Explores how bodies of knowledge developed, concerning folkloric beliefs, magic, sorcery, and witchcraft from the 12th -18th century which allows students to see how culture was exchanged across Europe leading up to the witch-trials of the 17th century and offers an explanation of why the witch-hunts and trials became so prevalent due to a strong belief in the existence of witchcraft in the popular conscious. The collection looks at a range of sources which crossed the religions, political and linguistic boundaries such as objects, legal documents, letters, art, literature, the oral tradition and pamphlets providing students with a range of case studies to deepen their understanding of the period and to inform their own research. Includes examples from across Europe from England to Italy, Norway to France and the Netherlands to Spain. Allowing students to see how these cultural exchanges crossed geographical boundaries to form a collective phenomenon.

Explores how bodies of knowledge developed, concerning folkloric beliefs, magic, sorcery, and witchcraft from the 12th -18th century which allows students to see how culture was exchanged across Europe leading up to the witch-trials of the 17th century and offers an explanation of why the witch-hunts and trials became so prevalent due to a strong belief in the existence of witchcraft in the popular conscious. The collection looks at a range of sources which crossed the religions, political and linguistic boundaries such as objects, legal documents, letters, art, literature, the oral tradition and pamphlets providing students with a range of case studies to deepen their understanding of the period and to inform their own research. Includes examples from across Europe from England to Italy, Norway to France and the Netherlands to Spain. Allowing students to see how these cultural exchanges crossed geographical boundaries to form a collective phenomenon.

Until the church recognizes the real face of the occult, it cannot serve as a source of hope and love.Its tentacles have infiltrated the very fiber of our day-to-day existence. Its symbols adorn our buildings, our currency, and the clothes and jewelry we lay upon our bodies. Its followers are legion, some of them blind to their own devotion while others pour out effort and intellect toward a broader understanding of the divine.
It is the occult, and it dominates the world's faith mind-set. Jeff Harshbarger and his friends know about occult practices. Jeff left his life of Satanism after two unsuccessful suicide attempts and an offer to become his group's first human sacrifice.
"Dancing with the Devil" tells the true stories of Jeff and others who have walked various paths of the occult. Each author's account of his or her experience with the occult is introduced by Jeff as he ties their stories together, weaving a tapestry that, by the book's close, shows the fabric of an occultist's real identity. Armed with stable faith and the sure love of Christ, they are stepping out to share a true look into the heart, mind, and soul of the occult and its followers.

This book explores the complexity of Iberian identity and multicultural/multi-religious interactions in the Peninsula through the lens of spells, talismans, and imaginative fiction in medieval and early modern Iberia. Focusing particularly on love magic-which manipulates objects, celestial spheres, and demonic conjurings to facilitate sexual encounters-Menaldi examines how practitioners and victims of such magic as represented in major works produced in Castile. Magic, and love magic in particular, is an exchange of knowledge, a claim to power and a deviation from or subversion of the licit practices permitted by authoritative decrees. As such, magic serves as a metaphorical tool for understanding the complex relationships of the Christian with the non-Christian. In seeking to understand and incorporate hidden secrets that presumably reveal how one can manipulate their environment, occult knowledge became one of the funnels through which cultures and practices mixed and adapted throughout the centuries.

Human Interaction with the Divine, the Sacred, and the Deceased brings together cutting-edge empirical and theoretical contributions from scholars in fields including psychology, theology, ethics, neuroscience, medicine, and philosophy, to examine how and why humans engage in, or even seek spiritual experiences and connection with the immaterial world. In this richly interdisciplinary volume, Plante and Schwartz recognize human interaction with the divine and departed as a cross-cultural and historical universal that continues to concern diverse disciplines. Accounting for variances in belief and human perception and use, the book is divided into four major sections: personal experience; theological consideration; medical, technological, and scientific considerations; and psychological considerations with chapters addressing phenomena including prayer, reincarnation, sensed presence, and divine revelations. Featuring scholars specializing in theology, psychology, medicine, neuroscience, and ethics, this book provides a thoughtful, compelling, evidence-based, and contemporary approach to gain a grounded perspective on current understandings of human interaction with the divine, the sacred, and the deceased. Of interest to believers, questioners, and unbelievers alike, this volume will be key reading for researchers, scholars, and academics engaged in the fields of religion and psychology, social psychology, behavioral neuroscience, and health psychology. Readers with a broader interest in spiritualism, religious and non-religious movements will also find the text of interest.

