The Internet Sacred Text Archive
I gotta mention this awesome website: http://www.sacred-texts.com/
It’s a spiritual seeker’s treasurehouse, also great for comparative religion types, full of a huge selection of folklore, religious, mystical, mythic, and spiritual writings from all of mankind – offered for free online or one can order CDs of their entire collection.
Thank goodness for US copyright laws that allow the public unrestricted use of writings of a certain antiquity, as a civic service. Luckily the deeply-pocketed Disney Corporation didn’t come up with a moneymaker until 1937, so works from before then should be safe from any more lobbied changes in our copyright laws. I’m guessing from now on, whenever Snow White is in danger of falling into the public domain, Disney will pay the politicians to change the length of copyright protection, as they already did once, so most likely anything created after 1937 will remain under copyright forever, alas.
A sample of free titles:
• The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries
• Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee
• The Emerald Tablet of Hermes
• A Sufi Message of Spritual Liberty
• The Creed of Half Japan
• Te Pito Te Henua, Or Easter Island
• The Babylonian Talmud
• The Authoress of the Odyssey
• The Story of Egil Skallagrimsson (Egil’s Saga)
• Chinese Occultism
• The Stone of the Philosophers
• A Journey in Southern Siberia
• The Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam
• The Upanishads, Parts I & II
• Moon Lore
And that’s just a miniscule portion of their vast and expanding collection.
Word,
LWIII
this is hands down one of my favorite sites. I have been reading there for years now and have hardly made a dent in what I want to read!
xo
Thanks la! I was very dismayed, as well as astonished – since it’s such a valuable place – to see they’re having economic snug times. Ever since I saw that I posted about them on http://www.gaia.com and bought a couple of CDs from them, twittered them, and now am blogging on how awesome they are.
We need to get the word out!
(That figures you already have been going there for years, you being who you are and all, so enlighteningly wonderful.)
xoxo!