Focusing on colonial Kenya, this book shows how conflicts between state authorities and Africans over witchcraft-related crimes provided an important space in which the meanings of justice, law and order in the empire were debated. Katherine Luongo discusses the emergence of imperial networks of knowledge about witchcraft. She then demonstrates how colonial concerns about witchcraft produced an elaborate body of jurisprudence about capital crimes. The book analyzes the legal wrangling that produced the Witchcraft Ordinances in the 1910s, the birth of an anthro-administrative complex surrounding witchcraft in the 1920s, the hotly contested Wakamba Witch Trials of the 1930s, the explosive growth of legal opinion on witch-murder in the 1940s, and the unprecedented state-sponsored cleansings of witches and Mau Mau adherents during the 1950s. A work of anthropological history, this book develops an ethnography of Kamba witchcraft or uoi.

Alchemy is best known as the age-old science of turning base metal into gold. But it is much more: essentially, it is a path of self-knowledge, unique in the Western tradition, with vital relevance for the modern world. The symbols of Alchemy lie deep in the collective unconscious, in the world of dreams and imagery: the practices of alchemy are rooted in an understanding of the oneness of spirit and matter through which we celebrate our sexuality and spirituality. Jay Ramsay takes us step by step through the stages of the alche-mical process using a wide range of original exercises to create a memorable journey that challenges, inspitres and transforms us at every stage. We too can be kings and queens: we too, once we leave our dross behind, are gold. It's full of fi ne things... --Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate 1984-1998, playwright and author. So much good work... --Robert Bly, award winning poet, essayist, activist and author. Jay Ramsay has written a luminous and wise guide to the mysteries of soul, and to the images and texts of alchemy, which explores these mysteries... --Anne Baring, philosopher, visionary and author of several books including: The Dream of the Cosmos: a Quest for the Soul and The Myth of the Goddess. Ramsay is among those who have been working most assiduously to share this archetypal language of the soul... --Lindsay Clarke, review in Caduceus. The clearest account of the alchemical process I've read... --Peter Redgrove, poet, novelist and playwright. Extremely wonderful and important... --Robert Sardello, author and co-founder of The School of Spiritual Psychology.

"Fascinating and vivid." New Statesman "Thoroughly researched." The Spectator "Intriguing." BBC History Magazine "Vividly told." BBC History Revealed "A timely warning against persecution." Morning Star "Astute and thoughtful." History Today "An important work." All About History "Well-researched." The Tablet On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives. As the result of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to be forever defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows; to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet, the hatred of their neighbours endured. For Bideford, it was said, was a place of witches. Though ‘pretty much worn away’ the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn, ignored, reviled, and extinguished but never more than half-forgotten, it seems that the memory of these three women - and of their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – was transformed from canker to regret, and from regret into celebration in our own age. Indeed, their example was cited during the final Parliamentary debates, in 1951, that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration and incantation, by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common. In this book, John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate, and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.

The visionary tradition of spirits, gods, and demons continues to subvert our rational universe, erupting from the shadows in times of intense religious and philosophical transition. In this dazzling history, Patrick Harpur links together fields as far apart as Greek philosophy and depth psychology, Renaissance magic and tribal ritual, Romantic poetry and the ecstasy of the shaman, to trace how societies have used myths to make sense of the world.

Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa reconstructs the biography of an ordinary South African, Jimmy Mohale. Born in 1964, Jimmy came of age in rural South Africa during apartheid, then studied at university and worked as a teacher during the anti-apartheid struggle. In 2005, Jimmy died from an undiagnosed sickness, probably related to AIDS. Jimmy gradually came to see the unanticipated misfortune he experienced as a result of his father's witchcraft and sought remedies from diviners rather than from biomedical doctors. This study casts new light on scholarly understandings of the connections between South African politics, witchcraft and the AIDS pandemic.

What is the secret meaning of alchemical symbolism? Why was the Royal Art kept secret for so long? Could ancient images really turn molten lead into gold with a mere pinch of the Philosopher's Stone? Really? Alchemy is perhaps the last true magical art to survive the ravages of the modern world. In this exquisite book, top laboratory alchemist Guy Ogilvy initiates the reader into some of the key concepts and practices of this extraordinary field of study. It includes extensive appendices. WOODEN BOOKS are small but packed with information. "Fascinating" FINANCIAL TIMES. "Beautiful" LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS. "Rich and Artful" THE LANCET. "Genuinely mind-expanding" FORTEAN TIMES. "Excellent" NEW SCIENTIST. "Stunning" NEW YORK TIMES. Small books, big ideas.

