Original and comprehensive, "Magic in the Ancient Greek World "takes the reader inside both the social imagination and the ritual reality that made magic possible in ancient Greece.
Explores the widespread use of spells, drugs, curse tablets, and figurines, and the practitioners of magic in the ancient world
Uncovers how magic worked. Was it down to mere superstition? Did the subject need to believe in order for it to have an effect?
Focuses on detailed case studies of individual types of magic
Examines the central role of magic in Greek life

Investigating the impact of Arabic medieval astrological and magical theories on early modern occult philosophy, this book argues that they provided a naturalistic explanation of astral influences and magical efficacy based on Aristotelian notions of causality.

Shows students of the history of witchcraft and magic that the beliefs of the seventeenth century continued through the Enlightenment, despite the attempts by philosophers to dismiss magic and its practice, into the nineteenth century. The volume is divided into three sections highlighting different definitions of magic including the concern over the non-material world as found in popular and elite practices, its relationship with science and medicine, and other forms of divination available to the general population. Providing students with a broad view of how magic was engaged with in the eighteenth century to inform their own studies. Explores the relationship between magic, science and medicine providing students with a good understanding of how the emerging fields of science and medicine came into conflict with popular belief in and practice of magic. Allowing students to see why magic still resonated with the general public into the nineteenth century.

Kim Krans's NEW YORK TIMES bestseller THE WILD UNKNOWN TAROT (375K copies sold) launched a culture-shifting brand that redefined tarot for the twenty-first century. Now comes Krans's next deck in her bestselling series, THE WILD UNKNOWN ALCHEMY DECK AND GUIDEBOOK. This stunning oracle deck reveals insights into the ancient mysteries of alchemy: the metaphorical process of turning lead (unconsciousness) into gold (enlightenment). Alchemy is the doorway to the imagination and self-discovery. You do not need to be an expert in metals, symbols, astrology, or Latin to become an alchemist. Whether a baker, mechanic, surgeon, seamstress, or surfer-those who become masters of their materials are all alchemists. The magic of Alchemy is available to anyone who is willing to explore, observe, and invoke transformation. Paired with a 224-page, hand-lettered, fully illustrated guidebook written and designed by Kim Krans, THE WILD UNKNOWN ALCHEMY DECK includes 71 beautiful, easy-to-shuffle hexagon cards divided into six suits: The Cosmic Forces, The Colors, The Seasons, The Materials, The Mysteries, and The Operations. Illustrated in Krans's iconic style of elegant line art and lush watercolor painting, each full-color card offers a tool for self-study and exploration, expressed through symbol, image, and language. The unique shape of the cards allows edges to meet and images to meld and transform, with all-new connecting spreads, including readings for revealing energetic and emotional blockages, identifying what is serving and what is draining, and much more. Through this profound experience of observing image, color, and materials with an alchemical perspective, new gifts and discoveries are revealed. This deck is a journey to awakening and reuniting us with what may be dormant or unseen as we begin to weave together the physical and mystical aspects of our lives.

The present volume owes its ongm to a Colloquium on "Alchemy and Chemistry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," held at the Warburg Institute on 26th and 27th July 1989. The Colloquium focused on a number of selected themes during a closely defined chronological interval: on the relation of alchemy and chemistry to medicine, philosophy, religion, and to the corpuscular philosophy, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The relations between Medicina and alchemy in the Lullian treatises were examined in the opening paper by Michela Pereira, based on researches on unpublished manuscript sources in the period between the 14th and 17th centuries. It is several decades since the researches of R.F. Multhauf gave a prominent role to Johannes de Rupescissa in linking medicine and alchemy through the concept of a quinta essentia. Michela Pereira explores the significance of the Lullian tradition in this development and draws attention to the fact that the early Paracelsians had themselves recognized a family resemblance between the works of Paracelsus and Roger Bacon's scientia experimentalis and, indeed, a continuity with the Lullian tradition.

The late Victorian period witnessed the remarkable revival of magical practice and belief. Butler examines the individuals, institutions and literature associated with this revival and demonstrates how Victorian occultism provided an alternative to the tightening camps of science and religion in a social environment that nurtured magical beliefs.

Early modern Finland is rarely the focus of attention in the study of European history, but it has a place in the context of northern European religious and political culture. While Finland was theoretically Lutheran, a religious plurality - embodied in ceremonies and interpreted as magic - survived and flourished. Blessing candles, pilgrimages, and offerings to forest spirits merged with catechism hearings and sermon preaching among the lay piety. What were the circumstances that allowed for such a continuity of magic? How were the manifestations and experiences that defined faith and magic tied together? How did western and eastern religious influences manifest themselves in Finnish magic? Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland shows us how peripheral Finland can shed light on the wider context of European magic and religion.

Traditionally, alchemy has been understood as a precursor to the science of chemistry but from the vantage point of the human spirit, it is also a discipline that illuminates the human soul. This book explores the goal of alchemy from Jungian, psychological, and philosophical perspectives. Jung's Alchemical Philosophy: Psyche and the Mercurial Play of Image and Idea is a reflection on Jung's alchemical work and the importance of philosophy as a way of understanding alchemy and its contributions to Jung's psychology. By engaging these disciplines, Marlan opens new vistas on alchemy and the circular and ouroboric play of images and ideas, shedding light on the alchemical opus and the transformative processes of Jungian psychology. Divides in the history of alchemy and in the alchemical imagination are addressed as Marlan deepens the process by turning to a number of interpretations that illuminate both the enigma of the Philosophers' Stone and the ferment in the Jungian tradition. This book will be of interest to Jungian analysts and those who wish to explore the intersection of philosophy and psychology as it relates to alchemy.

