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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
Ná herhaaldelike polisiebrouwerk begin kaptein Ben Booysen die Krugersdorp-moorde in 2016 manalleen ondersoek.
Booysen haal koerantvoorblaaie toe hy die baasbrein, Cecilia Steyn, en haar vyf trawante vir minstens 11 moorde in hegtenis neem.
Suid-Afrika se eie “Chuck Norris” neem die leser tot agter die skerms van die satanistiese moorde en onthul nuwe, skokkende besonderhede van die misdade wat die land amper ’n dekade lank vasgenael gehou het.
In 1636, residents at the convent of Santa Chiara in Carpi in
northern Italy were struck by an extraordinary illness that
provoked bizarre behavior. Eventually numbering fourteen, the
afflicted nuns were subject to screaming fits, throwing themselves
on the floor, and falling abruptly into a deep sleep. When medical
experts' cures proved ineffective, exorcists ministered to the
women and concluded that they were possessed by demons and the
victims of witchcraft. Catering to women from elite families, the
nunnery suffered much turmoil for three years and, remarkably,
three of the victims died from their ills. A maverick nun and a
former confessor were widely suspected to be responsible, through
witchcraft, for these woes. Based primarily on the exhaustive
investigation by the Inquisition of Modena, The Scourge of Demons
examines this fascinating case in its historical context. The
travails of Santa Chiara occurred at a time when Europe witnessed
peaks in both witch-hunting and in the numbers of people reputedly
possessed by demons. Female religious figures appeared particularly
prone to demonic attacks, and Counter-Reformation Church
authorities were especially interested in imposing stricter
discipline on convents. Watt carefully considers how the nuns of
Santa Chiara understood and experienced alleged possession and
witchcraft, concluding that Santa Chiara's diabolical troubles and
their denouement -- involving the actions of nuns, confessors,
inquisitorial authorities, and exorcists -- were profoundly shaped
by the unique confluence of religious, cultural, judicial, and
intellectual trends that flourished in the 1630s. Jeffrey R. Watt
is professor of history at the University of Mississippi.
In a long-overlooked diary entry, Franz Kafka admitted to suffering
from ''bouts of clairvoyance.'' These bouts of clairvoyance can be
seen in his writing, in moments when the solid basis of human
cognition totters, the dissolution of matter seems imminent, and
objects are jarringly severed from physical referents. June O.
Leavitt offers a fascinating examination of the mystical in Kafka's
life and writings, showing that Kafka's understanding of the occult
was not only a product of his own clairvoyant experiences but of
the age in which he lived.
Kafka lived during the modern Spiritual Revival, a powerful
movement which resisted materialism, rejected the adulation of
science and Darwin, and idealized clairvoyant modes of
consciousness. Kafka's contemporaries - such theosophical
ideologues as Madame H.P. Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and Dr. Rudolph
Steiner - encouraged the counterculture to seek the true, spiritual
essence of reality by inducing out-of-body experiences and
producing visions of higher disembodied beings through meditative
techniques. Leaders of the Spiritual Revival also called for the
adoption of certain lifestyles, such as vegetarianism, in order to
help transform consciousness and return humanity to its divine
nature.
Interweaving the occult discourse on clairvoyance, the divine
nature of animal life, vegetarianism, the spiritual sources of
dreams, and the eternal nature of the soul with Kafka's
dream-chronicles, animal narratives, diaries, letters, and stories,
Leavitt takes the reader on a journey through the texts of a great
psychic writer and the fascinating epoch of the Spiritual Revival.
Daughters of Hecate unites for the first time research on the
problem of gender and magic in three ancient Mediterranean
societies: early Judaism, Christianity, and Graeco-Roman culture.
The book illuminates the gendering of ancient magic by approaching
the topic from three distinct disciplinary perspectives: literary
stereotyping, the social application of magic discourse, and
material culture.
The volume challenges presumed associations of women and magic by
probing the foundations of, processes, and motivations behind
gendered stereotypes, beginning with Western culture's earliest
associations of women and magic in the Bible and Homer's Odyssey.
Daughters of Hecate provides a nuanced exploration of the topic
while avoiding reductive approaches. In fact, the essays in this
volume uncover complexities and counter-discourses that challenge,
rather than reaffirm, many gendered stereotypes taken for granted
and reified by most modern scholarship.
By combining critical theoretical methods with research into
literary and material evidence, Daughters of Hecate interrogates
gendered stereotypes that are as relevant now as for understanding
antiquity or the early modern witch hunts.
This is Laurence Gardner's final book, written shortly before his
death in 2010 and is the accompanying book to his Origin of God
(published 2011 by dash house publishing). Together with Origin of
God, this book outlines an irrefutable and searing indictment of
conventional belief and exposes the evils and absurdities
perpetuated over the millenia in the name of Christianity. In
Revelation of the Devil, Laurence Gardner traces the history of the
Devil, from its roots in Mesopotamia and the Old Testament all the
way up to the modern world of today. Travelling through the New
Testament, as well as the Koran, and then passing in turn through
the Inquisitions, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, he unmasks
what he has called "the myth of evil and the conspiracy of Satan."
For nearly 2,000 years a supernatural entity known as the Devil has
been held responsible by Church authorities for bringing sin and
wickedness into the world. Throughout this period, the Devil has
been portrayed as a constant protagonist of evil, although his
origin remains a mystery and his personality has undergone many
interpretive changes, prompting questions such as: If God is all
good and all powerful, then why does evil exist? How can it exist?