Suppose you could ask God the most puzzling questions about existence--questions about love and faith, life and death, good and evil.

Supose God provided clear, understandable answers.

It happened to Neale Donald Walsch. It can happen to you.

You are about to have a conversation.


Walsch's fascinating three-year conversation with God about every aspect of life and living began in 1992, Walsch says, when he was struggling financially and his health and relationships were suffering. Out of frustration, he composed an angry, passionate letter to God demanding to know why his life was in such turmoil. To his amazement, when he was finished, he was moved to continue writing as God answered back. The book that grew from that first experience addresses the real life issues we all face at work, at home, and out in the world, as well as the larger questions of the nature of God and his relationship to man.

How does Walsch know that God was actually talking to him? "The book contains concepts and information beyond anything I've ever thought of," says Walsch. "But more importantly, I've found out through other readers that there are hundreds of people that have had this same experience. This book has allowed them to speak out."

Walsch claims that God speaks to everyone all the time, that we're just not listening. "Have you ever been struck by a song lyric or the cover story of a magazine you suddenly pass on a newsstand that seems to answer a question you've had? Have you ever met someone for the first time and had that person mention something out of the blue that's been on your mind? Have you ever gone to church and thought the minister must have read your mail, because he seems to be talking directly to you? We often write things off to coincidence that we should give God credit for."

There has long existed among the Germanic Pennsylvania Dutch people a belief in white and dark magic. The art of white magic in the Dutch Country is referred to by old-timers as Braucherei in their unique Dialect, otherwise known as Powwowing. Hexerei, of course, is the art of black magic. Powers used to heal in the art of Braucherei are derived from God (the Holy Trinity), but the powers employed in Hexerei are derived from the Devil, in the simplest of explanation. Therefore, one who engages in the latter has bartered or "sold his soul to the Devil," and destined for Hell! For nearly three centuries, the Pennsylvania Dutch have not hesitated to use Braucherei in the healing of their sick and afflicted, and regionally, the culture has canonized early 19th Century faith healer, Mountain Mary (of the Oley Hills), as a Saint for her powers of healing. Furthermore, contemporary of hers, John Georg Hohman, has published numerous early 19th Century books on the matter still in use today. Both their form of faith healing has many counterparts in our civilization, however, the subset of Hexerei, witchcraft, or black magic was always considered of utmost evil here in the region; and only desperate people, and those with devious intentions, have resorted to its equally powerful and secret powers.

"Nightshades is the record of one remarkable magician's exploration of the inverse regions of the Tree of Life. Aleister Crowley's Liber 231 provides the map and Kenneth Grant's Nightside of Eden a travelogue. "Liber 231, apparently started life as a text within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as an exercise to develop astral and trance abilities or perhaps in other more elaborate rites. The nightside aspect requires some care and alertness in case of accident. The correct attitude is said to be one of self or ego-less witness. Or maybe it's just one needs Or maybe it's just one needs the use of an all-embracing rather than a limited kind of identity and self-identification?" "The Nightside is always with us. It's so much older than the Dayside. Before the light began to shine, the night was there. Some assume that we are dealing with a simple polarity. On one hand the radiant world of colours and forms, more or less thinkable, reasonable and meaningful. Like the pretty picture of the Tree of Life it has its scenic cites, its hotels, restaurants, shopping opportunities and highways in between. On the other hand the chaotic world of uncertain and incomprehensible mysteries. Both of them connected by the voidness that makes them possible. It looks symmetrical. But when you reach the Nightside it doesn't work like that. The Nightside is not simply a reflection of the dayside with a few confusing and spooky bits thrown in. The Dayside is a tiny island of experience in a huge ocean, the Nightside, full of currents, island chains and continents of the possible and impossible. All and Nothing are present everywhere. Our island is not the opposite of the world-ocean, it is simply a tiny and comprehensible part of it." Jan Fries Nightshades comprises 72 intense drawings prefaced by an explanatory essay detailing the background and genesis of this ultimate magical adventure.

