Pandemonium: An Illustrated History of Demonology presents for this first time Satan's family tree, providing a history and analysis of his fellow fallen angels from Asmodeus to Ziminiar. Throughout there will be short entries on individual demons, but Pandemoniumwill be more than just a visual encyclopedia. It will also focus on the influence of figures like Beelzebub, Azazel, Lilith, and Moloch on Western religion, literature, and art. Ranging from the earliest scriptural references to demons in the New Testament through the Enlightenment and Romantic eras when our devils took on a subtler form, Pandemonium functions as a compendium of Lucifer's subjects from Dante's The Divine Comedy to John Milton's Paradise Lost, and all points in between. &#8203;Containing rarely seen illustrations of very old treatises on demonology as well as more well-known works by the great masters of Western painting, this book will celebrate the art of hell like never before!

Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology

Arts & Photography

Simon, Ed

Religious

Cernunnos

Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology is a gloriously illustrated overview of angels across art, religion, and literature from scholar Ed Simon, writer for The Millions.\nIneffable, invisible, inscrutable—angels are enduring creatures across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and human experiences of the divine as mediated by spiritual emissaries are an aspect of almost every religious tradition. In popular culture, angels are often reduced to the most gauzy, sentimental, and saccharine of images: fat babies with wings and guardians with robes, halos, and harps. By contrast, in scripture whenever one of the heavenly choirs appears before a prophet or patriarch, they first declare, “Fear not!” for terror would be the most appropriate initial reaction to these otherworldly beings. Angels are often not what we’d expect, but it’s precisely in that transcendent encounter that something of the strangeness of existence can be conveyed.\nElysium: A Visual History of Angelology is a follow-up volume to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology, offering an account of the angelic hierarchies as they’ve been understood across centuries and cultures, and of the individual personages, such as the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel, who have marked the mythology of the West.\nIncludes Color Illustrations

Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology

A captivating artistic and philosophic exploration of humankind's complex moral codes A companion piece to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology, Seven Sins and Seven Virtues will complete this moral trilogy and finally consider God's most enigmatic of creations: None of the conundrums of metaphysics are as baroque as the motivations of the human soul. Unlike the devils condemned to perdition and the angels compelled to paradise, humans are divine creatures that house within them warring impulses. Seven Sins and Seven Virtues will examine the literary, philosophical, theological, and most of all artistic expressions of the seven deadly sins and their respective seven cardinal virtues, drawing upon millennia of history to gather a compendium of humanity at its best and its worst. As a volume, the book will explore the Manichean nature of the human animal in all of its grandeur and canker, motivated by the faith that tales of damnation and salvation are the only stories that are ultimately worth telling.

The Seven Deadly Sins and Seven Heavenly Virtues: A Visual History

The Soul of Pittsburgh: Essays on Life, Community and History (The History Press)

History

Americas

The History Press

In the wake of the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks we, as an increasingly secular nation, were reminded that religion is, for good and bad, still significant in the modern world. Alongside this new awareness, religion reporters adopted the tools of so-called New Journalists, reporters of the 1960s and '70s like Truman Capote and Joan Didion who inserted themselves into the stories they covered while borrowing the narrative tool kit of fiction to avail themselves of a deeper truth. 
At the turn of the millennium, this personal, subjective, voice-driven New Religion Journalism was employed by young writers, willing to scrutinize questions of faith and doubt while taking God-talk seriously. Articles emerged from such journalists as Kelly Baker, Ann Neumann, Patrick Blanchfield, Jeff Kripal, and Meghan O'Gieblyn, characterized by their brash, innovative, daring, and stylistically sophisticated writing and an unprecedented willingness to detail their own interaction with faith (or their lack thereof). 
The God Beat brings together some of the finest and most representative samples of this emerging genre. By curating and presenting them as part of a meaningful trend, this compellingly edited collection helps us understand how we talk about God in public spaces--and why it matters--in a whole new way.

The God Beat: What Journalism Says about Faith and Why It Matters

Bradatan, Costica

Religion & Spirituality

Broadleaf Books

Binding the Ghost is both manifesto and example of a new variety of reading that centers a theological perspective in considering what literature actually does. Neither dogmatic nor apologetic, sectarian or denominational, this mode of reading acknowledges the inherently charged strangeness of writing and fiction, whereby authors have the ability to seemingly create entire universes from words alone. 
Ed Simonconsiders the theological depth, resonance, and mystery of the acts of reading and writing. His lyrical, incisive essays cover subjects such as the incarnational poetics of reading a physical book as opposed to reading online, the historical relationship between monotheism and the development of the alphabet, how the novel and Protestantism developed interiority within people, the occult significance of punctuation, and the functional similarities between poetry and prayer. Binding the Ghost presents a humane sacralization of reading and writing that takes into account the wonder, enchantment, and mystery of the very idea of poetry and fiction.

Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Fortress Press

A poet who crafted the greatest character in literary history with his engaging anti-hero of Satan, John Milton connected personal experience with the breadth of cosmic epic. His Paradise Lost is a touchstone of English literature. 
In the latest entry in Ig's celebrated Bookmarked series, author Ed Simon considers Paradise Lost within the scope of his own alcoholism and recovery, the collapse of higher education, the imbecility of the canon wars, the piquant joys of labyrinthine sentences, and the exquisite attractions of Lucifer. Milton is easy to respect and easier to fear, but with the guidance of Simon, Milton becomes easiest of all to love. Paradise Lost may have generated thousands of works of criticism over the centuries, but none of them are like this.

Heaven, Hell and Paradise Lost (Bookmarked, 16)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Ig Publishing

Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain

Melville House

At a moment of cultural and political crisis, with forces of reaction seemingly ascendant throughout the West, it's fair to ask what use does anyone have for America, God, or any other similar fictions? What use does theological language have for the radical facing the apocalypse? Among the subjects considered: the need for an Augustinian left, legacies of American violence, speaking in tongues, the humanities facing climate change, the maturity of realizing that you will die, how to sail towards Utopia, and witches.

America and Other Fictions: On Radical Faith and Post-Religion

World

Zero Books

In the tradition of Roland Barthes' Mythologies and Walter Benjamin's aphoristic Theses on the Philosophy of History, Ed Simon's Furnace of this World is a fragmentary, digressive, impressionistic account of what the radical implications of goodness could possibly be in late capitalism. "Furnace of this World" interrogates the concept of goodness, while arguing that it's always more interesting and radical than its opposite. With neither hubris nor reductionism, Furnace of this World speaks of what it means to pursue justice in a fallen world.

Furnace of this World: Or, 36 Observations About Goodness

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Books by Simon, Ed