Wangerin examines one small symbolic revolution against American capitalist culture. It was carried out by youth who were painfully and personally aware of the problems of what they called the System, though they did not necessarily understand the underlying causes of their problems. They called themselves the Children of God. Wangerin studied the Children of God from 1973-1978 in the United States, Mexico, and Italy and has kept in touch with some of them ever since. This is one of the most thorough studies of the controversial cult founded in 1968 by David Berg, and the only ethnography that treats it as a mystical utopian socialist movement.

This remarkable work contains the original texts with translations and descriptions of a series of Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Christian, Gnostic, and Muslim amulets and magical devices and figures. Man through the ages has widely held the importance of being able to hold the evil eye at bay.

Spirituality and the Occult argues against the widely held view that occult spiritualities are marginal to Western culture. Showing that the esoteric tradition is unfairly neglected in Western culture and that much of what we take to be 'modern' derives at least in part from this tradition, it casts a fresh, intriguing and persuasive perspective on intellectual and cultural history in the West. Brian Gibbons identifies the influence and continued presence of esoteric mystical movements in disciplines such as:
* medicine
* science
* philosophy
* Freudian and Jungian psychology
* radical political movements
* imaginative literature.

Over half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich, the complexities of Nazi ideology are still being unravelled. This text is a serious attempt to identify these ideological origins. It demonstrates the way in which Nazism was influenced by powerful occult and millenarian sects that thrived in Germany and Austria at the turn of the century. Their ideas and symbols filtered through to nationalist-racist groups associated with the infant Nazi party and their fantasies were played out with terrifying consequences in the Third Reich: Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka are the hellish museums of the Nazi apocalypse. This bizarre and fascinating story contains lessons we cannot afford to ignore.

San Antonio is such an interesting and fascinating place to live, it seems a lot of folks just don't want to leave when it's their time to go: so, those Spirits of San Antonio just keep on returning--most often "When Darkness Falls". Once again, well-known ghost story writer Docia Williams brings us a new book about recent ghost sightings and mysterious happenings in the Alamo City. A chilling book for those wanting a guide to places where spirits are known to rendezvous or for those who just like a good ghost story.

Between 1875 and 1947, a period bookended, respectively, by the founding of the Theosophical Society and the death of notorious occultist celebrity Aleister Crowley, Britain experienced an unparalleled efflorescence of engagement with unusual occult schema and supernatural phenomena such as astral travel, ritual magic, and reincarnationism. Reflecting the signal array of responses by authors, artists, actors, impresarios and popular entertainers to questions of esoteric spirituality and belief, this interdisciplinary collection demonstrates the enormous interest in the occult during a time typically associated with the rise of secularization and scientific innovation. The contributors describe how the occult realm functions as a turbulent conceptual and affective space, shifting between poles of faith and doubt, the sacrosanct and the profane, the endemic and the exotic, the forensic and the fetishistic. Here, occultism emerges as a practice and epistemology that decisively shapes the literary enterprises of writers such as Dion Fortune and Arthur Machen, artists such as Pamela Colman Smith, and revivalists such as Rolf Gardiner

Histories of witchcraft continue to fascinate us in the late twentieth century. Looking at texts from colonial narratvies to court masques, trial records to folktales, and Shakespeare to Sylvia Plath, this book shows how the witch acts as a carrier for the fears, desires and fantasies of women and men both now and in the early modern period.
Among other topics, The Witch in History discusses:
* the way the fantasy body of the witch, viewed as both hard and boundless, represents fear of the maternal body;
* how Macbeth and other Renaissance dramas are exploitative and sensationalist representations of witchcraft;
* how the representations of witchcraft in Europe were influenced by encounters in the New World with Native American religion, and vice versa;
* how radical feminists, modern witches and academic historians have appropriated the figure of the witch to construct their own identities. This extraordinary and fascinating study goes beyond the exploration of the figure of the witch, comprising an innovative contribution to all early modern studies.

Related link: Reviews in History
eBook available with sample pages: 0203359720

This book looks at explanations of the black arts as they existed during early medieval centuries in Western Europe. It objectively examines the historical development of magic and witchcraft and emphasizes the reality of these black arts. Stressing the historiographical significance of the modern literature of the occult, this book provides a solid display of the leading role of rationalism in modern literature. The author employs studies in anthropology and examinations of writings of medieval encyclopedists, code of pagan law, and the Church Fathers from the fourth to the eighth centuries. By remaining objective and employing such historiographical and theological details to his work, Duke creates a high quality and unique study which supports refutations of rationalist historians who see middle-age witchcraft as a delusion. His book will appeal to students and scholars of medieval history, as well as anyone interested in the black arts. Contents: Abbreviations; Acknowledgments; MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY; Introduction; The Modern Literature of Witchcraft; The Roman and Christian Background; The Western Fathers and Magic and Witchcraft A.D. 300-450; St. Augustine on Magic and Miracles; Magic, Miracles and the Ecclesiastical Witchcraft; Heirs of the Latin Fathers; Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.

