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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
In a culture where the supernatural possessed an immediacy now
strange to us, magic was of great importance both in the literary
and mythic tradition and in ritual practice. Recently, ancient
magic has hit a high in popularity, both as an area of scholarly
inquiry and as one of general, popular interest. In Magic,
Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds Daniel Ogden
presents three hundred texts in new translations, along with brief
but explicit commentaries. This is the first book in the field to
unite extensive selections from both literary and documentary
sources. Alongside descriptions of sorcerers, witches, and ghosts
in the works of ancient writers, it reproduces curse tablets,
spells from ancient magical recipe books, and inscriptions from
magical amulets. Each translation is followed by a commentary that
puts it in context within ancient culture and connects the passage
to related passages in this volume. Authors include the well known
(Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Pliny) and the
less familiar, and extend across the whole of Greco-Roman
antiquity.
The second edition includes a new preface, an updated
bibliography, and new source-passages, such as the earliest use of
the word "mage" in Greek" (fr. Aeschylus' Persians ), a werewolf
tale (Aesop's Fables), and excerpts from the most systematic
account of ancient legislation against magic (Theodosian Code).
"Evil—the infliction of pain upon sentient beings—is one of the
most long-standing and serious problems of human existence.
Frequently and in many cultures evil has been personified. This
book is a history of the personification of evil, which for the
sake of clarity I have called 'the Devil.' I am a medievalist, but
when I began some years ago to work with the concept of the Devil
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, I came to see that I could
not understand the medieval Devil except in terms of its historical
antecedents. More important, I realized that I could not understand
the Devil at all except in the context of the problem of evil. I
needed to face the issue of evil squarely, both as a historian and
as a human being."—from the Preface This lively and learned book
traces the history of the concept of evil from its beginnings in
ancient times to the period of the New Testament. A remarkable work
of synthesis, it draws upon a vast number of sources in addressing
a major historical and philosophical problem over a broad span of
time and in a number of diverse cultures, East and West. Jeffrey
Burton Russell probes the roots of the idea of evil, treats the
development of the idea in the Ancient Near East, and then examines
the concept of the Devil as it was formed in late Judaism and early
Christianity. Generously illustrated with fifty black-and-white
photographs, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers, from
specialists in religion, theology, sociology, history, psychology,
anthropology, and philosophy to anyone with an interest in the
demonic, the supernatural, and the question of good and evil.
A practical guide to the Anglo-Saxon Futhark and how runes were
used in Old England In the early Anglo-Saxon period, the region of
Great Britain known as Northumbria was a kingdom in its own right.
These lands, in what is now northern England and southeast
Scotland, were the targets of the first Viking raids on Britain.
This violent influx, followed by the establishment of trade routes
with the Norse, brought the runes to the region, where they
intermingled with local magical traditions and legends, resulting
in the development of a practical runic wisdom entirely unique to
Northumbria. In this guide to the Wyrdstaves, or runic practices,
of Old Northumbria, Nigel Pennick examines the thirty-three runes
of the Anglo-Saxon Futhark and how they were used in Old England
for weaving the web of Wyrd. Sharing runic lore and legends from
the area, he explains how the Northumbrian runes are unique because
they contain elements from all the cultures of the region,
including the Picts, Britons, Romans, Angles, Scots, and Norse. He
illustrates how each rune in this tradition is a storehouse of
ancient knowledge, detailing the meanings, historical uses,
symbolism, and related tree and plant spirits for each of the
thirty-three runes. The author describes the Northumbrian use of
runes in magic and encryption and explores geomancy divination
practices, the role of sacred numbers, and the power of the eight
airts, or directions. He also shows how the Northumbrian runes have
a close relationship with Ogam, the tree alphabet of the ancient
Celts. Providing a magical history of Northumbria, as well as a
look at the otherworldly beings who call these lands home,
including boggarts, brownies, and dragons, Pennick explains how
traditional spirituality is intimately tied to the landscape and
the cycle of the seasons. He reveals how the runic tradition is
still vibrantly alive in this area and ready for us to reawaken to
it.
