Paul’s Lists: Religion

 

These are books in my library that have something to say about religion generally, whether by comparing religions, or by examining the phenomena of spirituality or the wisdom underlying religion. Here again, it is hard to suggest just one; it would depend what your focus is. But maybe The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James—a fantastic and illuminating series of lectures from 1901. And the closest thing I have to a personal bible is The Masks of God series by Joseph Campbell. Read The Hero with a Thousand Faces first, then read the whole Masks of God series.

The List

• The Angels and Us by Mortimer J. Adler
• Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith by Norman Cohn
• Does God Exist? by Hans Küng
• Forgotten Truth:The Common Vision of the World’s Religions by Huston Smith
• A Guide for the Perplexed by E. F. Schumacher
• A History of Religious Ideas, volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries by Mircea Eliade
• A History of Religious Ideas, volume 2: From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms by Mircea Eliade
• A History of Religious Ideas, volume 3: From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity by Mircea Eliade
• The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational by Rudolf Otto
• The Masks of God 1: Primitive Mythology by Joseph Campbell
• The Masks of God 2: Oriental Mythology by Joseph Campbell
• The Masks of God 3: Occidental Mythology by Joseph Campbell
• The Masks of God 4: Creative Mythology by Joseph Campbell
• The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History by Mircea Eliade
• The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley
• The Religions of Man by Huston Smith
• The Sword of Gnosis: Metaphysics, Cosmology, Tradition, Symbolism, edited by Jacob Needleman
• The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

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