Shows students of the history of witchcraft and magic that the beliefs of the seventeenth century continued through the Enlightenment, despite the attempts by philosophers to dismiss magic and its practice, into the nineteenth century. The volume is divided into three sections highlighting different definitions of magic including the concern over the non-material world as found in popular and elite practices, its relationship with science and medicine, and other forms of divination available to the general population. Providing students with a broad view of how magic was engaged with in the eighteenth century to inform their own studies. Explores the relationship between magic, science and medicine providing students with a good understanding of how the emerging fields of science and medicine came into conflict with popular belief in and practice of magic. Allowing students to see why magic still resonated with the general public into the nineteenth century.

The Malleus is an important text and is frequently quoted by authors across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. Yet it also presents serious difficulties: it is difficult to understand out of context, and is not generally representative of late medieval learned thinking. This, the first book-length study of the original text in English, provides students and scholars with an introduction to this controversial work and to the conceptual word of its authors. Like all witch-theorists, Institoris and Sprenger constructed their witch out of a constellation of pre-existing popular beliefs and learned traditions. Therefore, to understand the Malleus, one must also understand the contemporary and subsequent debates over the reality and nature of witches. This book argues that although the Malleus was a highly idiosyncratic text, its arguments were powerfully compelling and therefore remained influential long after alternatives were forgotten. Consequently, although focused on a single text, this study has important implications for fifteenth-century witchcraft theory. This is a fascinating work on the Malleus Maleficarum and will be essential to students and academics of late medieval and early modern history, religion and witchcraft studies. -- .

The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism shows how people can live together and overcome the challenge of religious terrorism by adopting a "secular outlook" on life and politics. * Shows how secularism can answer the problem of religious terrorism * Provides new perspectives on how religious minorities can be integrated into liberal democracies * Reveals how secularism has gained a new political and moral significance. * Also examines such topics as atheism, religious criticism and free speech

Discover some of the world’s most awe-inspiring and holy places, from Stonehenge to Uluru, and Walden Pond to Angkor Wat. Humans have always searched for and created meaning in the world around them, whether in breathtakingly stunning natural features and phenomena, acknowledging the ancient home of a particular faith or movement, or honouring the location of a significant event. In this beautifully illustrated guide, Alice Peck discusses what makes a place spiritual – whether reaches of time, geography, the provision of sustenance or inspiration, or mystery and magic – and then explores 80 such locations around the globe. Rather than a comprehensive travel guide, the description of each one includes a detail or tip – something beautiful, strange, relatively unknown or unfamiliar – to allow readers to deepen their focus and perhaps experience the place in a different way than they might expect. If you are unable to travel at this time, this book will help you plan your next adventure. And if you are trying to limit your carbon footprint, each destination is accompanied by a related meditation, prayer, practice or quotation to help you connect to the spirit of it from your own home.

Aldous Huxley's acclaimed and gripping account of one of the strangest occurrences in history

In 1643 an entire convent in the small French village of Loudun was apparently possessed by the devil. After a sensational and celebrated trial, the convent's charismatic priest Urban Grandier--accused of spiritually and sexually seducing the nuns in his charge--was convicted of being in league with Satan. Then he was burned at the stake for witchcraft.

In this classic work by the legendary Aldous Huxley--a remarkable true story of religious and sexual obsession considered by many to be his nonfiction masterpiece--a compelling historical event is clarified and brought to vivid life.

This book presents a pragmatic response to arguments against religion made by the New Atheism movement. The author argues that analytic and empirical philosophies of religion-the mainstream approaches in contemporary philosophy of religion-are methodologically unequipped to address the "Threefold Challenge" made by popular New Atheist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. The book has three primary motivations. First, it provides an interpretation of the New Atheist movement that treats their claims as philosophical arguments and not just rhetorical exercises or demagoguery. Second, it assesses and responds to these claims by elaborating four distinct contemporary philosophical perspectives- analytic philosophy, empirical philosophy, continental philosophy, and pragmatism-as well as contextualizing these perspectives in the history of the philosophy of religion. Finally, the book offers a metaphilosophical critique, returning again and again to the question of method. In the end, the author settles upon a modified version of pragmatism that he concludes is best suited for articulating the terms and stakes of the God Debate. Challenging the New Atheism will be of interest to scholars and students of American philosophy and philosophy of religion.

