Though it is clearly an exceptionally important part of popular culture, witchcraft has generated a variety of often contradictory interpretations, starting from widely differing premises about the nature of witchcraft, its social role and the importance of higher theology as well as more popular beliefs. This work offers a conspectus of historical work on witchcraft in Europe, and shows how many trends converged to form the figure of the witch, and varied from one part of Europe to another.

Devils, ghosts, poltergeists, werewolves, and witches are all covered in this book about the "dark side" of supernatural beliefs in early modern Europe, tapping period literature, folklore, art, and scholarly writings in its investigation. The dark side of early modern European culture could be deemed equal in historical significance to Christianity based on the hundreds of books that were printed about the topic between 1400 and 1700. Famous writers and artists like William Shakespeare and Albrecht Durer depicted the dark side in their work, and some of the first printed books in Europe were about witches. The pervasive representation of these monsters and apparitions in period literature, folklore, and art clearly reflects their power to inspire fear and superstition, but also demonstrates how integral they were to early modern European culture. This unique book addresses topics of the supernatural within the context of the early modern period in Europe, covering "mythical" entities such as devils, witches, ghosts, poltergeists, and werewolves in detail and examining how they fit in with the emerging new scientific method of the time. This unique combination of cultural studies for the period is ideal for undergraduate students and general readers. Illustrations from rare books on witchcraft and demonology An annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources Appendices address early modern supernatural art and artists who depicted the dark side as well as important historical individuals

Witchcraft violence is a feature of many contemporary African societies. In Ghana, belief in witchcraft and the malignant activities of putative witches is prevalent. Purported witches are blamed for all manner of adversities including inexplicable illnesses and untimely deaths. As in other historical periods and other societies, in contemporary Ghana, alleged witches are typically female, elderly, poor, and marginalized. Childhood socialization in homes and schools, exposure to mass media, and other institutional mechanisms ensure that witchcraft beliefs are transmitted across generations and entrenched over time. This book provides a detailed account of Ghanaian witchcraft beliefs and practices and their role in fueling violent attacks on alleged witches by aggrieved individuals and vigilante groups.

Increasingly, contemporary scholarship reveals the strong connection between Victorian women and the world of the nineteenth-century supernatural. Women were intrinsically bound to the occult and the esoteric from mediums who materialised spirits to the epiphanic experiences of the New Woman, from theosophy to telepathy. This volume addresses the various ways in which Victorian women expressed themselves and were constructed by the occult through a broad range of texts. By examining the roles of women as automatic writing mediums, spiritualists, authors, editors, theosophists, socialists and how they interpreted the occult in their life and work, the contributors in this edition return to sensation novels, ghost stories, autobiographies, s?ances and fashionable magazines to access the visible and invisible worlds of Victorian life. The variety of texts analysed by the authors in this collection demonstrates the many interpretations of the occult in nineteenth-century culture and the ways that women used supernatural imagery and language to draw attention to issues that bore immediate implications on their own lives. Either by catering for the fad of ghost stories or by giving public trance speeches women harnessed the metaphorical and financial forces of the supernatural. As the articles in this book demonstrate the occult was after all a female affair. This book was published as a special issue of Women's Writing.

The paranormal has gone mainstream.Beliefs are on the rise, with almost half of the British population, and two thirds of Americans, claiming to believe in extra sensory perceptions and hauntings. Psychic magazines like Spirit and Destiny, television shows such as Fringe, Ghost Whisperer and Most Haunted, ghost-cams and e-poltergeists, bestselling books on mind, body and spirit, and magicians like Derren Brown have moved from the outer limits to the centre of popular culture, turning paranormal beliefs and scepticism into revenue streams. Paranormal Media offers a unique, timely exploration of the extraordinary, unexplained and supernatural in popular culture, looking in unusual places in order to understand this phenomenon. Early spirit forms such as magic lantern shows or the spirit photograph are re-imagined as a search for extraordinary experiences in reality TV, ghost tourism, and live shows. Through a popular cultural ethnography, and critical analysis in social and cultural theory, this ground-breaking book by Annette Hill presents an original and rigorous examination of people's experiences of spirits and magic. In popular culture, people are players in an orchestral movement about what happens to us when we die. In a very real sense the audience is the show. This book is the story of audiences and their participation in a show about matters of life and death. Paranormal Media will be a highly interesting read for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as academics, on a wide range of television, media, cultural studies, and sociology courses.

For over a decade the cult of La Santa Muerte has grown rapidly in Mexico and the United States. Thousands of people--ranging from drug runners and mothers to cabdrivers, soldiers, police, and prison inmates--invoke the protection of La Santa Muerte. Devotees seek her protection through practicing popular vows, attending public rosaries and masses at street altars, and constructing and maintaining home altars. This book examines La Santa Muerte's role in people's daily lives and explores how popular religious practices of worship and devotion developed around a figure often associated with illicit activities. She represents life with the possibility of respite but without ultimate redemption, and she speaks to the complexities of lives lived at the fringes of violence, insecurity, impunity, and economic hardship. The essays collected here move beyond the visually arresting sight of La Santa Muerte as a tattoo or figurine, suggesting that she represents a major movement in Mexico.

The paranormal has gone mainstream.Beliefs are on the rise, with almost half of the British population, and two thirds of Americans, claiming to believe in extra sensory perceptions and hauntings. Psychic magazines like Spirit and Destiny, television shows such as Fringe, Ghost Whisperer and Most Haunted, ghost-cams and e-poltergeists, bestselling books on mind, body and spirit, and magicians like Derren Brown have moved from the outer limits to the centre of popular culture, turning paranormal beliefs and scepticism into revenue streams. Paranormal Media offers a unique, timely exploration of the extraordinary, unexplained and supernatural in popular culture, looking in unusual places in order to understand this phenomenon. Early spirit forms such as magic lantern shows or the spirit photograph are re-imagined as a search for extraordinary experiences in reality TV, ghost tourism, and live shows. Through a popular cultural ethnography, and critical analysis in social and cultural theory, this ground-breaking book by Annette Hill presents an original and rigorous examination of people's experiences of spirits and magic. In popular culture, people are players in an orchestral movement about what happens to us when we die. In a very real sense the audience is the show. This book is the story of audiences and their participation in a show about matters of life and death. Paranormal Media will be a highly interesting read for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as academics, on a wide range of television, media, cultural studies, and sociology courses.

This book rediscovers a spiritual way of preparing the actor towards experiencing that ineffable artistic creativity defined by Konstantin Stanislavski as the creative state. Filtered through the lens of his unaddressed Christian Orthodox background, as well as his yogic or Hindu interest, the practical work followed the odyssey of the artist, from being oneself towards becoming the character, being structured in three major horizontal stages and developed on another three vertical, interconnected levels. Throughout the book, Gabriela Curpan aims to question both the cartesian approach to acting and the realist-psychological line, generally viewed as the only features of Stanislavski's work. This book will be of great interest to theatre and performance academics as well as practitioners in the fields of acting and directing.

Pseudoscience and Extraordinary Claims of the Paranormal: A Critical Thinker's Toolkit provides readers with a variety of "reality-checking" tools to analyze extraordinary claims and to determine their validity. Integrates simple yet powerful evaluative tools used by both paranormal believers and skeptics alike Introduces innovations such as a continuum for ranking paranormal claims and evaluating their implications Includes an innovative "Critical Thinker's Toolkit," a systematic approach for performing reality checks on paranormal claims related to astrology, psychics, spiritualism, parapsychology, dream telepathy , mind-over-matter, prayer, life after death, creationism, and more Explores the five alternative hypotheses to consider when confronting a paranormal claim Reality Check boxes, integrated into the text, invite students to engage in further discussion and examination of claims Written in a lively, engaging style for students and general readers alike Ancillaries: Testbank and PowerPoint slides available at www.wiley.com/go/pseudoscience

The first English-language survey of ancient Greek divinatory methods, "Ancient Greek Divination" offers a broad yet detailed treatment of the earliest attempts by ancient Greeks to seek the counsel of the gods.
Offers in-depth discussions of oracles, wandering diviners, do-it-yourself methods of foretelling the future, magical divinatory techniques, and much more
Illustrates how the study of divination illuminates the mentalities of ancient Greek religions and societies

Originally published in Brazil as O Diabo e a Terra de Santa Cruz, this translation from the Portuguese analyzes the nature of popular religion and the ways it was transferred to the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Using richly detailed transcripts from Inquisition trials, Mello e Souza reconstructs how Iberian, indigenous, and African beliefs fused to create a syncretic and magical religious culture in Brazil.

Focusing on sorcery, the author argues that European traditions of witchcraft combined with practices of Indians and African slaves to form a uniquely Brazilian set of beliefs that became central to the lives of the people in the colony. Her work shows how the Inquisition reinforced the view held in Europe (particularly Portugal) that the colony was a purgatory where those who had sinned were exiled, a place where the Devil had a wide range of opportunities. Her focus on the three centuries of the colonial period, the multiple regions in Brazil, and the Indian, African, and Portuguese traditions of magic, witchcraft, and healing, make the book comprehensive in scope.

