|
|
Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
Witchcraft's legacy is full of myth, magick and ancient archetypes.
In the 21st century, these may feel more distant than ever, but in
uncertain times, harnessing the energy of the maiden, the mother,
and the crone are more empowering than ever. A guide to all things
magick, Bewitched snakes through the types of witches, deities,
astrological influences, and how to harness the powers within.
Simmering with spells and beautiful illustration, this book is a
visual guide through the world of witchcraft. Accessible and
lavish, this book is the perfect artefact for any altar (with
guidance on how to build one).
First published in 1984. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
First published in 1986. Independent Spirits is about the
intellectual world of the humbly-born in late nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century Britain, focussing on plebeian, or working- and
lower middle-class spiritualists. This book is an important study
which throws light on the idealism and search for knowledge that
were so central in plebeian circles and in certain, very important
parts of the labour movement during the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. This title will be of interest to students of
history.
The fourth edition of The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe,
written by one of the leading names in the field, is the ideal
resource for both students and scholars of the witch-hunts.For
those starting out in their studies of witch-beliefs and witchcraft
trials, Brian Levack provides a concise survey of this complex and
fascinating topic, while for more seasoned scholars the scholarship
is brought right up to date. The Witchcraft Sourcebook, now in its
second edition, is a fascinating collection of documents
illustrating the development of ideas about witchcraft from ancient
times to the eighteenth century along with commentary and
background by Brian Levack. Including trial records, demonological
treatises and sermons, literary texts, narratives of demonic
possession and artistic depiction of witches, the documents show
how notions of witchcraft have changed over time, and consider the
connection between gender and witchcraft and the nature of the
witch's perceived power. Available to purchase as a bundle,
together these two books make the perfect collection for students
and lecturers of witchcraft and witch-hunts in the early modern
period.
A history of the role that the occult has played in the formation
of modern science and medicine, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment has
had a tremendous impact on our understanding of the western
esoteric tradition. Beautifully illustrated, it remains one of
those rare works of scholarship which the general reader simply
cannot afford to ignore.
From Nikki Van De Car, the best-selling author of Practical Magic,
comes a fully-illustrated, enchanted introduction to the witch's
world of modern potions, including tinctures, infusions, herbal
DIYs, and magically-infused craft cocktails. Witchcraft meets
cocktail craft in Potions, a contemporary introduction to the world
of infusions, tisanes and herbal teas, homemade tinctures, and
expertly mixed alcoholic beverages, all imbued with a healthy dose
of everyday enchantment. As with all magic, intention is what makes
a potion a potion, and author Nikki Van De Car uses her signature
blend of holistic remedies, DIY projects, and accessible magical
rituals to guide readers through the wide world of potion-making.
From homebrewed kombuchas to crystal-charged cocktails, this fully
illustrated guide is an essential addition to the arsenal of
kitchen witches and enchanted mixologists. Organized around a
series of intentions -- including Creativity, Calm, Love, Harmony,
and Protection -- the chapters in this book each include teas,
cocktails, kombuchas, non-alcoholic beverages, and DIY components
like bitters, shrubs, and infusions, that enhance the reader's
spellwork. Every recipe will involve a brief ritual of some kind,
whether setting an intention, or using a crystal, sun magic, or
moon magic, and each recipe will involve some form of herbal magic.
Each cocktail is accompanied by a vibrant, full-color illustration,
and each chapter includes longer mystical rituals to support the
reader's overall magical practice.
Everywhere, the witches are rising. Are you ready to answer the
call and embrace your own inner witch? In this book, Indigenous
seer, healer, and spirit communicator Juliet Diaz guides you on a
journey to connect with the Magick within you. She explains how to
cast off what doesn't serve you, unleash your authentic self, and
become an embodiment of your truth. You'll also learn the skills
and techniques you need to build your own Magickal craft. Within
these enchanted pages you'll discover how to: - Connect with the
power of your inner witch - Create spells, potions, and rituals for
love, protection, healing, manifestation and more - Amplify your
energy by working with a Book of Shadows - Create an altar and
decorate it according to the seasons - Work with the Moon and the
Seasons of the Witch - Connect with your ancestors to receive their
wisdom Filled with Magick, inspiration, and love, Witchery is your
guide and companion on a sacred journey to true self-empowerment.