This is the first book-length study of the uncanny, an important topic for contemporary thinking on literature, film, philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism and queer history. Much of this importance can be traced back to Freud's extraordinary essay of 1919, 'The Uncanny' (Das Unheimliche). As a ghostly feeling and concept, however, the uncanny has a complex history going back to at least the Enlightenment. Royle offers a detailed account of the emergence of the uncanny, together with a series of close readings of different aspects of the topic. Following a major introductory historical and critical overview, there are chapters on literature, teaching, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, film, the death drive, deja vu, silence, solitude and darkness, the fear of being buried alive, the double, ghosts, cannibalism, telepathy, madness and religion. -- .

This book offers a clear and novel method from inserting mystical ideals into theatrical productions. This book introduces a new way of understanding the history of theatre. This book gives an east-to-understand overview of mystical thinking. This book lays out a clear understanding of how theatre might positively influence the audience and society.

This book examines the misuse of history in New Atheism and militant anti-religion. It looks at how episodes such as the Witch-hunt, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust are mythologized to present religion as inescapably prone to violence and discrimination, whilst the darker side of atheist history, such as its involvement in Stalinism, is denied. At the same time, another constructed history-that of a perpetual and one-sided conflict between religion and science/rationalism-is commonly used by militant atheists to suggest the innate superiority of the non-religious mind. In a number of detailed case studies, the book traces how these myths have long been overturned by historians, and argues that the New Atheism's cavalier use of history is indicative of a troubling approach to the humanities in general. Nathan Johnstone engages directly with the God debate at an academic level and contributes to the emerging study of non-religion as a culture and an identity.

This is the first academic overview of witchcraft and popular magic in Ireland and spans the medieval to the modern period. Based on a wide range of un-used and under-used primary source material, and taking account of denominational difference between Catholic and Protestant, it provides a detailed account of witchcraft trials and accusation.

This book examines the relations between the Albanian communist regime and the Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (AAOC) from 1945, when the communists came to power, to 1967, when Albania became the only atheistic state in the world, and religion of all kinds was completely suppressed. Based on extensive archival research, the book outlines Orthodox Church life under communism and considers the regime's strategies to control, use, and subordinate the Church. It argues against a simple state oppression versus Church resistance scenario, showing that the situation was much more complex, with neither the regime nor the Church being monolithic entities. It shows how, despite the brutality and the constant pressure of the state, the Church successfully negotiated with the communist authorities and benefited from engaging with them, and how the communist authorities used the Church as a tool of foreign policy, especially to strengthen the regime's ties with their East European allies.

The first monograph on Carpocrates in 80 years, providing an up to date reassessment of him and his followers. Offers the latest research on Carpocrates, Epiphanes, and Marcellina.

This book is unique in providing a concise, single authored introduction to the field of NRMs, providing a streamlined and affordable option. Provides an up to date overview of the field, covering recent debates and new avenues of research that have not yet been covered in existing textbooks. Provides a context for the field and the questions that drive it in an accessible way, giving students an informed understanding of the field and equipping them to do their own research on stigmatized religious groups.

Originally published in 1974 Intimacy and Ritual is a sympathetic study of spiritualist activities and their relation to the practitioners' secular lives. The book, in particular, looks at the therapeutic function of spiritualism. Based on the author's fieldwork as a 'participant observer' among spiritualists in a South Wales town, the research covers spiritualists services and meetings as well as interviews with spiritualists in their own homes. The book gives an accurate account of spiritualist doctrines and beliefs about the spirit world. The book postulates that spirit possession always relates to illness and shows how this is often the physical counterpart of social malaise. Throughout the study, spiritualism is seen in terms of the coping techniques and the rewards which it offers its members. The book shows that spiritualism is more highly regarded as a problem-solving source than the formal care-giving organizations, such as psychiatrist hospitals and the social work agencies. Healing activities are interpreted as a symbolic enactment of male and female roles ideally conceived, and spiritualist messages offer symbols and explanations of illness and misfortune.

