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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
What is a grimoire? The word has a familiar ring to many people,
particularly as a consequence of such popular television dramas as
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. But few people are sure
exactly what it means. Put simply, grimoires are books of spells
that were first recorded in the Ancient Middle East and which have
developed and spread across much of the Western Hemisphere and
beyond over the ensuing millennia. At their most benign, they
contain charms and remedies for natural and supernatural ailments
and advice on contacting spirits to help find treasures and protect
from evil. But at their most sinister they provide instructions on
how to manipulate people for corrupt purposes and, worst of all, to
call up and make a pact with the Devil. Both types have proven
remarkably resilient and adaptable and retain much of their
relevance and fascination to this day. But the grimoire represents
much more than just magic. To understand the history of grimoires
is to understand the spread of Christianity, the development of
early science, the cultural influence of the print revolution, the
growth of literacy, the impact of colonialism, and the expansion of
western cultures across the oceans. As this book richly
demonstrates, the history of grimoires illuminates many of the most
important developments in European history over the last two
thousand years.
The Routledge History of Witchcraft is a comprehensive and
interdisciplinary study of the belief in witches from antiquity to
the present day, providing both an introduction to the subject of
witchcraft and an overview of the on-going debates. This extensive
collection covers the entire breadth of the history of witchcraft,
from the witches of Ancient Greece and medieval demonology through
to the victims of the witch hunts, and onwards to children's books,
horror films, and modern pagans. Drawing on the knowledge and
expertise of an international team of authors, the book examines
differing concepts of witchcraft that still exist in society and
explains their historical, literary, religious, and anthropological
origin and development, including the reflections and adaptions of
this belief in art and popular culture. The volume is divided into
four chronological parts, beginning with Antiquity and the Middle
Ages in Part One, Early Modern witch hunts in Part Two, modern
concepts of witchcraft in Part Three, and ending with an
examination of witchcraft and the arts in Part Four. Each chapter
offers a glimpse of a different version of the witch, introducing
the reader to the diversity of witches that have existed in
different contexts throughout history. Exploring a wealth of texts
and case studies and offering a broad geographical scope for
examining this fascinating subject, The Routledge History of
Witchcraft is essential reading for students and academics
interested in the history of witchcraft.
Feeling Exclusion: Religious Conflict, Exile and Emotions in Early
Modern Europe investigates the emotional experience of exclusion at
the heart of the religious life of persecuted and exiled
individuals and communities in early modern Europe. Between the
late fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries an unprecedented
number of people in Europe were forced to flee their native lands
and live in a state of physical or internal exile as a result of
religious conflict and upheaval. Drawing on new insights from
history of emotions methodologies, Feeling Exclusion explores the
complex relationships between communities in exile, the homelands
from which they fled or were exiled, and those from whom they
sought physical or psychological assistance. It examines the
various coping strategies religious refugees developed to deal with
their marginalization and exclusion, and investigates the
strategies deployed in various media to generate feelings of
exclusion through models of social difference, that questioned the
loyalty, values, and trust of "others". Accessibly written, divided
into three thematic parts, and enhanced by a variety of
illustrations, Feeling Exclusion is perfect for students and
researchers of early modern emotions and religion.
Strange Histories is an exploration of some of the most
extraordinary beliefs that existed in the late Middle Ages through
to the end of the seventeenth century. Presenting serious accounts
of the appearance of angels and demons, sea monsters and dragons
within European and North American history, this book moves away
from "present-centred thinking" and instead places such events
firmly within their social and cultural context. By doing so, it
offers a new way of understanding the world in which dragons and
witches were fact rather than fiction, and presents these riveting
phenomena as part of an entirely rational thought process for the
time in which they existed. This new edition has been fully updated
in light of recent research. It contains a new guide to further
reading as well as a selection of pictures that bring its themes to
life. From ghosts to witches, to pigs on trial for murder, the book
uses a range of different case studies to provide fascinating
insights into the world-view of a vanished age. It is essential
reading for all students of early modern history. .
Opulent jeweled objects ranked among the most highly valued works
of art in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, precious
stones prompted sophisticated reflections on the power of nature
and the experience of mineralized beings. Beyond a visual regime
that put a premium on brilliant materiality, how can we account for
the ubiquity of gems in medieval thought? In The Mineral and the
Visual, art historian Brigitte Buettner examines the social roles,
cultural meanings, and active agency of precious stones in secular
medieval art. Exploring the layered roles played by gems in
aesthetic, ideological, intellectual, and economic practices,
Buettner focuses on three significant categories of art: the
jeweled crown, the pictorialized lapidary, and the illustrated
travel account. The global gem trade brought coveted jewels from
the Indies to goldsmiths' workshops in Paris, fashionable bodies in
London, and the crowns of kings across Europe, and Buettner shows
that Europe's literal and metaphorical enrichment was predicated on
the importation of gems and ideas from Byzantium, the Islamic
world, Persia, and India. Original, transhistorical, and
cross-disciplinary, The Mineral and the Visual engages important
methodological questions about the work of culture in its material
dimension. It will be especially useful to scholars and students
interested in medieval art history, material culture, and medieval
history.