The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts analyzes a large corpus of early Christian texts and Pseudepigraphic materials to understand how the authors of these texts used, abused and silenced enslaved characters to articulate their own social, political, and theological visions. The focus is on excavating the texts "from below" or "against the grain" in order to notice the slaves, and in so doing, to problematize and (re)imagine the narratives. Noticing the slaves as literary iterations means paying attention to broader theological, ideological, and rhetorical aims of the texts within which enslaved bodies are constructed. The analysis demonstrates that by silencing slaves and using a rhetoric of violence, the authors of these texts contributed to the construction of myths in which slaves functioned as a useful trope to support the combined power of religion and empire. Thus was created not only the perfect template for the rise and development of a Christian discourse of slavery, but also a rationale for subsequent violence exercised against slave bodies within the Christian Empire. The study demonstrates the value of using the tools and applying the insights of subaltern studies to the study of the Pseudepigrapha and in early Christian texts. This volume will be of interest not only to scholars of early Christianity, but also to those working on the history of slavery and subaltern studies in antiquity.

This unique volume looks at three engaging and contemporary case studies. This topic has a wide appeal in sociology, political theory, religious studies, and cultural studies, along with the burgeoning field of studies in secularity and nonreligion. Anxiety surrounding religious symbols have never been more apparent than in society today and this volume offers a comprehensive analysis of this controversial topic.

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, this book examines how contemporary secularism in France is positioned as a guarantor of women's rights. Selby argues that the complex "fetishization" of headscarves in public, governmental, and feminist French discourse positions publicly-visible Muslim women in ways that obscure their engagement with laicite (French secularism).

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems- both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

The exciting follow-up to the bestselling Harry Potter Knitting Magic, this volume offers 28 new and official patterns for knits ranging from spellbinding stuffed toys to cosy Hogwarts house apparel to all-new costume replicas – including bewitching projects inspired by the Fantastic Beasts films!

Discover even more knitting magic with a brand-new collection of patterns inspired by the characters, creatures and artefacts of the wizarding world. Harry Potter Knitting Magic: More Patterns from Hogwarts and Beyond includes patterns for toys, apparel, and costume replicas pulled straight from the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts films, all pictured in gorgeous colour photography.

Projects: Knit yourself a mini sock garland that spells ‘Dobby Is Free’. Support your favourite team with a Hogwarts Quidditch Pullover. Channel the elegance of Professor McGonagall with the stunning Vero Verto Cape. Travel beyond Hogwarts to 1920s New York with projects inspired by the Fantastic Beasts films, including a gorgeous colourwork scarf inspired by Newt’s case, a mischievous stuffed Niffler and a sparkling Gigglewater Shawl.

Copyright © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. WIZARDING WORLD characters, names and related indicia are © & ™ Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. – WB SHIELD: © & ™ WBEI. Publishing Rights © JKR. (s21)

Partiality and Impartiality in African Philosophy fills the lacuna in African philosophy literature on the inherent tension between requirements of partiality (favoritism) and impartiality (equality). Motsamai Molefe deploys two strategies to philosophically resolve the tension between partiality and impartiality. The first strategy involves applying the moral theories of Kwasi Wiredu, Thaddeus Metz, and Kwame Gyekye to the problem. Finding their views useful in some ways and seriously limited in others, Molefe turns to the second strategy in which he invokes the salient normative concept of personhood in African cultures. Molefe argues that the concept of personhood adjoins theories of human dignity and moral perfection (virtue). The major insight that emerges is a robust ethical theory qua personhood that accommodates both partiality and impartiality. He grounds requirements of impartiality on human dignity, which operates largely as a macro-ethical concept that normatively informs the character of our social institutions (politics). Politics is characterized by fairness, equality, and impartiality. Partiality (the agent-and-other-centred forms of it) is directly connected with the agent's chief moral duty to achieve her own virtue (moral perfection), which operates as a micro-ethical concept. These two kinds of moral partialism, self-favoritism and close ties such as family, are justified by appeal to the project's view, instead of the individuals-and-relationships view typically invoked to justify moral partiality in the literature.

This book offers a detailed analysis of the Gospel of Thomas in its historic and literary context, providing a new understanding of the genesis of the Jesus tradition. Discovered in the twentieth century, the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas is an important early text whose origins and place in the history of Christianity continue to be subjects of debate. Aiming to relocate the Thomasine community in the wider context of early Christianity, this study considers the Gospel of Thomas as a bridge between the oral and literary phases of the Christian movement. It will therefore, be useful for Religion scholars working on Biblical studies, Coptic codices, gnosticism and early Christianity.