The 1980s saw the emergence of New Age and neo-paganism as major new religious movements. In the first book-length study of these movements, Michael York describes their rituals and beliefs and examines the similarities, differences and relationships between them. He profiles particular groups, including the Church Universal Triumphant, Nordic pagans, and the Covenant of Unitarian Pagans, and questions the adequacy of existing sociological categories for describing these largely amorphous phenomena.

With stunning regularity, the search for our cosmic roots has been yielding remarkable new discoveries about the universe and our place in it. In his compelling book, Origins: The Quest for Our Cosmic Roots, veteran science journalist Tom Yulsman chronicles the latest discoveries and describes in clear and engaging terms what they mean. From the interior of protons to the outer reaches of the universe, and from the control room of one of the world's most powerful particle accelerators to an observatory atop the tallest mountain in the Pacific basin, Yulsman takes readers on a fantastic voyage at the cutting edge of science. How could the universe have sprouted from absolute nothingness? What is the origin of galaxies? How do stars and planets form? And despite what now seem to be incredible odds, how did Earth come to be a rich oasis of biodiversity-one that has given rise to a species intelligent enough to ask these questions? In laying out the answers, Origins addresses some of the most profound issues humans have ever confronted.

This book provides a practical introduction to Chaos Magic, one of the fastest growing areas of Western Occultism. Through it you can change your circumstances, live according to a developing sense of personal responsibility, effect change around you, and stop living as a helpless cog in some clockwork universe. All acts of personal/collective liberation are magical acts. Magic leads us into exhilaration and ecstasy; into insight and understanding; into changing ourselves and the world in which we participate. Through magic we may come to explore the possibilities of freedom.

Academics tend to look on 'esoteric', 'occult' or 'magical' beliefs with contempt, but are usually ignorant about the religious and philosophical traditions to which these terms refer, or their relevance to intellectual history. Wouter Hanegraaff tells the neglected story of how intellectuals since the Renaissance have tried to come to terms with a cluster of 'pagan' ideas from late antiquity that challenged the foundations of biblical religion and Greek rationality. Expelled from the academy on the basis of Protestant and Enlightenment polemics, these traditions have come to be perceived as the Other by which academics define their identity to the present day. Hanegraaff grounds his discussion in a meticulous study of primary and secondary sources, taking the reader on an exciting intellectual voyage from the fifteenth century to the present day and asking what implications the forgotten history of exclusion has for established textbook narratives of religion, philosophy and science.

The Kabbalah is an esoteric Jewish doctrine adapted by author S.L. MacGregor Mathers to form the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, an occult organisation. This volume includes three of the critical books from the Zohar, the fundamental work in Kabbalah, as well as Mathers' introduction explaining the key elements of Jewish mysticism. Mathers' translation from Hebrew originally appeared in 1926, and it continues to be a valuable resource for students interested in Religious Studies, particularly Mysticism and the Occult.

Fragments of ancient belief have been incorporated into folklore and Christian dogma with the result that its original tenets have merged with the myths and psychologies of the intervening years. Hilda Ellis Davidson sifts through centuries of cultural and religious influences to locate evidence of these "lost" pagan beliefs.
Davidson illustrates how northern pagan religions have been represented and misinterpreted by the Christian tradition and throws light on the nature of such beliefs and how they have been preserved. "The Lost Beliefs of" "Northern Europe" stresses both the possibilities and the difficulties of investigating pre-Christian faiths and emphasizes the need to separate speculation from scientific proof.
This book will be a useful tool for students with a serious interest in archaeology as it illustrates with examples how objectivity is not necessarily the driving force in forming our supposedly scientific view of the past. It will also appeal to the general reader who wants to understand the true nature of Northern European pagan belief as opposed to the oversimplified view popularized by the media.
"The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe" argues for intellectual rigorousness rather than romanticization of the past, and challenges the reader to rethink accepted interpretations.

Fragments of ancient belief mingle with folklore and Christian dogma until the original tenets are lost in the myths and psychologies of the intervening years. Hilda Ellis Davidson illustrates how pagan beliefs have been represented and misinterpreted by the Christian tradition, and throws light on the nature of pre-Christian beliefs and how they have been preserved. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe stresses both the possibilities and the difficulties of investigating the lost religious beliefs of Northern Europe.

The Kabbalah is an esoteric Jewish doctrine adapted by author S.L. MacGregor Mathers to form the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, an occult organisation. This volume includes three of the critical books from the Zohar, the fundamental work in Kabbalah, as well as Mathers' introduction explaining the key elements of Jewish mysticism. Mathers' translation from Hebrew originally appeared in 1926, and it continues to be a valuable resource for students interested in Religious Studies, particularly Mysticism and the Occult.

Bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble! Well there's little toil, and no trouble to be found in this tasty book of witch's brews. Lore and superstition combine with modern magickal methods to help readers design beverages that quench both physical and spiritual thirst completely while tantalizing their taste buds.