Includes the History of the Tablet, Followed By Multiple
Translations, Textual Remarks, Commentaries, Appendix, and
Bibliography -
A fifteen-year-old girl who claimed regular communications with the
spirits of her dead friends and relatives was the subject of the
very first published work by the now legendary psychoanalyst C.G.
Jung. Collected here, alongside many of his later writings on such
subjects as life after death, telepathy and ghosts, it was to mark
just the start of a professional and personal interest-even
obsession-that was to last throughout Jung's lifetime. Written by
one of the greatest and most controversial thinkers of the
twentieth century, Psychology and the Occult represents a
fascinating trawl through both the dark, unknown world of the
occult and the equally murky depths of the human psyche. Carl
Gustav Jung (1875-1961). Founded the analytical school of
psychology and developed a radical new theory of the unconscious
that has made him one of the most familiar names in
twentieth-century thought.
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, seances
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.
Exorcism is more widespread in contemporary England than perhaps at
any other time in history. The Anglican Church is by no means the
main provider of this ritual, which predominantly takes place in
independent churches. However, every one of the Church of England
dioceses in the country now designates at least one member of its
clergy to advise on casting out demons. Such `deliverance ministry'
is in theory made available to all those parishioners who desire
it. Yet, as Francis Young reveals, present-day exorcism in
Anglicanism is an unlikely historical anomaly. It sprang into
existence in the 1970s within a church that earlier on had spent
whole centuries condemning the expulsion of evil spirits as either
Catholic superstition or evangelical excess. This book for the
first time tells the full story of the Anglican Church's approach
to demonology and the exorcist's ritual since the Reformation in
the sixteenth century. The author explains how and why how such a
remarkable transformation in the Church's attitude to the rite of
exorcism took place, while also setting his subject against the
canvas of the wider history of ideas.
This book will interest clinicians who have wondered what
professional practice would be like in the corporate setting and
want to learn more about the psychological and organizational
dynamics that 'drive' executive behavior. Based on the premise that
leadership effectiveness is a function of both leader productivity
and health, this book reviews the latest information and research
data and offers case studies to illustrate specific strategies for
maximizing executive health. Len Sperry has been consulting to
executives and organizations for 30 years and has written numerous
articles and several books on executives and workplace dynamics.
This book offers a new perspective on a long-debated issue: the
role of the occult in surrealism, in particular under the
leadership of French writer Andre Breton. Based on thorough source
analysis, this study details how our understanding of occultism and
esotericism, as well as of their function in Bretonian surrealism,
changed significantly over time from the early 1920s to the late
1950s.
Witchcraft: The Basics is an accessible and engaging introduction to the scholarly study of witchcraft, exploring the phenomenon of witchcraft from its earliest definitions in the Middle Ages through to its resonances in the modern world. Through the use of two case studies, this book delves into the emergence of the witch as a harmful figure within western thought and traces the representation of witchcraft throughout history, analysing the roles of culture, religion, politics, gender and more in the evolution and enduring role of witchcraft.
Key topics discussed within the book include:
The role of language in creating and shaping the concept of witchcraft
The laws and treatises written against witchcraft
The representation of witchcraft in early modern literature
The representation of witchcraft in recent literature, TV and film
Scholarly approaches to witchcraft through time
The relationship between witchcraft and paganism
With an extensive further reading list, summaries and questions to consider at the end of each chapter, Witchcraft: The Basics is an ideal introduction for anyone wishing to learn more about this controversial issue in human culture, which is still very much alive today.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One The early modern context: a case study of early modern Britain
Chapter Two The seventeenth and early eighteenth century context: America as the major case study
Chapter Three Witchcraft in early modern literature: "the witchcraft renaissance"
Chapter Four Witchcraft Studies
Chapter Five Witchcraft Today: Religious Redefinitions
Chapter Six Reinventing the good witch
Further Study Reading List
Index
/
Of interest to interdisciplinary historians as well as those in
various other fields, this book presents the first publication of
14 poems ranging from 12 to 3,000 lines. The poems are printed in
the chronological order of their composition, from Elizabethan to
Augustan times, but nine of them are verse translations of works
from earlier periods in the development of alchemy. Each has a
textual and historical introduction and explanatory note by the
Editor. Renaissance alchemy is acknowledged as an important element
in the histories of early modern science and medicine. This book
emphasises these poems expression of and shaping influence on
religious, social and political values and institutions of their
time too and is a useful reference work with much to offer for
cultural studies and literary studies as well as science and
history.