In response to the intellectual movement of New Atheism, this volume articulates a "New Theist" response that has at its core a desire to engage in productive and depolarizing dialogue. To ensure this book is of interest to atheists and theists alike, a team of experts in the field of philosophy of religion offer an assessment of the strongest New Atheist arguments. The chapters address the most pertinent questions about God, including politics and morality, and each essay shows how a reflective theist might deal with points raised by the New Atheists. This volume is a serious academic engagement with the questions asked by New Atheism. As such, it will be of significant interest to scholars working in the philosophy of religion and theology, as well as those engaged in religious studies generally.

Offering a new template for future exploration, Susan Greenwood examines and develops the notion that the experience of magic is a panhuman orientation of consciousness, a form of knowledge largely marginalized in Western societies. In this volume she aims to form a "bridge of communication" between indigenous magical or shamanic worldviews and rationalized Western cultures. She outlines an alternative mythological framework for the latter to help develop a magical perception, as well as giving practical case studies derived from her own research. The form of magic discussed here is not fantastic or virtual, but ecological and sensory. Magical knowledge infiltrates the body in its deepest levels of the subconscious, and unconscious, as well as conscious awareness; it is felt and understood through the connection with an inspirited world that includes the consciousness of other beings, including those of plant, animal and the physical environment. This is anthropology from the heart rather than the head, and it engages with the messy area of emotions, an embodiment of the senses, and struggles to find a common language of listening to one another across a void of differences. The aim is to provide a non-reductive structure for the creative interplay of both magical and analytical modes of thought. Passion is a motivator for change, and a change in attitude to magic as an integrative force of human understanding is the main thread of this work.

Does science argue against the existence of the human soul? Many scientists and scholars believe the whole is more than the sum of the parts. This book uses information and systems theory to describe the "more" that does not reduce to the parts. One sees this in the synapses"or apparently empty gaps between the neurons in one's brain"where informative relationships give rise to human mind, culture, and spirituality. Drawing upon the disciplines of cognitive science, computer science, neuroscience, general systems theory, pragmatic philosophy, and Christian theology, Mark Graves reinterprets the traditional doctrine of the soul as form of the body to frame contemporary scientific study of the human soul.

Goddess as Nature makes a significant contribution to elucidating the meaning of a female and feminist deity at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Bridging the gap between the emergent religious discourse of thealogy - discourse about the Goddess - and a range of analytical concerns in the philosophy of religion, the author argues that thealogy is not as incoherent as many of its critics claim. By developing a close reading of the reality-claims embedded within a range of thealogical texts, one can discern an ecological and pantheistic concept of deity and reality that is metaphysically novel and in need of constructive philosophical, thealogical and scholarly engagement. Philosophical thealogy is, in an age concerned with re-conceiving nature in terms of agency, chaos, complexity, ecological networks and organicism, both an active possibility and a remarkably valuable academic, feminist and religious endeavour.

Utilizing contemporary scholarship on secularization, individualism, and consumer capitalism, this book explores religious movements founded in the West which are intentionally fictional: Discordianism, the Church of All Worlds, the Church of the SubGenius, and Jediism. Their continued appeal and success, principally in America but gaining wider audience through the 1980s and 1990s, is chiefly as a result of underground publishing and the internet. This book deals with immensely popular subject matter: Jediism developed from George Lucas' Star Wars films; the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, founded by 26-year-old student Bobby Henderson in 2005 as a protest against the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools; Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius which retain strong followings and participation rates among college students. The Church of All Worlds' focus on Gaia theology and environmental issues makes it a popular focus of attention. The continued success of these groups of Invented Religions provide a unique opportunity to explore the nature of late/post-modern religious forms, including the use of fiction as part of a bricolage for spirituality, identity-formation, and personal orientation.

