Black magic, occult practices and witchcraft still evoke huge curiosity, interest and amazement in the minds of people. Although witchcraft in Europe has been a widely studied phenomenon, black magic and occult are not yet a popular theme of academic research in India, even though India is known as a land of magic, tantra and occult. The Indian State of Assam was historically feared as the land of Kamrup-Kamakhya, black magic, witch craft and occultic practices. It was where different Tantric cults as well as other occult practices thrived. This book is one of the rare collections where such practices are recorded and academically analyzed. It combines studies of all three practices of Black Magic, Witchcraft and Occult into a single book. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

Are mysticism and morality compatible or at odds with one another? If mystical experience embraces a form of non-dual consciousness, then in such a state of mind, the regulative dichotomy so basic to ethical discretion would seemingly be transcended and the very foundation for ethical decisions undermined. Venturing Beyond - Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism is an investigation of the relationship of the mystical and moral as it is expressed in the particular tradition of Jewish mysticism known as the Kabbalah. The particular themes discussed include the denigration of the non-Jew as the ontic other in kabbalistic anthropology and the eschatological crossing of that boundary anticipated in the instituition of religious conversion; the overcoming of the distinction between good and evil in the mystical experience of the underlying unity of all things; divine suffering and the ideal of spiritual poverty as the foundation for transmoral ethics and hypernomian lawfulness.

This book explores the phenomenon of Rainbow Gatherings in Europe. These countercultural events form radically alternative temporary societies in the peripheries of modern states and manage themselves without centralized power, market economy or institutionalized forms of religion. The volume offers a vivid description of life in the Gatherings, analyses the main ideological tenets and places the meetings in historical and cultural context. It considers how the Rainbow Gathering tradition is rooted in networks of alternative spirituality and environmental counterculture but also reflects broader shifts in religion and religiosity.

Non-sensationalist historical account of Nazi occultism Explores both prewar and postwar manifestations of this phenomenon Draws on a global set of examples and case studies

'This book is an important contribution, and I hope it will open many minds. What is particularly important in it are the discussions of David Bohm, of bioplasma, biophotons, and bioelectronics.' - PROFESSOR ZBIGNIEW WOLKOWSKI, Sorbonne University, Paris "Answers so many questions, scientific and esoteric, about the true nature of our reality... A seminal work... Will revolutionise how we frame reality and the thinking of everyone on this planet. Kudos to Professor Temple for striking the first match to light the fire." - NEW DAWN The story of the science of plasma and its revolutionary implications for the way we understand the universe and our place in it. Histories of science in the 20th century have focused on relativity and quantum mechanics. But, quietly in the background, there has been a third area of exploration which has equally important implications for our understanding of the universe. It is unknown to the general public despite the fact that many Nobel prize winners, senior academics and major research centres around the world have been devoted to it - it is the study of plasma Plasma is the fourth state of matter and the other three - gas, liquid and solids - emerge out of plasma. This book will reveal how over 99% of the universe is made of plasma and how there are two gigantic clouds of plasma, called the Kordylewski Clouds, hovering between the Earth and the Moon, only recently discovered by astronomers in Hungary. Other revelations not previously known outside narrow academic disciplines include the evidence that in certain circumstances plasma exhibits features that suggest they may be in some sense alive: clouds of plasma have evolved double helixes, banks of cells and crystals, filaments and junctions which could control the flow of electric currents, thus generating an intelligence similar to machine intelligence. We may, in fact, have been looking for signs of extra-terrestrial life in the wrong place. Bestselling author Robert Temple has been following the study of plasma for decades and was personally acquainted with several of the senior scientists - including Nobel laureates - at its forefront, including Paul Dirac, David Bohm, Peter Mitchell and Chandra Wickramasinghe (who has co-written an academic paper with Temple).

"Witches and Neighbours "is a highly original and unconventional analysis of a fascinating historical phenomenon. Unlike other studies of the subject which focus on the mechanisms of persecution, this book presents a rich picture of witchcraft as an all-pervasive aspect of life in early modern Europe.

Robin Briggs combines recent research with his own investigations to produce a brilliant and compelling account of the central role of witchcraft in the past. Although the history of witchcraft can only be studied through records of persecutions, these reveal that trials were unusual in everyday life and that witchcraft can be viewed as a form of therapy. Witchcraft was also an outlet and expression of many fundamental anxieties of society and individuals in a time when life was precarious. The book argues that witchcraft - its belief and persecutions - cannot be explained by general causes but was as complex and changing as the society of which it formed a vital part.

