A King Travels examines the scripting and performance of festivals in Spain between 1327 and 1620, offering an unprecedented look at the different types of festivals that were held in Iberia during this crucial period of European history. Bridging the gap between the medieval and early modern eras, Teofilo Ruiz focuses on the travels and festivities of Philip II, exploring the complex relationship between power and ceremony, and offering a vibrant portrait of Spain's cultural and political life. Ruiz covers a range of festival categories: carnival, royal entries, tournaments, calendrical and noncalendrical celebrations, autos de fe, and Corpus Christi processions. He probes the ritual meanings of these events, paying special attention to the use of colors and symbols, and to the power relations articulated through these festive displays. Ruiz argues that the fluid and at times subversive character of medieval festivals gave way to highly formalized and hierarchical events reflecting a broader shift in how power was articulated in late medieval and early modern Spain. Yet Ruiz contends that these festivals, while they sought to buttress authority and instruct different social orders about hierarchies of power, also served as sites of contestation, dialogue, and resistance. A King Travels sheds new light on Iberian festive traditions and their unique role in the centralizing state in early modern Castile.

Thomas North’s 1555 Travel Journal: From Italy to Shakespeare makes available a little known early modern journal kept by a member of Queen Mary’s delegation to Rome, its purpose to win papal approval of England’s return to Roman Catholicism. The book provides details of the six-month journey, a discussion of the manuscript, and an identification of the twenty-year-old Thomas North as its author. It also points to numerous connections between the journal and the plays of Shakespeare, extending the playwright’s debt beyond North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives and revealing how the journal served as a template for The Winter’s Tale and Henry VIII. Both, the authors argue, were written by North during the Marian years (1554-58) and later adapted by Shakespeare. Like the authors’ 2018 “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels” by George North,this book presents original work using digital research tools, including massive databases and plagiarism software. The earlier book garnered worldwide attention, with a front-page story in The New York Times.

This volume brings together scholarship on indigenous forms of travel to decolonize travel theory. It looks at certain minoritarian-vernacular traveling cults – very rarely examined – that compel us to rethink, on the one hand, the conventional tropes of and rationales for travel; and, on the other hand, notions of (post)coloniality, nationalism and modernity in the context of India. The book illustrates the enduring problematic of the ‘colonial episteme’: how it deploys pervasive categories through which travel practices are sought to be understood, and why such categories are inadequate in accounting for the vernacular traveling cults in question. In studying the vernacular world-making in and through these cults, this book offers critical insights on how they defy the log(ist)ics of the ‘imperial categories’ and why they must be read as expressions of decoloniality. An important contribution to travel studies, the book will be an indispensable resource for students and researchers of South Asian studies, travel theory, Indian literary and cultural studies, cultural history and anthropology, sociology, and decoloniality.

Part historical detail,part fiction, A Kings Grave is a sweeping drama of the Gothic nations struggle against the tyrannical oppression and injustice suffered at the hands of the ruthless, egocentric and self-absorbed Roman Emperor, Honorius. Who personally attempts the complete annihilation of the Goths and their king, Alareik, a persistent thorn in his side. Support for his obsession comes from an unexpected source, where deception, revenge and ego ally themselves against the Gothic ruler, whose notion of a kingdom of conscience threatens the very existence of Rome.

This book concerns clinical psychology, but it is most concerned with the world outside the clinic. That world—where culture, history, and economy are found—radically impacts the public’s mental health. However these worldly considerations often do not feature centrally in the science and practice of clinical psychology, a subfield of psychology seemingly dedicated to mental health. Desai offers a corrective by travelling out of the clinic and into the world, exploring ideas, movements, and thinkers that help broaden our approach to well-being, by situating it within its cultural, historical, and sociopolitical contexts. The book aims to be an intercultural journey itself—encountering Buddhism, phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. along the way. Featuring a Foreword by Jeffrey Sachs, the book positions pressing matters such as social justice, racial justice, and environmental justice as integral components of good mental health work. The book will be of interest to readers interested in cultural and community approaches to psychological science and practice.

Beginning with the Black Death in 1348 and extending through to the demise of Habsburg rule in 1700, this second edition of Spanish Society, 1348–1700 has been expanded to provide a wide and compelling exploration of Spain’s transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Each chapter builds on the first edition by offering new evidence of the changes in Spain’s social structure between the fourteenth and seventeenth century. Every part of society is examined, culminating in a final section that is entirely new to the second edition and presents the changing social practices of the period, particularly in response to the growing crises facing Spain as it moved into the seventeenth century. Also new to this edition is a consideration of the social meaning of culture, specifically the presence of Hermetic themes and of magical elements in Golden Age literature and Cervantes’ Don Quijote. Through the extensive use of case studies, historical examples and literary extracts, Spanish Society is an ideal way for students to gain direct access to this captivating period.

Sri Radhe, Astrology or Jyotish-Shastra, which consists of the three Skandas, Siddhanta, Samhita and Hora, is called the eye of the Vedas. The good and evil things of the world can be seen with the eyes, similarly the cause and renunciation of the good and evil actions prescribed in the Vedas, i.e. which action to do at what time and when not to do; How to do etc. The work of the eye is done by astrology. Just as a man with eyes can see thorns in the path and protect himself from them, so a man who knows astrology, knowing all good and evil deeds, can be happy by doing good deeds. When a man can accomplish even the rare deeds of the gods by being born in this mortal world and doing the best deeds, who is the wise man who will fail to come to such a good world and do the means of his advancement? With this in mind, Maharishi Naradaji, who by nature is benevolent to all living beings, celebrated astrology consisting of three skandas for the benefit of human beings. It contains scriptures- panayana, grahachar, abdalakshan, samvatsaraphal, tithi, var, nakshatra, yoga, muhurta, upagraha, Surya Sankranti, graha-gochar, chandratarabaladhyaya, lagnavichar, prathamarajodarshan vichar, garbhadhanse to marriage 16 rituals, pratishtha, yatra, gharpravesh, sadyovrishti. Who does not know the glory of Devarshi Narada, who is a yogi and a scientist? He has kept two mysterious subjects in the glory of his philosophy in this self-made Narada Astrology from Sri Narada Puran. It is indeed Vedic