'The fables of witchcraft have taken so fast hold and deepe root in
the heart of man, that few or none can indure with patience the
hand and correction of God.' Reginald Scot, whose words these are,
published his remarkable book The Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584.
England's first major work of demonology, witchcraft and the
occult, the book was unashamedly sceptical. It is said that so
outraged was King James VI of Scotland by the disbelieving nature
of Scot's work that, on James' accession to the English throne in
1603, he ordered every copy to be destroyed. Yet for all the anger
directed at Scot, and his scorn for Stuart orthodoxy about wiches,
the paradox was that his detailed account of sorcery helped
strengthen the hold of European demonologies in England while also
inspiring the distinctively English tradition of secular magic and
conjuring. Scot's influence was considerable. Shakespeare drew on
The Discoverie of Witchcraft for his depiction of the witches in
Macbeth. So too did fellow-playwright Thomas Middleton in his
tragi-comedy The Witch. Recognising Scot's central importance in
the history of ideas, Philip Almond places his subject in the
febrile context of his age, examines the chief themes of his work
and shows why his writings became a sourcebook for aspiring
magicians and conjurors for several hundred years. England's First
Demonologist makes a notable contribution to a fascinating but
unjustly neglected topic in the study of Early Modern England and
European intellectual history.
This book is based on the author's ten-year research into the
politics of belief surrounding paranormal ideas. Through a detailed
examination of the participants, issues, strategies and underlying
factors that constitute the contemporary paranormal debate, the
book explores the struggle surrounding the status of paranormal
phenomena. It examines, on the one hand, how the principal arbiters
of religious and scientific truths - the Church and the academic
establishment - reject paranormal ideas as 'occult' and
'pseudo-scientific', and how, on the other hand, paranormal
enthusiasts attempt to resist such labels and instead establish
paranormal ideas as legitimate knowledge. The author contends that
the paranormal debate is the outcome of wider discursive processes
that are concerned with the construction and negotiation of truth
in Western society generally. More specifically, the debate is seen
as an aspect of the "boundary work" that defines the contours of
religious and scientific orthodoxy. The book paves new ground in
understanding the nature of belief relating to a topic that has
long held fascination to academics and lay people alike -
paranormal ideas. It develops a discursive framework for
understanding a contemporary social phenomenon, hence placing the
study at the cutting edge of ethnographic development that seeks to
integrate discursive perspectives with empirical accounts of
sociological phenomena. Most importantly, the study is intended to
contribute to the debate surrounding communicative action, by
outlining a discursive perspective on the negotiation of ideational
differences that goes beyond the incommensurability theories that
have dominated the sociology of communication and knowledge.
The Empty Seashell explores what it is like to live in a world
where cannibal witches are undeniably real, yet too ephemeral and
contradictory to be an object of belief. In a book based on more
than three years of fieldwork between 1991 and 2011, Nils Bubandt
argues that cannibal witches for people in the coastal, and
predominantly Christian, community of Buli in the Indonesian
province of North Maluku are both corporeally real and
fundamentally unknowable.
Witches (known as gua in the Buli language or as suanggi in
regional Malay) appear to be ordinary humans but sometimes,
especially at night, they take other forms and attack people in
order to kill them and eat their livers. They are seemingly
everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The reality of gua,
therefore, can never be pinned down. The title of the book comes
from the empty nautilus shells that regularly drift ashore around
Buli village. Convention has it that if you find a live nautilus,
you are a gua. Like the empty shells, witchcraft always seems to
recede from experience.
Bubandt begins the book by recounting his own confusion and
frustration in coming to terms with the contradictory and
inaccessible nature of witchcraft realities in Buli. A detailed
ethnography of the encompassing inaccessibility of Buli witchcraft
leads him to the conclusion that much of the anthropological
literature, which views witchcraft as a system of beliefs with
genuine explanatory power, is off the mark. Witchcraft for the Buli
people doesn't explain anything. In fact, it does the opposite: it
confuses, obfuscates, and frustrates. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida
s concept of aporia an interminable experience that remains
continuously in doubt Bubandt suggests the need to take seriously
people s experiential and epistemological doubts about witchcraft,
and outlines, by extension, a novel way of thinking about
witchcraft and its relation to modernity."
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