A magical grimoire of sigils and rituals for summoning and mastering spirits, The Key of Solomon the King is the most infamous, of all magick books. It has influenced everything from the revival of magick and the Western Mystery Traditions (tarot, alchemy, astrology, etc.) to fictional works such as Lovecraft's The Necronomicon. This new 2017 hardcover edition of S. L. MacGregor Mathers' masterwork includes reproductions of all original 13 plates from the 1885 edition.

This new edition of Magick from Aiwass Books includes annotations shedding light on this challenging text. First published in Liber ABA (Part II), Aleister Crowley's dark masterpiece Magick is essential reading for students of Thelema and the occult. This guide to the principle tenets of black magic is a concise version of the more dense four-book magnum opus Liber ABA or 'Book 4' and is recommended to initiates.

Millions of users have taken up residence in virtual worlds, and in those worlds they find opportunities to revisit and rewrite their religious lives. Robert Geraci argues that virtual worlds and video games have become a locus for the satisfaction of religious needs, providing many users with communities, a meaningful experience of history and human activity, and a sense of transcendence. Using interviews, surveys, and his own first-hand experience within the games, Geraci shows how World of Warcraft and Second Life provide participants with the opportunity to rethink what it means to be religious in the contemporary world. Not all participants use virtual worlds for religious purposes, but many online residents use them to rearrange or replace religious practice as designers and users collaborate in the production of a new spiritual marketplace. Using World of Warcraft and Second Life as case studies, this book shows that many residents now use virtual worlds to re-imagine their traditions and work to restore them to authentic sanctity, or else replace religious institutions with virtual communities that provide meaning and purpose to human life. For some online residents, virtual worlds are even keys to a post-human future where technology can help us transcend mortal life. Geraci argues that World of Warcraft and Second Life are virtually sacred because they do religious work. They often do such work without regard for and frequently in conflict with traditional religious institutions and practices; ultimately they participate in our sacred landscape as outsiders, competitors, and collaborators.

After twenty years of meditation and studying, Robert Blumetti has complied a modern perspective on the Norse myths for anyone of European ancestry who seeks a personal connection with the Gods of their ancestors. He has discovered a new understanding of the death and resurrection legend of Balder and its meaning for all people of European ancestry in the twenty-first century. "The Book of Balder Rising" is a religious guide on how the old myths can be a path to a new spirituality in the present modern age. Blumetti's new understanding of the old myths is presented as a guide for personal and spiritual transformation.

Discover the meaning and role that the Gods can play in leading you to the dawning of the New Age of Gimli. Blumetti explains how the old Gods still live on within us, and how we can once again make them a living part of our lives. This book is a must read for all who are interested in the old pagan religions of Europe and its a message of hope and joy for the future that will change your life in ways that will amaze you.

In Algonquin Indian lore, Manitou is a supernatural power that permeates the world, a power that can assume the form of a deity referred to as The Great Manitou or The Great Spirit, creator of all things and giver of life. In that sense, Manitou can be considered the counterpart of the Christian God. From early times, the belief in Manitou extended from the Algonquins in Eastern Canada to other tribal nations--the Odawa, Ojibwa, Oglala, and even the Cheyenne in the Western plains. As European settlers made their way across the land, the confrontation between Christianity and Native American religions revealed itself in various ways. That confrontation continues to this day. In Manitou and God, Thomas describes American Indian religions as they compare with principal features of Christian doctrine and practice. He traces the development of sociopolitical and religious relations between American Indians and the European immigrants who, over the centuries, spread across the continent, captured Indian lands and decimated Indian culture in general and religion in particular. He identifies the modern-day status of American Indians and their religions, including the progress Indians have made toward improving their political power, socioeconomic condition, and cultural/religious recovery and the difficulties they continue to face in their attempts to better their lot. Readers will gain a better sense of the give and take between these two cultures and the influence each has had on the other.

The story of King Solomon has fascinated spiritual and religious writers for millennia - this book advances a theory that Solomon was infact a Magi who created many of the rituals, spells and symbols important to occultists. Although the idea that Solomon carried some sort of mystical powers is not new, this book purports to be written in the ancient king of the Jews' own hand. The magical symbols and diagrams which are situated alongside the various rituals and incantations are intricate, containing pentacles and other shapes. Towards the end of the book a large table is appended, detailing a selection of mystical alphabets and their English. For his investigation, Mathers delved deep into the archives of the British Museum, unearthing an old French manuscript of the text which he duly translated into English. He also replicated the diagrams and symbols; these efforts resulted in this modern English version of the old Solomon manuscripts, and an increase in interest toward writings hitherto obscure.

