The True History of Merlin the Magician
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Narrated by:
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Jennifer M. Dixon
About this listen
A medieval historian examines what we really know about the man who was "Merlin the Magician" and his impact on Britain.
The historical Merlin was no rough magician: he was a learned figure from the cutting edge of medieval science and adept in astrology, cosmology, prophecy, and natural magic, as well as being a seer and a proto-alchemist. His powers were convincingly real—and useful, for they helped to add credibility to the "long-lost" history of Britain which first revealed them to a European public. Merlin's prophecies reassuringly foretold Britain's path, establishing an ancient ancestral line and linking biblical prophecy with more recent times. Merlin helped to put British history into world history.
Anne Lawrence-Mathers also explores the meaning of Merlin's magic across the centuries, arguing that he embodied ancient Christian and pagan magical traditions, recreated for a medieval court and shaped to fit a new moral framework. Linking Merlin's reality and power with the culture of the Middle Ages, this remarkable book reveals the true impact of the most famous magician of all time.
©2012 Anne Lawrence-Mathers (P)2023 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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The foundations of modern knowledge - philosophy, math, astronomy, geography - were laid by the Greeks, whose ideas were written on scrolls and stored in libraries across the Mediterranean and beyond. But as the vast Roman Empire disintegrated, so did appreciation of these precious texts. Christianity cast a shadow over so-called pagan thought, books were burned, and the library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of classical knowledge, was destroyed. Yet some texts did survive and The Map of Knowledge explores the role played by seven cities around the Mediterranean....
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Terrible narration.
- By nathan535 on 11-05-19
By: Violet Moller
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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books
- Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library
- By: Edward Wilson-Lee
- Narrated by: Richard Trinder
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books tells the story of the first and greatest visionary of the print age, a man who saw how the explosive expansion of knowledge and information generated by the advent of the printing press would entirely change the landscape of thought and society. He also happened to be Christopher Columbus’ illegitimate son.
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Erudite. Stimulating. Rewarding.
- By R. P. RIBEYRE on 10-26-20
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The Alphabet Versus the Goddess
- The Conflict Between Word and Image
- By: Leonard Shlain
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 24 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Who changed the sex of God? This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values.
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Can't Even Get Started
- By Marie on 02-08-19
By: Leonard Shlain
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The Witch
- A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present
- By: Ronald Hutton
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 16 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Why have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe's history. The witch came to prominence - and often a painful death - in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early modern state.
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Meticulously researched, dry but great.
- By Matthew T Shank on 09-21-18
By: Ronald Hutton
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Introducing the Ancient Greeks
- From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind
- By: Edith Hall
- Narrated by: Sian Thomas
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall's Introducing the Ancient Greeks is the first book to offer a synthesis of the entire ancient Greek experience, from the rise of the Mycenaean kingdoms of the sixteenth century BC to the final victory of Christianity over paganism in AD 391. Each of the ten chapters visits a different Greek community at a different moment during the twenty centuries of ancient Greek history.
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Surveying the Greeks
- By Jolene on 05-31-18
By: Edith Hall
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Pagans
- The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity
- By: James J. O'Donnell
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 7 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Pagans explores the rise of Christianity from a surprising and unique viewpoint: that of the people who witnessed their ways of life destroyed by what seemed then a powerful religious cult. These "pagans" were actually pious Greeks, Romans, Syrians, and Gauls, who observed the traditions of their ancestors. To these devout polytheists, Christians who worshiped only one deity were immoral atheists who believed that a splash of water on the deathbed could erase a lifetime of sin.
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19th Century Scholarship
- By Marianne on 10-16-18
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Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies)
- By: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
- Narrated by: Aze Fellner
- Length: 4 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for History. This book discusses the troubling and possibly irreconcilable split between Jewish memory and Jewish historiography.
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Best book of history of Judaism written in centuries
- By Bicigodo on 07-19-15
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The Exodus
- By: Richard Elliott Friedman
- Narrated by: Richard Elliott Friedman
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Biblical scholars, Egyptologists, archaeologists, historians, literary scholars, anthropologists, and filmmakers are drawn to the mystery of the exodus. Unable to find physical evidence until now, many archaeologists and scholars claim this mass migration is just a story, not history. Others oppose this conclusion, defending the biblical account.
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It started well......
- By kboy2008 on 04-21-20
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The Closing of the Western Mind
- The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason
- By: Charles Freeman
- Narrated by: Nigel Patterson
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 368 AD, he changed the course of European history in ways that continue to have repercussions to the present day. Adopting those aspects of the religion that suited his purposes, he turned Rome on a course from the relatively open, tolerant, and pluralistic civilization of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority, whether that of the Bible, or the writings of Ptolemy in astronomy and of Galen and Hippocrates in medicine.
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Not proven
- By Jeffrey D on 04-30-21
By: Charles Freeman
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Lost Enlightenment
- Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane
- By: S. Frederick Starr
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects.
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Subject worthwhile but repetative narrative
- By F-M on 04-10-14
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The Secret History of the World
- By: Jonathan Black
- Narrated by: Robert Powell
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Abridged
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Here, for the first time, is a complete history of the world based on the beliefs and writings of secret societies, researched with the help of an initiate of more than one secret society.
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Not for beginners
- By Being of Light on 09-13-12
By: Jonathan Black