Best Selling Books by Thomas Taylor

An irresistibly silly and charming story about fun and family, with tongue-twisting text from award-winning writer, Thomas Taylor, and lovingly-rendered illustrations from the critically-acclaimed, Penny Dann.

Fully illustrated, this is Thomas Taylor''s essay on the ancient initiation rituals of Eleusis and Bacchus. The inner teachings of these ancient Mediterranean mystery religions have been lost for two millennia, but Taylor believed that he had found the skeleton key in classical mythology and Plato''s philosophy. This influential essay outlines his theory. Chapters include: Fable Is Love''s World, Poem By Schiller; Introduction To The Third Edition; Section 1. Eleusinian Mysteries; Section 2. Bacchic Mysteries; Hymn To Minerva; Appendix; Orphic Hymns; Hymn Of Cleanthes; and, Glossary.

Proclus (b. circa. 412 C.E., d. 485) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher. This is a short book of translations of fragments of Proclus by Thomas Taylor, the English Neoplatonist and translator of Aristotle, Plato and Orpheus.

the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, it is proper to insert a few words of explanation. These observances once represented the spiritual life of Greece, and were considered for two thousand years and more the appointed means for regeneration through an interior union with the Divine Essence. However absurd, or even offensive they may seem to us, we should therefore hesitate long before we venture to lay desecrating hands on what others have esteemed holy. We can learn a valuable lesson in this regard from the Grecian and Roman writers, who had learned to treat the popular religious rites with mirth, but always considered the Eleusinian Mysteries with the deepest reverence.