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Siddhartha is Hermann Hesse's much acclaimed allegory about Humanity's quest for enlightenment, telling the tale of an Indian youth, born a privileged Brahmin, who rejects ritual and doctrine in order to truly experience the ultimate reality - Brahman - for himself. Siddhartha's spiritual journey is one of experimentation, followed each time by dissatisfaction. From the asceticism of the Samanas to the hedonism of Säs¿ra with all its sexual de...

For Lebanese-American writer and artist, Khalil Gibran, Jesus the Son of Man was the most challenging and cherished of all his works. "My art can find no better resting place than the personality of Jesus. …He shall always be the supreme figure of all ages and in Him we shall always find mystery, passion, love, imagination, tragedy, beauty, romance and truth." It was always Gibran's ambition to re-tell the story of Jesus in an unconventional w...

Widely acclaimed since its first publication in 1927, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is a novel whose overt simplicity of plot veils a complex mix of autobiographical detail, tangled social questions and deep philosophical enigmas. The author's innovative use of nonlinear plot, stream-of-consciousness, and varying narrators, transforms the apparently 'normal' incidents in the life of the Ramsay family into a probing reflection on personal ...

Hesiod was a simple shepherd of Boetia in 700 BC Greece until, as he himself describes, he became beloved of the Muses who bestowed upon him a laurel staff and with it the gift of Poetry: "they breathed into me wondrous voice, so that I should celebrate things of the future and things that were aforetime." Hesiod's earliest poem, the famous Works and Days, shines a light on the daily tasks, timings, and strategies needed to farm successfully...

The Ring of the Nibelung is Wagner's gripping tale of Gods, giants, dwarves and heroes, of High Magic, forbidden passion, treachery, and the redeeming quality of selfless love. A homage to Germanic heritage and mythology, the saga has inspired many many later books, including J.R.Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. The 35 full-page illustrations by the inimitable Arthur Rackham both enhance and inform Wagner's stirring prose, vivifying this entrancin...

One of nineteenth century's greatest philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer made his mark by a fearless insistence on addressing realities rather than abstract ideas, an approach which invited as much heated criticism as it did respect. In The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims, Schopenhauer discusses a range of topics - among them, possessions, reputation, sexual passions and religion - and presents a stark analysis of the human condition befo...

The Rosicrucians burst upon European consciousness some 400 years ago with the publication of three 'manifestos', causing consternation throughout the continent and promulgating ideas that remain potent to the present day. The Fama Fraternitatis tells the story of the enigmatic C.R.C. who journeyed to Jerusalem and thence to fabled Damcar in Arabia, where he sought, and was instructed in, the sacred knowledge of the sages. Returning to Europe...

First published in 1890, the second of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, The Sign of the Four is a classic of detective fiction and a forerunner of this now-ubiquitous genre. The story has everything - a beautiful damsel in distress, mysterious disappearances, a murder, a strange and lustrous pearl, a peculiar map, four desperate villains, an exotic treasure and, above it all, smiling superiorly as he moves with sure-footed con...

As a comprehensive work on magic through the ages, The History of Magic, is hard to beat. Éliphas Lévi was born in poverty in 1810, the son of a Parisian shoemaker. His early associations with the Christian Catholic Church were ambivalent because of his interest in "the Secret Doctrine" - Magic. His voice as a magus emerged in Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual, published in 1855-56, followed by The History of Magic (1860), where he...

Virginia Woolf's novel follows a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, an outwardly self-assured London socialite, as she prepares for her party that evening. Mrs. Dalloway's interior monologue flits from preoccupation with the details of her party to memories as a young girl some thirty years ago, and to the subsequent choices she made. She reveals a private umwelt that is torn between the stultifying conventional existence she has chosen to ...

Wars - Revolution and Restitution is June Moss' cry of grief after her mother died in 1993. Through poetry, Moss expresses feelings that had long been buried in her psyche but then spontaneously surfaced and "seemed to write themselves...." Moss addresses war, capitalism, empires and our unfair class systems past and present which we inherit from birth. She expresses thoughts and feelings that are part and parcel of us all as humans: death, lo...

A literary classic and children's favourite for more than four generations, The Wind in the Willows is both beautifully written and richly inventive. Children of all ages adore the anthropomorphised tales of the leading characters: vainglorious, irresponsible Mr Toad, cautious, self-effacing Mole, grumpy old Badger's periodic need to be on his own and Ratty's joy in simply being alive in this wonderful world - especially when "messing about in...

Written over two millennia ago in China, The Art of War is the first known rational treatise on the planning and conduct of military operations. It's author, Sun Tzu, was a Chinese strategist who lived between 554-496 BC, during the Spring and Autumn Period of the Middle Kingdom's turbulent history. Dr. Lionel Giles published his classic translation of Art of War in 1910, when he was Keeper of the British Museum's Department of Oriental Manusc...

The Sayings of Mencius has been revered for well over 2, 000 years, and is arguably the most influential of the Si Shu (Four Books) which form the foundation of traditional Chinese education, 'Master Meng' was born during the turbulent Warring States period, and was a tireless advocate of Confucian thought, defending and expanding its tenets as a means of achieving peaceful relations between individuals and competing kingdoms. The sage spent m...

Uncle Tom's Cabin - the bestselling novel of the 19th century - was instrumental in exposing the brutal reality of African American slavery and played a prominent role in its abolition. Its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe was a stalwart Christian and committed abolitionist. In violation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal for anyone in the United States to offer aid or assistance to a runaway slave, she and her husband were ...

Masonry is the most widely spread Fraternity in the world today, yet its origins remain shrouded in myth and conjecture. In his latest book, writer and researcher Ray Hudson delves deeply into the true genesis of the Craft. Using information gleaned from more than 35 years as an active mason (holding senior positions in all the mainstream Masonic Orders, plus many other specialist groups) he rejects the most widely held view - that the system ...

Nietzsche's 'Beyond Good and Evil' is a tour de force of moral and ethical philosophy. First published in 1886, the book comprises almost three hundred 'statements' - from pithy one-liners, to long convoluted arguments of a page or more. Nietzsche boldly claims that all philosophy is on the wrong track: we need to change, to become 'new philosophers' who will overcome accepted morality, which the author sees as 'slave-morality', glorifying fai...

Written around 400 B.C. by Kautilya, the 'Indian Machiavelli', THE ARTHASHASTRA was thought lost for more than a thousand years. It was rediscovered in 1905, when scholar Rudrapatnam Shamashastry was asked to catalogue an unpromising pile of palm leaf manuscripts - and suddenly found himself holding a complete copy of the long-lost masterpiece. Shamashastry published an English translation in 1915 to worldwide acclaim. Until that time, Western...

Among the classical Greco-Roman philosophers none are more influential than the first century Stoic, Epictetus, and the core of his teachings is found in The Enchiridion, or "handbook." Epictetus was the slave of an officer in Nero's imperial guard. He became schooled in Stoicism and after obtaining his freedom, brought his own insights to bear on the precepts of this life-changing philosophy, lecturing first in Rome and then in Nicopolis wher...

Benedictus de Spinoza's ground-breaking philosophy made him a controversial figure of 17th century Rationalism and a major influence in the Enlightenment that followed. Spinoza developed contentious ideas from an early age, resulting in his expulsion from Amsterdam's Jewish community when he was only twenty-three. Christian orthodoxy likewise repudiated his philosophy and the Catholic Church later issued a ban on all his writings. Undeterred a...