If God created everything, then where did the Devil come from? If
the Devil exists, then why does he not feature in any pre-Christian
document? Revelation of the Devil follows the Devil's sinister
history, in the manner of a biography, from his scriptural
introduction to the dark satanic cults of the present day. In a
strict chronological progression, we experience the mood of each
successive era as the Devil's image was constantly manipulated to
suit the changing motives of his creators in their bid for
threat-driven clerical control.
Recent years have seen a significant shift in the study of new
religious movements. In Satanism studies, interest has moved to
anthropological and historical work on groups and inviduals.
Self-declared Satanism, especially as a religion with cultural
production and consumption, history, and organization, has largely
been neglected by academia. This volume, focused on modern Satanism
as a practiced religion of life-style, attempts to reverse that
trend with 12 cutting-edge essays from the emerging field of
Satanism studies. Topics covered range from early literary
Satanists like Blake and Shelley, to the Californian Church of
Satan of the 1960s, to the radical developments that have taken
place in the Satanic milieu in recent decades. The contributors
analyze such phenomena as conversion to Satanism, connections
between Satanism and political violence, 19th-century decadent
Satanism, transgression, conspiracy theory, and the construction of
Satanic scripture. A wide array of methods are employed to shed
light on the Devil's disciples: statistical surveys,
anthropological field studies, philological examination of The
Satanic Bible, contextual analysis of literary texts, careful
scrutiny of obscure historical records, and close readings of key
Satanic writings. The book will be an invaluable resource for
everyone interested in Satanism as a philosophical or religious
position of alterity rather than as an imagined other.
A sigil is an intensely powerful magickal tool that any modern
witch should consider adding to their repertoire. Sigils can help
manifest your desires, ward off evil, and add deeper levels of
meaning to your spells. You don’t have to be an artist to create
a sigil—anyone can do it. Sigil Craft is Lia Taylor’s
must-have guide to creating sigils, including step-by-step
instructions using various methods including the Magic Square and
Austin Osman Spare, as well as an overview of sigils throughout
history, from Agrippa to modern chaos magick, from medieval
grimoires and prehistoric cave paintings to the graphic novels of
Grant Morrison. Taylor shares how to charge your sigils,
incorporate them into your creative endeavors, and heighten the
power of your sigils through the shoaling technique. This immensely
useful book is fully illustrated with Taylor’s art, and is a
fascinating guide to an increasingly popular practice.Â
Crop circles are the finest, most beautiful and original art forms
of modem times, and they are totally mysterious. Behind the crop
circle phenomenon is an evident purpose. Some intelligence, human,
alien or spiritual, is in the process of communication. It is
exposing us to a course of re-education, beginning with the symbols
of sacred knowledge and wisdom. The most striking evidence for this
view is the amazing formation that appeared at Crooked Soley in
Wiltshire on the 27th August 2002. Clearly expressed in its design
are certain numerical symbols that are known esoterically as the
'Keys to Creation'. They are also keys to that universal science
associated with the Holy Grail. From time to time it is revealed
again, and when that happens, culture and the human spirit are
renewed and life on earth is restored to its natural state as a
reflection of paradise.
The book provides an overview and analysis of the witch trials in
the Scottish Borders in the 17th century. The 17th century was a
time of upheaval in Scottish and British history, with a civil war,
the abolition of the monarchy, the plague and the reformation all
influencing the social context at the time. This book explores the
social, political, geographical, religious and legal structures
that led to the increased amount of witch trials and executions in
the Scottish Borders. As well as looking at specific trials the
book also explores the role of women, both as accuser and as
accused.
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.
A fascinating and enlightening celebration of mushrooms and the
magic of the forest for those who revel in mushroom imagery and
lore. Mushrooms--as a decorative element, as a signifier of the
mystery of the forest, and as an adorable emblem of witchy
cottagecore dreams--have proliferated in the collective
consciousness as of late. Mushroom Magick is a whimsical collection
of mushroom facts and fables divided into three sections: first,
profiles of 22 well-known mushrooms include information on biology
and common uses as well as a rundown of their energetic properties
and suggestions for incorporating them into spellwork. Section two
provides a world-spanning collection of mushroom myths and fables.
The final section is a taste of the spells and rituals that you can
perform with common mushrooms such as creminis, shiitakes, and
portobellos--carved candles, floor washes, teas, and even some
yummy meals can improve your love life, super-charge your good
fortune, or even cast a well-deserved hex upon your most hated
enemy.
The Ancient and Accepted Rite for England and Wales covers the
4th-33rd degrees, including the 18th 'Rose Croix' degree. The
author explores the historic background to this important part of
Freemasonry with the original being published in 1980. A second
edition appeared in 1987 which was a completely revised work after
much new documented evidence was discovered, and this third edition
is another reprint of this authoritative study.
The end of the eighteenth century saw the end of the witch trials
everywhere. This volume charts the processes and reasons for the
decriminalisation of witchcraft but also challenges the widespread
assumption that Europe has been 'disenchanted'. For the first time
surveys are given of the social role of witchcraft in European
communities down to the end of the nineteenth century and of the
continued importance of witchcraft and magic as topics of debate
among intellectuals and other writers
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