Since its original publication in 1996, this book has become the standard work on the subject of witchcraft. It now appears in a revised edition with an updated bibliography.

This book is not available from Blackwell in the United States and the Philippines.

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.

Exam board: Pearson Edexcel; OCR Level: AS/A-level Subject: History First teaching: September 2015 First exams: Summer 2016 (AS); Summer 2017 (A-level) Put your trust in the textbook series that has given thousands of A-level History students deeper knowledge and better grades for over 30 years. Updated to meet the demands of today's A-level specifications, this new generation of Access to History titles includes accurate exam guidance based on examiners' reports, free online activity worksheets and contextual information that underpins students' understanding of the period. - Develop strong historical knowledge: in-depth analysis of each topic is both authoritative and accessible - Build historical skills and understanding: downloadable activity worksheets can be used independently by students or edited by teachers for classwork and homework - Learn, remember and connect important events and people: an introduction to the period, summary diagrams, timelines and links to additional online resources support lessons, revision and coursework - Achieve exam success: practical advice matched to the requirements of your A-level specification incorporates the lessons learnt from previous exams - Engage with sources, interpretations and the latest historical research: students will evaluate a rich collection of visual and written materials, plus key debates that examine the views of different historians

This book challenges the widespread assumption that the ethical life and society must be moral in any objective sense. In his previous works, Marks has rejected both the existence of such a morality and the need to maintain verbal, attitudinal, practical, and institutional remnants of belief in it. This book develops these ideas further, with emphasis on constructing a positive alternative. Calling it "desirism", Marks illustrates what life and the world would be like if we lived in accordance with our rational desires rather than the dictates of any actual or pretend morality, neither overlaying our desires with moral sanction nor attempting to override them with moral strictures. Hard Atheism and the Ethics of Desire also argues that atheism thereby becomes more plausible than the so-called New Atheism that attempts to give up God and yet retain morality.

Phyllis Curott’s first book, Book of Shadows, was an inspirational, spiritual memoir that chronicled her journey from Ivy League-educated, New York City attorney to Wiccan High Priestess. By inviting readers of all faiths to share in her own personal transformation, Phyllis debunked many of the myths surrounding Wicca and revealed it for what it really is: a spiritual movement whose tenets of Goddess worship and reverence for Nature were a great deal more accessible and familiar than she’d ever expected. In Witch Crafting, Phyllis digs deep into the practices and principles of Witchcraft to provide a comprehensive guidebook that anyone "novices and seasoned practitioners alike" can use to incorporate the beauty and power of Wicca into their own daily lives.
Far from being just another mechanical spell book, Witch Crafting is the first book to offer readers not only the how-to of Witchcraft, but also the why-to, explaining the profound spiritual tenets behind Wiccan techniques. Filled with both traditional and innovative shamanic practices, Phyllis also provides an empowering new definition of magic and reexamines the ethics under which Witchcraft is practiced, offering a groundbreaking alternative to the Threefold Law. With enchanting stories from Curott’s own experiences, Witch Crafting will also teach you how to:
• Master the secret arts of effective spellcasting

• Create sacred space and personal rituals

• Perform divinations for spiritual insight and earthly success

• Tap into the power of altered states, such as dreaming, meditation, prayer, and trance

• Keep a magical journal and create your own Book of Shadows ·Keep a magical

Rich with detailed advice for making magic, working with Nature, and finding the Divine within, as well as thought-provoking evaluations of this remarkable spirituality, Witch Crafting is the special volume that you’ve been searching for. Whether you are a beginner or have been practicing Witchcraft for years, whether you worship in a coven or on your own, Witch Crafting is the ideal handbook for you, or anyone seeking to unlock the divine power that makes real magic happen and experience the ecstasy, energy, and gifts of the Universe more fully.


From the Hardcover edition.

