctity—ultimately suggesting that our humdrum lives are shadowed by the alien dimension of myth.

Based on the life of the Danish thinker, Soren Kierkegaard, The Stormy Petrel is the inside story of what his life is about - an investigation into a soul torn between natural love and a supernatural vocation, which leads inexorably to the attack that makes his name anathema for a hundred years.

Who am I? What's my life's purpose? Where am I going when I die?These questions lie at the heart of all our lives, yet clear answers seem hard to come by. A Complete Guide to the Soul explains that answers can in fact be found in a secret history that runs like quicksilver through Western culture, from philosophy and alchemy, to poetry and modern psychology. This hidden tradition places our soul at the centre of the universe and shows us how to recover a sense of meaning that so many of us have lost today.In this important book, Patrick Harpur explores the nature of our soul, as well as its destiny. He unpacks the myths that surround it and shows how it may actually be the very fabric of reality. And he explains that, not until we have a clear understanding of this invisible part of ourselves, can we discover the answers to many of our questions about existence and human nature. Ultimately, this knowledge could help us find our true place within the world in which we live.

In this dazzling history of the imagination, Patrick Harpur links together fields as far apart as Greek philosophy and depth psychology, Renaissance magic and tribal ritual, Romantic poetry and modern models of the Universe, to trace how myths have been used to make sense of the world.