This historical ethnography from Central Sudan explores the century-old intertwining of zar , spirit possession, with past lives of ex-slaves and shows that, despite very different social and cultural contexts, zar has continued to be shaped by the experience of slavery.

In its most general sense, the term "Spiritual but Not Religious" denotes those who, on the one hand, are disillusioned with traditional institutional religion and, on the other hand, feel that those same traditions contain deep wisdom about the human condition. This edited collection speaks to what national surveys agree is a growing social phenomenon referred to as the "Spiritual but Not Religious Movement" (SBNRM). Each essay of the volume engages the past, present and future(s) of the SBNRM. Their collective contribution is analytic, descriptive, and prescriptive, taking stock of not only the various analyses of the SBNRM to date but also the establishment of a new ground upon which the continued academic discussion can take place. This volume is a watershed in the growing academic and public interest in the SBNRM. As such, it will vital reading for any academic involved in Religious Studies, Spirituality and Sociology.

A powerfully poignant tale of one of the most turbulent moments in Scotland's history: the North Berwick Witch Trials. IT'S THE 4TH OF DECEMBER 1591. On this, the last night of her life, in a prison cell several floors below Edinburgh's High Street, convicted witch Geillis Duncan receives a mysterious visitor - Iris, who says she comes from a future where women are still persecuted for who they are and what they believe. As the hours pass and dawn approaches, Geillis recounts the circumstances of her arrest, brutal torture, confession and trial, while Iris offers support, solace - and the tantalising prospect of escape. Hex is a visceral depiction of what happens when a society is consumed by fear and superstition, exploring how the terrible force of a king's violent crusade against ordinary women can still be felt, right up to the present day. 'This series has already produced two works of note and distinction. It raises the question - if a country cannot re-tell its history, will it be stuck forever in aspic and condemned to be nothing more than a shortbread tin illustration? Hex and Rizzio are showing the way towards a reckoning, and about time too' - Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

"The subject of this book is those who have placed themselves 'against the faith', in other words, those who have opposed the prevailing religious faith of their time. Such opponents adopt this position for a wide variety of reasons and in many different ways. They are sometimes fiery activists hammering against leaders and leading ideas and at other times are quiet, contemplative skeptics questioning all knowledge and all orthodoxy. They can be immersed in the politics of their time, like Bradlaugh or Thomas Paine. They can be poets like Heine and Shelley, historians like Gibbon, playwrights like Buchner, or novelists like George Eliot and Mark Twain. They may be scientists like Huxley, or philosophers like J.S. Mill. They may be most at home on the public platform, like Ingersoll, or in the study like Pierre Bayle. They can be relaxed men of the world like Hume or temperamental outsiders like d'Holbach. They may lead quiet and little known lives like the freethinker Collins or the clergyman Meslier, or they may be outstanding polymaths of their age, like Voltaire or Bertrand Russell.
This book covers deists, skeptics and atheists. Without attempting to be comprehensive, I have tried to show that there is a spectrum between the three. There has often been close contact between deists, who gently criticize the Christian faith, skeptics who questions all knowledge, and atheists, who detach themselves from any belief in God. Occasionally individuals have held all these positions at different periods of their lives. Furthermore the distinction sometimes made between the respectable philosophic skeptic and the disreputable agitating atheist is not clear-cut: philosophers sometimes agitate and frequently rub shoulders with activists, and reformers and campaigners often think quite deeply.
Since this book in the main covers Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the faith opposed is Christianity. A history of opponents to Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism would provide fascinating parallels, but that book has yet to be written. It is a mistake - and one to which opponents are particularly prone - to imagine the 'faith' as a monolithic entity, rather than an accumulation of various traditions. There can therefore be opposition to the faith from within as well as without and heresy and heterodoxy have sometimes been not far apart."

This book explains in detail the most ancient of all spiritual paths called, The Way of the Medicine Wheel. It describes every aspect of the powerful sacred ceremony performed to construct a medicine wheel, and how it can be used to merge the physical and spiritual realms together in our daily lives. The nineteen Teaching Sessions presented in this book also explain the specifi c steps involved in conducting many ancient ceremonies that, collectively, can create a personal lifestyle that produces peace, harmony, and balance within the Sacred Circle of Life. The words to the songs associated with those ceremonies are printed in the Appendix. In addition, detailed information is given about some of the major Native American prophecies concerning the coming Earth Changes-what most Native Americans call "The Time of Great Cleansing". The reader will also learn how this ancient sacred path can help people properly prepare themselves for the devastating Earth Changes which are about to engulf us as we rapidly approach the near horizon of time.

This book proposes that the drive for religiosity and experiences of the sacred are far from lost in contemporary western societies. The contributors' objective is to explore the myriad of ways late modern shamanism is becoming more vital and personally significant to people, communities, and economies in Nordic countries.

In writing any account of someone else's religious beliefs and practices, any author must find himself between two poles: what members of the religion wish to tell, and what the public wishes to know. Nowhere are these polarities more distant than in the field of new religions. The public wishes to know about recruitment, brainwashing, and fundraising within the Unification Church, while the authors discussion with UC members elicited far more material on their own inner spiritual life. After consideration the author has concluded that a common meeting ground is simply not possible, and that any book, including this one, has to be a compromise.

In 1848 the Fox sisters, living near Rochester, New York, began modern spiritualism by producing a series of "raps" or "knocks", supposedly from the spirit world, through which communication could be maintained. The public's interest was captured, and soon an overwhelming desire to communicate with departed loved ones led to the devising of other methods of communicating with spirits. Spiritualism spread rapidly both in Britain and the United States, with mediums setting up shop everywhere. These mediums ranged from obvious charlatans and highly skilled conjurors to those who sincerely believed they had psychic power. Gradually a number of the more skillful mediums gained reputations that brought them national and even international renown. Among these "superstars" was Daniel Dunglas Home (1833-1886), still recognized as the finest physical medium of the nineteenth century. The Scottish-born Home rose to prominence as a medium in the United States, returning to England in 1855. He spent the rest of his career in England and Europe, conducting seances at the homes of the wealthy and in the chambers of royalty. His feats of bodily levitation and elongation, "spirit hands", fire resistance, "rapping", and the like astounded his audiences. They were convinced of his extraordinary powers to reach "beyond". Scientists of the time remained aloof from the phenomena of spiritualism, unwilling to attend seances or examine the phenomena under controlled conditions. A rare exception was Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), a chemist and physicist who was roundly ridiculed by many of his fellow scientists for his five-year investigation of a number of important spiritualists and mediums, includingDaniel Dunglas Home, Florence Cook, and Anna Eva Fay. Although many were later proven frauds, this was never the case with Daniel Dunglas Home - until now. The Sorcerer of Kings takes readers inside the testing procedures of Crookes, to explore just what his investigation entailed. What made Sir William a believer? How could so many other mediums fall victim to their own gimmicks while Daniel Dunglas Home successfully overcame efforts to expose him? Noted researcher Gordon Stein unwraps this century-old mystery to reach startling new conclusions about a man whose "powers" were eagerly sought on two continents and the man of science who attempted to find him out once and for all. Stein has written a fascinating study of Victorian England and a character study of several notable Victorians that could cause a revision in the social history of that period.