Description:
This book charts the borderline between the nocturnal side of mysticism and the luminous side of death and it illuminates their paradoxical affinities. Within a culture of both denial and despair, it affirms the reality but not the finality of death. If what the generations have called the mystery of death is "the last enemy," a still more mysterious mysticism would anticipate, illuminate and disarm it, issuing in what "eyes have not seen, ears have not heard." This work is contemporary in that it represents a creative and original appropriation of tradition, is spiritually more mystical than devotional-and is ecumenically conversant with and sensitive to the great religious traditions.
Brief description: Christopher Nugent is Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of The Colloquy of Poissy: A Study in Sixteenth-Century Ecumenism, and Masks of Satan: The Demonic in History.
Review Quotes:
"This book illuminates the mysterious affinity between mysticism and death. There are many books today on death and dying, but none like this one." -- Bernadette Roberts