First published in 1986. Independent Spirits is about the intellectual world of the humbly-born in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain, focussing on plebeian, or working- and lower middle-class spiritualists. This book is an important study which throws light on the idealism and search for knowledge that were so central in plebeian circles and in certain, very important parts of the labour movement during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This title will be of interest to students of history.

A history of the role that the occult has played in the formation of modern science and medicine, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment has had a tremendous impact on our understanding of the western esoteric tradition. Beautifully illustrated, it remains one of those rare works of scholarship which the general reader simply cannot afford to ignore.

A fifteen-year-old girl who claimed regular communications with the spirits of her dead friends and relatives was the subject of the very first published work by the now legendary psychoanalyst C.G. Jung. Collected here, alongside many of his later writings on such subjects as life after death, telepathy and ghosts, it was to mark just the start of a professional and personal interest-even obsession-that was to last throughout Jung's lifetime. Written by one of the greatest and most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century, Psychology and the Occult represents a fascinating trawl through both the dark, unknown world of the occult and the equally murky depths of the human psyche. Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Founded the analytical school of psychology and developed a radical new theory of the unconscious that has made him one of the most familiar names in twentieth-century thought.

Increasingly, contemporary scholarship reveals the strong connection between Victorian women and the world of the nineteenth-century supernatural. Women were intrinsically bound to the occult and the esoteric from mediums who materialised spirits to the epiphanic experiences of the New Woman, from theosophy to telepathy. This volume addresses the various ways in which Victorian women expressed themselves and were constructed by the occult through a broad range of texts. By examining the roles of women as automatic writing mediums, spiritualists, authors, editors, theosophists, socialists and how they interpreted the occult in their life and work, the contributors in this edition return to sensation novels, ghost stories, autobiographies, seances and fashionable magazines to access the visible and invisible worlds of Victorian life. The variety of texts analysed by the authors in this collection demonstrates the many interpretations of the occult in nineteenth-century culture and the ways that women used supernatural imagery and language to draw attention to issues that bore immediate implications on their own lives. Either by catering for the fad of ghost stories or by giving public trance speeches women harnessed the metaphorical and financial forces of the supernatural. As the articles in this book demonstrate the occult was after all a female affair. This book was published as a special issue of Women's Writing.

G.I. Gurdjieff (d. 1949) remains an important, if controversial, figure in early 20th-century Western Esoteric thought. Born in the culturally diverse region of the Caucasus, Gurdjieff traveled in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere in search of practical spiritual knowledge. Though oftentimes allusive, references to Sufi teachings and characters take a prominent position in Gurdjieff's work and writings. Since his death, a discourse on Gurdjieff and Sufism has developed through the contributions as well as critiques of his students and interlocutors. J.G. Bennett began an experimental Fourth Way' school in England in the 1970s which included the introduction of Sufi practices and teachings. In America this discourse has further expanded through the collaboration and engagement of contemporary Sufi teachers. This work does not simply demonstrate the influence of Gurdjieff and his ideas, but approaches the specific discourse on and about Gurdjieff and Sufism in the context of contemporary religious and spiritual teachings, particularly in the United States, and highlights some of the adaptive, boundary-crossing, and hybrid features that have led to the continuing influence of Sufism.

This book will interest clinicians who have wondered what professional practice would be like in the corporate setting and want to learn more about the psychological and organizational dynamics that 'drive' executive behavior. Based on the premise that leadership effectiveness is a function of both leader productivity and health, this book reviews the latest information and research data and offers case studies to illustrate specific strategies for maximizing executive health. Len Sperry has been consulting to executives and organizations for 30 years and has written numerous articles and several books on executives and workplace dynamics.

Provides a new insight into Crowley's life as a magician and literary figure. identifies and gives an analysis of Crowley's poetry. places him to the context of Edwardian Britain's addiction to the cult of pan. Paul Newman is a well established author and expert on the occult. he is the editor of Abraxus magazine.

Despite the much vaunted 'end of religion' and the growth of secularism, people are engaging like never before in their own 'spiritualities of life'. Across the West, paranormal belief is on the rise. The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures brings together the work of international scholars across the social sciences and humanities to question how and why people are seeking meaning in the realm of the paranormal, a heretofore subjugated knowledge. With contributions from the UK and other European countries, the USA, Australia and Canada, this ground-breaking book attends to the paranormal as a position from which to critique dominant forms of knowledge production and spirituality. A rich exploration of everyday life practices, textual engagements and discourses relating to the paranormal, as well as the mediation, technology and art of paranormal activity, this book explores themes such as subcultures and mainstreaming, as well as epistemological, methodological, and phenomenological questions, and the role of the paranormal in social change. The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures constitutes an essential resource for those interested in the academic study of cultural engagements with paranormality; it will appeal to scholars of cultural and media studies, popular culture, sociology, cultural geography, literature, film and music.