The Grimoire of Arthur Gauntlet is an outstanding example of a seventeenth century London Cunning-man's book of practice. Cunning-folk were practitioners of magic and herbal medicine who dealt with problems in their local communities. Cunning-man Arthur Gauntlet was based in Gray's Inn Lane in London, and his personal working book contains a fascinating diverse mixture of herbal remedies, prayers, magical and biblical charms, with previously unseen angelic conjurations and magic circles, in an eclectic blend of practical magic for health, wealth, love and protection. This unique manuscript demonstrates both the diverse and spiritual nature of such Cunning-folk's books of practice, as well as their magical emphasis on Biblical scripture, particularly the Psalms, and their opposition to witchcraft, found in charms and conjurations. Arthur Gauntlet worked with a female skryer called Sarah Skelhorn, and drew on numerous preceding sources for his craft, including the Arbatel, the Heptameron, Folger Vb.26, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, the Book of Gold, the writings of the German magus Cornelius Agrippa, the astrologer William Bacon and Queen Elizabeth I's court astrologer Dr. John Dee, as well as other London Cunning-folk. In his introduction, the author provides fresh insights into the hidden world of seventeenth century magical London, exploring the web of connections between astrologers, cunning-folk and magicians, playwrights, authors and church figures. These connections are also highlighted by the provenance of the manuscript, which is traced from Arthur Gauntlet through the hands of such notable angel magicians as Elias Ashmole (founder of the world's first public museum, the Ashmolean in Oxford), Baron Somers (the Lord Chancellor), Sir Joseph Jekyll (Master of the Rolls) and Sir Hans Sloane (founder of the British Museum), as well as the astrologer John Humphreys and the cunning-woman Ann Savadge. This is a unique work which draws attention to the often neglected place of women in seventeenth century magic, both as practitioners (such as skryers and Cunning-women), and customers. It also emphasises the vital and influential role played by Cunning-Men and Women in synthesising and transmitting the magical traditions of medieval Britain into the subsequent centuries, as well as their willingness to conjure a wide range of spiritual creatures to achieve results for their clients, including angels, demons, fairies, and the dead.

This classic study of the French magician Eliphas Levi and the occult revival in France is at last available again after being out of print and highly sought after for many years. Its central focus is Levi himself (1810-1875), would-be priest, revolutionary socialist, utopian visionary, artist, poet and, above all, author of a number of seminal books on magic and occultism. It is largely thanks to Levi, for example, that the Tarot is so widely used today as a divinatory method and a system of esoteric symbolism. The magicians of the Golden Dawn were strongly influenced by him, and Aleister Crowley even believed himself to be Levi's reincarnation. The book is not only about Levi, however, but also covers the era of which he was a part and the remarkable figures who preceded and followed him the esoteric Freemasons and Illuminati of the late 18th century, and later figures such as the Rosicrucian magus Josephin Peladan, the occultist Papus (Gerard Encausse), the Counter-Pope Eugene Vintras, and the writer J.-K. Huysmans, whose work drew strongly on occult themes. These people were avatars of a set of traditions which are now seen as an important part of the western heritage and which are gaining increasing attention in the academy. Christopher McIntosh's vivid account of this richly fascinating era in the history of occultism remains as fresh and compelling as ever.

Faunalia is a controversial Pagan festival with a reputation for being wild and emotionally intense. It lasts five days, 80 people attend, and the two main rituals run most of the night. In the tantalisingly erotic Baphomet rite, participants encounter a hermaphroditic deity, enter a state of trance and dance naked around a bonfire. In the Underworld rite participants role play their own death, confronting grief and suffering. These rituals are understood as "shadow work" - a Jungian term that refers to practices that creatively engage repressed or hidden aspects of the self. Sex, Death and Witchcraft is a powerful application of relational theory to the study of religion and contemporary culture. It analyses Faunalia's rituals in terms of recent innovations in the sociology of religion and religious studies that focus on relational etiquette, lived religion, embodiment and performance. The sensuous and emotionally intense ritual performances at Faunalia transform both moral orientations and self-understandings. Participants develop an ethical practice that is individualistic, but also relational, and aesthetically mediated. Extensive extracts from interviews describe the rituals in participants' own words. The book combines rich and evocative description of the rituals with careful analysis of the social processes that shape people's experiences at this controversial Pagan festival.