A fascinating and enlightening celebration of mushrooms and the
magic of the forest for those who revel in mushroom imagery and
lore. Mushrooms--as a decorative element, as a signifier of the
mystery of the forest, and as an adorable emblem of witchy
cottagecore dreams--have proliferated in the collective
consciousness as of late. Mushroom Magick is a whimsical collection
of mushroom facts and fables divided into three sections: first,
profiles of 22 well-known mushrooms include information on biology
and common uses as well as a rundown of their energetic properties
and suggestions for incorporating them into spellwork. Section two
provides a world-spanning collection of mushroom myths and fables.
The final section is a taste of the spells and rituals that you can
perform with common mushrooms such as creminis, shiitakes, and
portobellos--carved candles, floor washes, teas, and even some
yummy meals can improve your love life, super-charge your good
fortune, or even cast a well-deserved hex upon your most hated
enemy.
Pandemonium: An Illustrated History of Demonology presents for this
first time Satan's family tree, providing a history and analysis of
his fellow fallen angels from Asmodeus to Ziminiar. Throughout
there will be short entries on individual demons, but Pandemonium
will be more than just a visual encyclopedia. It will also focus on
the influence of figures like Beelzebub, Azazel, Lilith, and Moloch
on Western religion, literature, and art. Ranging from the earliest
scriptural references to demons in the New Testament through the
Enlightenment and Romantic eras when our devils took on a subtler
form, Pandemonium functions as a compendium of Lucifer's subjects
from Dante's The Divine Comedy to John Milton's Paradise Lost, and
all points in between. Containing rarely seen illustrations of very
old treatises on demonology as well as more well-known works by the
great masters of Western painting, this book will celebrate the art
of hell like never before!
As a practising Christian priest, Hermann Beckh was profoundly
aware that the mystery of substance - its transmutation in the
cosmos and the human being - was a mystical fact to be approached
with the greatest reverence, requiring at once ever-deepening
scholarship and meditation. He viewed chemistry as a worthy but
materialistic science devoid of spirit, while the fullness of
spiritual-physical nature could be approached by what he preferred
to call 'chymistry' or 'alchymy', thereby taking in millennia of
spiritual tradition. In consequence, Beckh's Alchymy, The Mystery
of the Material World is not limited to the conventional workings
of Western alchemy, nor to what can be found in the Bible from
Genesis to Revelation - although he does unveil hidden riches
there. Neither should Beckh be considered only as a learned
Professor with impeccable academic qualifications and European-wide
recognition. Beckh writes about such topics as 'Isis', 'the Golden
Fleece', traditional fairy-stories and Wagner's Parsifal in a way
that enables the reader to catch glimpses of the Mystery of
Substance; to share the writer's authentic experience of the divine
substantia - the living reality - of Christ in the world. Beckh's
Alchymy set an entirely new standard, and went on to become his
most popular publication. This is the first time that it has been
translated into English, along with updated footnotes, making his
ideas and insights accessible to a wide readership. In addition,
this edition features translations of Beckh's 'The New Jerusalem',
where theology could best be expressed in verse; his exemplary
essay on 'Snow-white'; observations on 'Allerleirauh', and a
substantial excerpt from Gundhild Kacer-Bock's biography of Beckh.
This book represents the first systematic study of the role of the
Devil in English witchcraft pamphlets for the entire period of
state-sanctioned witchcraft prosecutions (1563-1735). It provides a
rereading of English witchcraft, one which moves away from an older
historiography which underplays the role of the Devil in English
witchcraft and instead highlights the crucial role that the Devil,
often in the form of a familiar spirit, took in English witchcraft
belief. One of the key ways in which this book explores the role of
the Devil is through emotions. Stories of witches were made up of a
complex web of emotionally implicated accusers, victims, witnesses,
and supposed perpetrators. They reveal a range of emotional
experiences that do not just stem from malefic witchcraft but also,
and primarily, from a witch's links with the Devil. This book,
then, has two main objectives. First, to suggest that English
witchcraft pamphlets challenge our understanding of English
witchcraft as a predominantly non-diabolical crime, and second, to
highlight how witchcraft narratives emphasized emotions as the
primary motivation for witchcraft acts and accusations.