Satanism is a complex and controversial phenomenon co-existing in many social and rhetorical contexts. Some consider it the root of all evil in the world. Others see it as a juvenile proxy for rebellion or as a misapplication of serious esoteric beliefs and practices. Then again, some consider it a specific religious or philosophical position serving as a personal and collective identity. This book, written by three experts in the field of Satanism studies, examines Satanism as a contemporary movement in continuous dialogue with popular culture, aiding as a breeding ground for other new religious movements. Shifting the focus from mythology to meaning-making, this is a book about the invention of Satanism among self-declared religious Satanists. Like all ideologists and believers, Satanists incorporate, borrow, and modify elements from other traditions, and this book explores how traditional folklore and prior strands of occultism were synthesized by Anton LaVey in his founding of the Church of Satan and the creation of the Satanic Bible. Later chapters examine contemporary Satanist subcultures from various perspectives, also demonstrating how Satanism, despite its brief history as an organized phenomenon, continues to reinvent itself. There are now numerous Satanisms with distinctive interpretations of what being a Satanist entails, with some of these new versions deviating more from the historical "mainstream" than others. In this fascinating account of a seemingly abstruse and often-feared movement, Dyrendal, Lewis, and Petersen demonstrate that the invention of Satanism is an ongoing, ever-evolving process.

Investigation of literary and archaeological evidence in search of pagan sources for the Arthurian legend. `Darrah makes the valid point that episodes in the Arthurian romances read like motifs from the ancient mythologies...[he] reconstructs a lost British paganism, grounded in the rivers, hills and woods, and especially those grey monoliths...reminders of a cosmology vanished from this island. NIKOLAI TOLSTOY, DAILY TELEGRAPH `Contends, with a good deal of evidence, that the impact of pre-Christian Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Cornish and Breton religion is greater than has been previously thought... Extensively researched and well written.' CHOICE The origins of Arthurian romance will always be a hotly disputed subject. The great moments of the legends belong partly to dimly-remembered history, partly to the poets' imagination down the ages, yet there is another strand to the stories which goes back deeper and further: the traces of ancient pagan religion, found both in Arthurian heroes who have inherited the attributes of gods, and in episodes which reflect ancient religious rituals. Darrah's careful study of the thematic relationships of, particularly, the more obscure episodes of the romances and his identification of the relative geography of Arthurian Britain as portrayed in the romances will be valuable even to those who differ with his conclusions. His most original contribution to an unravelling of a pagan Arthurian past lies in his appropriation of the fascinating evidence of standing stones and pagan cultic sites. This is dark and difficult territory, but building on elusive clues, and tracing a range of sites, especially in south-west Britain, John Darrah hasadded a significant new dimension to the search for the sources of the legends of Arthur and his court. JOHN DARRAH has also written The Real Camelot.

Explores the unified science-religion of early humanity and the impact of Hermetic philosophy on religion and spirituality * Investigates the Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus's famous story that Seth's descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe * Reveals how this original knowledge has influenced civilization through Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Masonic, Hindu, and Islamic mystical knowledge * Examines how "Enoch's Pillars" relate to the origins of Hermeticism, Freemasonry, Newtonian science, William Blake, and Theosophy Esoteric tradition has long maintained that at the dawn of human civilization there existed a unified science-religion, a spiritual grasp of the universe and our place in it. The biblical Enoch--also known as Hermes Trismegistus, Thoth, or Idris--was seen as the guardian of this sacred knowledge, which was inscribed on pillars known as Enoch's or Seth's pillars. Examining the idea of the lost pillars of pure knowledge, the sacred science behind Hermetic philosophy, Tobias Churton investigates the controversial Jewish and Egyptian origins of Josephus's famous story that Seth's descendants inscribed knowledge on two pillars to save it from global catastrophe. He traces the fragments of this sacred knowledge as it descended through the ages into initiated circles, influencing civilization through Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, Masonic, Hindu, and Islamic mystical knowledge. He follows the path of the pillars' fragments through Egyptian alchemy and the Gnostic Sethites, the Kabbalah, and medieval mystic Ramon Llull. He explores the arrival of the Hermetic manuscripts in Renaissance Florence, the philosophy of Copernicus, Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, and the origins of Freemasonry, including the "revival" of Enoch in Masonry's Scottish Rite. He reveals the centrality of primal knowledge to Isaac Newton, William Stukeley, John Dee, and William Blake, resurfacing as the tradition of Martinism, Theosophy, and Thelema. Churton also unravels what Josephus meant when he asserted one Sethite pillar still stood in the "Seiriadic" land: land of Sirius worshippers. Showing how the lost pillars stand as a twenty-first century symbol for reattaining our heritage, Churton ultimately reveals how the esoteric strands of all religions unite in a gnosis that could offer a basis for reuniting religion and science.

*THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE* *A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR* 'A bona fide historical classic' Sunday Times 'Simply one of the best history books I have ever read' BBC History In the frontier town of Springfield in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails and property vanishes. People suffer fits and are plagued by strange visions and dreams. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics, and the community becomes tangled in a web of spite, distrust and denunciation. The finger of suspicion falls on a young couple struggling to make a home and feed their children: Hugh Parsons the irascible brickmaker and his troubled wife, Mary. It will be their downfall. The Ruin of All Witches tells the dark, real-life folktale of witch-hunting in a remote Massachusetts plantation. These were the turbulent beginnings of colonial America, when English settlers' dreams of love and liberty, of founding a 'city on a hill', gave way to paranoia and terror, enmity and rage. Drawing on uniquely rich, previously neglected source material, Malcolm Gaskill brings to life a New World existence steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in curses and enchantments, and precariously balanced between life and death. Through the gripping micro-history of a family tragedy, we glimpse an entire society caught in agonized transition between supernatural obsessions and the age of enlightenment. We see, in short, the birth of the modern world. 'Gaskill tells this deeply tragic story with immense empathy and compassion, as well as historical depth' The Guardian 'As compelling as a campfire story ... Gaskill brings this sinister past vividly to life' Erica Wagner, Financial Times

Strange Histories is an exploration of some of the most extraordinary beliefs that existed in the late Middle Ages through to the end of the seventeenth century. Presenting serious accounts of the appearance of angels and demons, sea monsters and dragons within European and North American history, this book moves away from "present-centred thinking" and instead places such events firmly within their social and cultural context. By doing so, it offers a new way of understanding the world in which dragons and witches were fact rather than fiction, and presents these riveting phenomena as part of an entirely rational thought process for the time in which they existed. This new edition has been fully updated in light of recent research. It contains a new guide to further reading as well as a selection of pictures that bring its themes to life. From ghosts to witches, to pigs on trial for murder, the book uses a range of different case studies to provide fascinating insights into the world-view of a vanished age. It is essential reading for all students of early modern history. .

According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery--for many of them, West's efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In "Ethnographic Sorcery," West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation.
A key theme of West's research into sorcery is that one sorcerer's claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West's attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realized that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.

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

In 1711, in County Antrim, eight women were put on trial accused of orchestrating the demonic possession of young Mary Dunbar, and the haunting and supernatural murder of a local clergyman’s wife. Mary Dunbar was the star witness in this trial, and the women were, by the standards of the time, believable witches – they smoked, they drank, they just did not look right. With echoes of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and the Salem witch-hunt, this is a story of murder, of hysteria, and of how the ‘witch craze’ that claimed over 40,000 lives in Europe played out on Irish shores.

Ranging from the pre-Christian era to Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton at the end of the seventeenth century, this Reader covers a broad range of alchemical authors and works. Organized chronologically, it includes around thirty selections in authoritative but lightly-modernized versions. The selections will provide the reader with a basic introduction to the field and its interdisciplinary links with science and medicine, philosophy, religion, and literature and the arts.