In this volume, Lawrence Schiffman and Michael Swartz assemble a collection of Jewish incantation texts which were copied in the Middle Ages and preserved in the Cairo Genizah. Many of these texts, now held in Cambridge University Library, are published here for the first time. All the texts are translated and supplemented by detailed philological and historical commentary, tracing the praxis and beliefs of the Jewish magical tradition of Late Antiquity. Their relation to Jewish legal and mystical teachings is also explored. 'A major contribution to this area of inquiry. Fourteen incantation texts are made accessible here. They are framed with all the desired apparatus: clear facsimiles, transcriptions, translations, commentary, substantial bibliography and three indexes. The lengthy introduction, in particular, is valuable, providing a mise au point for future study of Genizah magical texts.' s teven m. wasserstorm, ajs review Lawrence H. Schiffman is the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, USA. He is a member of the Enoch seminar and of the Advisory Board of The Journal Henoch. Michael D.Swartz is Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University, USA.

From the Middle Ages to the close of the 17th century, alchemy was fundamental to Western culture, as scores of experimenters sought to change lead into gold. Though its significance declined with the rise of chemistry, alchemy continued to captivate the imagination of writers and its images still appear in modern creative works. This book examines the literary representation of alchemical theory and the metaphor of alchemical regeneration in the works of Edward Taylor, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. While Taylor used alchemical metaphors to illustrate the redeeming grace of God upon the soul, these same metaphors were used by Poe, Hawthorne, and Fuller to depict a broader concept of redemption. These later writers used alchemical imagery to describe both the regeneration of the individual and the possible transformation of society. For Poe, alchemy became a metaphor for the transforming power of imagination; for Hawthorne, it became a means of representing the redeeming power of love; for Fuller, it figured the reconciliation of gender opposites. Thus these four American writers incorporated the idea of regeneration in their works, and the tropes and metaphors of the medieval alchemists provided a fascinating way of imagining the transformative process.

In the first chapters of this book we simultaneously follow two threads. While considering the lives of Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, and King Ludwig II of Bavaria in their nineteenth-century incarnations and in earlier incarnations, we examine the planetary configurations accompanying not only their conception, birth, and death, but also various significant events in their lives. In this way we experience how these two perspectives-the biographical and the astrological-weave together and are intimately interconnected. As illuminating as this is, the author also indicates however that astrological calculation alone can never suffice for the truly deep biographical research into karma and reincarnation demonstrated in this work. The author shows that although it is clear that an individual's destiny is connected with the positions of the celestial bodies-that certain regular occurrences are evident-nonetheless no strict regularities exist. He maintains moreover that a certain level of clairvoyance is requisite for any serious astrological study of destiny; even more-that real astrology requires initiation. Such astrological research, when successfully carried out as it is here, relating salient celestial configurations to the life-drama of well-known historical personalities, reads like fine literature. On a practical level this work illustrates several important new tools for the astrologer: how to calculate hermetic charts, how to cast horoscopes not only of birth and death but also of conception (including the astrological significance of the embryonic period between conception and birth), and then also how to apply these various horoscopes in describing the spiral of life that unfolds in seven-year periods during the course of a person's earthly existence. All this reveals profound and fascinating regularities-among them the discovery that stellar configurations during the embryonic period are reflected again and again in the subsequent periods of life. Quite new for most readers will be the author's treatment of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, indicating that the names given these planets are deeply meaningful in the light of spiritual science. To make his case he extends Rudolf Steiner's description of cosmic evolution by drawing upon Greek mythology, particularly Orphic cosmology. This book by Robert Powell is of the greatest possible interest. Professor Konrad Rudni_ki Astronomical Observatory Jagiellonian University Cracow, Poland

