One old dharma bum was convinced, not without envy, that the Kumari is given soma – the legendary narcotic mentioned in the Rig Veda. Sie fängt die Emotionen der Charaktere so eindringlich ein, dass man als Leser nicht anders kann, als sich auf die Reise mit ihnen einzulassen. Beautifully written by cultural historian and broadcaster, Dr Janina Ramirez, and stunningly illustrated by Sarah Walsh, this amazing book contains goddesses, guides, spirits, saints, witches, demons and many more female figures that have played an important role in shaping belief today.

It is a sacred place, a magical apex that generates prosperity for the kingdom and bestows blessings on everyone who passes through it. Love and betrayal, tolerance, and bigotry compete as the story travels through two and a half centuries of the life of one woman. The same criss-crossing traffic passes by the old royal palace, skirting the temple plinths and the ancient pilgrims’ rest house of Kasthamandap (the building that gave Kathmandu its name) as it has for over a millennium. View image in fullscreen Blodeuwedd’s invitation to Gronw Pebr, after the painting by Ernest Wallcousins. The Mallas had derived their wealth from two vital trade routes traversing the valley: one running south–north from India to Tibet and, beyond, to China; the other east–west from Bhutan and Sikkim to Mustang and Kashmir.Here she wisely speaks of the dynamics of women’s lives in modern culture and the power of this spiritual practice, flowing from extremely ancient roots into the presence of 21 st-century women.

In my early 30s, I realized that Greek mythology was a late, patriarchal revision of the earlier Goddess-centric myths.Though little more than two centuries ago, this was in the days when gods and goddesses still frequented the valley, consorting with mortals. He is the co-author of Gods, Heroes, and Kings: The Battle for Mythic Britain (2001) and author of numerous books on mythology including Myth: A Biography of Belief (2002), The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (2005) and Medusa: In the Mirror of Time (Reaktion, 2013).

Sometimes that's the best we can manage, but at other times we don't want to feel like a post-modern, post-feminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.

It talks about the gender partitioning which still survived in some cultures today, women as warriors, advisers, goddesses and properties.

They entrance and empower people across time and space and the stories in this book tap into the needs, desires, fears and hopes inside all of us. Polish-born Second World War special agent Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, is the subject of the Spy Who Loved, a book that led to Clare being decorated with Poland’s national honour, the Bene Merito.Perhaps,’ I scribbled in my notebook, she stood for ‘some kind of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of the world’.