This book examines the post-9/11 God debate in the West. Through a close study of prominent English God debaters Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, Christopher Hitchens, and Terry Eagleton, Adrian Rosenfeldt demonstrates that New Atheist and religious apologist ideas and arguments about God, science, and identity are driven by mythic autobiographical narratives and Protestant or Catholic cultural heritage. This study is informed by criticism of the New Atheist polemic as being positivistic, and the religious apologists as propagating "sophisticated theology." In both cases, the God debaters are perceived as disassociating themselves from human lived experience. It is through reconnecting the God debaters' intellectual ideas to their cultural and social background that the God debate can be grounded in a recognisable human reality that eludes reductive distinctions and disembodied abstractions.

This book considers how the non-religious self is performed publicly online, and how digital culture and technology shapes this process. Building on a YouTube case study with women vloggers, it presents unique empirical data on non-organized atheism in the United States. Lundmark suggests that the atheist self as performed online exists in tension between a perception of atheism as sinful and amoral in relation to hegemonical Christianity in the U.S., and the hyperrational, male-centered discourse that has characterized the atheist movement. She argues that women atheist vloggers co-effect third spaces of emotive resonance that enable a precarious counterpublicness of performing atheist visibility. The volume offers a valuable contribution to the discussion of how the public, the private, and areas in-between are understood within digital religion, and opens up new space for engaging with the increased visibility of atheist identity in a mediatized society.

Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams situates the life and fiction of the Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite's Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Aren Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams's seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.

Imagine yourself sitting on the cool damp earth, surrounded by deep night sky and fields full of fireflies, anticipating the ritual of initiation that you are about to undergo. Suddenly you hear the sounds of far-off singing and chanting, drums booming, rattles "snaking," voices raised in harmony. The casting of the Circle is complete. You are led to the edge of the Circle, where Death, your challenge, is waiting for you. With the passwords of "perfect love" and "perfect trust" you enter Death's realm. The Guardians of the four quarters purify you, and you are finally reborn into the Circle as a newly made Witch.
Coming to the Edge of the Circle offers an ethnographic study of the initiation ritual practiced by one coven of Witches located in Ohio. As a High Priestess within the coven as well as a scholar of religion, Nikki Bado-Fralick is in a unique position to contribute to our understanding of this ceremony and the tradition to which it belongs. Bado-Fralick's analysis of this coven's initiation ceremony offers an important challenge to the commonly accepted model of "rites of passage." Rather than a single linear event, initiation is deeply embedded within a total process of becoming a Witch in practice and in community with others.
Coming to the Edge of the Circle expands our concept of initiation while giving us insight into one coven's practice of Wicca. An important addition to Ritual Studies, it also introduces readers to the contemporary nature religion variously called Wicca, Witchcraft, the Old Religion, or the Craft.

The History of the Devil (1900) is a philosophical study by Paul Carus. A lifelong Monist, Carus sought to apply a scientific analysis to the principles of humanity's religions. Credited with bridging the gap between Eastern and Western beliefs, Carus believed that the dualism rampant in the West could be replaced in order to establish a more equitable world where difference and diversity would be accepted and nurtured, rather than suppressed. "This world of ours is a world of opposites. There is light and shade, there is heat and cold, there is good and evil, there is God and the Devil. The dualistic conception of nature has been a necessary phase in the evolution in human thought." Recognizing the need for dualism in the history of humanity, Carus sought to promote the principles of Monism in the West, believing it could lead to a universal worldview capable of uniting East and West. A positivist and pantheist, Carus believed that by pursuing "in religion the same path that science travels, [...] the narrowness of sectarianism [would] develop into a broad cosmical religion which shall be as wide and truly catholic as is science itself." To lay the groundwork for this "cosmical religion," he investigates the figure of the Devil and the historical evolution of the concept of evil, which he saw as predating belief in goodness and God. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Paul Carus' The History of the Devil is a classic of philosophy reimagined for modern readers.

Islam in France is often regarded as a political 'issue' and much of the scholarly and public debates about Islam in contemporary France over the last three decades have concentrated on the supposedly 'antagonistic' relationship between France, Islam and its Muslims. Against such a troubled backdrop, however, this book looks at the ways in which certain prominent French Muslim intellectuals seek to articulate a vision of multi-faith co-existence, which embraces a critical secularism, and which simultaneously draw on religious and secular humanist traditions. Intellectuals have historically played a major part in French public life, yet relatively little is known about the work of Abdelwahab Meddeb, Malek Chebel, Leila Babes, Dounia Bouzar and Abdennour Bidar, whose writings and public interventions this book examines. Secularism, Islam and public intellectuals in contemporary France will be of particular interest to specialists, undergraduate and post-graduate students working across the Humanities and Social Sciences from disciplines such as Francophone Studies, Anthropology, Religious Studies or Sociology. -- .