Despite Enlightenment scepticism about the supernatural, stories about spirits were regularly printed and shared throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This case-study in the transmission of a single story (of a young gunsmith near Bristol conjuring spirits, leading to his early death) reveals both how and why successive generations found meaning in such accounts. It shows the workings of an expanding national print culture, but also the continued importance of locality, oral culture and manuscript copying, especially among the newly educated. It offers an insight into the culture of Anglican clergy, spiritual autodidacts, evangelical preachers, pioneering astrologers, mesmerists and spiritualists, revealing the on-going appeal of Bible-based providentialism. Initially told as a warning-lesson against meddling with the demonic, the story also appealed to those keen to uphold the existence of spirits, and to various groups who themselves wished to communicate with spirits, while its portrayal of a doomed youth attracted sympathy.

In ancient Greece and Rome, dreams were believed by many to offer insight into future events. Artemidorus' Oneirocritica, a treatise on dream-divination and compendium of dream-interpretations written in Ancient Greek in the mid-second to early-third centuries AD, is the only surviving text from antiquity that instructs its readers in the art of using dreams to predict the future. In it, Artemidorus discusses the nature of dreams and how to interpret them, and provides an encyclopaedic catalogue of interpretations of dreams relating to the natural, human, and divine worlds. In this volume, Harris-McCoy offers a revised Greek text of the Oneirocritica with facing English translation, a detailed introduction, and scholarly commentary. Seeking to demonstrate the richness and intelligence of this understudied text, he gives particular emphasis to the Oneirocritica's composition and construction, and its aesthetic, intellectual, and political foundations and context.

Bringing together twelve studies, this book provides an overview of the key issues of on-going interest in the study of Scottish witchcraft. The authors tackle various aspects of the question of witches; considering how people came to be considered 'witches', with new insights into the centrality of neighbourhood quarrels and misfortune; and delving into folk belief and various acts of witchcraft. It also examines the practice of witch-hunting, the 'urban geography' of witch-hunting, Scotland's international witch-hunting connections and brings fresh insights to the much-studied North Berwick witchcraft panic. Reconstructions of the brutal and ceremonial punishments inflicted on 'witches' offers a gruesome but compelling reminder of the importance of the subject.

An unabridged edition to include: Wherein I Bow to the Reader - A Prelude to the Quest - A Magician Out of Egypt - I Meet A Messiah - The Anchorite of the Adyar River - The Yoga Which Conquers Death - The Sage Who Never Speaks - With The Spiritual Head of South India - The Hill of the Holy Beacon - Among The Magicians And Holy Men - The Wonder-Worker of Benares - Written in the Stars - The Garden of the Lord - At the Parsee Messiah's Headquarters - A Strange Encounter - In a Jungle Hermitage - Tablets of Forgotten Truth

This book examines magic's generally maleficent effect on humans from ancient Egypt through the Middle Ages, including tales from classical mythology, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures. It shows that certain magical motifs lived on from age to age, but that it took until the Italian Renaissance for magic tales to become fairy tales.

This book starts with a meticulous explanation of terminology used in astronomy and astrology. This can be considered as a splendid example of how to explain strictly scientific notions to readers who are not necessarily skilled in the exact sciences. From an astronomical point of view, the most interesting part of the work is the presentation of the old Egyptian world system, which the author concludes was the same as the system of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). He considers this astronomical system not just as a transitory historical conception, but as something which possesses permanent value. The author's deep historical studies made it possible for him also to solve the problem of the interchange of Mercury and Venus, something indicated many years ago by Rudolf Steiner. This is an important achievement in the history of astronomy. The main astrological finding of this book is that the zodiac of the stars (sidereal zodiac) - as employed by the Babylonians, Egyptians, and ancient Greeks - is the authentic zodiac. Moreover, the auther promotes a new type of astrological chart (hermetic chart) for the conception, birth, and death of personalities under consideration, in addition to the customary geocentric horoscope and in place of the heliocentric horoscope promoted by Willi Sucher (1902-1985). With the hermetic chart the auther places a new tool in the hands of astrologers and opens up new possibilities for astrology as a science. On this basis he develops his two "laws" of reincarnation, illustrating them by striking examples. These "laws" express themselves by way of certain planetary configurations coinciding at the moments of birth and death in successive incarnations. He believes that with these "laws" the significance of the tropical zodiac is disproved. This work of Robert Powell, presenting a new astrological system, is a valuable step in the development of a new wisdom of the stars in line with the ideas of Willi Sucher. Willi Sucher's books and articles are full of charm - deep in a spiritual sense - representing a star wisdom in an embryonic state. With this book by Robert Powell, the ideas of Willi Sucher are born as an earthly reality and something new is brought into the world. Professor Konrad Rudni_ki Astronomical Observatory Jagiellonian University Cracow, Poland

