An investigation into the underpinnings and superstructures of the Pagan world view Pagan religions have tended to be more concerned with practice that with theory and in a system that has no dogma - no legislated doctrine - that is as it should be. Yet as the movement grows and matures, it is inevitable that we will begin to think in a more abstract way about our models and systems. John Michael Greer has provided a primer on the kinds of ideas and themes that must be included in any discussion of the theology and philosophy of Neo-pagan religions.  Much of the book takes shape in a dialogue with existing ideas in theology, philosophy, and comparative religion. It looks to find a middle ground between too much and too little reference to the work of other scholars to find a comprehensible yet intellectually rigorous middle ground. It aims to be part of a conversation, that stretches out over the centuries.  Voices of polytheist spirituality have had little place in that conversation for many years, but much of value has been said in their absence. The rebirth of polytheism as a living religious tradition in the Western world will inevitably force a reassessment of much of that heritage, and pose challenges to some of its most cherished assumptions.  Yet reassessment is not necessarily rejection, and the traditions of modern polytheism are deeply enough indebted to legacies from the past that an attentive ear to earlier phases of the conversation is not out of place.

Witchcraft is rarely mentioned in official documents of the contemporary Roman Catholic church, but ideas about the dangers of witchcraft and other forms of occultism underpin the recent revival of interest in exorcism in the church. This Element examines hierarchical and clerical understandings of witchcraft within the contemporary Roman Catholic church. The Element considers the difficulties faced by clergy in parts of the developing world, where belief in witchcraft is so dominant it has the potential to undermine the church's doctrine and authority. The Element also considers the revival of interest in witchcraft and cursing among Catholic demonologists and exorcists in the developed world. The Element explores whether it is possible for a global church to adopt any kind of coherent approach to a phenomenon appraised so differently across different cultures that the church's responses to witchcraft in one context are likely to seem irrelevant in another.

Gathering together the vast literature on witchcraft related issues published in the last decade, this six-volume set focuses on issues such as gender, government and law, the culture of religion and the occult. Using approaches from several disciplines, including anthropology and sociology, this source provides a sweeping overview of the occult.

Gathering together the vast literature on witchcraft related issues published in the last decade, this six-volume set focuses on issues such as gender, government and law, the culture of religion and the occult. Using approaches from several disciplines, including anthropology and sociology, this source provides a sweeping overview of the occult.

'Magical Interpretations, Material Realities brings together many of today's best scholars of contemporary Africa. The theme of "witchcraft" has long been associated with exoticizing portraits of a "traditional" Africa, but this volume takes the question of occult as a point of entry into the moral politics of some very modern African realities.' - James Ferguson, University of California, USA

'These essays bear eloquent testimony to the ongoing presence and power of the occult imaginary, and of the intimate connection between global capitalism and local cosmology, in postcolonial Africa. A major contribution to scholarship that aims to rework the divide between modernity and tradition.' - Charles Piot, Duke University, USA

This volume sets out recent thinking on witchcraft in Africa, paying particular attention to variations in meanings and practices. It examines the way different people in different contexts are making sense of what 'witchcraft' is and what it might mean.
For example: the State in Cameroon; Pentecostalism in Malawi; the university system in Nigeria and the IMF in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The editors provide a timely overview and reconsideration of longstanding anthropological debate about 'African witchcraft, while simultaneously raising broader concerns about the theories of the western social sciences.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203398254

Contents:
Barstow, Anne Llewellyn. 'On Studying Witchcraft as Women's History. A Historiography of the European Witch Persecutions.' Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 4 (1988).

Purkiss, Diane. 'Women's Stories of Witchcraft in Early Modern England: the House, the Body, the Child.' Gender and History 7 (1995).

Jackson Louise. 'Witches, Wives and Mothers: Witchcraft Persecutions and Women's Confessions in Seventeenth-Century England.' Women's History Review 4 (1995).

Maluf, Sônia Weidner. 'Witches and Witchcraft: A Study About Representations of Female Power on Santa Catarina Island.' International Sociology 7 (1992).

Roper, Lyndal. 'Stealing Manhood: Capitalism and Magic in Early Modern Germany.' Gender and History 3 (1991).

Roper, Lyndal. 'Witchcraft and Fantasy in Early Modern Germany.' History Workshop 32 (1991).

Briggs, Robin. 'Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community.' French History 5 (1991).

Clark, Stuart. 'The 'Gendering' of Witchcraft in French Demonology: Misogyny or Polarity?' French Studies 5 (1991).

Holmes, Clive. 'Women: Witnesses and Witches.' Past and Present 140 (1993).

Whitney, Elspeth. 'The Witch 'She' / The Historian 'He': Gender and the Historiography of the European Witch-Hunts.' Journal of Women's History 7 (1995).

