Annotated bibliography

Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel. Handbook to Life in the Aztec World. N.p.: Facts on File, 2006. Print.

            This is the book that interested me the most therefore spent the most time on. The ideologies of the Aztec people are quite astonishing, the fact that for their superior amount of knowledge about the stars and mathematics they lived every day for the Gods is crazy to me because these days I see people using this kind of knowledge for selfish reasons rather than for a higher power. Which in my mind is a crazy concept because the Aztec’s were a very advanced civilization and it’s hard to imagine that they would just make up their beliefs, which is what most modern people would say. The Aztecs touched on a very important concept of creation theories, destruction between one stage of human existence and the creation of another one afterwards which is why at least 4-5 of my prompts involve their creation theory which involved human existence under 5 different suns, the fifth being the present. This also touched on their thoughts on after life which lead to another prompt which is somewhat a contour drawing with wire of a soul leaving a body in the fetal position.

Brooks, Max. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. New

York: Three Rivers, 2003. Print.

As humans our most important instinct is survival there’s no arguing that. I was lead to this concept of zombies after having read about how in many creation theories there have been creations followed by destruction of the creation then again followed by another, better, creation. It lead me to make a sewn prompt in which there are 3 white napkins being ‘attacked’ by brown napkins to symbolize the spread of the disease that supposedly spreads from zombies.

Daniken, Erich Von. Chariot of the Gods? N.p.: Berkley, 1980. Print.

            I started with this book and lead off to find “Creation Myths.” This book talks about a variety of theories which surround themselves with the notion that early civilizations were visited by extraterrestrial beings that helped them start their civilizations. Having said that it seems like a farfetched idea at first but the book backs up this theory with facts from around the world that lead to this theory being a logical conclusion.

Franz, Marie-Louise Von. Creation Myths Revised Edition. N.p.: Shambhala, 1972. Print.

            After reading about the possibility that human kind was visited by aliens in the beginning to give us somewhat of a head start I wondered how early civilizations believed we came into existence so I checked this book out and read all sorts of different creation theories from around the world. Afterwards I went on to read more in depth about other culture’s creation theories.

McKenna, Terrence K. Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge. New

York, NY: Bantam, 1992. Print.

This book introduces the notion that human kind’s state of mind was initially sprouted from the introduction of a mind altering substance in our ancestor’s diet. It goes on to talk about shamans and how they are tied to the spiritual world because of the use of mind altering substances. This lead me to think about how in this day and age we see people who use mind altering substances as absurd and crazy and how the general public is mostly strayed away from this kind of thing. But looking back on it I think that as a society people of that day were more as a whole than any other time rather than being selfish as the general public has come to be today. Leading me to a prompt about how the human mind thinks more about money than the spiritual aspect of life.

Nicholson, Irene. Mexican and Central American Mythology. N.p.: Paul Hamlyn, 1967. Print.

            This book talks about Mexican and Central American Mythology, including their creation theories and stories about their Gods and how they went about their days. The crazy think about that region of the world is that they had similar creation theories and Gods as well. Which lead me to think, what if they actually saw what they believed in? Seeing is believing in some people’s eyes after all.

Noss, David S. A History of the World's Religions. N.p.: Pearson Education, 2003. Print.

            I was lead to this in search of a variety of different creation theories, but it was more of a dictionary of religions so I chose to skim through but didn’t really get much out of it.

Owen, Ted, Denise Dickson, Walter Patrick. Medeiros, and John A. Platt. High Art: A History of

the Psychedelic Poster. London: Sanctuary Pub., 1999. Print.

I was lead to this book after “Food of the Gods,” I wanted to see the most recent visual aspects of evolving minds, because of the fact that during the time when these posters where made the general youth was infatuated with mind altering substances.

Sayers, Dorothy L. Dante The Divine Comedy 1: Hell. N.p.: Penguin Group, 1949. Print.

            Skimming through the book I noticed an illustration of the levels of Hell and that lead me to recreate it as one of my prompts but not as an illustration more like an abstraction.

Taylor, Charles H., and Patricia Finley. Images of the Journey in Dante's Divine Comedy. N.p.:

Yale University, 1997. Print.

I got this and the book above at the same time to get a visual with what I was reading but the books themselves didn’t really go together because it wasn’t as chronological as I thought it would be. So it was more of a visual reference for ideas more than conceptual.

Thompson, J. Eric S. Maya History & Religion. N.p.: University of Oklahoma, 1990. Print.

            The Mayan people were tied with the concept of time which lead me to create a prompt made of times cut out of receipts surrounded by bus transfers in the form of a clock to symbolize how the concept of time is still important.

World Bible Publishing St, comp. The New American Bible. N.p.: Catholic World/World Bible,

2011. Print.

The creation theory that usually comes to mind comes from the bible which is why I picked this book out. This was one of the books I came to later on, definitely after “Creation Myths”, and the comparison between how the bible says we came into existence and how other cultures say we did isn’t far off. I read of many stories in which humans were molded in one way or another out of the dirt or clay. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of theories that are very similar to one another and that lead me to believe that this is no coincidence.