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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies
Who are the familiar spirits of classical culture and what is their
relationship to Christian demons? In its interpretation of Latin
and Greek culture, Christianity contends that Satan is behind all
classical deities, semi-gods, and spiritual creatures, including
the gods of the household, the lares and penates." "But with "In
the Company of Demons," the world's leading demonologist Armando
Maggi argues that the great thinkers of the Italian Renaissance had
a more nuanced and perhaps less sinister interpretation of these
creatures or spiritual bodies.
Maggi leads us straight to the heart of what Italian Renaissance
culture thought familiar spirits were. Through close readings of
Giovan Francesco Pico della Mirandola, Strozzi Cigogna, Pompeo
della Barba, Ludovico Sinistrari, and others, we find that these
spirits or demons speak through their sudden and striking
appearances--their very bodies seen as metaphors to be interpreted.
The form of the body, Maggi explains, relies on the spirits'
knowledge of their human interlocutors' pasts. But their core trait
is compassion, and sometimes their odd, eerie arrivals are seen as
harbingers or warnings to protect us. It comes as no surprise then
that when spiritual beings distort the natural world to
communicate, it is vital that we begin to listen.
In Colonial Transactions Florence Bernault moves beyond the racial
divide that dominates colonial studies of Africa. Instead, she
illuminates the strange and frightening imaginaries that colonizers
and colonized shared on the ground. Bernault looks at Gabon from
the late nineteenth century to the present, historicizing the most
vivid imaginations and modes of power in Africa today: French
obsessions with cannibals, the emergence of vampires and witches in
the Gabonese imaginary, and the use of human organs for fetishes.
Struggling over objects, bodies, agency, and values, colonizers and
colonized entered relations that are better conceptualized as
"transactions." Together they also shared an awareness of how the
colonial situation broke down moral orders and forced people to use
the evil side of power. This foreshadowed the ways in which people
exercise agency in contemporary Africa, as well as the
proliferation of magical fears and witchcraft anxieties in
present-day Gabon. Overturning theories of colonial and
postcolonial nativism, this book is essential reading for
historians and anthropologists of witchcraft, power, value, and the
body.
Magic and Medieval Society presents a thematic approach to the
topic of magic and sorcery in Western Europe between the eleventh
and the fifteenth century. It aims to provide readers with the
conceptual and documentary tools to reach informed conclusions as
to the existence, nature, importance and uses of magic in medieval
society. Contrary to some previous approaches, the authors argue
that magic is inextricably connected to other areas of cultural
practice and was found across medieval society. Therefore, the book
is arranged thematically, covering topics such as the use of magic
at medieval courts, at universities and within the medieval Church
itself. Each chapter and theme is supported by additional
documents, diagrams and images to allow readers to examine the
evidence side-by-side with the discussions in the chapters and to
come to informed conclusions on the issues. This book puts forward
the argument that the witch craze was not a medieval phenomenon but
rather the product of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and
demonstrates how the components for the early-modern prosecution of
witches were put into place. This new Seminar Study is supported by
a comprehensive documents section, chronology, who's who and
black-and-white plate section. It offers a concise and
thought-provoking introduction for students of medieval history.
2013 Reprint of 1906 Edition. Full facsimile of the original
edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Three
Volumes bound into one. Volume contents are: Vol. 1. Prolegomena.
-- Vol. 2. Sermons. -- Vol. 3. Excerpts and fragments This work
exemplifies all that is best in Mead's dedicated, scholarly, but
eminently readable studies of the spiritual roots of Christian
Gnosticism and, more generally, of personal religion in the
Greco-Roman world. His work encompassed much more than this; Mead
was equally at home with Sanskrit texts, Patristic literature,
Buddhist thought, and the problems of contemporary philosophy and
psychical research. He devoted his intellectual energy to the
complex interplay of Gnosticism, Hellenism, Judaism, and
Christianity. This three volume set presents his insights into the
formation of the Gnostic world-view and establishes him as an
outstanding translator of these Hermetic books, and as the first
modern scholar of Gnostic tradition.
This book is an analysis of witchcraft and witch hunting as they
appeared in southwestern Germany in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Starting from a short analysis of some basic problems in
the interpretation of European witchcraft, it proceeds to a study
of the shifting denominational views regarding witches and the
growth of Catholic orthodoxy. That theoretical vantage yields
insight into the patterns in time, space, and confession that
characterized all witch hunts in the German Southwest. There
follows a narrative analysis of the largest witch hunts and the
general crisis of confidence they produced. Analysis is
complemented by a summary of what is known about the people accused
of witchcraft, as well as an examination of the popular suspicion
directed toward old women at the start of most panics and the
breakdown of this stereotype as the panics progressed.