Shamanism is part of the spiritual life of nearly all Native North Americans. This bibliography gives the reader access to a wealth of information on shamanism from the Bering Strait to the Mexican border and from Maine to Florida. It includes articles and books focusing on the spiritual connections of Native Americans to the world through shamans. The books covered compare practices from tribe to tribe, make distinctions between witchcraft or sorcery and shamanism, and discuss the artifacts and tools of the trade. Many are well illustrated, including collections from the nineteenth century.

This study of modernism's high imperial, occult-exotic affiliations presents many well-known figures from the period 1880-1960 in a new light. Modernism and the Occult traces the history of modernist engagement with 'irregular', heterodox and imported knowledge.

Especially since the Renaissance, some in Western Christendom have suspected that the deeper dimension of their tradition has somehow been lost, and have therefore sought to discover, or create, an 'esoteric' or 'initiatic' Christianity. In the middle of the nineteenth century two scholars, Gabriele Rossetti and Eugne Aroux, pointed to certain esoteric meanings in the work of Dante Alighieri, notably The Divine Comedy. Partly based on their scholarship, Gunon in 1925 published The Esoterism of Dante. From the theses of Rosetti and Aroux, Gunon retains only those elements that prove the existence of such hidden meanings; but he also makes clear that esoterism is not 'heresy' and that a doctrine reserved for an elite can be superimposed on the teaching given the faithful without standing in opposition to it. One of Ren Gunon's lifelong quests was to discover, or revive, the esoteric, initiatory dimension of the Christian tradition. In the present volume, along with its companion volume Insights into Christian Esoterism (which includes the separate study Saint Bernard), Gunon undertakes to establish that the three parts of The Divine Comedy represent the stages of initiatic realization, exploring the parallels between the symbolism of the Commedia and that of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Christian Hermeticism, and illustrating Dante's knowledge of traditional sciences unknown to the moderns: the sciences of numbers, of cosmic cycles, and of sacred astrology. In these works Gunon also touches on the all-important question of medieval esoterism and discusses the role of sacred languages and the principle of initiation in the Christian tradition, as well as such esoteric Christian themes and organizations as the Holy Grail, the Guardians of the Holy Land, the Sacred Heart, the Fedeli d'Amore and the 'Courts of Love', and the Secret Language of Dante. In addition to Dante, various other paths toward a possible Christian esoterism have been explored by many investigators-the legend of the Holy Grail, the Knights Templars, the tradition of Courtly Love, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and Christian Hermeticism-and Gunon deals with all of these in the present volume as well as his Insights into Christian Esoterism. In the latter, one chapter in particular, 'Christianity and Initiation', will be of special interest with regard to the history of the Traditionalist School. When first published as an article, it gave rise to some controversy because Gunon here reaffirmed his denial of the efficacy of the Christian sacraments as rites of initiation, a point of divergence between the teachings of Gunon and those of other key perennialist thinkers. Both The Esoterism of Dante and Insights into Christian Esoterism will be of inestimable value to all who are struggling to come to terms with the fullness of the Christian tradition.

Attain wealth, prosperity, and abundance with The Witches' Wealth Spell Book Add a little bit of magic to your daily life with this pocket-sized guide for spell casters of all levels. With spells and incantations for wealth, success, prosperity, and more, this charming collection is perfect for anyone with a penchant for the magical.