Spanning from the inauguration of James I in 1603 to the execution
of Charles I in 1649, the Stuart court saw the emergence of a full
expression of Renaissance culture in Britain. Hart examines the
influence of magic on Renaissance art and how in its role as an
element of royal propaganda, art was used to represent the power of
the monarch and reflect his apparent command over the hidden forces
of nature. Court artists sought to represent magic as an expression
of the Stuart Kings' divine right, and later of their policy of
Absolutism, through masques, sermons, heraldry, gardens,
architecture and processions. As such, magic of the kind enshrined
in Neoplatonic philosophy and the court art which expressed its
cosmology, played their part in the complex causes of the Civil War
and the destruction of the Stuart image which followed in its wake.
Despite the much vaunted 'end of religion' and the growth of
secularism, people are engaging like never before in their own
'spiritualities of life'. Across the West, paranormal belief is on
the rise. The Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures
brings together the work of international scholars across the
social sciences and humanities to question how and why people are
seeking meaning in the realm of the paranormal, a heretofore
subjugated knowledge. With contributions from the UK and other
European countries, the USA, Australia and Canada, this
ground-breaking book attends to the paranormal as a position from
which to critique dominant forms of knowledge production and
spirituality. A rich exploration of everyday life practices,
textual engagements and discourses relating to the paranormal, as
well as the mediation, technology and art of paranormal activity,
this book explores themes such as subcultures and mainstreaming, as
well as epistemological, methodological, and phenomenological
questions, and the role of the paranormal in social change. The
Ashgate Research Companion to Paranormal Cultures constitutes an
essential resource for those interested in the academic study of
cultural engagements with paranormality; it will appeal to scholars
of cultural and media studies, popular culture, sociology, cultural
geography, literature, film and music.
H.C. Erik Midelfort has carved out a reputation for innovative work
on early modern German history, with a particular focus on the
social history of ideas and religion. This collection pulls
together some of his best work on the related subjects of
witchcraft, the history of madness and psychology, demonology,
exorcism, and the social history of religious change in early
modern Europe. Several of the pieces reprinted here constitute
reviews of recent scholarly literature on their topics, while
others offer sharp departures from conventional wisdom. A critique
of Michel Foucault's view of the history of madness proved both
stimulating but irritating to Foucault's most faithful readers, so
it is reprinted here along with a short retrospective comment by
the author. Another focus of this collection is the social history
of the Holy Roman Empire, where towns, peasants, and noble families
developed different perceptions of the Protestant and Catholic
Reformations and of the options the religious revolutions of the
sixteenth century offered. Finally, this collection also brings
together articles which show how Freudian psychoanalysis and
academic sociology have filtered and interpreted the history of
early modern Germany.
Between the years of 1898 and 1926, Edward Westermarck spent a
total of seven years in Morocco, visiting towns and tribes in
different parts of the country, meeting local people and learning
about their language and culture; his findings are noted in this
two-volume set, first published in 1926. Alongside extensive
reference material, including Westermarck's system of
transliteration and a comprehensive list of the tribes and
districts mentioned in the text, the chapters discuss such areas as
the influences on and relationship between religion and magic in
Morocco, the origins of beliefs and practices, curses and
witchcraft. This is the first volume of two dealing with the same
subject, and will fascinate any student or researcher of
anthropology with an interest in the history of ritual, culture and
religion in Morocco.
"The Gates of the Necronomicon" is another important and invaluable
companion book to the Necro. To properly utilise the magick of the
Necro, an occultist must decipher the deep complex world that the
Mad Arab describes, and for many a reader, the complexity and
nuance are overwhelming. Here Simon gives a detailed and compelling
history of the importance of the constellations, especially the Big
Dipper - the Bear constellation. Ancient cultures from Asia, Africa
and South America all have myths that point to the importance of
the Bear constellation, and Simon convincingly argues that this
universal acknowledgment suggests that this constellation is deeply
rooted in the origin of the human race. Hence the importance of the
location of the Bear constellation in the night sky for the
efficacy of the spells found in the Necro. This book will be an
invaluable resource for practitioners of the occult for years to
come.
|
|