Ross, Eric B. 'Syphilis, Misogyny, and Witchcraft in 16th-century Europe.' Current Anthropology 36 (1995).

Horsley, Ritta and Richard. 'On the Trail of the Witches: Wise Women, Midwives and the European Witch-Hunts.' Women in Germany Yearbook 3 (1986).

Gaskill, Malcolm. 'The Devil in the Shape of a Man: Witchcraft, Conflict and Belief in Jacobean England.' Historical Reseach 71 (1998).

Behar, Ruth. 'Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women's Powers: Views from the Mexican Inquisition.' In Asunción Lavrin ed., Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press: 1989).

Zika, Charles. 'Fears of Flying: Representations of Witchcraft and Sexuality in Early Sixteenth-Century Germany.' Australian Journal of Art 8 (1989-90).

Scully, Sally. 'Marriage or a Career? Witchcraft as an Alternative in Seventeenth-Century Venice.' Journal of Social History 28 (1995).

Accati, Louisa. 'The Spirit of Fornication: Virtue of the Soul and Virtue of the Body in Friuli, 1600-1800.' In Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, eds., Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).

Dresen-Coenders, Lène. 'Witches as Devils' Concubines: On the Origin of Fear of Witches and Protection against Witches.' In Lène Dresen-Coenders and Petty Bange, eds., Saints and She-Devils: Images of Women in the 15th and 16th Centuries (London, UK: Rubicon Press, 1987).

Sharpe, J.A. 'Witchcraft and Women in Seventeenth-Century England: Some Northern Evidence.' Continuity and Change 6 (1991).

Kamensky, Jane. 'Words, Witches and Women Trouble: Witchcraft, Disorderly Speech, and Gender Boundaries in Puritan New England.' Essex Institute Historical Collections 128 (1992).

Kivelson, Valerie A. 'Through the Prism of Witchcraft: Gender and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy.' In B.E. Evans, B.A. Egnel, and C.D. Worobec, eds., Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991).

Griffin, Wendy. 'The Embodied Goddess: Feminist Witchcraft and Female Divinity.' Sociology and Religion 56 (1995).

Gathering together the vast literature on witchcraft related issues published in the last decade, this six-volume set focuses on issues such as gender, government and law, the culture of religion and the occult. Using approaches from several disciplines, including anthropology and sociology, this source provides a sweeping overview of the occult.

Contents:
Megged, Amos. 'Magic, Popular Medicine and Gender in Seventeenth-Century Mexico: The Case of Isobel de Montoya.' Social History 19 (1994)

Klaniczay, Gábor. 'Shamanistic Elements in Central European Witchcraft.' In Mihály Hoppál, ed., Shamanism in Eurasia (G öttingen, Germany: 1984).

de Blécourt, Willem. 'Witch Doctors, Soothsayers and Priests on Cunning Folk in European Historiography and Tradition.' Social History 19 (1994).

O'Neil, Mary. 'Magical Healing, Love Magic and the Inquisition in Late Sixteenth-Century Modena.' In Stephen Haliczar, ed., Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1987).

Davies, Owen. 'Healing Charms in Use in England and Wales, 1700-1950.' Folklore 107 (1996).

Sebald, Hans. 'Shaman, Healer, Witch. Camparing Shamanism with Franconian Folk Magic.' Ethnologica Europaea 14 (1984).

Alver, Bente Gullveig and Torunn Selberg. 'Folk Medicine as Part of a Larger Concept Complex.' Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore 43 (1987).

Cassar, P. 'Healing by Sorcery in 17th and 18th Century Malta.' St. Lukes Hospital Gaz. (Guardamangia) 11 (1976).

Gentilcore, David. 'The Church, the Devil and the Healing Activities of Living Saints in the Kingdon of Naples After the Council of Trent.' In Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds., Medicine and the Reformation (London, UK: Routledge, 1993).

Fox, Sylvia. 'Witch or Wise-Woman? Women as Healers Throughout the Ages.' Jaarboek Liturgie Onderzoek 8 (1992).

Cave, Alfred A. 'Indian Shamens and English Witches in Seventeenth-Century New England.' Essex Institute Historical Collections 128 (1992).

Hicks, David. 'On Syphilis and Witchcraft.' Current Anthropology 36 (1985).

Waardt, Hans de, 'From Cunning Man to Natural Healer.' In J.M.W. Binneveld and Rudolf Decker, eds., Curing and Insuring. Essays on Illness in Past Times: The Netherlands, Belgium, England and Italy, 16th-20th Centuries (Hilversum, the Netherlands: Verloren, 1992).

Harley, David. 'Historians as Demonologists: The Myth of the Midwife Witch.' Social History of Medicine 3 (1990).

