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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
Sales restricted to North America paperback only due to
co-publication agreement with Koninklijke Brill NV. Brill retains
the cloth rights in all remaining countries.English language rights
only.
This book explores a series of powerful artifacts associated with
King Solomon via legendary or extracanonical textual sources.
Tracing their cultural resonance throughout history, art historian
Allegra Iafrate delivers exciting insights into these objects and
interrogates the ways in which magic manifests itself at a material
level. Each chapter focuses on a different Solomonic object: a ring
used to control demons; a mysterious set of bottles that constrain
evil forces; an endless knot or seal with similar properties; the
shamir, known for its supernatural ability to cut through stone;
and a flying carpet that can bring the sitter anywhere he desires.
Taken together, these chapters constitute a study on the reception
of the figure of Solomon, but they are also cultural biographies of
these magical objects and their inherent aesthetic, morphological,
and technical qualities. Thought-provoking and engaging, Iafrate's
study shows how ancient magic artifacts live on in our imagination,
in items such as Sauron's ring of power, Aladdin's lamp, and the
magic carpet. It will appeal to historians of art, religion,
folklore, and literature.
In 1634 Urbain Grandier, a handsome and successful seducer of women
and priest of the parish of Loudun, was tried, tortured and burnt
at the stake. He had been found guilty of being in league with the
devil and seducing an entire convent of nuns in what was the most
sensational case of mass possession and sexual hysteria in history.
Grandier maintained his innocence to the end and four years after
his death the nuns were still being subjected to exorcisms to free
them from their demonic bondage. Huxley's vivid account of this
bizarre tale of religious and sexual obsession transforms our
understanding of the medieval world.
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