Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The Book of Black Magic is Arthur Edward Waite's magnum opus of occult lore; this edition contains the author's original icons, symbols, seals and drawings. This supreme guide to occultist history, lore, magick, and ceremony is split into two parts: The first is entitled ""The Literature of Ceremonial Magic."" Here, Waite examines the ritualistic traditions which surrounding the occult movement for centuries. He notes various texts, and how these had a bearing upon the practice of the occult and of magical ceremony. The second part, ""The Complete Grimoire,"" concerns how those who practice black magic and occult ritual become versed in the craft. The stringent physical and mental requirements, and the need to practice a spiritual attunement and inner ablution, is detailed. Astronomical knowledge of the planets and their movements is a necessity, as is possession of a variety of instruments, plus a deep knowledge of the various symbols and scripts used in occultism.

There are far fewer publications on the ethnology of Micronesia than for any other region in the Pacific. This dearth is especially seen in the traditional religion, folklore, and iconography of the area. Haynes and Wuerch have located 1,193 relevant titles. For the first time, these mostly scarce or unpublished materials are now accessible in this essential research tool. The focus is on tradition, which became modified after contact with the West--the adaptation and persistence of these traditions are included in this bibliography.

Traditional Micronesian iconography is largely religious in nature, as is the case with most tribal or preliterate societies. There is also a large corpus of Micronesian myths, legends, beliefs, and practices that may not fit the Western concept of religion, but would be classified under folklore. That distinction cannot be consistently made in Micronesian cultures, nor in most other preliterate, thus prehistoric, societies. The overlap of religion and folklore is pervasive, so the scope of subjects included is broad. The subject matter encompasses magic, sorcery, ritual, cosmology, mythology, iconography, iconology, oral traditions, songs, chants, dance, music, traditional medicine, and many activities of daily life. Only those works that directly treat these subjects in the context of religion or folklore are included in this volume.

Spontaneous shrines have emerged, both in the United States and internationally, as a way to mourn those who have died a sudden or shocking death, and to acknowledge the circumstances of the deaths. The contributors to "Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death "address events such as the Texas A&M bonfire collapse, the Pentagon and New York City after 9-11, roadside crosses, a memorial wall in Philadelphia, and the use of Day of the Dead altars to bring attention to deceased undocumented immigrants. The first comprehensive work to examine and theorize the phenomenon as a whole, this book explores the origins, types, uses, and meanings of these shrines.""

Scheherazade's Children gathers together leading scholars to explore the reverberations of the tales of the Arabian Nights across a startlingly wide and transnational range of cultural endeavors. The contributors, drawn from a wide array of disciplines, extend their inquiries into the book's metamorphoses on stage and screen as well as in literature--from India to Japan, from Sanskrit mythology to British pantomime, from Baroque opera to puppet shows. Their highly original research illuminates little-known manifestations of the Nights, and provides unexpected contexts for understanding the book's complex history. Polemical issues are thereby given unprecedented and enlightening interpretations.

Organized under the rubrics of Translating, Engaging, and Staging, these essays view the Nights corpus as a uniquely accretive cultural bundle that absorbs the works upon which it has exerted influence. In this view, the Arabian Nights is a dynamic, living and breathing cross-cultural phenomenon that has left its mark on fields as disparate as the European novel and early Indian cinema. While scholarly, the writers' approach is also lively and entertaining, and the book is richly illustrated with unusual materials to deliver a sparkling and highly original exploration of the Arabian Nights' radiating influence on world literature, performance, and culture.

Philip F. Kennedy is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature at New York University, and General Editor of the Library of Arabic Literature series at NYU Press.

Marina Warner is Professor of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex and Fellow of the British Academy. Her most recent book, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights, has won several awards, including the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the Shaykh Zayed Book Award.

The legends collected here are the ancient stories of the people of Ksan who have lived in northern British Columbia for over six thousand years. We-Gyet is the essence of every man's frailties exaggerated into gentle humour or ribald laughter. His adventures always end in disaster. His blunders and tricks changed the face of the earth, and the shapes of many of earth's creatures. We-Gyet was a creator - by accident!

Myths are best understood as a convergence of voices from across times and cultures. They are the instruments through which authors and audiences seek to grapple with questions about the fundamental nature of the universe. The answers, however, constantly change in light of changing circumstances such as the interface between western and non-western cultures, or cataclysmic events. The authors argue that these societies' worldviews assume that the process of flow between events, rather than the nature of the events, is critical to a model of human sociality.

Boundaries, whether of a ritual, physical, or social nature, are perceived as constantly broken by the exchange of ideas across time, space, and peoples. Our understanding of such issues as gender relations and the body, social change, imagination, play, and the conceptualization of power is furthered by probing how it is that myth is both expressive as well as constitutive of human thought on these topics.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing many of these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This is a reissue of a much-admired variorum edition of Yeats's stories. 'This edition, which includes previously unpublished texts, gives a text history, which establishes once and for all the extent to which Yeats's work was modified by editors. Truly definitive. Indispensible for any major collection, including public libraries.' Library Journal

Originally published in 1913. Author: J.G.Frazer, D.C.L., Ll.D., Litt.D. Language: English Keywords: Religion / Magic / Folklore / Mythology Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Inuit hunting traditions are rich in perceptions, practices and stories relating to animals and human beings. The authors examine key figures such as the raven, an animal that has a central place in Inuit culture as a creator and a trickster, and qupirruit, a category consisting of insects and other small life forms. After these non-social and inedible animals, they discuss the dog, the companion of the hunter, and the fellow hunter, the bear, considered to resemble a human being. A discussion of the renewal of whale hunting accompanies the chapters about animals considered 'prey par excellence': the caribou, the seals and the whale, symbol of the whole. By giving precedence to Inuit categories such as 'inua' (owner) and 'tarniq' (shade) over European concepts such as 'spirit 'and 'soul', the book compares and contrasts human beings and animals to provide a better understanding of human-animal relationships in a hunting society.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing many of these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This study innovatively explores how Malory’s Morte Darthur responds to available literary vernacular Arthurian traditions—the French defined as theoretical in impulse, the English as performative and experimental. Negotiating these influences, Malory transforms constructions of masculine heroism, especially in the presentation of Launcelot, and exposes the tensions and disillusions of the Arthurian project. The Morte poignantly conveys a desire for integrity in narrative and subject-matter, but at the same time tests literary conceptualizations of history, nationalism, gender and selfhood, and considers the failures of social and legal institutionalizations of violence, in a critique of literary form and of social order.