OMENS OF MILLENNIUM: THE GNOSIS OF ANGELS, DREAMS, AND RESURRECTION

New York City, NY: Riverhead Books, 1996. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/As New Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Riverhead Books, 1996. Hardcover. As New/As New. First Edition/First Printing. 255 pages. The author's book-length account on subject. One of Harold Bloom's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly copies that are signed on a tipped-in page. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Harold Bloom's "Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, And Resurrection". Ominous beginnings. As the 21st century (abysmally) unfolds, Western culture is fascinated once again with angels, aliens (that is, bad angels or demons), and other otherworldly beings. Harold Bloom pulls us back to show with characteristic clarity and insight that our current longings are atavistically derived from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Angels are harbingers of Apocalypse, expressing our very real anxieties about the end of the world. As such, they are a very real threat to science and its principal invention, our post-modern, consumerist society. Always on the mark, Bloom contends that, using technology's dazzling "special effects", shallow, escapist, and triumphalist popular culture has sought to contain and diminish a great tradition that has inspired some of the greatest Western artists and thinkers such as John Milton, William Blake, and of course, Shakespeare. He restores the "angelic" to its rightful place, as the transcendent image of the "all-too-human". "Draws on his life-long study of religion and in particular, the belief that God is not an external force but resides within each one of us. Through the ancient literature of Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Gnosticism, and Muslim Shiite Sufism, he reveals to us angels not as the kitschy cherubs we know today but as magnificent, terrifying beings who have always played a central role in Western culture. He allows us to feel their splendor and to experience the powerful role that dreams and near-death experiences have held throughout the centuries. In the dazzling final chapter, he delivers a Gnostic Sermon in which he urges us toward transcendence. Harold Bloom has written a book whose triumph is not only its synthesis of centuries of religious thought but its deep spirituality, through which we come to know and mourn a religious experience no longer available to us" (Publisher's blurb). An absolute "must-have" title for Harold Bloom collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the title page by the author: "For David Streitfeld, Harold Bloom". It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page, as copies available online are. The recipient, who is named, was personally known to the author. Bloom's signature on this particular copy (which had become unsteady with old age and illness) is one of the most beautiful we have ever seen. This title is a modern classic. This is one of few such signed and inscribed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. The greatest literary critic of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER HAROLD BLOOM TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1573220450.