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.

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.

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).

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.

The number of non-religious men and women has increased dramatically over the past several decades. Yet scholarship on the non-religious is severely lacking. In response to this critical gap in knowledge, The Nonreligious provides a comprehensive summation and analytical discussion of existing social scientific research on the non-religious. The authors present a thorough overview of existing research, while also drawing on ongoing research and positing ways to improve upon our current understanding of this growing population. The findings in this book stand out against the corpus of secular writing, which is comprised primarily of polemical rants critiquing religion, personal life-stories/memoirs of former believers, or abstract philosophical explorations of theology and anti-theology. By offering the first research- and data-based conclusions about the non-religious, this book will be an invaluable source of information and a foundation for further scholarship. Written in clear, jargon-free language that will appeal to the increasingly interested general readers, this book provides an unbiased, thorough account of all relevant existing scholarship within the social sciences that bears on the lived experience of the non-religious.

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.

The enigmatic and richly illustrative tarot deck reveals a host of strange and iconic mages, such as The Tower, The Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man and The Fool: over which loom the terrifying figures of Death and The Devil. The 21 numbered playing cards of tarot have always exerted strong fascination, way beyond their original purpose, and the multiple resonances of the deck are ubiquitous. From T. S. Eliot and his "wicked pack of cards" in "The Waste Land" to the psychic divination of Solitaire in Ian Fleming's "Live and Let Die"; and from the satanic novels of Dennis Wheatley to the deck's adoption by New Age practitioners, the cards have in modern times become inseparably connected to the occult. They are now viewed as arguably the foremost medium of prophesying and foretelling. Yet, as the author shows, originally the tarot were used as recreational playing cards by the Italian nobility in the Renaissance. It was only much later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, that the deck became associated with esotericism before evolving finally into a diagnostic tool for mind, body and spirit. This is the first book to explore the remarkably varied ways in which tarot has influenced culture. Tracing the changing patterns of the deck's use, from game to mysterious oracular device, Helen Farley examines tarot's emergence in 15th century Milan and discusses its later associations with astrology, kabbalah and the Age of Aquarius.