The History Of The Devil : The Horned God of the West
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1929.
First American Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Very Good with no dust jacket. Item #16879
Light cover wear, light tone, otherwise light wear. Solid hardcover. ; First American Edition, from English sheets, of Thompson's tracing of the evolution of the Devil from its prehistoric roots through paganism, magic, folklore and Christian theology. He argues that what became known as the Devil is a transformed remnant of old cults and nature worship - especially horned gods or nature-spirits - reinterpreted by later religious systems. "Lowe Thompson’s History of the Devil (1929) united Murray’s work on horned gods with insights from the sex radical Edward Carpenter – a personal friend of Mary Neal. Carpenter’s (1919) ‘Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk’ argued that homosexual and intersex people acted as prophets, priests or wizards in “primitive” societies. As well as possessing innate gifts, such individuals were constitutionally unfit for the role of warrior, and therefore turned towards the spiritual and creative. Lowe Thompson’s (now almost totally overlooked) contribution to archaeology was to bring prehistory into relation with radical theories of sex and sexuality." - “Wild Worship of a Lost and Buried Past”: Enchanted Archaeologies and the Cult of Kata, 1908–1924; Helen Wickstead; Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, Volume 27 - Issue 1 - 2017. ; xiv, 172 pages.
Price: $999.95