BACK COVER #
Kuan Yin is the most important and best loved deity of the Chinese world. She is the living expression of compassion, whose gentle face and elegant figure form a centre of devotion in most Chinese homes and workplaces. Yet she is barely known in the West and few studies have been made of her. The authors of this book have travelled all over China in search of her true story and origins within Buddhism, Taoism and the female shamans of China. Now, in her universal mystery and power of divine feminine, she transcends all doctrines, creeds and traditions.The beautiful poetry of the 100 Prophecies of Kuan Yin is her translated into English for the first time. These poems are used as a method of divination, to gain insight into the depths of the soul. With the myths, they form the heart of this new look at one of the most powerful but least known goddesses.
BLURBS #
"Kuan Yin vividly documents the continual reassertion of the human need to rearticulate the feminine in the divine. It tells a compelling story that reads like a detective mystery, sheds new light on both Chinese and Western religions, and shows that the contemporary rassertion of the Goddess in the hearts and minds of women and men is actually a recurrent cross-cultural theme."-- Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade
"We learn something about Kuan Yin's great significance, her enchanting statues and temples, but also about the literature she inspired, especially a collection of 100 poems full of wisdom and great beauty which have been translated in this book with much sensitivity and insight, almost for the first time."
-- Ursula King, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol