This book explores the relationships between ancient witchcraft and its modern incarnation, and by doing so fills an important gap in the historiography. It is often noted that stories of witchcraft circulated in Greek and Latin classical texts, and that treatises dealing with witch-beliefs referenced them. Still, the role of humanistic culture and classical revival in the developing of the witch-hunts has not yet been fully researched. Marina Montesano examines Greek and Latin literature, revealing how particular features of ancient striges were carried into the Late Middle Ages, through the Renaissance and into the fifteenth century, when early Italian trials recall the myth of the strix common in ancient Latin sources and in popular memory. The final chapter also serves as a conclusion, to show how in Renaissance Italy and beyond, classical accounts of witchcraft ceased to be just stories, as they had formerly been, and were instead used to attest to the reality of witches' powers.

Sir James George Frazer originally set out to discover the origins of one ancient custom in Classical Rome - the plucking of the Golden Bough from a tree in the sacred grove of Diana, and the murderous succession of the priesthood there - and was led by his invetigations into a twenty-five year study of primitive customs, superstitions, magic and myth throughout the world. The monumental thirteen-volume work which resulted has been a rich source of anthropological material and a literary masterpiece for more than half a century. Both the wealth of his illustrative material and the broad sweep of his argument can be appreciated in this very readable single volume.

Do you ever find that the earth stills and you suddenly feel acutely alive? Have you ever looked into an animal's eyes and felt the pull of a more primal world? Do you sometimes feel panic rise, or isolation sink upon you, or simply feel out of kilter with the modern world? 'Inside my cauldron is a thick fistful of paper, old diary entries, work "to do" lists, notes I wrote while I was in a bad place and feeling trapped in a life that was keeping my mind small and narrow; thoughts and feelings that are holding me back, keeping me tied to a time I want to let go of. These papers are flashes of lightning across a darkened room and I want them gone. As they curl and burn, twisting in their black spirals like the farewell flourish of a travelling cloak, a sense of calm sweeps through my chest and shoulders. I feel it so strongly, like a blast of ice to my system, shivering out the old thoughts. I'm burning a path for something new to come in.' One winter, Jennifer Lane reached breaking point in her fast-paced office life. In the year that followed her stress-related illness, she set out to rediscover the solace and purpose that witchcraft had given her as a teenager. The Wheel is an immersive, engaging read - exploring the life-long draw of witchcraft and our vulnerability to toxic working environments and digital demands. In her year-long journey Jennifer explores ancient festivals and rituals, and visits fellow pagans and wild landscapes, in search of wisdom and peace. For those who are sick at heart of noise, anger and disconnection, The Wheel is full of wise words, crackling rituals and natural beauty. This is a quest to discover how to live fully connected to the natural world while firmly in the twenty-first century.

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.

Tap into the magic all around you with Witchcraft, an illustrated guide to ancient potions, spells, chants, rituals, and incantations from around the world. Learn how to form a spirit circle with coven members, what instruments you need for your craft, special conjurations for each day of the week, and hundreds of crafty spells and potions that will allow you to: Banish headaches Keep your home safe Envision your future spouse Win riches Communicate with animals Conceive a child Summon the dead Make it snow Separate lovers Know your future And more! Spells are conveniently organized by purpose: safekeeping spells, healing spells and potions, spells against enemies, counter-spells, luck and fortune spells, love and matchmaking spells, weather and earth spells, spells to cast on animals, power spells, and communing with the dead. With stunning linoleum-cut illustrations by artist Melissa West that bring the magic of the past to life, this comprehensive compendium is also a delightful page-turner that's full of unexpected treasures. Place it in a sacred place in your home-and make sure no enemies find it to access its inestimable powers! The Mystical Handbook series from Wellfleet takes you on a magical journey through the wonderful world of spellcraft and spellcasting. Explore a new practice with each volume and learn how to incorporate spells, rituals, blessings, and cleansings into your daily routine. These portable companions feature beautiful foil-detail covers and color-saturated interiors on a premium paper blend. Other books in the series include: Love Spells, Moon Magic, Moon Magic Journal, Knot Magic, Superstitions, House Magic, Herbal Magic, Book of Shadows, and Goddess Magic.

This book explores local cultural discourses and practices relating to manifestations and experiences of the demonic, the spectral and the uncanny, probing into their effects on people's domestic and intimate spheres of life. The chapters examine the uncanny in a cross-cultural manner, involving empirically rich case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Europe. They use an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to show how people are affected by their intimate interactions with spiritual beings. While several chapters focus on the tensions between public and private spheres that emerge in the context of spiritual encounters, others explore what kind of relationships between humans and demonic entities are imagined to exist and in what ways these imaginations can be interpreted as a commentary on people's concerns and social realities. Offering a critical look at a form of spiritual experience that often lacks academic examination, this book will be of great use to scholars of Religious Studies who are interested in the occult and paranormal, as well as academics working in Anthropology, Sociology, African Studies, Latin American Studies, Gender Studies and Transcultural Psychology.

Vampires and Vampirism (1914) is a work from another era, a time when belief and wonder led some to travel down pathways of knowledge in search of truth and terror, not knowing what they would find. Written in response to an "awakened [popular] interest in supernormal phenomena" in the early twentieth century, Dudley Wright's Vampires and Vampirism traces the history of vampirism around the world, from ancient Babylonia, Assyria, and Greece, to Great Britain, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Beginning with the question "What is a vampire?", Wright seeks to first define the term before moving into an analysis of how belief in vampirism emerged from various and distant religious and cultural traditions. Each chapter uses a scholarly mix of ancient and modern sources to enlighten the reader, and the book culminates in a chapter titled "Fact or Fiction?", which allows the reader to hear from believers and skeptics alike. The book includes harrowing personal accounts of outbreaks of vampirism in British India and Mexico, as well as a lengthy bibliography. In a world where matters of occult nature, such as astrology, have reentered the popular consciousness, Vampires and Vampirism is sure to be of interest. It is also a fascinating document of a time when Europeans-faced with spiritual doubt and inspired by religious traditions and myths from the outer reaches of empire-sought to establish new systems of belief, new orders they hoped could replace those they feared were quickly becoming lost. At times despicable, and always controversial, Dudley Wright was a tireless searcher whose life included conversions to Islam and Catholicism, forays into anti-Semitism-later retracted-and a deep, spiritual involvement with organizations dedicated to matters both visible and invisible, true and beyond belief. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this new edition of Dudley Wright's Vampires and Vampirism is a classic of history and horror reimagined for modern readers.

Explores the importance of alchemy and its links to the occult in the period between 1320 and 1400. This title synthesizes various aspects of alchemy and shows its contribution to intellectual, social and political life in the fourteenth century. It also explores manuscripts to reveal the daily routines of the alchemist.

This book provides a history of witchcraft in the territories that compose contemporary Romania, with a focus on the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The first part presents aspects of earthly justice, religious and secular, analysing the codes of law, trials and verdicts, and underlining the differences between Transylvania on one hand, and Moldavia and Wallachia on the other. The second part is concerned with divine justice, describing apocalyptic texts that talk about the pains of witches in hell, but also the ensembles of religious painting where, in vast compositions of the Last Judgment, various punishments for the sin of witchcraft are imagined.

This collection of articles by distinguished scholars and experts in their particular fields of research is introduced by a chapter dealing with general matters of the current hermeneutics of magic: what is the nature of magic and what is the understanding of magic in the Western world-view and what - for instance - in the African world? Centered around studies on Jesus and magic the second part contains studies on the use of the term magic in the New Testament and especially in Acts. The third section broadens the understanding of magic through selected case studies in different approaches to magic in the environment and background of the New Testament (Old Testament, Qumran, Apuleius, Women as Magicians). Early Christianity subsequent to the New Testament develops its own view of magic, criticizing pagan magic but not being uninfluenced by magic or magic-like practices. This development is part of the fourth and last chapter of the collection along with two different papers on the possible use of Jewish and Christian themes in later magical texts. The collection explores the importance of magic within Early Christianity, an issue shared with its Old Testament and Jewish roots and with its ancient background, implying reluctance and critique. Both magical traits and the critique of non-Christian magic have an impact on later scripture and still exert influence now on modern theoretical discussion and popular ideas.