The 'Grimoire of Pope Honorius' is the first and most important of
the French 'black magic' grimoires which proliferated across Europe
in the 17th-19th centuries. Combining a grimoire of conjurations to
demons of the four directions and seven days of the week with a
Book of Secrets full of simple charms, the 'Grimoire of Pope
Honorius' was second only to the Key of Solomon in the influence it
exerted on magicians, charmers and cunning-folk in both rural and
urban France. 'The Complete Grimoire of Pope Honorius' contains
material translated from all four of the different French editions
of the 'Grimoire of Pope Honorius'.
Perfect for Hallowe'en: haunting accounts of real-life exorcisms
through the centuries, from ancient Egypt and the biblical Middle
East to colonial America and twentieth-century South Africa
Levitation. Feats of superhuman strength. Speaking in tongues. A
hateful, glowing stare. The signs of spirit possession have been
documented for thousands of years and across religions and
cultures, even into our own time. Unsettling and chilling, The
Penguin Book of Exorcisms brings together the most astonishing
accounts: Saint Anthony set upon by demons in the form of a lion, a
bull and a panther, who are no match for his devotion and prayer;
the Prophet Muhammad casting an enemy of God out of a young boy;
fox spirits in medieval China and Japan; a headless bear assaulting
a woman in sixteenth-century England; the possession of an entire
convent of Ursuline nuns in a French town; a Zulu woman who daily
floated to a height of five feet; the exorcism in Earling, Iowa, in
1928 that inspired the film The Exorcist; a Filipina girl 'bitten
by devils'; and a rare example of a priest's letter requesting
permission of a bishop to perform an exorcism - after witnessing a
boy walk backwards up a wall. . .
'I really enjoyed this read. It was well written with a captivating
storyline and well developed characters . . . [An] evocative and
tender book . . . everyone who reads it will be enchanted like I
was' reader review 'Propulsive and poignant, Black Candle Women
concocts an intoxicating potion of warmth, wisdom, and wonder. This
gorgeous debut novel is a sweepingly fashioned love story where
romance and rebellion intertwine with fear and family. And the
stakes are epic. I was completely and gladly under Ms. Brown's
spell' AVA DUVERNAY 'A big-hearted debut, with complex, flawed, and
compelling characters I was rooting for every step of the way' E.M.
TRAN 'Richly imagined and elegantly told, with plenty of satisfying
secrets, heartaches, and twists' SADEQA JOHNSON 'A spellbinding
romp. The Montrose women will have you clutching your pearls on
this rollercoaster of a debut' CAROLYN HUYNH 'Written with warmth
and an eye for detail, Diane Marie Brown's Black Candle Women
explores the bonds of family and the magical power of belief to
transform our lives' SHAUNA J. EDWARDS & ALYSON RICHMAN 'Black
Candle Women is a compassionate novel about motherhood, sisterhood,
independence, and the reflection and forgiveness required to break
generational curses' DE'SHAWN CHARLES WINSLOW 'Brown deftly
portrays an insular family of women in all of its complicated glory
. . . The spiritual angle gives this powerful family drama a
magical twist that will delight readers' BOOKLIST (starred review)
'Black Candle Women is a bold and tender story about three
generations of women each attempting to find their way amidst the
gifts and curses they've inherited . . . This novel is a wondrous
celebration of womanhood' CLEYVIS NATERA
************************************* 'All of you are cursed, you
hear me? An ugly death for the ones with whom you fall in love' For
generations, the Montrose women have lived alone with their
secrets, their delicate peace depending on the unspoken bond that
underpins their family life - Voodoo and hoodoo magic, and a
decades-old curse that will kill anyone they fall for. When
seventeen-year-old Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first
time, this careful balance is thrown into disarray. For the other
women have been keeping the curse from Nickie, and revealing it
means that they must reckon with their own choices and mistakes. As
new truths emerge, the Montrose women are set on a collision course
that echoes back to New Orleans' French Quarter, where a crumbling
book of spells may hold the answers that all of them have been
looking for... Rich in its sense of character and place, Black
Candle Women is a haunting and magical debut from a talented new
storyteller. ************************************* Early readers
are LOVING Black Candle Women! 'I LOVED IT SO SO MUCH. Magic? A
cursed family tree? Badass women? This was an adventure from start
to finish and it was my pleasure to read' 'What a fascinating story
about some amazing women. I was caught on page one and stayed
captivated until the very end. Bravo!!' 'This book was amazing from
start to finish. I was so captivated by each of the characters' 'I
was invested from the first page and really loved these characters
and their story'
"A pioneer work in . . . the sexual structuring of society. This is not just another book about witchcraft."--Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University
Confessing to "Familiarity with the Devils," Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens, was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. In 1662, Ann Cole was "taken with very strange Fits" and fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events in Salem took place.
More than three hundred years later the question still haunts us: Why were these and other women likely witches? Why were they vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft? In this work Carol Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.