Millennialists through the ages have looked forward to the apocalyptic moment that will radically transform society into heaven on earth. They have delivered withering critiques of their own civilizations and promised both the impending annihilation of the forces of evil and the advent of a perfect society. And all their promises have invariably failed. We tend, therefore, to dismiss these prophets of doom and salvation as crackpots and madmen, and not surprisingly historians of our secular era have tended to underestimate their impact on our modern world. Now, Richard Landes offers a lucid and ground-breaking analysis of this widely misunderstood phenomenon.
This long-awaited study shows that many events typically regarded as secular--including the French Revolution, Marxism, Bolshevism, Nazism-not only contain key millennialist elements, but follow the apocalyptic curve of enthusiastic launch, disappointment and (often catastrophic) re-entry into "normal time." Indeed, as Landes examines the explicit millennialism behind such recent events as the emergence of Global Jihad since 1979, he challenges the common notion that modern history is largely driven by secular interests. By focusing on ten widely different case studies, none of which come from Judaism or Christianity, he shows that millennialism is not only a cultural universal, but also an extremely adaptive social phenomenon that persists across the modern and post-modern divides. At the same time, he also offers valuable insight into the social and psychological factors that drive such beliefs.
Ranging from ancient Egypt to modern-day UFO cults and global Jihad, Heaven on Earth both delivers an eye-opening revisionist argument for the significance of millennialism throughout history and alerts the reader to the alarming spread of these ideologies in our world today.

The Writings of Aleister Crowley 2 presents three essential texts by the black magick master: White Stains, The Psychology of Hashish and The Blue Equinox. Each work has been updated for the digital age with new formatting and punctuation, along with original footnotes and illustrations.

This book offers an in-depth description and analysis of Chinese coin-like charms, which date back to the second century CE and which continued to be used until mid 20th century. This work is unique in that it provides an archaeological and analytical interpretation of the content of these metallic objects: inscriptive, pictorial or both. As the component chapters show, these coin-like objects represent a wealth of Chinese traditional folk beliefs, including but not limited to family values, social obligations and religious desires. The book presents a collection of contributed chapters, gathering a diverse range of perspectives and expertise from some of the world's leading scholars in the fields of archaeology, religious studies, art history, language and museology. The background of the cover image is a page from Guang jin shi yun fu , a rhyming dictionary first published in the ninth year of the Kangxi Reign (1652 CE). The metal charm dates back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE), depicting two deities traditionally believed to possess the majic power of suppressing evil spirits. The stich-bound book in the foreground is a collection of seal impressions from the beginning of the 20th century. Its wooden press board is inscribed da ji xiang by Fang Zhi-bin in the year of bing yin (1926 CE).

Yoga. Humanistic Psychology. Meditation. Holistic Healing. These practices are commonplace today. Yet before the early 1960s they were atypical options for most people outside of the upper class or small groups of educated spiritual seekers. Esalen Institute, a retreat for spiritual and personal growth in Big Sur, California, played a pioneering role in popularizing quests for self-transformation and personalized spirituality. This "soul rush" spread quickly throughout the United States as the Institute made ordinary people aware of hundreds of ways to select, combine, and revise their beliefs about the sacred and to explore diverse mystical experiences. Millions of Americans now identify themselves as spiritual, not religious, because Esalen paved the way for them to explore spirituality without affiliating with established denominations The American Soul Rush explores the concept of spiritual privilege and Esalen's foundational influence on the growth and spread of diverse spiritual practices that affirm individuals' self-worth and possibilities for positive personal change. The book also describes the people, narratives, and relationships at the Institute that produced persistent, almost accidental inequalities in order to illuminate the ways that gender is central to religion and spirituality in most contexts.

In October of 1563, 18-year old Anne Mylner was herding cows near her home when she was suddenly enveloped by a white cloud that precipitated a months-long illness characterized by sleeplessness, loss of appetite, convulsions, and bodily swelling. Mylner's was the first of several cases during the reign of Elizabeth I of England that were interpreted as demon possession, a highly emotional experience in which an afflicted person displays behavior indicating a state of religious distress. To most Elizabethans, belief in Satan was as natural as belief in God, and Satan's affliction of mankind was clearly demonstrated in the physical and spiritual distress displayed by virtually every person at some point in his or her life. This book recounts 11 cases of Elizabethan demon possession, documenting the details of each case and providing the cultural context to explain why the diagnosis made sense at the time. Victims included children and adults, servants and masters, Catholics and Protestants, frauds and the genuinely ill. Edmund Kingesfielde's wife, possessed by a demon who caused her to hate her children and to contemplate suicide, was cured when her husband changed his irreverent tavern sign (depicting a devil) for a more seemly design. Alexander Nyndge, possessed by a Catholic demon that spoke with an Irish accent, was cured by his own brother through physical bondage and violence. Agnes Brigges and Rachel Pindar, whose afflictions included vomiting pins, feathers, and other trash, were revealed as frauds and forced to confess publicly, their parents being imprisoned for complicity in the fraud. All these cases attest to a powerful need to ascribe some moral significance to humansuffering. Allowing the sufferer to externalize and ultimately evict the "demon" as the cause of his or her affliction bestowed some measure of hope--no mean feat in a world with such widespread human distress.