Author: Central Intelligence Agency File Type: pdf There has been much opinion and little fact written on the subject of lock picking. It is the purpose of this book to clarify the facts about this delicate process, and at the same time to train you in proper procedure. Reading this book is certainly enough to get you started picking simple locks, but remember a great deal of time and patience are needed to become a truly proficient locksmith. In this volume, you will learn the fundamental theories of lock picking in addition to proper terminology, the importance of tool design (i.e. how to select and use the right tool for a given job), the effects of tolerances, and finally the techniques most commonly used by locksmiths to successfully pick the vast majority of standard pin and wafer tumbler locks. Lock picking is a useful, engaging, and satisfying skill with this book and a little determination, youll be off to a great start. **

Author: Heidi Wendt File Type: pdf In his sixth satire, Juvenal deplores the pastimes of Roman women, foremost of which is superstition. Speculating about how wives busy themselves while their husbands are away, the poet introduces a revolving door of visitors who include a eunuch of the eastern goddess Bellona, an impersonatorof Egyptian Anubis, a Judean priestess, and Chaldean astrologers. From these religious experts women solicit services ranging from dream interpretation and purification to the coercion of lovers or wealthy acquaintances. Juvenals catalogue captures not only the popularity of these freelanceexperts at the turn of the second century, but also their familiarity among his Roman audiences, whom he could expect to get the joke. Heidi Wendt investigates the backdrop of this enthusiasm for exotic wisdom and practices by examining the rise of self-authorized experts in religion during the first century of the Roman Empire. Unlike members of civic priesthoods and temples, freelance experts had to generate their own legitimacy,often through demonstrations of skill and learning out on the streets, in marketplaces, and at the temple gates. While historically these professionals have been studied separately from the development of modern conceptions of religion, Wendt argues that they, too, participated in a highlycompetitive form of religious activity from which emerged the modern-day characters not just of religious experts but specialists of philosophy, medicine, and education as well. Wendt notes affinities across this wider class of activity, but focuses on those experts who directly enlisted gods andsimilar beings. Over the course of the first century freelance experts grew increasingly influential, more diverse with respect to the skills or methods in which they claimed expertise, and more assorted in the ethnic coding of their wisdom and practices. Wendt argues that this class of religiousactivity engendered many of the innovative forms of religion that flourished in the second century, including but not limited to phenomena linked with Persian Mithras, the Egyptian gods, and the Judean Christ.The evidence for self-authorized experts in religion is abundant, but scholars of ancient Mediterranean religion have only recently begun to appreciate their impact on the Empires changing religious landscape. At the Temple Gates integrates studies of Judaism, Christianity, mystery cults,astrology, magic, and philosophy to paint a colorful portrait of religious expertise in early Rome.

Author: Shela Sheikh File Type: pdf Third Text, 2018. doi10.108009528822.2018.1483899

Author: Leslie C. Orr File Type: pdf Through the use of epigraphical evidence, Leslie C. Orr brings into focus the activities and identities of the temple women (devadasis) of medieval South India. This book shows how temple womens initiative and economic autonomy involved them in medieval temple politics and allowed them to establish themselves in roles with particular social and religious meanings. This study suggests new ways of understanding the character of the temple woman and, more generally, of the roles of women in Indian religion and society.ReviewThis work operates at the highest levels of scholarship and regularly yields gems of insight on the problems of South Indian historiography. . . . The true value of this book lies not in historicism or comparison but in its portrait of womens agency within a broader context of relationships (35) during their own time.--Journal of the American Academy of ReligionAbout the AuthorLeslie C. Orr is at Concordia University, Quebec.