Monsters in Greek literature are often thought of as creatures which exist in mythological narratives, however, as this book shows, they appear in a much broader range of ancient sources and are used in creation narratives, ethnographic texts, and biology to explore the limits of the human body and of the human world. This book provides an in-depth examination of the role of monstrosity in ancient Greek literature. In the past, monsters in this context have largely been treated as unimportant or analysed on an individual basis. By focusing on genres rather than single creatures, the book provides a greater understanding of how monstrosity and abnormal bodies are used in ancient sources. Very often ideas about monstrosity are used as a contrast against which to examine the nature of what it is to be human, both physically and behaviourally. This book focuses on creation narratives, ethnographic writing, and biological texts. These three genres address the origins of the human world, its spatial limits, and the nature of the human body; by examining monstrosity in these genres we can see the ways in which Greek texts construct the space and time in which people exist and the nature of our bodies. This book is aimed primarily at scholars and students undertaking research, not only those with an interest in monstrosity, but also scholars exploring cultural representations of time (especially the primordial and mythological past), ancient geography and ethnography, and ancient philosophy and science. As the representation of monsters in antiquity was strongly influential on medieval, renaissance, and early modern images and texts, this book will also be relevant to people researching these areas.

This new edition introduces the reader to the philosophy of early Christianity in the second to fourth centuries AD, and contextualizes the philosophical contributions of early Christians in the framework of the ancient philosophical debates. It examines the first attempts of Christian thinkers to engage with issues such as questions of cosmogony and first principles, freedom of choice, concept formation, and the body-soul relation, as well as later questions like the status of the divine persons of the Trinity. It also aims to show that the philosophy of early Christianity is part of ancient philosophy as a distinct school of thought, being in constant dialogue with the ancient philosophical schools, such as Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and even Epicureanism and Scepticism. This book examines in detail the philosophical views of Christian thinkers such as Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa, and sheds light in the distinct ways they conceptualized traditional philosophical issues and made some intriguing contributions. The book's core chapters survey the central philosophical concerns of the early Christian thinkers and examines their contributions. These range across natural philosophy, metaphysics, logic and epistemology, psychology, and ethics, and include such questions as how the world came into being, how God relates to the world, the status of matter, how we can gain knowledge, in what sense humans have freedom of choice, what the nature of soul is and how it relates to the body, and how we can attain happiness and salvation. This revised edition takes into account the recent developments in the area of later ancient philosophy, especially in the philosophy of Early Christianity, and integrates them in the relevant chapters, some of which are now heavily expanded. The Philosophy of Early Christianity remains a crucial introduction to the subject for undergraduate and postgraduate students of ancient philosophy and early Christianity, across the disciplines of classics, history, and theology.

This is a scintillating volume on the mythologies of the afterlife in the world religions from various eras. "Tales of Lights and Shadows" offers a fresh approach to the traditional mythology and literature of the afterlife, centering on tensions and polarities in the afterlife concepts: bright vs. dismal, heaven vs. reincarnation, theocentric vs. anthropocentric heaven, etc. Presenting examples from virtually all the world's religious cultures past and present, this fascinating book puts the concepts clearly in the context of the worldview and social issues of that society. Robert Ellwood depicts the many rich mythologies of the afterlife from the ancient Mesopotamians, Japanese, Greeks of the Homeric era, to Christian views of heaven or the Buddhist western paradise. He explores views of the concept of reincarnation as well as the arduous preparation for the afterlife that must be taken in some traditions. Ellwood concludes by looking at the way varying views of the afterlife influence religious and even secular culture, and how in turn culture can influence the popular heavens and hells of the time and place.

Originally published in 1974, Ritual in Industrial Society is based on several years' research including interviews and observations into the importance of ritual in industrial society within modern Britain. The book addresses how identity and meaning for people of all occupations and social classes can be derived through rituals and provides an expansive and diverse examination of how rituals are used in society, including in birth, marriage and death. The book offers an examination into the use of symbolic action in the body to articulate experiences which words cannot adequately handle and suggests that this enables modern men and women to overcome the mind-body splits which characterise modern technological society. In addition to this, the book examines ritual as a tool for articulating and sharing religious experiences, a point often overlooked by more intellectual approaches to religion in sociology. In addition to this, the book covers an exploration into ritual in social groups and how this is used to develop a sense of belonging among members. The book will be of interest to sociologists as well as academics of religion and theology, social workers and psychotherapists.

Witches and Warlocks of New York is a collection of legends and historical accounts about witches and warlocks from the Empire State. This will be the second in a series (the first being Massachusetts publishing September 1, 2021). New York has a surprisingly rich history of witches and witchcraft. These stories are known locally in the towns where they occurred but have never been collected into one book before. Included are a history and origins of witchcraft in New York State and historical tales of "witches" across the state including Hulda and the thirteen Witches of the Catskills.