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.

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.

This volume examines the prevalence, function, and socio-political effects of slavery discourse in the major theological formulations of the late third to early fifth centuries AD, arguably the most formative period of early Christian doctrine. The question the book poses is this: in what way did the Christian theologians of the third, fourth, and early fifth centuries appropriate the discourse of slavery in their theological formulations, and what could the effect of this appropriation have been for actual physical slaves? This fascinating study is crucial reading for anyone with an interest in early Christianity or Late Antiquity, and slavery more generally.

As religion and politics become ever more intertwined, relationships between religion and political parties are of increasing global political significance. This handbook responds to that development, providing important results of current research involving religion and politics, focusing on: democratisation, democracy, party platform formation, party moderation and secularisation, social constituency representation and interest articulation. Covering core issues, new debates, and country case studies, the handbook provides a comprehensive overview of fundamentals and new directions in the subject. Adopting a comparative approach, it examines the relationships between religion and political parties in a variety of contexts, regions and countries with a focus on Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism. Contributions cover such topics as: religion, secularisation and modernisation; religious fundamentalism and terrorism; the role of religion in conflict resolution and peacebuilding; religion and its connection to state, democratisation and democracy; and regional case studies covering Asia, the Americas, Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa. This comprehensive handbook provides crucial information for students, researchers and professionals researching the topics of politics, religion, comparative politics, secularism, religious movements, political parties and interest groups, and religion and sociology.

Exploring religious and spiritual changes which have been taking place among Indigenous populations in Australia and New Zealand, this book focuses on important changes in religious affiliation in census data over the last 15 years. Drawing on both local social and political debates, while contextualising the discussion in wider global debates about changing religious identities, especially the growth of Islam, the authors present a critical analysis of the persistent images and discourses on Aboriginal religions and spirituality. This book takes a comparative approach to other Indigenous and minority groups to explore contemporary changes in religious affiliation which have raised questions about resistance to modernity, challenges to the nation state and/or rejection of Christianity or Islam. Helena Onnudottir, Adam Posssamai and Bryan Turner offer a critical analysis to on-going public, political and sociological debates about religious conversion (especially to Islam) and changing religious affiliations (including an increase in the number of people who claim 'no religion') among Indigenous populations. This book also offers a major contribution to the growing debate about conversion to Islam among Australian Aborigines, Maoris and Pacific peoples.

Su-un and His World of Symbols explores the image which Choe Che-u (Su-un), the founder of Donghak (Eastern Learning) Korea's first indigenous religion, had of himself as a religious leader and human being. Su-un gave his life so that he could share his symbols, his scriptures and the foundational principals of his religion with all people, regardless of their status, gender, age or education. His egalitarian creed challenged the major religious traditions in Korea, and Korean society as a whole, to reflect on the innate dignity of each individual, and to reform their social, ethical and religious practices to accord with the reality of the Divine presence in the 'sacred refuge' that lies within. Exploring the two symbols which Su-un created and used to disseminate his religion, and the two books of Scripture which he composed, this book breaks new ground by presenting the only major work in English which attempts to ascertain the image Su-un had of himself as the prototype of a new kind of religious leader in Korea, and by extension, East Asia.

This book provides a new sociological account of contemporary religious phenomena such as channelling, holistic healing, meditation and divination, which are usually classed as part of a New Age Movement. Drawing on his extensive ethnography carried out in the UK, alongside comparative studies in America and Europe, Matthew Wood criticises the view that such phenomena represent spirituality in which self-authority is paramount. Instead, he emphasises the role of social authority and the centrality of spirit possession, linking these to participants' class positions and experiences of secularisation. Informed by sociological and anthropological approaches to social power and practice, especially the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, Wood's study explores what he calls the nonformative regions of the religious field, and charts similarities and differences with pagan, spiritualist and Theosophical traditions.

