A nineteenth century French priest discovers something in his mountain village at the foot of The Pyrenees, which enables him to amass and spend a fortune of millions of pounds. The tale seems to begin with buried treasure and then turns into an unprecedented historical detective story - a modern Grail quest leading back through cryptically coded parchments, secret societies, the Knights Templar, the Cathar heretics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and a dynasty of obscure French kings deposed more than 1,300 years ago. The author's conclusions are persuasive: at the core is not material riches, but a secret - a secret of explosive and controversial proportions, which radiates out from the little Pyrenees village all the way to contemporary politics and the entire edifice of the Christian faith. It involves nothing less than...the Holy Grail.

The most complete summation to date of the New Testament evidence for magical practice by Jesus and the early Christians. The very notion of Jesus being a sorcerer runs so against the grain of the Western cultural myth that even non-Christians are likely to find it far-fetched or even vaguely disturbing. Nevertheless, scholars steadily accumulated evidence for magical practices in the New Testament throughout much of the 20th century. It is that ever expanding body of knowledge that has made this book possible. This book examines the following: The nature of the earliest Christian documents, the defects of their trans-mission, and the evidence for the suppression of descriptions of magical acts. The closely related problem of the New Testament accounts as historical sources. The radically apocalyptic nature of Jesus' message and the expectations of the early church. The failure of the apocalypse to occur and the theological reaction to that failure. The role of magic and mystery religion in early Christianity. A revisiting of the story of the "beloved disciple" and what it may tell us about Jesus and suppression of evidence about his life. Contents: Documentary Evidence / Infancy Narratives / Confrontation / Resurrection as Ghost Story /Apocalyptic Prophet / Apocalypse Postponed, / Magic and Mystery, / Jesus the Magician / Spirit Versus Spirit, / Ecstatic Inner Circle, / Christian Mysteries, / Secret Gospel of Mark, / Beloved Disciple, / On the Use of Boys in Magic, / Apocalypse, Magic, and Christianity, / "Son of David." / Mary Magdalene

Kentucky has a rich legacy of ghostly visitations. Lynwood Montell has harvested dozens of tales of haunted houses and family ghosts from all over the Bluegrass state. Many of the stories were collected from elders by young people and are recounted exactly as they were gathered. Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky includes chilling tales such as that of the Tan Man of Pike County, who trudges invisibly through a house accompanied by the smell of roses, and the famed Gray Lady of Liberty Hall in Frankfort, a houseguest who never left. Montell tells the story of a stormy night, shortly before Henry Clay's death, when the ghost of the statesman's old friend Daniel Boone calls upon him, and then recounts the more modern story of the ghouls that haunt the rehearsal house of the band The Kentucky Headhunters.

Included are accounts of haunted libraries, mansions, bedrooms, log cabins, bathrooms, college campuses, apartments, furniture, hotels, and distilleries, as well as reports of eerie visitations from ghostly grandmothers, husbands, daughters, uncles, cousins, babies, slaves, Civil War soldiers, dogs, sheep, and even wildcats. Almost all of Kentucky's 120 counties are represented. Though the book emphasizes the stories themselves, Montell offers an introduction discussing how local history, local character, and local flavor are communicated across the generations in these colorful stories.

Outline of the processes of cosmic evolution, including detailed exercises for attaining higher conscious states.

Filled with spells, recipes, and crafts, this book helps you discover the magical rhythms of the natural world. Join Anna Franklin, bestselling author of The Hearth Witch s Compendium, as she shares time-honoured recipes and step-by-step instructions for bringing enchantment and joy into your life. You will discover dozens of incantations and spells to help you celebrate the cycles of the seasons, honour the gods and spirits, and release negative energy and anxiety. The world is filled with magic, if we can just slow down and learn how to channel it. The Hearth Witch s Year provides hands-on tips for sabbats, solstices, saints days, and more than 100 other auspicious dates so you can connect with the earth s natural energies and manifest your deepest desires.

Almost two decades after writing his famous The Occult, Colin Wilson re-examined the whole spectrum of the mystical and paranormal, producing a general occult theory that remains as compelling as the evidence of atomic particles. Originally published in 1988, Beyond the Occult contains a huge amount of new material and evidence, which came to light following publication of The Occult. It combines scientific thinking on the nature of physical reality with a wide range of fascinating case studies, from the Swiss dowser who located the body of a missing woman to the lucky American whose dreams foretold the winning horses in multiple races to scores of accounts of mystical experiences of the Divine, of spirit possession and of poltergeists. Part One covers the amazing hidden powers of the human mind: ESP, clairvoyance, psychometry, precognition, psychokinesis, and dowsing. Part Two considers the more mysterious forces for good or evil - poltergeists, spirit possession, and reincarnation - that convinced Colin Wilson of the reality of disembodied spirits. In Beyond the Occult, Colin Wilson puts forward a convincing case that our so-called 'normal' experience may, in fact, be subnormal, and that evolution may have brought us near the edge of a quantum leap into a hugely expanded human consciousness. This new edition includes a foreword by Colin Wilson's biographer, Colin Stanley.

According to the Bible, Eve was the first to heed Satan's advice to eat the forbidden fruit and thus responsible for all of humanity's subsequent miseries. The notion of woman as the Devil's accomplice is prominent throughout Christian history and has been used to legitimize the subordination of wives and daughters. In the nineteenth century, rebellious females performed counter-readings of this misogynist tradition. Lucifer was reconceptualized as a feminist liberator of womankind, and Eve became a heroine. In these reimaginings, Satan is an ally in the struggle against a tyrannical patriarchy supported by God the Father and his male priests. Per Faxneld shows how this Satanic feminism was expressed in a wide variety of nineteenth-century literary texts, autobiographies, pamphlets, newspaper articles, paintings, sculptures, and even artifacts of consumer culture like jewelry. He details how colorful figures like the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, gender-bending Theosophist H. P. Blavatsky, author Aino Kallas, actress Sarah Bernhardt, anti-clerical witch enthusiast Matilda Joslyn Gage, decadent marchioness Luisa Casati, and the Luciferian lesbian poetess Renee Vivien embraced these reimaginings. By exploring the connections between esotericism, literature, art and the political realm, Satanic Feminism sheds new light on neglected aspects of the intellectual history of feminism, Satanism, and revisionary mythmaking.

"Nightshades is the record of one remarkable magician's exploration of the inverse regions of the Tree of Life. Aleister Crowley's Liber 231 provides the map and Kenneth Grant's Nightside of Eden a travelogue. "Liber 231, apparently started life as a text within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as an exercise to develop astral and trance abilities or perhaps in other more elaborate rites. The nightside aspect requires some care and alertness in case of accident. The correct attitude is said to be one of self or ego-less witness. Or maybe it's just one needs Or maybe it's just one needs the use of an all-embracing rather than a limited kind of identity and self-identification?" "The Nightside is always with us. It's so much older than the Dayside. Before the light began to shine, the night was there. Some assume that we are dealing with a simple polarity. On one hand the radiant world of colours and forms, more or less thinkable, reasonable and meaningful. Like the pretty picture of the Tree of Life it has its scenic cites, its hotels, restaurants, shopping opportunities and highways in between. On the other hand the chaotic world of uncertain and incomprehensible mysteries. Both of them connected by the voidness that makes them possible. It looks symmetrical. But when you reach the Nightside it doesn't work like that. The Nightside is not simply a reflection of the dayside with a few confusing and spooky bits thrown in. The Dayside is a tiny island of experience in a huge ocean, the Nightside, full of currents, island chains and continents of the possible and impossible. All and Nothing are present everywhere. Our island is not the opposite of the world-ocean, it is simply a tiny and comprehensible part of it." Jan Fries Nightshades comprises 72 intense drawings prefaced by an explanatory essay detailing the background and genesis of this ultimate magical adventure.

Evil is an intrinsically fascinating topic. In Lucifer, Jeffrey Burton Russell continues his compelling study of the personification of evil in the figure of the Devil. The previous two volumes in this remarkable tertalogy—The Devil and Satan—trace the history of the concept of the devil comparatively as it emerged in diverse cultures and followed its development in Western thought from the ancient Hebrew religion through the first five centuries of the Christian era.The present volume charts the evolution of the concept of the devil from the fifth century through the fifteenth. Drawing on an impressive array of sources from popular religion, art, literature, and drama, as well as from scholastic philosophy, mystical theology, homiletics, and hagiography, Russell provides a detailed treatment of Christian diabology in the Middle Ages. Although he focuses primarily on Western Christian thought, Russell also includes, for the sake of comparison, material on the concept of the devil in Greek Orthodoxy during the Byzantine period as well as in Muslim thought.Russell recounts how the Middle Ages saw a refinement in detail rather than a radical alteration of diabological theory. He shows that the medieval concept of the devil, fundamentally unchanged over the course of the centuries, eventually gave rise to the unyielding beliefs that resulted in the horrifying cruelties of the witch-hunting craze in the 1500s and 1600s. This major contribution to the history of the Middle Ages and to the history of religion will enlighten scholars and students alike and will appeal to anyone concerned with the problem of evil in our world.