"A remarkable achievement. The 'witches' come alive in this book, not as stereotypes, but as real women living in a society that suspected and feared their independence and combativeness."--Mary Beth Norton, Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History, Cornell University
In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Franciscan friar John
of Rupescissa sent a dramatic warning to his followers: the last
days were coming; the apocalypse was near. Deemed insane by the
Christian church, Rupescissa had spent more than a decade confined
to prisons--in one case wrapped in chains and locked under a
staircase--yet ill treatment could not silence the friar's
apocalyptic message. Religious figures who preached the end times
were hardly rare in the late Middle Ages, but Rupescissa's
teachings were unique. He claimed that knowledge of the natural
world, and alchemy in particular, could act as a defense against
the plagues and wars of the last days. His melding of apocalyptic
prophecy and quasi-scientific inquiry gave rise to a new genre of
alchemical writing and a novel cosmology of heaven and earth. Most
important, the friar's research represented a remarkable
convergence between science and religion. In order to understand
scientific knowledge today, Leah DeVun asks that we revisit
Rupescissa's life and the critical events of his age--the Black
Death, the Hundred Years' War, the Avignon Papacy--through his
eyes. Rupescissa treated alchemy as medicine (his work was the
conceptual forerunner of pharmacology) and represented the emerging
technologies and views that sought to combat famine, plague,
religious persecution, and war. The advances he pioneered, along
with the exciting strides made by his contemporaries, shed critical
light on later developments in medicine, pharmacology, and
chemistry.
Many of the herbal and magical practices of the Scots are echoed in
traditional Norwegian folk medicine and magic. This is a valuable
resource book not only for the serious folklorist, but also for a
wider audience interested in a deeper look at rural Scottish
practices. Ms. Hopman has done an amazing amount of research, and
her Scottish herbalism section is far more detailed than I've seen
elsewhere. A "must have" for the northern European folklorist's
library.
Jane T. Sibley, Ph.D., author of "The Hammer of the Smith" and "The
Divine Thunderbolt: Missile of the Gods."
Through her books, Ellen Evert Hopman lifts the veil between worlds
of the present and the past. She guides the reader on a fascinating
journey to our ancient Celtic history, simultaneously restoring
lost knowledge and entertaining the reader. Be prepared to be
educated and delighted.
Wendy Farley, Clan McKleod
The first things is WOW Ellen Hopman has given us a volume that
belongs in Harry Potter's library. This wonderful collection of
enchantments, faery lore and herbal potions, is presented by a
practicing herbalist and (I suspect) magician. It is a useful
manual of magic, an unusual tourist guide to Scotland, certainly a
delightful read, and at the very least, a comprehensive and
thoroughly footnoted collection of folk lore for humorless
librarians and scholars.
Matthew Wood MS (Scottish School of Herbal Medicine) Registered
Herbalist (American Herbalists Guild)
Every now and again, a book emerges from the waves of occult and
magical authorship that delves into the deep and ancestral waters
of old magic This book is one of those rare occasions. From the
lore of herbs to the blessing of stones; from avioding the
elf-blast to healing through Faerie blessing - Ellen guides the
reader through ancient groves of oral lore to discover a power and
spirit that connects the reader to the oldest of magics, the earth
and her elements. I am confident that the Scottish Ancestral Wise
Ones, are renewed through this book and the old ways live once
again
Orion Foxwood, Traditional Witch Elder, Conjurer in Southern
Root-Doctoring and Faery Seer (www.orionfoxwood.com), author of
"The Faery Teachings" (R.J. Stewart Books) and "The Tree of
Enchantment" (Weiser Books).
This book analyzes the gendered transformation of magical figures
occurring in Arthurian romance in England from the twelfth to the
sixteenth centuries. In the earlier texts, magic is predominantly a
masculine pursuit, garnering its user prestige and power, but in
the later texts, magic becomes a primarily feminine activity, one
that marks its user as wicked and heretical. This project explores
both the literary and the social motivations for this
transformation, seeking an answer to the question, 'why did the
witch become wicked?' Heidi Breuer traverses both the medieval and
early modern periods and considers the way in which the
representation of literary witches interacted with the culture at
large, ultimately arguing that a series of economic crises in the
fourteenth century created a labour shortage met by women. As women
moved into the previously male-dominated economy, literary backlash
came in the form of the witch, and social backlash followed soon
after in the form of Renaissance witch-hunting. The witch figure
serves a similar function in modern American culture because
late-industrial capitalism challenges gender conventions in similar
ways as the economic crises of the medieval period.
By the spring of 1645, civil war had exacted a terrible toll upon
England. Disease was rife, apocalyptic omens appeared in the skies,
and idolators detected in every shire. In a remote corner of Essex,
two obscure gentlemen began interrogating women suspected of
witchcraft, triggering the most brutal witch-hunt in English
history. Witchfinders is a spellbinding study of how Matthew
Hopkins, 'the Witchfinder General', and John Stearne extended their
campaign across East Anglia, driven by godly zeal. Exploiting the
anxiety and lawlessness of the times, and cheered on by ordinary
folk, they extracted confessions of satanic pacts resulting in
scores of executions.
Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available
of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those
people believed to be able-and who in some instances thought
themselves able-to manipulate the world around them through magical
practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal,
literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His
sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much
less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church
art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells.
Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time
Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout
Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs
persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the
coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern
Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to
the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European
neighbors, the Sami and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse
areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and
Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural
hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By
examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and
law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love,
prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both
the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance.
With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural
signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses
on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing
witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blakulla.
Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy
demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in
conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of
exercising social control.
Ranging from the pre-Christian era to Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton at the end of the seventeenth century, this Reader covers a broad range of alchemical authors and works. Organized chronologically, it includes around thirty selections in authoritative but lightly-modernized versions. The selections will provide the reader with a basic introduction to the field and its interdisciplinary links with science and medicine, philosophy, religion, and literature and the arts.
Le Livre d'Or (The Book of Gold) is a unique 17th century French
magical work comprising numerous amulets, charms, prayers, spells
and sigils for working with the Biblical Book of the Psalms of King
David. Written in a simple style akin to a medieval Book of Secrets
combined with magical practices from the ancient world, Le Livre
d'Or brings together practices which have their roots in major
works from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Cairo Genizah, to the Greek
Magical Papyri and Sepher Shimmush Tehillim (Magical Use of the
Psalms). Now translated into English for the first time, this
exceptional text demonstrates the significance of the Psalms as a
unifying and vital thread throughout the development of Western
magic. From Sweden to Syria, Britain to the Baltic, the use of
appropriate Psalms has spread as a significant part of popular folk
and religious magic, and Le Livre d'Or is an inimitable example of
the transmission of divine power through the written and spoken
word. Le Livre d'Or was originally bound as part of Lansdowne MS
1202 with a 17th century French copy of the most important of
grimoires, the Key of Solomon. The extensive commentary by David
Rankine and Paul Harry Barron emphasises the place of the Psalms
within the Grimoire tradition, detailing their extensive
apotropaic, amuletic and coercive uses in works such as the Book of
Abramelin, the Key of Solomon and the Goetia. The editors also
illustrate how the magic of the Psalms has underlain and
cross-fertilised numerous traditions over the last two thousand
years, from Hellenic magicians, early Christians and Jews of the
ancient world to practitioners of the medieval Grimoires and
Renaissance Cunning-folk. Whether it was for benevolent or malefic
results, Le Livre d'Or provided the appropriate Psalm verses and
relevant techniques. This previously ignored work is an outstanding
example of eminently practical magic which not only draws on such
major works as the Heptameron and the Steganographia, but also many
of the divine names found in the Kabbalah. From Saints to spirits,
characters to Creeds, Le Livre d'Or shines forth as a significant
and reclaimed chapter in the Western Esoteric Traditions.
Most scholarship on sorcery and witch-craft has narrowly focused on
specific times and places, particularly early modern Europe and
twentieth-century Africa. And much of that research interprets
sorcery as merely a remnant of premodern traditions. Boldly
challenging these views, "Sorcery in the Black Atlantic" takes a
longer historical and broader geographical perspective, contending
that sorcery is best understood as an Atlantic phenomenon that has
significant connections to modernity and globalization. A
distinguished group of contributors here examine sorcery in Brazil,
Cuba, South Africa, Cameroon, and Angola. Their insightful essays
reveal the way practices and accusations of witchcraft spread
throughout the Atlantic world from the age of discovery up to the
present, creating an indelible link between sorcery and the rise of
global capitalism. Shedding new light on a topic of perennial
interest, "Sorcery in the Black Atlantic" will be provocative,
compelling reading for historians and anthropologists working in
this growing field.
The remarkable discussions in this volume took place between Rudolf
Steiner and workers at the Goetheanum, Switzerland. The varied
subject-matter was chosen by his audience at Rudolf Steiner's
instigation. Steiner took their questions and usually gave
immediate answers. The astonishing nature of these responses -
their insight, knowledge and spiritual depth - is testimony to his
outstanding ability as a spiritual initiate and profound thinker.
Accessible, entertaining and stimulating, the records of these
sessions will be a delight to anybody with an open mind. In this
particular collection, Rudolf Steiner deals with topics ranging
from limestone to Lucifer! He discusses, among other things,
technology; the living earth; natural healing powers; colour and
sickness; rainbows; whooping cough and pleurisy; seances; sleep and
sleeplessness; dreams; reincarnation; life after death; the
physical, ether and astral bodies and the 'I'; the two Jesus
children; Ahriman and Lucifer; the death, resurrection and
ascension of Christ; Dante and Copernicus.
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