Early modern Finland is rarely the focus of attention in the study of European history, but it has a place in the context of northern European religious and political culture. While Finland was theoretically Lutheran, a religious plurality - embodied in ceremonies and interpreted as magic - survived and flourished. Blessing candles, pilgrimages, and offerings to forest spirits merged with catechism hearings and sermon preaching among the lay piety. What were the circumstances that allowed for such a continuity of magic? How were the manifestations and experiences that defined faith and magic tied together? How did western and eastern religious influences manifest themselves in Finnish magic? Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland shows us how peripheral Finland can shed light on the wider context of European magic and religion.

This fascinating book explores how traumatic experience interacts with unconscious phantasy based in folklore, the supernatural and the occult. Drawing upon trauma research, case study vignettes, and psychoanalytic theory, it explains how therapists can use literature, the arts, and philosophy to work with clients who feel cursed and manifest self-sabotaging states. The book examines the challenges that can arise when working with this client population and illustrates how to work through them while navigating potent transferences and projective identifications. It's an important read for students, psychotherapists, and counselors in the mental health field.

Can theology still operate in the void of post-theism? In attempting to answer this question Agnosis examines the concept of the void itself, tracing a history of nothingness from Augustine through Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Bataille and Derrida, and dialoguing with Japan's Kyoto School philosophers. It is argued that neither Augustinian nor post-Hegelian metaphysics have given a satisfactory understanding of nothingness and that we must look to an experience of nothingness as the best ground for future religious life and thought.

A surprisingly large number of English poets have either belonged to a secret society, or been strongly influenced by its tenets. One of the best known examples is Christopher Smart's membership of the Freemasons, and the resulting influence of Masonic doctrines on A Song to David. However, many other poets have belonged to, or been influenced by not only the Freemasons, but the Rosicrucians, Gormogons and Hell-Fire Clubs. First published in 1986, this study concentrates on five major examples: Smart, Burns, William Blake, William Butler Yeats and Rudyard Kipling, as well as a number of other poets. Marie Roberts questions why so many poets have been powerfully attracted to the secret societies, and considers the effectiveness of poetry as a medium for conveying secret emblems and ritual. She shows how some poets believed that poetry would prove a hidden symbolic language in which to reveal great truths. The beliefs of these poets are as diverse as their practice, and this book sheds fascinating light on several major writers.

The rise of atheism and unbelief is a key feature in the development of the modern world, yet it is a topic which has been little explored by historians. This book presents a series of studies of irreligious ideas in various parts of Europe during the two centuries following the Reformation. Atheism was everywhere illegal in this period. The word itself first entered the vernacular languages soon after the Reformation, but it was not until the eighteenth century that the first systematic defences of unbelief began to appear in print. Its history in the intervening years is significant but problematic and hitherto obscure. The leading scholars who have contributed to this volume offer a range of approaches and draw on a wide variety of sources to produce a scholarly, original, and fascinating book. Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment will be essential reading for all concerned with the religious, intellectual, and social history of early modern Europe.

Satan worship. Witches. New Age channelers. The last two decades have witnessed a vast upsurge in occult activity. Scores of popular books have warned Christians of the dangers and urged them to do battle against these spiritual forces. Few books, however, have developed a careful biblical theology on demons, principalities and powers. Clinton Arnold seeks to fill this gap, providing an in-depth look at Paul's letters and what they teach on the subject. For perspective, he examines first-century Greek, Roman and Jewish beliefs as well as Jesus' teaching about magic, sorcery and divination. Arguing against many recent interpretations that have seen principalities and powers as impersonal social, economic and political structures, Arnold contends that the New Testament view is that such forces are organized, personal beings which Jesus defeated at the cross and will bring into full subjection at his return. In his concluding section Arnold suggests practical ways in which Christians today can contend with the forces of evil. A thoughtful, biblical look at an urgent challenge facing the church.

Between the years of 1898 and 1926, Edward Westermarck spent a total of seven years in Morocco, visiting towns and tribes in different parts of the country, meeting local people and learning about their language and culture; his findings are noted in this two-volume set, first published in 1926. The first volume contains extensive reference material, including Westermarck's system of transliteration and a comprehensive list of the tribes and districts mentioned in the text. The chapters in this, the second volume, explore such areas as the rites and beliefs connected with the Islamic calendar, agriculture, and childbirth. This title will fascinate any student or researcher of anthropology with an interest in the history of ritual, culture and religion in Morocco.