Fascinating and highly informative, The Appearance of Witchcraft explores how visual representations of witchcraft contributed to the widespread acceptance of witch beliefs in sixteenth-century Europe and helped establish the preconditions for the widespread persecution of witches.

Focusing on the visual contraction, or figure of the witch, and the activity of witchcraft, Zika places the study in the context of sixteenth-century withcraft and demonological theory, and in the turbulent social and religious changes of the period.

Zika argues that artists and printers used images to relate witchcraft theories, developed by theologians and legitimated by secular authorities, to a whole range of contemporary discourses on women and gender roles, sexuality, peasant beliefs and medical theories of the body. He also examines the role of artist as mediators between the ideas of the elite and the ordinary people.

For students of medieval history or anyone interested in the appearance of witchcraft, this will be an enthralling and invaluable read.

Historical records of charms, the verbal element of vernacular magic, date back at least as far as the late middle ages, and charming has continued to be practiced until recently in most parts of Europe. And yet, the topic has received only scattered scholarly attention to date. By bringing together many of the leading authorities on charms and charming from Europe and North America, this book aims to rectify this neglect, and by presenting discussions covering a variety of periods and of locations - from Finland to France, and from Hungary to England - it forms an essential reader on the topic.

"The Goetia" is the most famous grimoire after the Key of Solomon. This volume contains a transcription of a hitherto unpublished manuscript of the Lemegeton which includes four whole grimoires: "Liber Malorum Spituum seu Goetia"; "Theurgia-Goetia"; "Ars Paulina" (Books 1 & 2); and, "Ars Almadel". This was owned by Dr Thomas Rudd, a practising scholar-magician of the early seventeenth century. There are many editions of the "Goetia", of which the most definitive is that of Joseph Peterson, but here we are interested in how the "Goetia" was actually used by practising magicians in the 16th and 17th century, before the knowledge of practical magic faded into obscurity. To evoke the 72 demons listed here without the ability to bind them would be foolhardy indeed. It was well known in times past that invocatio and ligatio, or binding, was a key part of evocation, but in the modern editions of the "Goetia" this key technique is expressed in just one word 'Shemhamaphorash', and its use is not explained. This volume explains how the 72 angels of the Shem ha-Mephorash are used to bind the spirits, and the correct procedure for safely invoking them using special seals incorporating the necessary controlling angel, whose name is also engraved on the breastplate and Brass Vessel.

Includes both significant previously published work and new material. Offers a unique overview of Jung's psychology of alchemy and its legacy. Takes into consideration important psychological and philosophical suppositions in Jungian work and includes dialogues with key post-Jungian thinkers such as Hillman and Giegerich.

People with eating disorders often make desperate attempts to exert magical control over their bodies in response to the threats they experience in relationships. Mary Levens takes the reader into the realm of magical thinking and its effect on ideas about eating and the body through a sensitive exploration of the images patients create in art therapy, in which themes of cannibalism constantly recur. Drawing on anthropology, religion and literature as well as psychoanalysis, she discusses the significance of these images and their implications for treatment of patients with eating disorders.

The Magical Control of the Body will be of interest to all of those concerned with patients or clients who have troubled relationships, both with others and with their own bodies.

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Henrik Bogdan and Martin P. Starr offer the first comprehensive examination of one of the twentieth century's most distinctive occult iconoclasts. Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was a study in contradictions. He was born into a Fundamentalist Christian family, then educated at Cambridge where he experienced both an intellectual liberation from his religious upbringing and a psychic awakening that led him into the study of magic. He was a stock figure in the tabloid press of his day, vilified during his life as a traitor, drug addict and debaucher; yet he became known as the perhaps most influential thinker in contemporary esotericism. The practice of the occult arts was understood in the light of contemporary developments in psychology, and its advocates, such as William Butler Yeats, were among the intellectual avant-garde of the modernist project. Crowley took a more drastic step and declared himself the revelator of a new age of individualism. Crowley's occult bricolage, Magick, was a thoroughly eclectic combination of spiritual exercises drawing from Western European ceremonial magical traditions as practiced in the nineteenth-century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Crowley also pioneered in his inclusion of Indic sources for the parallel disciplines of meditation and yoga. The summa of this journey of self-liberation was harnessing the power of sexuality as a magical discipline, an instance of the "sacrilization of the self " as practiced in his co-masonic magical group, the Ordo Templi Orientis. The religion Crowley created, Thelema, legitimated his role as a charismatic revelator and herald of a new age of freedom under the law of ''Do what thou wilt.'' The influence of Aleister Crowley is not only to be found in contemporary esotericism-he was, for instance, a major influence on Gerald Gardner and the modern witchcraft movement-but can also be seen in the counter-culture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in many forms of alternative spirituality and popular culture. This anthology, which features essays by leading scholars of Western esotericism across a wide array of disciplines, provides much-needed insight into Crowley's critical role in the study of western esotericism, new religious movements, and sexuality.

• This volume provides a combination of the major schools of thought on the Salem witch trials and incorporates the current scholarship on the subject. Events are presented in a narrative format that delivers the drama of the trials and leaves instructors free to explore specific topics of their choosing in greater depth. An analysis of key issues is provided at the end of each chapter. • The third edition has been significantly updated to include an expanded section on the European origins of witch hunts and an update and expand epilogue which discusses the witch hunts – real and imagined, historical and cultural – since 1692. Allowing students new to the phenomenon of the witch-hunts and trials to better understand their origins and impact upon the national psyche. • The bibliography has been substantially updated, an extensive list of internet resources, sources of primary documents, documentaries, movies, artwork, and resources to assist lecturers with using this book in their classrooms and students to further their studies.

A first and coherent enquiry on vernacular religions across Monsoon Asia and critically questioning why they have been frequently alienated in the elitist discourse of mainstream Indic religions.