First published in 1957, The Secret Lore of Magic contains within it a series of major source-books of magical arts. Many of them translated into English for the first time, these works are annotated and fully illustrated.
The book's title in itself signalled the fact that the bulk of material in this bibliographical study had never been published openly before. Together with Oriental Magic which appeared in the preceding year, it provided a complete survey of fundamental magical literature, and thus a comprehensive reference system for psychologists, ethnologists and others interested in the rise and development of human beliefs.
Both books also introduced the general reader to dependable information about what was a shadowy and confusing subject.
: Shah Idries : The Secret Lore of Magic ISBN: 1784790699 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781784790691 : : 2163.00 . : .
(Bilingual English-Dari edition) Fatima is a young woman whose life seems beset by one disaster after another. Setting forth on a journey from her home in the West, she is shipwrecked and cast ashore alone near Alexandria, Egypt. Adopted by a local family of weavers, and beginning to prosper in her new life, she is captured and forced to work making masts for ships. While undertaking a journey to sell the masts, she finds herself shipwrecked once again - this time off the coast of China, where she finally realizes that what seemed to be disasters were really essential steps toward her eventual fulfillment. Full of wisdom and depth, and ideal as a bedtime story, Fatima's tale helps children understand the need for perseverance to reach their goals. This traditional teaching story is well known in Greek folklore, but the present version is attributed to Sheikh Mohamed Jamaludin of Adrianople (modern-day Edirne in Turkey), who died in 1750. Fatima the Spinner and the Tent is filled with wonderful illustrations by Natasha Delmar, who was taught to paint by her father, the celebrated classic Chinese painter Ng Yi-Ching. Delmar captures Fatima's adventures with a wealth of detail and color and, using Middle Eastern and Chinese design, transports readers to the exotic lands of Fatima's travels in a way delightful to both young and old.
: Shah, Idries : Tales of the dervishes ISBN: 1784792683 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781784792688 : : : 1723.00 . : .
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Although enormously attractive as sheer entertainment, Dervish tales were never presented merely on the level of a fable, legend or folklore. They stand comparison in wit, construction and piquancy with the finest stories of any culture, yet their true function as Sufi teaching stories is so little-known in the modern world, that no technical or popular terms exist to describe them.
The material in Tales of the Dervishes is the result of a thousand years of development, during which Dervish masters used these and other teaching stories to instruct their disciples. The tales are held to convey powers of increasing perception unknown to the ordinary man.
The Sufis is the best introduction ever written to the philosophical and mystical school traditionally associated with the Islamic world.
Powerful, concise, and intensely thought-provoking, it sums up over a thousand years of Eastern thought - the product of some of the greatest minds humanity has ever produced - into a single work, presenting timeless ideas in a fresh and contemporary style.
When the book was originally published in 1964, it launched its author, Idries Shah, on to the international stage, attracting the attention of thinkers and writers such as J. D. Salinger, Doris Lessing, Ted Hughes and Robert Graves.
It introduced to the Western world concepts which have subsequently become commonly accepted, varying from the psychological importance of attention and humour, to the use of traditional tales as teaching instruments (what Shah termed 'teaching-stories'), and the historical debt owed by the West to the Middle East in matters scientific, literary and philosophical.
As a primer for the many dozens of Sufi books that Shah later produced, it is unsurpassed, offering a clear window onto a community whose system of thought and action has long concerned itself with the advancement of the whole of humankind, and whose ideas about individuals and society, their purpose and direction, need to be understood now more than ever before.
Mulla Nasrudin, the wise fool of Eastern folklore, holds a special place in Sufi studies. The Sufis, who believe that deep intuition is the only real guide to knowledge, use the humorous stories of Nasrudin's adventures almost like exercises in Eastern thought. The Sufis ask people to choose a few which especially appeal to them, and turn them over in their mind, making them their own. Sufi teaching masters say that in this way a breakthrough into a higher wisdom can be effected. A single story can work on many levels, from great humor to initiating profound thought. Idries Shah's collection of Nasrudin tales is an excellent introduction to Sufi thought and Eastern philosophy.
: Shah Idries : The Elephant in the Dark ISBN: 1784791059 ISBN-13(EAN): 9781784791056 : : 1446.00 . : .
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In a darkened room a group of men once sought to examine an elephant. Taking hold of a different part - an ear, a leg, the tail - each one mistook his particular part for the whole. In the darkness, each of the men became convinced that the elephant was the object he himself had felt - a fan, a rope, a pillar - and so on. With this ancient fable, first described by the Sufi Master Jalaluddin Rumi, Idries Shah presents the Sufi perspective that Christianity and Islam stem from one, inner, origin. Based on Shah's celebrated Geneva University lectures, this book dazzles with the breadth of its scholarship, and the profound depth of its message. In a world riven by cultural and religious differences, The Elephant in the Dark offers fresh thinking, hope, and the ability to look at what we think we know in new ways.