"Koen Stroeken's work is fascinating, thought-provoking, theoretically challenging and ethnographically penetrating. It is anthropology, yes, and very true anthropology for that matter, but it is also a deep and unsettling experience finding its voice." . Per Brandstrom, Uppsala University

"The book is thoroughly engaging and a timely contribution to the literature on witchcraft. It may be found too provocative and controversial for some, but I appreciated the analysis as a useful interrogation of the 'certainties' of much anthropological theory and practice in the study of magic and witchcraft." . Joanne Thobeka Wreford, University of Capetown

Neither power nor morality but both. Moral power is what the Sukuma from Tanzania in times of crisis attribute to an unknown figure they call their witch. A universal process is involved, as much bodily as social, which obstructs the patient's recovery. Healers turn the table on the witch through rituals showing that the community and the ancestral spirits side with the victim. In contrast to biomedicine, their magic and divination introduce moral values that assess the state of the system and that remove the obstacles to what is taken as key: self-healing. The implied 'sensory shifts' and therapeutic effectiveness have largely eluded the literature on witchcraft. This book shows how to comprehend culture other than through the prism of identity and politics.

Koen Stroeken is a Lecturer in medical anthropology at Ghent University. He was initiated as a Chwezi healer in Tanzania before writing about cosmology and medicine."

Neo-paganism is the attempt to revive the polytheistic religions of old Europe. But how? Can one just invent or reinvent an authentic, living faith? Or are modern neo-pagans just engaged in elaborate role-playing games? In SUMMONING THE GODS, Collin Cleary argues that the gods have not died or forsaken us so much as we have died to or forsaken them. Modern civilization-including much of modern neo-paganism-springs from a mindset that closes man off to the divine and traps us in a world of our own creations. Drawing upon sources from Taoism to Heidegger, Collin Cleary describes how we can attain an attitude of openness that may allow the gods to return. In these nine wide-ranging essays, Collin Cleary also explores the Nordic pagan tradition, Tantrism, the writings of Alain de Benoist, Karl Maria Wiligut, and Alejandro Jodorowski, and Patrick McGoohan's classic television series The Prisoner. Cleary's essays are models of how to combine clarity and wit with spiritual depth and intellectual sophistication. "The writings of Collin Cleary are an excellent example of the way in which old European paganism continues to question our contemporaries in a thought-provoking way. Written with elegance, his work abounds in original points of view." -Alain de Benoist, author of On Being a Pagan "Jung compared the absence of the gods to a dry riverbed: their shapes remain, but devoid of the energy and substance that would make them live among us as they used to. What we await is the energy and substance to flow once more into the forms. The words of Collin Cleary, his thoughts and ideas, constitute the kind of fresh and vital energy that is needed to effect the renewal of the gods in our contemporary world." - Dr. Stephen E. Flowers, author of The Northern Dawn "Collin Cleary's Summoning the Gods is one of the most important books in its field. Unlike those who would speak for the gods, he shows us how to bring the gods into our lives by letting Them speak for themselves. Perhaps most importantly, Cleary has given serious followers of pagan religions the philosophical tools to defend their beliefs against the most erudite critics." - Stephen A. McNallen, Asatru Folk Assembly "Collin Cleary is a rare breed: a scholar of the mystical, and at the same time a mystic whose probing visions are informed by rigorous study. These are more than just eloquent and thought-provoking essays on myth, religion, or art; at their best, they resonate with the august and ancient tradition of the philosophical dialogue. Time and again, Cleary offers insights that powerfully orient the reader toward archaic ways of thinking, knowing, and seeing vividly-as if through newly opened eyes." -Michael Moynihan, co-editor, TYR: Myth-Culture-Tradition "I have admired Collin Cleary's work in TYR and Runa for years, and I am delighted that this volume of nine essays has arrived in the world. Cleary possesses the admirable ability to write with a frank 'openness to the divine' (to use his own phrase). He does so both clearly and profoundly, on a number of inter-related subjects. The essay 'Philosophical Notes on the Runes' ought to be required reading for all serious students of the runic systems. This book belongs in every radical Traditionalist library." -Juleigh Howard-Hobson, author of Sommer and Other Poems "Collin Cleary's Summoning the Gods is a landmark publication in the intellectual side of the Heathen revival. By applying modes of analysis ranging from Heideggerian phenomenology to Hegelian dialectic, Cleary manages to penetrate deep into the core of polytheistic religiosity. Attracting a thinker of Cleary's stature is an indicator of the vibrancy and health of modern Heathen thought. This book should be a welcome addition to any thinking Heathen's book shelf." -Christopher Plaisance, editor of The Journal of Contemporary Heathen Thought