This new and completely redesigned edition creates a colourful and
vibrant guide to the secret art. Klossowski de Rola elucidates the
mysterious language and polyvalent symbolism from a variety of
perspectives - practical, spiritual, elemental and historical - and
explains how the true alchemist differs from the modern chemist and
the false practitioner. Gold is only a by-product and emblem of the
Great Work of the alchemist. The latter part of the book comprises
the full text of a seventeenth-century exposition upon an
alchemist's dream-poem, and five richly illustrated `Themes'
sections, reproducing full sequences of alchemical thought, art and
paraphernalia.
The etiology of the Wimbum people in the Western Grassfields of
Cameroon is described through an examination of the way in which
the meanings of key concepts, used to interpret and explain illness
and other forms of misfortune, are continually being produced and
reproduced in the praxis of everyday communication. During the
course of numerous dialogues, witchcraft, a highly ambivalent
force, gradually emerges as the prime mover. As destructive
cannibals or respectable elders the witches are the ultimate cause
of all significant illness, misfortune and death, and as diviners
they are also the ultimate judges who apportion moral
responsibility. Even the ancestors and the traditional gods turn
out to be fronts behind which the witches hide their activities.The
study is on three levels: a medical anthropological exploration of
explanations of illness and misfortune; a detailed ethnography of
traditional African cosmology and witchcraft; and an examination of
recent theoretical issues in anthropology such as the nature of
ethnographic fieldwork and the possibility of dialogical or
postmodern ethnography.
In Freud's Early Psychoanalysis, Witch Trials and the Inquisitorial
Method: The Harsh Therapy, author Kathleen Duffy asks why Freud
compared his 'hysterical' patients to the accused women in the
witch trials, and his 'psychoanalytical' treatment to the
inquisitorial method of their judges. He wrote in 1897 to Wilhelm
Fliess: 'I ... understand the harsh therapy of the witches'
judges'. This book proves that Freud's view of his method as
inquisitorial was both serious and accurate. In this
multidisciplinary and in-depth examination, Duffy demonstrates that
Freud carefully studied the witch trial literature to develop the
supposed parallels between his patients and the witches and between
his own psychoanalytic method and the judges' inquisitorial
extraction of 'confessions', by torture if necessary. She examines
in meticulous detail both the witch trial literature that Freud
studied and his own case studies, papers, letters and other
writings. She shows that the various stages of his developing early
psychoanalytic method, from the 'Katharina' case of 1893, through
the so-called seduction theory of 1896 and its retraction, to the
'Dora' case of 1900, were indeed in many respects inquisitorial and
invalidated his patients' experience. This book demonstrates with
devastating effect the destructive consequences of Freud's
nineteenth-century inquisitorial practice. This raises the question
about the extent to which his mature practice and psychoanalysis
and psychotherapy today, despite great achievements, remain at
times inquisitorial and consequently untrustworthy. This book will
therefore be invaluable not only to academics, practitioners and
students of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, literature, history and
cultural studies, but also to those seeking professional
psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic help.
The Salem witch hunt of 1692 is among the most infamous events in
early American history; however, it was not the only such episode
to occur in New England that year. Escaping Salem reconstructs the
"other witch hunt" of 1692 that took place in Stamford,
Connecticut. Concise and accessible, the book takes students on a
revealing journey into the mental world of early America,
shattering the stereotype of early New Englanders as quick to
accuse and condemn.
Drawing on eyewitness testimony, Richard Godbeer tells the story
of Kate Branch, a seventeen-year-old afflicted by strange visions
and given to blood-chilling wails of pain and fright. Branch
accused several women of bewitching her, two of whom were put on
trial for witchcraft. Escaping Salem takes us inside the
Connecticut courtroom and into the minds of the surprisingly
skeptical Stamford townspeople. Were the pain and screaming due to
natural or supernatural causes? Was Branch simply faking the
symptoms? And if she was indeed bewitched, why believe her specific
accusations, since her information came from demons who might well
be lying? For the judges, Godbeer shows, the trial was a legal
thicket. All agreed that witches posed a real and serious threat,
but proving witchcraft (an invisible crime) in court was another
matter. The court in Salem had become mired in controversy over its
use of dubious evidence. In an intriguing chapter, Godbeer examines
Magistrate Jonathan Selleck's notes on how to determine the guilt
of someone accused of witchcraft, providing an illuminating look at
what constituted proof of witchcraft at the time. The stakes were
high--if found guilty, the two accused women would be hanged.