'Witches occupy a clear place in contemporary imagination. We can see them, shadowy, in the corners of the past: mad, glamorous, difficult, strange. They haunt the footnotes of history - from medieval witches burning at the stake to the lurid glamour of the 1970s witchcraft revival. But they are moving out of history, too. Witches are back. They're feminist, independent, invested in self-care and care for the world. They are here, because they must be needed.' What it means to be a witch has changed radically throughout history; where 'witch' was once a dangerous - and often deadly - accusation, it is now a proud self-definition. Today, as the world becomes ever more complicated and as we face ecological, political and economic crisis - witchcraft is experiencing a resurgence. Witches are back. In A Spell in the Wild, Alice Tarbuck explores what it means to be a witch today. Rooted in the real world, but filled with spells, rituals and recipes, this book is an accessible, seasonal guide to witchcraft in the twenty-first century. Following the course of a witch's calendar year while also exploring the history and politics of witchcraft, A Spell in the Wild is the perfect primer for the contemporary witch.

This volume investigates the physical evidence for magic in medieval and modern Britain, including ritual mark, concealed objects, amulets, and magical equipment. The contributors are the current experts in each area of the subject, and show between them how ample the evidence is and how important it is for an understanding of history.

This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and elite understandings of the supernatural. -- .

This is a work of fundamental importance for our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Europe. Stuart Clark offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals based on their publications in the field of demonology, and shows how these beliefs fitted rationally with many other views current in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Professor Clark is the first to explore the appeal of demonology to early modern intellectuals by looking at the books they published on the subject during this period. After examining the linguistic foundations of their writings, the author shows how the writers' ideas about witchcraft (and about magic) complemented their other intellectual commitments-in particular, their conceptions of nature, history, religion, and politics. The result is much more than a history of demonology. It is a survey of wider intellectual and ideological purposes, and underlines just how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.

In this innovative study, Colombian technology writer Mauricio Loza pursues an intriguing thesis on the origin of psychology and modern media, namely that they arise from the magical arts of the Renaissance, and it is there that we must seek what Ioan Culianu called "the prototype of the impersonal systems of the media, of indirect censorship, of global manipulation and of the trusts that exercise their occult control over the Western masses." The Hounds of Actaeon takes up Culianu's thesis to trace a history that unites such Renaissance luminaries as Marsilio Ficino and Giordano Bruno with modern thinkers, including Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, and Guy Debord. It covers a broad historical and intellectual terrain ranging from the Renaissance magic, through eighteenth-century medicine and nineteenth-century psychology, to the propaganda and media warfare of the twentieth century, proving that the modern era, secular in appearance, continues to be profoundly influenced by pre-modern ways of thinking. The importance of this study is twofold: on the one hand it elaborates a fresh perspective on certain themes of Renaissance erotic magic and its relation to mass psychology and psychoanalysis, while, on the other, it offers an alternative for the study of the media strategies that determine Western worldviews and behaviors.

Witch-Hunting in Scotland presents a fresh perspective on the trial and execution of the hundreds of women and men prosecuted for the crime of witchcraft, an offence that involved the alleged practice of maleficent magic and the worship of the devil, for inflicting harm on their neighbours and making pacts with the devil.

Brian P. Levack draws on law, politics and religion to explain the intensity of Scottish witch-hunting. Topics discussed include:

• the distinctive features of the Scottish criminal justice system
• the use of torture to extract confessions
• the intersection of witch-hunting with local and national politics
• the relationship between state-building and witch-hunting and the role of James VI
• Scottish Calvinism and the determination of zealous Scottish clergy and magistrates to achieve a godly society.