Stuart Schwartz of Yale University says, "It is arguably the best book of this genre about Latin America...all in all, a wonderful book." Alida Metcalf of Trinity University, San Antonio, says, "This book is a major contribution to the field of Brazilian history...the first serious study of popular religion in colonial Brazil...Mello e Souza is a wonderful writer."

In the living room of a London flat, a man stands naked and blindfolded. His wrists are bound together behind his back with red cord, which is looped round his neck and holds his arms up to make a triangle. A white cord is tied round his right ankle. What do witches do? What is it like to be a witch? Experience the process through the eyes of Stewart Farrar, author, journalist and witch, as he describes in detail in this new paperback edition for 2021 the activities and practices of modern-day witches. Principles of healing and clairvoyance as well as rituals, invocations and initial rites are covered in depth as Farrar accompanies the reader into the personal life of his own coven.

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.

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

How did the witch become wicked? This is the central question of Crafting the Witch, which documents and analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures that occurred in Arthurian romance as it developed from its earliest continental manifestations in the twelfth century to its flowering in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England. In particular, while wizard-figures remained repositories of privileged knowledge throughout these periods, representations of witches mitigated cultural anxieties prompted by nascent capitalist economics through a rigid circumscription of femininity within the domain of the maternal. Though there are innumerable studies of witchcraft, few explore the development of the witch-figure within a continuing literary tradition that spans both the medieval and early modern periods, a process which offers a unique glimpse into the history of this powerful figure. Arthurian texts serve as a particularly useful case study for mapping the intersection of medieval and early modern discourses of literature, religion, science, and law which formed the notorious and familiar wicked witch. The witch still functions as a warning to women who reject normative conventions of ideal femininity, reminding us that while opportunity may knock, wickedness taints those who try to answer.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is an analysis of witchcraft and witch hunting as they appeared in southwestern Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Starting from a short analysis of some basic problems in the interpretation of European witchcraft, it proceeds to a study of the shifting denominational views regarding witches and the growth of Catholic orthodoxy. That theoretical vantage yields insight into the patterns in time, space, and confession that characterized all witch hunts in the German Southwest. There follows a narrative analysis of the largest witch hunts and the general crisis of confidence they produced. Analysis is complemented by a summary of what is known about the people accused of witchcraft, as well as an examination of the popular suspicion directed toward old women at the start of most panics and the breakdown of this stereotype as the panics progressed.

The Church of Satan was founded by Anton LaVey on April 30, 1966. In his hands, Satan became a provocative symbol for indulgence, vital existence, natural wisdom and the human being's true animal nature. At present, religious Satanism exists primarily as a decentralized subculture with a strong internet presence within a larger Satanic milieu in Western culture. Though most are inspired by LaVey, the majority of contemporary Satanists are not members of the Church of Satan. The various expressions of modern Satanism all navigate in today's detraditionalized religious market through the creative appropriation of popular culture, philosophy, literature and religion. The concrete solutions are varied; but they all understand the power of transgression allying oneself with a most powerful symbol of resistance, namely Satan. Thus, contemporary religious Satanism could be understood as a complex negotiation of atheism, secularism, esotericism and self: A "self-religion" in the modern age. Despite the fascinating nature of religious Satanism, it has attracted little scholarship until relatively recently. This book brings together a group of international scholars to produce the first serious book-length study of religious Satanism, presenting a collection that will have wide appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike. The first part contains broader studies of influential groups and important aspects of the Satanic milieu, especially regarding historical developments, the construction of tradition and issues of legitimacy. The second part narrows the view to regional variations, especially with studies on Northern and Eastern Europe. The third part consists of primary documents selected for their representational and informational value.

Personifications of evil in the form of demons, devils, spirits, vampires, and other malign entities can be found across the popular cultural spectrum. One only has to peruse the shelves of music and book stores or view the content of some of the most successful films and television series to discover evidence for the phenomenal popular fascination with the demonic other. However, rather surprisingly, this is not an area in which much research has been done. The aim of this volume is to examine the demonic foil within popular culture. Moreover, it will bring together an international team of some of most important and creative scholars in the areas of Biblical Studies, Religious Studies, and Christian Theology currently exploring the religious significance of popular culture.

Over half a century after the defeat of the Third Reich, the complexities of Nazi ideology are still being unravelled. This text is a serious attempt to identify these ideological origins. It demonstrates the way in which Nazism was influenced by powerful occult and millenarian sects that thrived in Germany and Austria at the turn of the century. Their ideas and symbols filtered through to nationalist-racist groups associated with the infant Nazi party and their fantasies were played out with terrifying consequences in the Third Reich: Auschwitz, Sobibor and Treblinka are the hellish museums of the Nazi apocalypse. This bizarre and fascinating story contains lessons we cannot afford to ignore.