Pagan Resurrection
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Pagan Resurrection, subtitled A Force for Evil or the Future of Western Spirituality?, is a 2006 book written by anthropologist and broadcaster Richard Rudgley regarding the increasing interest in Odinism across Europe.
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[edit] Synopsis
"Pagan Resurrection" puts forward the controversial idea that it is the pagan god Odin, and not Jesus Christ, is far from being just a New Age fad, neopaganism is fast becoming a major spiritual, intellectual, ecological and political force across the globe.
Rudgely is an Oxford trained anthropologist and critically acclaimed author of "Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age", who has since presented three series on Channel 4. He explains the allegedly ancient idea of the "Web" (Wyrd) - a cosmic field of energies that encompasses time, space and the hidden potentials of the human organism, and shows that this is a pagan equivalent to the eastern tradition of Tao. Rudgely claims that western civilisation, belief systems and attitudes have been formed by the Odinic archetype. The influence of Christianity, he says, has been relatively recent and shallow.
Rudgley spends much of the book emphasizing the dark and violent side of Odin, according to Independent reviewer David V. Barrett, "committing the ultimate sin of any anthropologist or historian, back-projecting from highly selective examples of unpleasantness today and photo-fitting them to a distorted image from the mythological past". He concludes that Rudgely's book is "a catalogue of racist individuals and organisations whose only connection with Odin, through very dubious links, is by assertion rather than argument."
[edit] Book details
First published in 2006 by Arrow Books Ltd (UK) in Hardback, with 288 pages. ISBN 0-7126-8096-9