Rubinger, Catherine. 'Witch or Saint: Absolutes in the French 18th Century Novel.' Atlantis 11 (1986).

This is the first major study of the most famous Reclaiming witch community, founded in 1979 in San Francisco, written by an author who herself participated in a coven for ten years. Jone Salomonsen describes and examines the communal and ritual practices of Reclaiming, asking how these promote personal growth and cultural-religious change.

'Magical Interpretations, Material Realities brings together many of today's best scholars of contemporary Africa. The theme of "witchcraft" has long been associated with exoticizing portraits of a "traditional" Africa, but this volume takes the question of occult as a point of entry into the moral politics of some very modern African realities.' - James Ferguson, University of California, USA

'These essays bear eloquent testimony to the ongoing presence and power of the occult imaginary, and of the intimate connection between global capitalism and local cosmology, in postcolonial Africa. A major contribution to scholarship that aims to rework the divide between modernity and tradition.' - Charles Piot, Duke University, USA

This volume sets out recent thinking on witchcraft in Africa, paying particular attention to variations in meanings and practices. It examines the way different people in different contexts are making sense of what 'witchcraft' is and what it might mean.
Using recent ethnographic materials from across the continent, the volume explores how witchcraft articulates with particular modern settings for example: the State in Cameroon; Pentecostalism in Malawi; the university system in Nigeria and the IMF in Ghana, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. The editors provide a timely overview and reconsideration of long-standing anthropological debates about 'African witchcraft', while simultaneously raising broader concerns about the theories of the western social sciences.

This study is the first to assemble the evidence for the existence of sorcerors in the ancient world; it also addresses the question of their identity and social origins. The resulting investigation takes us to the underside of Greek and Roman society, into a world of wandering holy men and women, conjurors and wonder-workers, and into the lives of prostitutes, procuresses, charioteers and theatrical performers.
This fascinating reconstruction of the careers of witches and sorcerors allows us to see into previously inaccessible areas of Greco-Roman life. Compelling for both its detail and clarity, and with an extraordinarily revealing breadth of evidence employed, it will be an essential resource for anyone studying ancient magic.

Using in-depth examples of 'magical' practice such as exorcisms, love rites, alchemy and the transformation of humans into divine beings, this lively volume demonstrates that the word 'magic' was used widely in late antique texts as part of polemics against enemies and sometimes merely as a term for other people's rituals. Professor Janowitz shows that 'magical' activities were integral to late antique religious practice, and that they must be understood from the perspective of those who employed them.

First written by Marcel Mauss and Henri Humbert in 1902, A General Theory of Magic gained a wide new readership when republished by Mauss in 1950. As a study of magic in 'primitive' societies and its survival today in our thoughts and social actions, it represents what Claude Lévi-Strauss called, in an introduction to that edition, the astonishing modernity of the mind of one of the century's greatest thinkers. The book offers a fascinating snapshot of magic throughout various cultures as well as deep sociological and religious insights still very much relevant today. At a period when art, magic and science appear to be crossing paths once again, A General Theory of Magic presents itself as a classic for our times.

Using in-depth examples of 'magical' practice such as exorcisms, love rites, alchemy and the transformation of humans into divine beings, this lively volume demonstrates that the word 'magic' was used widely in late antique texts as part of polemics against enemies and sometimes merely as a term for other people's rituals. Professor Janowitz shows that 'magical' activities were integral to late antique religious practice, and that they must be understood from the perspective of those who employed them.

This remarkable work contains the original texts with translations and descriptions of a series of Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Christian, Gnostic, and Muslim amulets and magical devices and figures. Man through the ages has widely held the importance of being able to hold the evil eye at bay.

Spirituality and the Occult argues against the widely held view that occult spiritualities are marginal to Western culture. Showing that the esoteric tradition is unfairly neglected in Western culture and that much of what we take to be 'modern' derives at least in part from this tradition, it casts a fresh, intriguing and persuasive perspective on intellectual and cultural history in the West. Brian Gibbons identifies the influence and continued presence of esoteric mystical movements in disciplines such as:
* medicine
* science
* philosophy
* Freudian and Jungian psychology
* radical political movements
* imaginative literature.

Originally published in 1978, The Occult Sourcebook has been compiled primarily for the many people who are for the first time becoming engrossed by the numerous and often confusing possibilities underlying the occult sciences. It consists of a series of articles on key areas, providing the reader with easy access to basic facts, together with a carefully planned guide to further reading. Critical comments on the recommended books allow the reader to select those which best suit their interests. The authors have also included a 'Who's Who of the occult' to provide short biographies of some of the more amazing figures who have already travelled down the mystic path. The book offers a programmed system of exploration into the realms of the unknown. It will be invaluable to the increasing number of people who are concerned with the exploration of enlarging human consciousness.