Kimberly B. Stratton investigates the cultural and ideological motivations behind early imaginings of the magician, the sorceress, and the witch in the ancient world. Accusations of magic could carry the death penalty or, at the very least, marginalize the person or group they targeted. But Stratton moves beyond the popular view of these accusations as mere slander. In her view, representations and accusations of sorcery mirror the complex struggle of ancient societies to define authority, legitimacy, and Otherness. Stratton argues that the concept "magic" first emerged as a discourse in ancient Athens where it operated part and parcel of the struggle to define Greek identity in opposition to the uncivilized "barbarian" following the Persian Wars. The idea of magic then spread throughout the Hellenized world and Rome, reflecting and adapting to political forces, values, and social concerns in each society. Stratton considers the portrayal of witches and magicians in the literature of four related periods and cultures: classical Athens, early imperial Rome, pre-Constantine Christianity, and rabbinic Judaism. She compares patterns in their representations of magic and analyzes the relationship between these stereotypes and the social factors that shaped them. Stratton's comparative approach illuminates the degree to which magic was (and still is) a cultural construct that depended upon and reflected particular social contexts. Unlike most previous studies of magic, which treated the classical world separately from antique Judaism, Naming the Witch highlights the degree to which these ancient cultures shared ideas about power and legitimate authority, even while constructing and deploying those ideas in different ways. The book also interrogates the common association of women with magic, denaturalizing the gendered stereotype in the process. Drawing on Michel Foucault's notion of discourse as well as the work of other contemporary theorists, such as Homi K. Bhabha and Bruce Lincoln, Stratton's bewitching study presents a more nuanced, ideologically sensitive approach to understanding the witch in Western history.

New collection of essays promising to re-energize the debate on Nazism's occult roots and legacies and thus our understanding of German cultural and intellectual history over the past century. Scholars have debated the role of the occult in Nazism since it first appeared on the German political landscape in the 1920s. After 1945, a consensus held that occultism - an ostensibly anti-modern, irrational blend of pseudo-religious and -scientific practices and ideas - had directly facilitated Nazism's rise. More recently, scholarly debate has denied the occult a role in shaping the Third Reich, emphasizing the Nazis' hostility to esoteric religion and alternative forms of knowledge. Bringing together cutting-edge scholarship on the topic, this volume calls for a fundamental reappraisal of these positions. The book is divided into three chronological sections. The first,on the period 1890 to 1933, looks at the esoteric philosophies and occult movements that influenced both the leaders of the Nazi movement and ordinary Germans who became its adherents. The second, on the Third Reich in power, explores how the occult and alternative religious belief informed Nazism as an ideological, political, and cultural system. The third looks at Nazism's occult legacies. In emphasizing both continuities and disjunctures, this book promises to re-open and re-energize debate on the occult roots and legacies of Nazism, and with it our understanding of German cultural and intellectual history over the past century. Contributors: Monica Black; Jeff Hayton; Oded Heilbronner; Eric Kurlander; Fabian Link and J. Laurence Hare; Anna Lux; Perry Myers; John Ondrovcik; Michael E. O'Sullivan; Jared Poley; Uwe Schellinger, Andreas Anton, and Michael T. Schetsche; Peter Staudenmaier. Monica Black is Associate Professor and Associate Head of the Department of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Eric Kurlander is J. Ollie Edmunds Chair and Professor of Modern European History at Stetson University.

A bold exploration of the reintegration of rationality and intuition, science and soul, to foster individual and planetary healing During the scientific revolution, science and soul were drastically separated, propelling humanity into four centuries of scientific exploration based solely on empiricism and rationality. But, as scientist and ecologist Stephan Harding, Ph.D., demonstrates in detail, by reintegrating science with profound personal experiences of psyche and soul, we can reclaim our lost sacred wholeness and help heal ourselves and our planet. The book begins with compelling introductions to depth psychology, alchemy, and Gaia theory--the science of seeing the Earth as an intelligent, self-regulating system, a theory pioneered by the author's mentor James Lovelock. Harding then explores how alchemy, as understood through the depth psychology of C. G. Jung, offers us powerful methods of reuniting rationality and intuition, science and soul. He examines the integration of important alchemical engravings, including those from L'Azoth des Philosophes and the Rosarium Philosophorum, with Gaian science. He shows how the seven key alchemical operations in the Azoth image can help us develop deeply transformative experiences and insights into our interconnectedness with Gaia. He then looks at how the four components of the living Earth--biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere--mesh not only with the four elements of alchemical theory but also with the four functions of consciousness from depth psychology. Woven throughout with the author's own experiences of Gaia alchemy, the book also offers guided meditations and contemplative exercises to open your receptivity to messages from the biosphere and help you develop your own Gaian alchemical way of life, full of wonder and healing.