The Grimoire of Arthur Gauntlet is an outstanding example of a seventeenth century London Cunning-man's book of practice. Cunning-folk were practitioners of magic and herbal medicine who dealt with problems in their local communities. Cunning-man Arthur Gauntlet was based in Gray's Inn Lane in London, and his personal working book contains a fascinating diverse mixture of herbal remedies, prayers, magical and biblical charms, with previously unseen angelic conjurations and magic circles, in an eclectic blend of practical magic for health, wealth, love and protection. This unique manuscript demonstrates both the diverse and spiritual nature of such Cunning-folk's books of practice, as well as their magical emphasis on Biblical scripture, particularly the Psalms, and their opposition to witchcraft, found in charms and conjurations. Arthur Gauntlet worked with a female skryer called Sarah Skelhorn, and drew on numerous preceding sources for his craft, including the Arbatel, the Heptameron, Folger Vb.26, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, the Book of Gold, the writings of the German magus Cornelius Agrippa, the astrologer William Bacon and Queen Elizabeth I's court astrologer Dr. John Dee, as well as other London Cunning-folk. In his introduction, the author provides fresh insights into the hidden world of seventeenth century magical London, exploring the web of connections between astrologers, cunning-folk and magicians, playwrights, authors and church figures. These connections are also highlighted by the provenance of the manuscript, which is traced from Arthur Gauntlet through the hands of such notable angel magicians as Elias Ashmole (founder of the world's first public museum, the Ashmolean in Oxford), Baron Somers (the Lord Chancellor), Sir Joseph Jekyll (Master of the Rolls) and Sir Hans Sloane (founder of the British Museum), as well as the astrologer John Humphreys and the cunning-woman Ann Savadge. This is a unique work which draws attention to the often neglected place of women in seventeenth century magic, both as practitioners (such as skryers and Cunning-women), and customers. It also emphasises the vital and influential role played by Cunning-Men and Women in synthesising and transmitting the magical traditions of medieval Britain into the subsequent centuries, as well as their willingness to conjure a wide range of spiritual creatures to achieve results for their clients, including angels, demons, fairies, and the dead.

In this volume, Lawrence Schiffman and Michael Swartz assemble a collection of Jewish incantation texts which were copied in the Middle Ages and preserved in the Cairo Genizah. Many of these texts, now held in Cambridge University Library, are published here for the first time. All the texts are translated and supplemented by detailed philological and historical commentary, tracing the praxis and beliefs of the Jewish magical tradition of Late Antiquity. Their relation to Jewish legal and mystical teachings is also explored. 'A major contribution to this area of inquiry. Fourteen incantation texts are made accessible here. They are framed with all the desired apparatus: clear facsimiles, transcriptions, translations, commentary, substantial bibliography and three indexes. The lengthy introduction, in particular, is valuable, providing a mise au point for future study of Genizah magical texts.' s teven m. wasserstorm, ajs review Lawrence H. Schiffman is the Ethel and Irvin A. Edelman Professor in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, USA. He is a member of the Enoch seminar and of the Advisory Board of The Journal Henoch. Michael D.Swartz is Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Ohio State University, USA.

India and the Occult explores the reception of Indian spirituality among Western occultists through case studies. Rather than focusing on the activities of Theosophical Society, India and the Occult looks at the 'hard-core' occultism, in particular the British 20th century currents associated with Aleister Crowley, Dion Fortune, Kenneth Grant, etc.

Faunalia is a controversial Pagan festival with a reputation for being wild and emotionally intense. It lasts five days, 80 people attend, and the two main rituals run most of the night. In the tantalisingly erotic Baphomet rite, participants encounter a hermaphroditic deity, enter a state of trance and dance naked around a bonfire. In the Underworld rite participants role play their own death, confronting grief and suffering. These rituals are understood as "shadow work" - a Jungian term that refers to practices that creatively engage repressed or hidden aspects of the self. Sex, Death and Witchcraft is a powerful application of relational theory to the study of religion and contemporary culture. It analyses Faunalia's rituals in terms of recent innovations in the sociology of religion and religious studies that focus on relational etiquette, lived religion, embodiment and performance. The sensuous and emotionally intense ritual performances at Faunalia transform both moral orientations and self-understandings. Participants develop an ethical practice that is individualistic, but also relational, and aesthetically mediated. Extensive extracts from interviews describe the rituals in participants' own words. The book combines rich and evocative description of the rituals with careful analysis of the social processes that shape people's experiences at this controversial Pagan festival.

The popular Wiccapedia gets the ultimate companion journal!   A Book of Shadows is a journal that witches keep close at hand for jotting down their spells—and this beautiful keepsake edition, by the authors of Wiccapedia, is the perfect accompaniment to that popular guide for modern witches. A concise first section features basic information on essential tools for spells, key herbs and crystals, moon phases and magick, and a wheel of yearly Wiccan holidays. Over 225 pages of journal pages follow, where you can record all the details of your spellcraft such as the date, the phase of the moon, the ingredients . . . and the results.  

