|
Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
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 book gives the beginner and experienced practitioner alike a
modern, 21st century view into the powerful and often misunderstood
magical current called 'Chaos Magick'. Written in a clear and
easily accessible style it examines the theory behind many
techniques used in magical, artistic, religious and scientific
systems of thought; then links and applies them towards desired
goals. Separated into two volumes the book can be used by the
reader as a workbook with rituals, techniques and exercises to be
followed, as a window into contemporary magical thought at the turn
of the century or simply as a rollercoaster of a good read! However
you choose to use it, this book will leave you feeling positive,
inspired and ready to apply any of the methods presented to your
own life.
This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of
witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the
best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the
North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as
alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist. It provides
hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal
documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully
comprehensible, as well as full texts of the pamphlet News from
Scotland and James' Demonology, all in a readable, modernised,
scholarly form. Full introductory sections and supporting notes
provide information about the contexts needed to understand the
texts: court politics, social history and culture, religious
changes, law and the workings of the court, and the history of
witchcraft prosecutions in Scotland before 1590. The book also
brings to bear on this material current scholarship on the history
of European witchcraft.
Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan (1809-1892) was the wife of the
mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan and mother of the
celebrated ceramicist William De Morgan. In this book, published in
1863, De Morgan, writing as 'CD' - with a preface by her husband
signed as 'AB' - acknowledges that alleged spirit manifestations
have faced much criticism and scepticism, but argues that it was a
little-understood phenomenon that merited further investigation.
She spent a decade on this research, and focused on the role of the
mediums, people who were believed to communicate with the spirit
world. She was aided in this by the arrival of a medium who lived
with the De Morgan family for six years. Her chapters also examine
in depth the process of dying and ideas about the afterlife. A
first-hand account of the nineteenth-century spiritualist world,
this book provides a fascinating glimpse into Britain's changing
religious landscape.
|
Mephistophela
(Paperback)
Catulle Mendes; Translated by Brian Stableford
|
R763
Discovery Miles 7 630
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
Surrealist artist Max Ernst defined collage as the "alchemy of
the visual image." Students of his work have often dismissed this
comment as simply a metaphor for the transformative power of using
found images in a new context. Taking a wholly different
perspective on Ernst and alchemy, however, M. E. Warlick
persuasively demonstrates that the artist had a profound and
abiding interest in alchemical philosophy and often used alchemical
symbolism in works created throughout his career.
A revival of interest in alchemy swept the artistic,
psychoanalytic, historical, and scientific circles of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Warlick sets Ernst's
work squarely within this movement. Looking at both his art (many
of the works she discusses are reproduced in the book) and his
writings, she reveals how thoroughly alchemical philosophy and
symbolism pervade his early Dadaist experiments, his foundational
work in surrealism, and his many collages and paintings of women
and landscapes, whose images exemplify the alchemical fusing of
opposites. This pioneering research adds an essential key to
understanding the multilayered complexity of Ernst's works, as it
affirms his standing as one of Germany's most significant artists
of the twentieth century.
Rosie Strange is back in the latest of the fabulously creepy Essex
Witch Museum Mysteries Secretly Rosie Strange has always thought
herself a little bit more interesting than most people – the
legacy her family has bequeathed her is definitely so, she’s long
believed. But then life takes a peculiar turn when the Strange
legacy turns out not just to be the Essex Witch Museum, but perhaps
some otherworldly gifts that Rosie finds difficult to fathom.
Meanwhile Sam Stone, Rosie’s curator, is oddly distracted as
breadcrumb clues into what happened to his missing younger brother
and other abducted boys from the past are poised to lead him and
Rosie deep into a dark wood where there lurks something far scarier
than Hansel and Gretel’s witch… Praise for the Essex Witch
Museum Mysteries: ‘I gleefully submitted to a tale of witchcraft,
feminism, mysterious strangers, historical atrocities, plucky
heroines and ghastly apparitions – and came away more proud than
ever to be an Essex girl.’ Sarah Perry, author of The
Essex Serpent ‘Confident, down-to-earth Essex girl Rosie is an
appealing character, and there is plenty of spooky fun in this
spirited genre mashup.’ Guardian
The Oxford Handbook of Russian Religious Thought is an
authoritative new reference and interpretive volume detailing the
origins, development, and influence of one of the richest aspects
of Russian cultural and intellectual life - its religious ideas.
After setting the historical background and context, the Handbook
follows the leading figures and movements in modern Russian
religious thought through a period of immense historical upheavals,
including seventy years of officially atheist communist rule and
the growth of an exiled diaspora with, e.g., its journal The Way.
Therefore the shape of Russian religious thought cannot be
separated from long-running debates with nihilism and atheism.
Important thinkers such as Losev and Bakhtin had to guard their
words in an environment of religious persecution, whilst some views
were shaped by prison experiences. Before the Soviet period,
Russian national identity was closely linked with religion -
linkages which again are being forged in the new Russia. Relevant
in this connection are complex relationships with Judaism. In
addition to religious thinkers such as Philaret, Chaadaev,
Khomiakov, Kireevsky, Soloviev, Florensky, Bulgakov, Berdyaev,
Shestov, Frank, Karsavin, and Alexander Men, the Handbook also
looks at the role of religion in aesthetics, music, poetry, art,
film, and the novelists Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Ideas,
institutions, and movements discussed include the Church academies,
Slavophilism and Westernism, theosis, the name-glorifying
(imiaslavie) controversy, the God-seekers and God-builders, Russian
religious idealism and liberalism, and the Neopatristic school.
Occultism is considered, as is the role of tradition and the
influence of Russian religious thought in the West.
|
You may like...
The Valkyries
Paulo Coelho
Paperback
R414
R340
Discovery Miles 3 400
|