Originally published in 1982, The Shaman and the Magician draws on the author's wide experience of occultism, western magic and anthropological knowledge of shamanism, to explore the interesting parallels between traditional shamanism and the more visionary aspects of magic in modern western society. In both cases, as the author shows, the magician encounters profound god-energies of the spirit, and it is up to the individual to interpret these experiences in psychological or mythological terms. The book demonstrates that both shamanism and magic offer techniques of approaching the visionary sources of our culture.

Originally published in 1978, The Occult Sourcebook has been compiled primarily for the many people who are for the first time becoming engrossed by the numerous and often confusing possibilities underlying the occult sciences. It consists of a series of articles on key areas, providing the reader with easy access to basic facts, together with a carefully planned guide to further reading. Critical comments on the recommended books allow the reader to select those which best suit their interests. The authors have also included a 'Who's Who of the occult' to provide short biographies of some of the more amazing figures who have already travelled down the mystic path. The book offers a programmed system of exploration into the realms of the unknown. It will be invaluable to the increasing number of people who are concerned with the exploration of enlarging human consciousness.

This volume advances our understanding of early Christianity as a lived religion by approaching it through its rites, the emotions and affects surrounding those rites, and the material setting for the practice of them. The connections between emotions and ritual, between rites and their materiality, and between emotions and their physical manifestation in ancient Mediterranean culture have been inadequately explored as yet, especially with regard to early Christianity and its water and dining rites. Readers will find all three areas-ritual, emotion, and materiality-engaged in this exemplary interdisciplinary study, which provides fresh insights into early Christianity and its world. Ritual, Emotion, and Materiality in the Early Christian World will be of special interest to interdisciplinary-minded researchers, seminarians, and students who are attentive to theory and method, and those with an interest in the New Testament and earliest Christianity. It will also appeal to those working on ancient Jewish and Greco-Roman religion, emotion, and ritual from a comparative standpoint.

Religions are at their core about creating certainty. But what happens when groups lose control of their destiny? Whether it leads to violence, or to nonviolent innovations, as found in minority religions following the death of their founders or leaders, uncertainty and insecurity can lead to great change in the mission and even teachings of religious groups. This book brings together an international range of contributors to explore the uncertainty faced by new and minority religious movements as well as non-religious fringe groups. The groups considered in the book span a range of religious traditions (Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam), old and new spiritual formations such as esotericism, New Age and organized new religious movements, as well as non-religious movements including the straight edge movement and the British Union of Fascists. The chapters deal with a variety of contexts, from the UK and US, to Japan and Egypt, with others discussing global movements. While all the authors deal with twentieth- and twenty-first-century movements and issues, several focus explicitly on historical cases or change over time. This wide-ranging, yet cohesive volume will be of great interest to scholars of minority religious movements and non-religious fringe groups working across religious studies, sociology and social psychology.

New religious movements commonly known as cults are defined as organizations that have arisen within the last 200 years. Most treatments of these movements have typically resorted to sensationalism rather than objectivity, and New religious movements tend to receive negative media publicity. Despite their unfavorable portrayal in popular culture, however, new religious movements are a global phenomenon and much remains to be studied about these movements. In this newly updated second edition of the Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements, George D. Chryssides traces the rise and development of new religious movements throughout the world. An updated introduction summarizes the phenomenon of new religious movements and lays out the changes to the dictionary since the 2001 edition, while the main body of the dictionary consists of close to 600 cross-referenced entries on key figures, ideas, themes, and places related to various new religious movements. An index organizes the information in the dictionary, and a comprehensive bibliography leads the researcher to further sources. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about new religious movements."