The Ring of Solomon
Fans rejoice -- everyone's favorite wise-cracking djinni is back! Thousands of years before his fateful service to the magician Nathaniel in London, wily Bartimaeus served as djinni to hundreds of masters, from Babylon and Ancient Egypt to the modern Middle East. In this brilliant new installment in the best-selling series, history is revealed as readers travel alongside Bartimaeus to Jerusalem and the court of King Solomon for his most exciting adventure yet.
King Solomon's Ring
Solomon, the legend goes, had a magic ring which enabled him to speak to the animals in their own language. Konrad Lorenz was gifted with a similar power of understanding the animal world. He was that rare beast, a brilliant scientist who could write (and indeed draw) beautifully. He did more than any other person to establish and popularize the study of how animals behave, receiving a Nobel Prize for his work. King Solomon's Ring, the book which brought him worldwide recognition, is a delightful treasury of observations and insights into the lives of all sorts of creatures, from jackdaws and water-shrews to dogs, cats and even wolves. Charmingly illustrated by Lorenz himself, this book is a wonderfully written introduction to the world of our furred and feathered friends, a world which often provides an uncanny resemblance to our own. A must for any animal-lover!
King Solomon and His Magic Ring
Recounts some of the stories of the wisdom and folly in the life of the legendary King Solomon.
The New Ring of Solomon
Evil Jinn are invading our world, possessing and killing humans. The only ones aware and capable of stopping the incursion are a Sufi teacher, and his student. They must find the Shamir– a legendary device used to shape the stones of Solomon’s temple– and King Solomon's Ring.We learn the history of Solomon and his acquisition of these artefacts through Yusuf’s research. The Sufis will need to gather a band of unusually gifted seekers to perform the Sufi Ceremony of Remembrance (known as Zikr)to close the ever-widening rift between the human and jinn worlds. They set out from from Berkeley to Los Angeles guided by tenuous dreams and signs, then Mt. Shasta, Yosemite and Crystal Cave. The band of seekers gathers new members while fighting off increasingly vicious attacks from demons and Jinn. Upon meeting NANCE in the Sierra foothills, they discover that she has inherited and named her husband’s yellow Cadillac bus The Shamir. As the Jinn attacks become more brutal, Shaykh Daud explains that each one of the travelers constitutes a part of Solomon’s Ring. They are to perform the Ceremony of Remembrance (Zikr) in the Crystal Cave which will amplify the energy necessary to shut the dimensional gap permanently. Yusuf continues his revelations about King Solomon and the legends of his use of magic. Pursued by demons driving one of Nance’s cars, a Plymouth Woodie, the bus is struck broadside and plunges down a hill and crashes, killing Shaykh Daud. Yusuf must now take charge before the army of Jinn engulfs them. They discover a hole blasted by the exploding bus revealing an entrance to a section of the cave. They bury Daud quickly as the jinn and demons gather. Jumping into the cave they form a circle and begin the ritual. The crystals help amplify the energy but what at first seemed successful is quashed by the most powerful demon. They attempt the ceremony again with their remaining energy and eventually succeed. The crack between the worlds is repaired, and each can return to their homes, enriched and strengthened for the next adventure.
The Testament of Solomon
This edition of the Testament of Solomon is a complete and accurate reprint of the original translation of ancient manuscripts by F.C. Conybeare first printed in 1898. It contains all Conybeare's original notes and commentary, including the Greek characters he footnoted for the reader's consideration. Beware of other editions of this work that do not contain all the original text. The Testament of Solomon is a pseudepigraphical work attributed to King Solomon the Wise of the Old Testament. Written in the first-person narrative, the book tells the story of the creation of the magical ring of King Solomon and how Solomon's ring was used to bind and control demons, including Beelzebub. In this book of King Solomon, the discourses between the King and the various spirits are told, and the story shows how Solomon uses his wisdom to withstand the demons' tricks and guile and enlist their aid in the building of his temple. The spells and seals of Solomon used by the King to bind the spirits are detailed, which makes this work a book of Solomon's magic, similar in nature to the Lesser Key of Solomon the King and the Greater Key of Solomon the King, which both are King Solomon books of magic and contain various talismans of Solomon, including the secret seal of Solomon. The manuscripts from which this work was discovered date from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. All were written in Greek. This dating makes most experts believe that the work is medieval. But some scholars, including D.C. Duling, argue that it is likely that the work comes from the 5th or 6th centuries. The various manuscripts used to source the work all date to medieval times, but the text itself, as well as references to other works, indicate the Testament is much older. For example, in the Dialogue of Timothy and Aquila, there is a direct reference to the Testament of Solomon. The Dialogue purports to have been written during the Archbishopric of Cyril in 444 C.E., and therefore, its reference would date the Testament before that time. Similarly, in the early 4th century Gnostic text On the Origin of the World, references to the book of Solomon and his 49 demons are made. No matter the date, the text provides an immensely interesting description of how King Solomon tamed various demons to build his temple. The text includes predictions of the coming of Christ, as one demon explains to Solomon that while he may be bound, the only thing that can truly take his power away is the man born from a virgin who will be crucified by the Jews.