In a supposedly 'global age,' which not everyone accepts, the late Dr Jennifer Crawford has brought together a range of disciplines in her creation of a unified, sensitive 'way of knowing' for the global era. Drawing upon her academic and lived experience in philosophy, environmental science, social work and feminism, together with a deep spiritual commitment, Jennifer Crawford has deftly woven together complex ideas in her reconceptualisation of global justice. Spiritually-Engaged Knowledge: The Attentive Heart is framed within the author's troubling encounters in India recounted in the Prologue and Epilogue. These transformative experiences inspired her multi-disciplinary exploration of justice, which took her beyond the boundaries of Western epistemology. Locating the global, the author defines what it is to be a member of a global community in which cross-cultural encounters bring forth the possibility of new genre of knowledge. Crawford situates her argument within contemporary philiosohpical contexts, drawing upon postmodern discourse, globalisation theory and the realisation of shared horizon for all human knowledge, which offers up a potential for 'knowing globally'. Crawford takes the reader through feminist theory, the ethic of care, the craft of 'othering', surrender to the 'other' and to our relationship with the earth which, she argues, can be reconfigured into an ethically-based way of knowing. Drawing on a range of belief systems, including Australian Aboriginal spirituality, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, metaphysics and Western philosophy, Crawford rebuilds an inclusive, compassionate, redefinition of care for the new millennium, which she calls spiritually-engaged knowledge.

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.

This book offers a conversant and comprehensive overview of the themes and concepts in spiritual tourism and Millennial tourists. Providing interdisciplinary insights from leading international researchers and academicians, this makes a critical contribution to the knowledge around spiritual tourism. Organized into four parts, the edited book provides modern and cutting-edge perspectives on important topics like linkages between spirituality and tourism, the predicament of spirituality in tourism among Millennials, anthropological views on spirituality, the work-life-balance, marketing of spiritual tourism destinations and the issues, threats and prospects of spiritual tourism in the emerging era. Part I introduces core concepts, theories on spiritual tourism and links it with the Millennial world. Part II explores the inclinations of millennials towards spirituality and their travel motivations, experiences, behaviours with special reference to spirituality. In Part III, on holistic tourism, the role of digitization in spiritual tourism adoption, marketing and management perspectives with special reference to Millennials are discussed. Part IV examines the issues, threats, policies and practices linked with spiritual tourism. This part also aims to explore the future challenges, opportunities for spiritual tourism development and to propose research-based solutions. Overall, the book will be a suitable means of getting insight into the minds of the diverse, experimental and open-minded generation of millennials. This book will fill the gap of research on spiritual tourism. As an edited book, it will add on new research and knowledge base with high quality contributions from researchers and practitioners interested in tourism management, hospitality management, business studies regional development and destination management.

A comparative analysis of both secular and religious communal groups in contemporary America, this study, originally published in 1978, shows that contemporary communalists stand in relation to collectivism much the same as early Protestants stood in relation to individualism - as the self-proclaimed pioneers of the new age. There is great diversity among communal groups, a diversity which is found to stem from alternative orientations towards time and alternative assumptions about the cognitive status of the social world. The author has made use of a phenomenologically derived typological framework to organize the data he has obtained through living in and visiting a number of communal groups. Within this framework, Alfred Schutz's 'mundane' phenomenology and Max Weber's interpretive sociology are employed as ways of approaching the situated sociology of knowledge in various communal groups. Six ideal types of communal groups are described: the commune, the intentional association, the community, the warring sect, the other-worldly sect and the ecstatic association. Two of these types - the intentional association and the community - are identified as participants' efforts to demonstrate 'worldly utopian' models for the reconstruction of society at large.