In the afterword, Godbeer explains how he used the trial evidence
to build his narrative, offering an inside perspective on the
historian's craft. Featuring maps, photos, and a selected
bibliography, Escaping Salem is ideal for use in undergraduate U.S.
survey courses. It can also be used for courses in colonial
American history, culture, and religion; witchcraft in the early
modern world; and crime and society in early America.
Often regarded as an artistic movement of interwar Paris,
Surrealism comprised an international community of artists,
writers, and intellectuals who have aspired to change the
conditions of life itself over the course of the past century.
Consisting of a wide range of dedicated case studies from the 1920s
to the 1970s, this book highlights the international dimensions of
the Surrealist Movement, and the radical chains of thought that
linked its followers across the globe: from France to Romania, and
from Canada to the former Czechoslovakia. From very early on, the
surrealists approached magic as a means of bypassing, discrediting,
and combatting rationalism, capitalism, and other institutionalized
systems and values that they saw to be constraining influences upon
modern life. Surrealist Sorcery maps out how this interest in magic
developed into a major area of surrealist research that led not
only to theoretical but also practical explorations of the subject.
Taking an international perspective, Atkin surveys this important
quality of the movement and how it's remained an important element
in the surrealist project and its ongoing legacy.
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Witchcraft Today
(Paperback)
Gerald B Gardner; Foreword by Margaret Murray; Introduction by Raymond Buckland
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R401
R335
Discovery Miles 3 350
Save R66 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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In the early seventeenth century, a new movement was proclaimed throughout Europe, announcing the universal reform of religion, science, art, and society. The main proponents of this movement were the esoteric "Rosicrucians". Europe was a world in transition and Rosicrucianism was but the latest movement to capture the public imagination. Concerned with spiritual illumination and intellectual knowledge the movement continued to have widespread influence long after it was supposedly over, as can be traced in the works of Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon. 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. eBook available with sample pages: 0203166019
Invite joy and healing into your life using your own magic with
this self-help guide from the author of Witchcraft Therapy, Mandi
Em. Witchcraft is a practice where everyone can self-soothe and
find their alignment again through performance, play, following
impulses, and inviting joy into their lives. Beyond spell jars and
candle magic, there's a whole world of uncommon ways to inject some
childlike wonder and play therapy into your daily practice. Now you
can pursue joy, healing, and fun, with this guide to finding
happiness through magic, filled with straight-talk self-care advice
backed up by magical spells, rituals, recipes, meditations, and
more! Happy Witch is an uncommon spell book full of witchy
self-care spells and rituals that think outside the box of what a
witch's practice usually looks like. From kinetic cloud dough play
for moving through your emotions to using dance as a form of
manifestation, Happy Witch brings out your inner child to help you
undertake your healing through magic. Woven through with BS-free
empowering messages, suggestions, and encouragement on how to build
your intuitive practice that you love, this self-help guide is your
perfect companion for magical healing.
John Van Auken combines the collection of Egyptian past lives found
in the Cayce readings with Egyptian legends that appear in
papyruses, on temple walls, and in pyramid texts for a complete
picture that reveals the full story of priestesses, healers, female
pharaohs, and gods among humans. This book includes more than 80
illustrations with Cayce's insights into the pyramids, ancient
flight, the Hall of Records, the Great Initiate, and the seven
stages of soul growth.
Fast, informed answers to the challenges of false religions -- This
is an age when countless groups and movements, new and old, mark
the religious landscape in our culture. As a result, many people
are confused or uncertain in their search for spiritual truth and
meaning. Because few people have the time or opportunity to
research these movements fully, the Zondervan Guide to Cults and
Religious Movements series provides essential information and
insights for their spiritual journeys. The second wave of books in
this series addresses a broad range of spiritual beliefs, from
non-Trinitarian Christian sects to witchcraft and neo-paganism to
classic non-Christian religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism. All
books but the summary volume, Truth and Error, contain five
sections: -A concise introduction to the group being surveyed -An
overview of the group s theology --- in its own words -Tips for
witnessing effectively to members of the group -A bibliography with
sources for further study -A comparison chart that shows the
essential differences between biblical Christianity and the group
-- Truth and Error, the last book in the series, consists of
parallel doctrinal charts compiled from all the other volumes.
Three distinctives make this series especially useful to readers:
-Information is carefully distilled to bring out truly essential
points, rather than requiring readers to sift their way through a
sea of secondary details. -Information is presented in a clear,
easy-to-follow outline form with menu bar running heads. This
format greatly assists the reader in quickly locating topics and
details of interest. -Each book meets the needs and skill levels of
both nontechnical and technical readers, providing an elementary
level of refutation and progressing to a more advanced level using
arguments based on the biblical text. The writers of these volumes
are well qualified to present clear and reliable information and
help readers to discern truth from falsehood."
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