Originally published in 1982, The Shaman and the Magician draws on the author's wide experience of occultism, western magic and anthropological knowledge of shamanism, to explore the interesting parallels between traditional shamanism and the more visionary aspects of magic in modern western society. In both cases, as the author shows, the magician encounters profound god-energies of the spirit, and it is up to the individual to interpret these experiences in psychological or mythological terms. The book demonstrates that both shamanism and magic offer techniques of approaching the visionary sources of our culture.

In this original, provocative, well-reasoned, and thoroughly documented book, Frank Klaassen proposes that two principal genres of illicit learned magic occur in late medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic (in its extreme form, overt necromancy), which could not. Image magic tended to be recopied faithfully; ritual magic tended to be adapted and reworked. These two forms of magic did not usually become intermingled in the manuscripts, but were presented separately. While image magic was often copied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, The Transformations of Magic demonstrates that interest in it as an independent genre declined precipitously around 1500. Instead, what persisted was the other, more problematic form of magic: ritual magic. Klaassen shows that texts of medieval ritual magic were cherished in the sixteenth century, and writers of new magical treatises, such as Agrippa von Nettesheim and John Dee, were far more deeply indebted to medieval tradition--and specifically to the medieval tradition of ritual magic--than previous scholars have thought them to be.

Parting company with the trend in recent scholarship to treat the subject in abstract, highly theoretical terms, Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome proposes that the magic-working of antiquity was in reality a highly pragmatic business, with very clearly formulated aims - often of an exceedingly malignant kind. In seven chapters, each addressed to an important arm of Greco-Roman magic, the volume discusses the history of the rediscovery and publication of the so-called Greek Magical Papyri, a key source for our understanding of ancient magic; the startling violence of ancient erotic spells and the use of these by women as well as men; the alteration in the landscape of defixio (curse tablet) studies by major new finds and the confirmation these provide that the frequently lethal intent of such tablets must not be downplayed; the use of herbs in magic, considered from numerous perspectives but with an especial focus on the bizarre-seeming rituals and protocols attendant upon their collection; the employment of animals in magic, the factors determining the choice of animal, the uses to which they were put, and the procuring and storage of animal parts, conceivably in a sorcerer's workshop; the witch as a literary construct, the clear homologies between the magical procedures of fictional witches and those documented for real spells, the gendering of the witch-figure and the reductive presentation of sorceresses as old, risible and ineffectual; the issue of whether ancient magicians practised human sacrifice and the illuminating parallels between such accusations and late 20th century accounts of child-murder in the context of perverted Satanic rituals. By challenging a number of orthodoxies and opening up some underexamined aspects of the subject, this wide-ranging study stakes out important new territory in the field of magical studies.

This book takes what is often referred to as the "supernatural" to be normal natural phenomena that are closely linked to the neurobiology of the human species. Reflecting the neurocultural and biocultural perspective, the chapters cover phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, ghosts, and experiences of spirit entities. The contributors consider the "supernatural" as emerging from innate neurobiological structures and functions, and reflecting known neurobiological processes that explain their universality and persistence.

Magic is a universal phenomenon. Everywhere we look people perform ritual actions in which desirable qualities are transferred by means of physical contact and objects or persons are manipulated by things of their likeness. In this book Sorensen embraces a cognitive perspective in order to investigate this long-established but controversial topic. Following a critique of the traditional approaches to magic, and basing his claims on classical ethnographic cases, the author explains magic's universality by examining a number of recurrent cognitive processes underlying its different manifestations. He focuses on how power is infused into the ritual practice; how representations of contagion and similarity can be used to connect otherwise distinct objects in order to manipulate one by the other; and how the performance of ritual prompts representations of magical actions as effective. Bringing these features together, the author proposes a cognitive theory of how people can represent magical rituals as purposeful actions and how ritual actions are integrated into more complex representations of events. This explanation, in turn, yields new insights into the constitutive role of magic in the formation of institutionalised religious ritual.

In this original study of witchcraft, Gibson explores the stories told by and about witches and their 'victims' through trial records, early news books, pamphlets and fascinating personal accounts. The author discusses the issues surrounding the interpretation of original historical sources and demonstrates that their representations of witchcraft are far from straight forward or reliable. Innovative and thought-provoking, this book sheds new light on early modern people's responses to witches and on the sometimes bizarre flexibility of the human imagination.

This is a regional and comparative study of early modern witchcraft. The history of witchcraft continues to attract attention with its emotive and contentious debates. The methodology and conclusions of this book have impacted not only on witchcraft studies but on the approach to social and cultural history with its quantitative and anthropological approach. The book provides a case study on Essex as well as drawing comparisons with other regions of early modern England. The second edition adds a historiographical introduction, placing the book in context in the late 1990s.