From the Middle Ages to the close of the 17th century, alchemy was fundamental to Western culture, as scores of experimenters sought to change lead into gold. Though its significance declined with the rise of chemistry, alchemy continued to captivate the imagination of writers and its images still appear in modern creative works. This book examines the literary representation of alchemical theory and the metaphor of alchemical regeneration in the works of Edward Taylor, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Margaret Fuller. While Taylor used alchemical metaphors to illustrate the redeeming grace of God upon the soul, these same metaphors were used by Poe, Hawthorne, and Fuller to depict a broader concept of redemption. These later writers used alchemical imagery to describe both the regeneration of the individual and the possible transformation of society. For Poe, alchemy became a metaphor for the transforming power of imagination; for Hawthorne, it became a means of representing the redeeming power of love; for Fuller, it figured the reconciliation of gender opposites. Thus these four American writers incorporated the idea of regeneration in their works, and the tropes and metaphors of the medieval alchemists provided a fascinating way of imagining the transformative process.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, entire communities, particularly in central Europe were gripped by a fear of witches and witchcraft, and pursued witches in order to bring them to justice. Professor David Nash unlocks the sometimes opaque history of the phenomenon of witchcraft in Britain, Europe and America. The book explores the development of witchcraft and belief in witches, the obsession with witches and witchcraft that spawned witch-hunting, the hey-day and decline of witch-hunting, and the fascinating 'afterlife' of witchcraft: covering not only the survival of some beliefs into the nineteenth century but the academic interest in witchcraft in the early twentieth century, which culminated in the interest shown in the phenomenon by experts serving the interests and ideology of Nazi Germany. Among the themes that the author will examine are the geographical spread and regional differences in witchcraft and witch-hunting across Britain, Europe and America; the theories on the rise of witch-hunting; and gender differences: why so many more women were accused and convicted of witch-hunting than men.

In the first chapters of this book we simultaneously follow two threads. While considering the lives of Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, and King Ludwig II of Bavaria in their nineteenth-century incarnations and in earlier incarnations, we examine the planetary configurations accompanying not only their conception, birth, and death, but also various significant events in their lives. In this way we experience how these two perspectives-the biographical and the astrological-weave together and are intimately interconnected. As illuminating as this is, the author also indicates however that astrological calculation alone can never suffice for the truly deep biographical research into karma and reincarnation demonstrated in this work. The author shows that although it is clear that an individual's destiny is connected with the positions of the celestial bodies-that certain regular occurrences are evident-nonetheless no strict regularities exist. He maintains moreover that a certain level of clairvoyance is requisite for any serious astrological study of destiny; even more-that real astrology requires initiation. Such astrological research, when successfully carried out as it is here, relating salient celestial configurations to the life-drama of well-known historical personalities, reads like fine literature. On a practical level this work illustrates several important new tools for the astrologer: how to calculate hermetic charts, how to cast horoscopes not only of birth and death but also of conception (including the astrological significance of the embryonic period between conception and birth), and then also how to apply these various horoscopes in describing the spiral of life that unfolds in seven-year periods during the course of a person's earthly existence. All this reveals profound and fascinating regularities-among them the discovery that stellar configurations during the embryonic period are reflected again and again in the subsequent periods of life. Quite new for most readers will be the author's treatment of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, indicating that the names given these planets are deeply meaningful in the light of spiritual science. To make his case he extends Rudolf Steiner's description of cosmic evolution by drawing upon Greek mythology, particularly Orphic cosmology. This book by Robert Powell is of the greatest possible interest. Professor Konrad Rudni_ki Astronomical Observatory Jagiellonian University Cracow, Poland

In ancient Greece and Rome, dreams were believed by many to offer insight into future events. Artemidorus' Oneirocritica, a treatise on dream-divination and compendium of dream-interpretations written in Ancient Greek in the mid-second to early-third centuries AD, is the only surviving text from antiquity that instructs its readers in the art of using dreams to predict the future. In it, Artemidorus discusses the nature of dreams and how to interpret them, and provides an encyclopaedic catalogue of interpretations of dreams relating to the natural, human, and divine worlds. In this volume, Harris-McCoy offers a revised Greek text of the Oneirocritica with facing English translation, a detailed introduction, and scholarly commentary. Seeking to demonstrate the richness and intelligence of this understudied text, he gives particular emphasis to the Oneirocritica's composition and construction, and its aesthetic, intellectual, and political foundations and context.

Also available in an open-access, full-text edition at http: //repositories.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/86080/Marlin_585444251_Txt.pdf?sequence=1 The black sun, an ages-old image of the darkness in individual lives and in life itself, has not been treated hospitably in the modern world. Modern psychology has seen darkness primarily as a negative force, something to move through and beyond, but it actually has an intrinsic importance to the human psyche. In this book, Jungian analyst Stanton Marlan reexamines the paradoxical image of the black sun and the meaning of darkness in Western culture.
In the image of the black sun, Marlan finds the hint of a darkness that shines. He draws upon his clinical experiences--and on a wide range of literature and art, including Goethe's "Faust, " Dante's "Inferno," the black art of Rothko and Reinhardt--to explore the influence of light and shadow on the fundamental structures of modern thought as well as the contemporary practice of analysis. He shows that the black sun accompanies not only the most negative of psychic experiences but also the most sublime, resonating with the mystical experience of negative theology, the Kabbalah, the Buddhist notions of the void, and the black light of the Sufi Mystics.
An important contribution to the understanding of alchemical psychology, this book draws on a postmodern sensibility to develop an original understanding of the black sun. It offers insight into modernity, the act of imagination, and the work of analysis in understanding depression, trauma, and transformation of the soul. Marlan's original reflections help us to explore the unknown darkness conventionally called the Self.
"The image of Kali appearing in the color insert following page 44 is (c) Maitreya Bowen, reproduced with her permission, "[email protected].