Witchcraft, Witch-hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England constitutes a wide-ranging and original overview of the place of witchcraft and witch-hunting in the broader culture of early modern England. Based on a mass of new evidence extracted from a range of archives, both local and national, it seeks to relate the rise and decline of belief in witchcraft, alongside the legal prosecution of witches, to the wider political culture of the period. Building on the seminal work of scholars such as Stuart Clark, Ian Bostridge, and Jonathan Barry, Peter Elmer demonstrates how learned discussion of witchcraft, as well as the trials of those suspected of the crime, were shaped by religious and political imperatives in the period from the passage of the witchcraft statute of 1563 to the repeal of the various laws on witchcraft. In the process, Elmer sheds new light upon various issues relating to the role of witchcraft in English society, including the problematic relationship between puritanism and witchcraft as well as the process of decline.

Witchcraft and a Life in the New South Africa reconstructs the biography of an ordinary South African, Jimmy Mohale. Born in 1964, Jimmy came of age in rural South Africa during apartheid, then studied at university and worked as a teacher during the anti-apartheid struggle. In 2005, Jimmy died from an undiagnosed sickness, probably related to AIDS. Jimmy gradually came to see the unanticipated misfortune he experienced as a result of his father's witchcraft and sought remedies from diviners rather than from biomedical doctors. This study casts new light on scholarly understandings of the connections between South African politics, witchcraft and the AIDS pandemic.

The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, now in its fourth edition, is the perfect resource for both students and scholars of the witch-hunts written by one of the leading names in the field. 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. This new edition includes the most recent research on children, gender, male witches and demonic possession as well as broadening the exploration of the geographical distribution of witch prosecutions to include recent work on regions, cities and kingdoms enabling students to identify comparisons between countries. Now fully integrated with Brian Levack's The Witchcraft Sourcebook, there are links to the sourcebook throughout the text, pointing students towards key primary sources to aid them in their studies. The two books are drawn together on a new companion website with supplementary materials for those wishing to advance their studies, including an extensive guide to further reading, a chronology of the history of witchcraft and an interactive map to show the geographical spread of witch-hunts and witch trials across Europe and North America. A long-standing favourite with students and lecturers alike, this new edition of The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe will be essential reading for those embarking on or looking to advance their studies of the history of witchcraft

Provides a new insight into Crowley's life as a magician and literary figure. identifies and gives an analysis of Crowley's poetry. places him to the context of Edwardian Britain's addiction to the cult of pan. Paul Newman is a well established author and expert on the occult. he is the editor of Abraxus magazine.

Women Who Live Evil Lives documents the lives and practices of mixed-race, Black, Spanish, and Maya women sorcerers, spell-casters, magical healers, and midwives in the social relations of power in Santiago de Guatemala, the capital of colonial Central America. Men and women from all sectors of society consulted them to intervene in sexual and familial relations and disputes between neighbors and rival shop owners; to counter abusive colonial officials, employers, or husbands; and in cases of inexplicable illness.

Applying historical, anthropological, and gender studies analysis, Martha Few argues that women's local practices of magic, curing, and religion revealed opportunities for women's cultural authority and power in colonial Guatemala. Few draws on archival research conducted in Guatemala, Mexico, and Spain to shed new light on women's critical public roles in Santiago, the cultural and social connections between the capital city and the countryside, and the gender dynamics of power in the ethnic and cultural contestation of Spanish colonial rule in daily life.

For thousands of years, spiritual questions have haunted the hearts and minds of humankind. Do higher powers exist, and if so, what is our relationship to them? And how else might we interpret seemingly miraculous events such as faith healing, out-of-body experiences, and extrasensory perceptions? Wondrous Healing traces the human capacity for religious belief to the success of ancient healing rituals, such as chanting to calm women in childbirth or rhythmic dancing to reduce trauma from wounds. Those who accepted these hypnotic suggestions were far more likely to receive positive benefits from the "healing." The apparent success of such rituals, McClenon argues, led to the development of shamanism, humankind's first religion. Controversial and daring, McClenon's theory is based on his extensive research and firsthand observation of modern shamanistic performances across Asia and North America. His evidence supports the argument that evolutionary processes developed a biological basis for religion. McClenon's historical and anthropological analyses of these issues explore the relationship between science, society, and spirituality.