Prudentius' Crown of Martyrs offers an English translation, with introduction and commentary, of the Liber Peristephanon, Prudentius' vivid collection of lyric hymns in honor of Christian martyrs. To render Prudentius' metrically varied lines for twenty-first-century readers, Len Krisak relies on the inherent iambic nature of English. The introduction offers insight into social, political, and literary features of the fourth century, the life of Prudentius, the poet's other works, his Latinity and mastery of ancient meters, and the manuscript tradition and the reception of Prudentius in the Middle Ages and beyond. Given Prudentius' central place in the history of Latin poetry, this translation is a welcome resource for general readers interested in Western literary history. It will also find a home with scholarly audiences working on Late Antique and Early Christian literature and culture, in a wide variety of college classrooms and in academic libraries.

This book argues that moral theology has yet to embrace the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council concerning the ways in which it is to be renewed. One of the reasons for this is the lack of consensus between theologians regarding the nature, content and uniqueness of Christian morality. After highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the so-called autonomy and faith ethic schools of thought, Mealey argues that there is little dividing them and that, in some instances, both schools are simply defending one aspect of a hermeneutical dialectic. In an attempt to move away from the divisions between proponents of the faith-ethic and autonomy positions, Mealey enlists the help of the hermeneutical theory of Paul Ricoeur. She argues that many of the disagreements arising from the Christian proprium debate can be overcome if scholars look to the possibilities opened up by Ricoeur's hermeneutics of interpretation. Mealey also argues that the uniqueness of Christian morality is more adequately explained in terms of a specific identity (self) that is constantly subject to change and revision in light of many, often conflicting, moral sources. She advocates a move away from attempts to explain the uniqueness of Christian morality in terms of one specific, unchanging context, motivation, norm, divine command or value. By embracing the possibilities opened up by Ricoeurian hermeneutics, Mealey explains how concepts such as revelation, tradition, orthodoxy and moral conscience may be understood in a hermeneutical way without being deemed sectarian or unorthodox.

An investigation into the underpinnings and superstructures of the Pagan world view Pagan religions have tended to be more concerned with practice that with theory and in a system that has no dogma - no legislated doctrine - that is as it should be. Yet as the movement grows and matures, it is inevitable that we will begin to think in a more abstract way about our models and systems. John Michael Greer has provided a primer on the kinds of ideas and themes that must be included in any discussion of the theology and philosophy of Neo-pagan religions.  Much of the book takes shape in a dialogue with existing ideas in theology, philosophy, and comparative religion. It looks to find a middle ground between too much and too little reference to the work of other scholars to find a comprehensible yet intellectually rigorous middle ground. It aims to be part of a conversation, that stretches out over the centuries.  Voices of polytheist spirituality have had little place in that conversation for many years, but much of value has been said in their absence. The rebirth of polytheism as a living religious tradition in the Western world will inevitably force a reassessment of much of that heritage, and pose challenges to some of its most cherished assumptions.  Yet reassessment is not necessarily rejection, and the traditions of modern polytheism are deeply enough indebted to legacies from the past that an attentive ear to earlier phases of the conversation is not out of place.

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.

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.

New Religions and the Mediation of Non-Monogamy examines the relationship between alternative American religions and the media representation of non-monogamies on reality-TV shows like Sister Wives, Seeking Sister Wife, and Polyamory: Married & Dating. The book is the first full-length study informed by fieldwork with Mormon polygamists and fieldwork with LGBTQ Neo-Pagan/Neo-Tantric polyamorists. The book tracks community members' responses to the new media about them, their engagement with television and other media, and the likeness of representations to actual populations through fieldwork and interviews. The book highlights differences in socioeconomic privileges that shape Mormon polygamists' lives and LGBTQ polyamorists' lives, respectively. The polyamory movement receives support from liberal media. As reality TV has shifted the image of Mormon polygamy to one of liberal American middle-class culture, Mormon polygamists have gained in public favor. The media landscape of non-monogamy is mediated by, in addition to these alternative religious populations, the norms and practices of the reality-TV industry and by sociocultural and economic realities, including race and class. This book adds to the fields of media studies, critical race and gender studies, new religious movements, and queer studies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.