Nasr argues that the current ecological crisis has been exacerbated by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, he believes, if the recovery of the truth to which the great enduring religions all attest: that nature is sacred.

"Art and War in Japan and its Empire: 1931-1960" is an anthology that investigates the impact of the Fifteen-Year War (1931-1945) on artistic practices and brings together twenty scholars including art historians, historians, and museum curators from the United States, Canada, France, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. This will be the first art-historical anthology that examines responses to the war within and outside Japan in the wartime and postwar period. The anthology will scrutinize official and unofficial war artists who recorded, propagated, or resented the war; explore the unprecedented transnationality of artistic activity under Japan s colonial expansion; and consider the role of today s museum institutions in remembering the war through art. Contributors include: Asato Ikeda, Aya Lousa McDonald, Ming Tiampo, Akihisa Kawata, Mikiko Hirayama, Mayu Tsuruya, Michael Lucken, Bert Winther-Tamaki, Mark H. Sandler, Maki Kaneko, Kendall Brown, Reita Hirase, Gennifer Weisenfeld, Kari Shepherdson-Scott, Aida-Yuen Wong, Hyeshin Kim, Laura Hein, and Julia Adeney Thomas.

This book examines magic's generally maleficent effect on humans from ancient Egypt through the Middle Ages, including tales from classical mythology, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures. It shows that certain magical motifs lived on from age to age, but that it took until the Italian Renaissance for magic tales to become fairy tales.

An unabridged edition to include: Wherein I Bow to the Reader - A Prelude to the Quest - A Magician Out of Egypt - I Meet A Messiah - The Anchorite of the Adyar River - The Yoga Which Conquers Death - The Sage Who Never Speaks - With The Spiritual Head of South India - The Hill of the Holy Beacon - Among The Magicians And Holy Men - The Wonder-Worker of Benares - Written in the Stars - The Garden of the Lord - At the Parsee Messiah's Headquarters - A Strange Encounter - In a Jungle Hermitage - Tablets of Forgotten Truth

This book starts with a meticulous explanation of terminology used in astronomy and astrology. This can be considered as a splendid example of how to explain strictly scientific notions to readers who are not necessarily skilled in the exact sciences. From an astronomical point of view, the most interesting part of the work is the presentation of the old Egyptian world system, which the author concludes was the same as the system of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601). He considers this astronomical system not just as a transitory historical conception, but as something which possesses permanent value. The author's deep historical studies made it possible for him also to solve the problem of the interchange of Mercury and Venus, something indicated many years ago by Rudolf Steiner. This is an important achievement in the history of astronomy. The main astrological finding of this book is that the zodiac of the stars (sidereal zodiac) - as employed by the Babylonians, Egyptians, and ancient Greeks - is the authentic zodiac. Moreover, the auther promotes a new type of astrological chart (hermetic chart) for the conception, birth, and death of personalities under consideration, in addition to the customary geocentric horoscope and in place of the heliocentric horoscope promoted by Willi Sucher (1902-1985). With the hermetic chart the auther places a new tool in the hands of astrologers and opens up new possibilities for astrology as a science. On this basis he develops his two "laws" of reincarnation, illustrating them by striking examples. These "laws" express themselves by way of certain planetary configurations coinciding at the moments of birth and death in successive incarnations. He believes that with these "laws" the significance of the tropical zodiac is disproved. This work of Robert Powell, presenting a new astrological system, is a valuable step in the development of a new wisdom of the stars in line with the ideas of Willi Sucher. Willi Sucher's books and articles are full of charm - deep in a spiritual sense - representing a star wisdom in an embryonic state. With this book by Robert Powell, the ideas of Willi Sucher are born as an earthly reality and something new is brought into the world. Professor Konrad Rudni_ki Astronomical Observatory Jagiellonian University Cracow, Poland

Shamanism is part of the spiritual life of nearly all Native North Americans. This bibliography gives the reader access to a wealth of information on shamanism from the Bering Strait to the Mexican border and from Maine to Florida. It includes articles and books focusing on the spiritual connections of Native Americans to the world through shamans. The books covered compare practices from tribe to tribe, make distinctions between witchcraft or sorcery and shamanism, and discuss the artifacts and tools of the trade. Many are well illustrated, including collections from the nineteenth century.

This study of modernism's high imperial, occult-exotic affiliations presents many well-known figures from the period 1880-1960 in a new light. Modernism and the Occult traces the history of modernist engagement with 'irregular', heterodox and imported knowledge.