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Books > Mind, Body & Spirit > The Occult > General
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The Call
(Paperback)
David Spangler
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R302
R245
Discovery Miles 2 450
Save R57 (19%)
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A practical guide to using the sacred herbs of Samhain for healing,
divination, purification, protection, magic, and as tools for
contacting the Spirits The ancient Celts separated the year into
two halves, the light half and the dark half, summer and winter.
The festival of Samhain, from which the modern holiday of Halloween
originates, marks the transition from summer to winter, the end of
the Celtic year, a time when the barriers between the physical and
spiritual world are at their most transparent. The herbs most
characteristic of this time have specific magical and healing
properties that echo the darker aspect of the year and offer potent
opportunities for divination, contact with ancestors and Land
Spirits, and journeys in the Otherworld. Presenting a practical
guide to the sacred herbs and trees of Samhain, Ellen Evert Hopman
details the identification, harvest, and use of more than 70 plants
and trees in healing, divination, purification, magic, and as tools
for contacting the Spirits wandering the landscape at this liminal
time of year. She explores the most effective plants for protection
from the mischief of the "Good Neighbors," the Sidhe or Fairies, as
well as herbs for releasing the Dead when they are trapped on this
plane. Detailing the history, rites, and traditions of Samhain,
Hopman explains how to make an offering to the Land Spirits and
provides instructions for the traditional Samhain ritual of the
Dumb Supper, complete with recipes for the sacred foods of Samhain,
such as Soul Cakes, Colcannon, Boxty bread, and dandelion wine.
The Crucible meets The Craft in this brilliantly dark thriller about isolated communities, rumours and suspicion.
The arrival of three strangers on Lark, a remote island with a population of 300, is the cause of much speculation. The first, a young teacher - the only male teacher on the island - the other two, a mother and her teenage daughter. What have they come to escape? And what will they find waiting for them in Lark?
In Julie Mayhew's mesmerising and compelling thriller, an isolated and deeply religious island with a history of paganism is riven when a man is found dead in a stone circle. As rumours spread and tensions rise, three Lark teenage girls and the new arrival from the mainland find themselves accused of witchcraft - and murder.
The notion of "magic" is a current popular culture phenomenon.
Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings, the commercial glamour of the
footballer and the pop idol surround us with their charisma,
enchantment, and charm. But magic also exerts a terrifying
political hold upon us: bin Laden's alleged March 28 e-mail message
spoke of the attacks on America in form of "crushing its towers,
disgracing its arrogance, undoing its magic." The nine scholars
included in this volume consider the cultural power of magic, from
early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean to the curious
film career of Buffalo Bill, focusing on topics such as Surrealism,
France in the classical age, alchemy, and American fundamentalism,
ranging from popular to elite magic, from theory to practice, from
demonology to exoticism, from the magic of memory to the magic of
the stage. As these essays show, magic defines the limit of both
science and religion but as such remains indefinable.
In the ancient world, men and women joined cults known as Mysteries
to unite with the deities of the otherworld and achieve eternal
life. The most important of the Mysteries existed for two millennia
at the village of Eleusis. Its deities were Demeter and Persephone,
interchangeable in their roles as mother and daughter. The
initiations and other rituals of this goddess-based cult were a
profound secret: divulging information was punishable by death. For
centuries, scholars have probed the secrets of the Eleusinian
Mysteries and "kykeon, its sacramental Eucharist -- a sacred drink
containing psychoactive chemicals similar to those in LSD. Their
discoveries have been buried in the arcane language of alchemy, the
occult sciences, and secret societies. Here, in prose accessible to
all readers, Carl Ruck unravels the Mysteries, revealing the
awesome powers of the goddesses, as well as the pagan underpinnings
of Western culture.
Discover the secrets of the ancient temples, the sacred geometry
that gave rise to the world's most awe-inspiring cathedrals and the
cryptic ceremonies of the modern-day Freemasons. Thousands of years
ago, people began to notice that certain structures had beneficial
effects on the crops that sustained their lives. A body of
traditional lore evolved, guiding the priests and priestesses of
ancient tribes in the use of architecture and ceremonies that made
use of wholly natural magical effects. The Temple of Solomon was
only one of many ancient structures that drew on the temple
tradition, and its secrets and traditions have been passed along
from the Knights Templar to the Freemasons. Join John Michael Greer
as he rebuilds a body of lost knowledge that's been used to
accumulate and direct energy throughout history...and can be used
again today.
Into the Mystic is a contemporary spiritual autobiography written
from a mystical perspective that introduces the reader to the
hidden life of twentieth-century Canadian mystic, Olga Park. The
book consists of a series of vignettes and poems written by the
author and by Park as well as some illustrations of Park's own
spiritually inspired artistic creations. It explores the relation
of the female spiritual seeker to her wisdom teacher, guru, and
spiritual mentor, and addresses timeless questions about the
relation of time to eternity, the nature and emergence of
consciousness, direct mystical experience etc. in a contemporary
Canadian context. The book synthesizes memoir, spiritual
autobiography, biography, personal narrative, and poetry in an
innovative way.
Notions of magic and healing have been changing over past years and
are now understood as reflecting local ideas of power and agency,
as well as structures of self, subjectivity and affect. This study
focuses on contemporary urban Russia and, through exploring social
conditions, conveys the experience of living that makes magic
logical. By following people's own interpretations of the work of
magic, the author succeeds in unraveling the logic of local
practice and local understanding of affliction, commonly used to
diagnose the experiences of illness and misfortune.
The name "Aleister Crowley" instantly conjures visions of diabolic
ceremonies and orgiastic indulgences--and while the sardonic
Crowley would perhaps be the last to challenge such a view, he was
also much more than "the Beast," as this authoritative biography
shows. "Perdurabo" (the magical name Crowley chose when inducted
into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) traces Crowley's
remarkable journey from his birth as the only son of a wealthy lay
preacher to his death in a boarding house as the world's foremost
authority on magick. Along the way, he rebels against his
conservative religious upbringing; befriends famous artists,
writers, and philosophers (and becomes a poet himself ); is
attacked for his practice of "the black arts"; and teaches that
science and magick can work together. While seeking to spread his
infamous philosophy of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the
Law," Crowley becomes one of the most notorious figures of his day.
Based on Richard Kaczynski's twenty years of research, and
including previously unpublished biographical details, "Perdurabo"
paints a memorable portrait of the man who inspired the
counterculture and influenced generations of artists, punks,
wiccans, and other denizens of the demimonde.
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