Religion and Outer Space examines religion in and on the final frontier. This book offers a first-of-its-kind roadmap for thinking about complex encounters of religion and outer space. A multidisciplinary group of scholarly experts takes up some of the most intriguing scientific, spiritual, trade/commercial, and even military dimensions of the complex entanglements of religion and outer space. Attending to the historical reality that the interconnections between religion and the heavens are as old as religions themselves, the volume starts with an examination of "outer space" elements in the most sacred writings of the world's religions. It then explores some of the religious questions inevitable in this encounter, analyzing cultural constructions (both literary and actual) of religion and outer space. It ends with examinations of the role of religion in the very real and very present business of space exploration. What might motivate the spread of religion (or at least fantasies of religion in its myriad possibilities) into new interior and exterior dimensions of the cosmos? Only the future will tell. Religion and Outer Space is essential reading for students and academics with an interest in religion and space, religion and science, space exploration, religion and science fiction, popular culture, and religion in America.

How to study the contemporary dynamics between the religious, the nonreligious and the secular in a globalizing world? Obviously, their relationship is not an empirical datum, liable to the procedures of verification or of logical deduction. We are in need of alternative conceptual and methodological tools. This volume argues that the concept of 'social imaginary' as it is used by Charles Taylor, is of utmost importance as a methodological tool to understand these dynamics. The first section is dedicated to the conceptual clarification of Taylor's notion of social imaginaries both through a historical study of their genealogy and through conceptual analysis. In the second section, we clarify the relation of 'social imaginaries' to the concept of (religious) worldviewing, understood as a process of truth seeking. Furthermore, we discuss the practical usefulness of the concept of social imaginaries for cultural scientists, by focusing on the concept of human rights as a secular social imaginary. In the third and final section, we relate Taylor's view on the role of social imaginaries and the new paths it opens up for religious studies to other analyses of the secular-religious divide, as they nowadays mainly come to the fore in the debates on what is coined as the 'post-secular.'

New Age and holistic beliefs and practices - sometimes called the "new spirituality" - are widely distributed across modern global society. The fluid and popular nature of new age makes these movements a very challenging field to understand using traditional models of religious analysis. Rather than treating new age as an exotic specimen on the margins of 'proper' religion, "New Age Spirituality" examines these movements as a form of everyday or lived religion. The book brings together an international range of scholars to explore the key issues: insight, healing, divination, meditation, gnosis, extraordinary experiences, and interactions with gods, spirits and superhuman powers. Combining discussion of contemporary beliefs and practices with cutting-edge theoretical analysis, the book repositions new age spirituality at the forefront of the contemporary study of religion.

• This volume provides a combination of the major schools of thought on the Salem witch trials and incorporates the current scholarship on the subject. Events are presented in a narrative format that delivers the drama of the trials and leaves instructors free to explore specific topics of their choosing in greater depth. An analysis of key issues is provided at the end of each chapter. • The third edition has been significantly updated to include an expanded section on the European origins of witch hunts and an update and expand epilogue which discusses the witch hunts – real and imagined, historical and cultural – since 1692. Allowing students new to the phenomenon of the witch-hunts and trials to better understand their origins and impact upon the national psyche. • The bibliography has been substantially updated, an extensive list of internet resources, sources of primary documents, documentaries, movies, artwork, and resources to assist lecturers with using this book in their classrooms and students to further their studies.

The Little Book of Spiritualism is your spiritual guide. This mini manual provides the perfect introduction to spiritualism and the spirit world, full of techniques, thoughts, terminology and quotes to guide you in your own spiritual journey. From spirit guides to mediums and angels to affirmations, this little book is a fascinating insight into spirituality and how it can transform your life. The Ranks of the Angels In total, there are said to be nine levels of angels, and this is a brief summary and hierarchy of the angels, from highest to lowest. Seraphim Seraphim are the highest order of the hierarchy of angels. These angelic beings spend their time worshipping and praising God. Cherubim Cherubim are the second highest order. They are depicted on the Ark of the Covenant as its guardians. God sent them to guard Eden after the expulsion of Adam and Eve.