This original survey combines broad interpretations of the rise and fall of Scottish witchcraft prosecutions with detailed case studies of specific witch-hunts. Witch-Hunting in Scotland makes fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in witchcraft or in the political, legal and religious history of the early modern period.

As a former private investigator and forensic writer, Joe Nickell has spent much of his career identifying forged documents, working undercover to infiltrate theft rings, and investigating questioned deaths. Now he turns his considerable investigative skill toward the paranormal, researching the most well-known and mysterious phenomena all over the world -- spontaneous human combustion, UFO visitations, auras, electronic poltergeists, and many, many more -- with an eye toward solving these mysteries rather than promoting or dismissing them.

Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal examines the cases of over forty paranormal mysteries. Using a hands-on approach, Nickell visits the scene of the so-called unexplainable activity whenever possible and attempts to physically duplicate the miraculous. Whether he's inflicting stigmata on himself or recreating the liquefying blood of Saint Januarius, Nickell does whatever necessary to eliminate the probable before considering the supernatural. What is left is that much more fascinating.

Nickell reports on familiar legends from American history such as the supernatural events surrounding Abraham Lincoln's death and the supposed crash landing of an alien spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico. He closely examines claims of the miraculous, from rose petals bearing the likeness of Jesus to photographs of a "golden door" to heaven. Controversial mysteries such as clairvoyance and "spirit painting," haunted places, and freaks of nature are just a few of the many topics covered.

Suspenseful, engrossing, funny, and grounded in scientific methodology, Real-Life X-Files provides real explanations for the "paranormal" activities that have intrigued human beings for centuries.

This book traces the development of Haiti's combined Vodou-Christian religion from 1500 to the present and explains how this combination of distinct faiths coalesces in a coherent belief system. What are the historical reasons for the popularity of two contradictory worldviews in Haiti, Vodou and Catholicism? What elements of Vodou and Catholicism are alike, and how are they drastically different? What is the connection between indigenous African religions and Vodou? And why has religion in Haiti evidenced an accelerating rate of change in recent decades? Roots of Haiti's Vodou-Christian Faith: African and Catholic Origins answers these questions and more in its examination of the highly unique and often-misunderstood religious practices in Haiti. Reaching back half a millennium to the European conquest of the island of Haiti, author R. Murray Thomas inspects the origins and nature of these two competing and complementary religious traditions: the traditional African faiths brought by the slaves who were imported to Haiti to labor in the fields and mines, and the Catholicism promoted-often violently-by Spanish and French colonial authorities. Following a historical background, the subsequent chapters focus on the organization of Haitian religion, spirits, creation belief, causes and ceremonies, maxims and tales, symbols and sacred objects, sacred sites, religious societies, and the future of the Vodou-Christian faith. Provides a history of Haiti's unique religious tradition that explains how Spanish and French colonizers established Catholicism in Haiti and identifies how the connections between Vodou and African indigenous religions formed over the past five centuries Proposes seven "principles of accommodation" that enable Vodou-Catholicism to be regarded as a cohesive, rational system by the vast majority of Haitians Presents information culled from hundreds of references from the professional literature as well as interviews with two university professors who are both authorities on Haitian Vodou-Christianity and practitioners of the faith

Spirit Possession and Communication in Religious and Cultural Contexts explores the phenomenon of spirit possession, focusing on the religious and cultural functions it serves as a means of communication. Drawing on the multidisciplinary expertise of philosophers, anthropologists, historians, linguists, and scholars of religion and the Bible, the volume investigates the ways that spirit possession narratives, events, and rituals are often interwoven around communicative acts, both between spiritual and earthly realms and between members of a community. This book offers fresh insight into the enduring cultural and religious significance of spirit possession. It will be an important resource for scholars from a diverse range of disciplines, including religion, anthropology, history, linguistics, and philosophy.