The Four Great Religions: Now Available!

 

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This well made Theosophical work is, I think, my favorite by Besant thus far. It avoids some of the more strange material in that path associated with ethnic issues and focuses almost entirely on religious history- namely that associated with Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Christianity, proclaiming that those are akin to four epochs of spiritual development, with frequent allusions to their holy scriptures.

According to Besant there are similarities in these four spiritual systems that must be noted, in preparation for the arrival of a fifth age- the literal new age heralded by a new enlightened master.

130 pages.

Funeral Customs: Now Available!

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This extremely interesting work is sadly little-known despite its scope; several thousand years of human history and a dozen or so cultures, with all funerary rites they're associated with- from the memento mori and then-modern practices back through embalming, interring, or burning corpses.

The greatest part of this work is its general mention of the slow (or occasionally mono-generational) process of change over time as applied to funeral customs. Nowhere is this as intrinsic as with the black death and the necessity of abandoning more elaborate and single-member graves and services in favor of mass burial, water burial, and expedited blessings.

238 pages.