Lux in Tenebris is a collection of eighteen original interdisciplinary essays that address aspects of the verbal and visual symbolism in the works of significant figures in the history of Western Esotericism, covering such themes as alchemy, magic, kabbalah, angels, occult philosophy, Platonism, Rosicrucianism, and Theosophy. Part I: Middle Ages & Early Modernity ranges from Gikatilla, Ficino, Camillo, Agrippa, Weigel, Boehme, Yvon, and Swedenborg, to celestial divination in Russia. Part II: Modernity & Postmodernity moves from occultist thinkers Schwaller de Lubicz and Evola to esotericism in literature, art, and cinema, in the works of Colquhoun, Degouve de Nuncques, Bruskin, Doitschinoff, and Perez-Reverte, with an essay on esoteric theories of colour. Contributors are: Michael J.B. Allen, Susanna Akerman, Lina Bolzoni, Aaron Cheak, Robert Collis, Francesca M. Crasta, Per Faxneld, Laura Follesa, Victoria Ferentinou, Joshua Gentzke, Joscelyn Godwin, Hans Thomas Hakl, Theodor Harmsen, Elke Morlok, Noel Putnik, Jonathan Schorsch, Gyoergy Szoenyi, Carsten Wilke, and Thomas Willard.

Witches and Warlocks of New York is a collection of legends and historical accounts about witches and warlocks from the Empire State. This will be the second in a series (the first being Massachusetts publishing September 1, 2021). New York has a surprisingly rich history of witches and witchcraft. These stories are known locally in the towns where they occurred but have never been collected into one book before. Included are a history and origins of witchcraft in New York State and historical tales of "witches" across the state including Hulda and the thirteen Witches of the Catskills.

The Jewel of Annual Astrology is an encyclopaedic treatise on Tajika or Sanskritized Perso-Arabic astrology, dealing particularly with the casting and interpretation of anniversary horoscopes. Authored in 1649 CE by Balabhadra Daivajna, court astrologer to Shah Shuja' - governor of Bengal and second son of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan - it casts light on the historical development of the Tajika school by extensive quotations from earlier works spanning five centuries. With this first-ever scholarly edition and translation of a Tajika text, Martin Gansten makes a significant contribution not only to the study of an important but little known knowledge tradition, but also to the intellectual historiography of Asia and the transmission of horoscopic astrology in the medieval and early modern periods.

The Ouija board jury incident of 1994 is one of the most disconcerting in English legal history, possibly (says the author) 'the nadir of reported juror misbehaviour in the 20th-century'. But, as Professor Jeremy Gans shows, in an era of soundbites it has been distorted by the media whilst even eminent lawyers have sometimes got the story wrong. In this first full-length treatment he emphasises the known facts, the constitutional dilemma of investigating even bizarre jury misbehaviour and how the trial involved one of the most serious murder cases of the decade in which two people were shot in cold blood. Stephen Young's conviction after a re-trial is still claimed to be a miscarriage of justice by some people, as to which Gans puts forward his own ingenious solution. But quite apart from analysing the facts of R v Young, this book is a tour de force on jury misbehaviour in which the author also examines the implications for example of winks and nods, research by jurors, speaking or listening out of turn, going to sleep during the hearing or falling in love with one of the advocates. Amusing at first sight, such events involve deep questions of law, practice and democratic involvement in the Criminal Justice process. Far from being a mere anecdote, the case of the Ouija board jurors, the misconceptions about it and the issues it leads to deserve close study by anyone who is even remotely interested in jury trial. The first full length treatment of an iconic case. Dispels the myths that have built-up around it. Looks at other instances of jury misbehaviour. Shows how the courts and Parliament have wrestled with problems of this kind. A first-rate analysis of a baffling double murder.

Divination, the use of special talents and techniques to gain divine knowledge, was practiced in many different forms in ancient Israel and throughout the ancient world. The Hebrew Bible reveals a variety of traditions of women associated with divination. This sensitive and incisive book by respected scholar Esther J. Hamori examines the wide scope of women's divinatory activities as portrayed in the Hebrew texts, offering readers a new appreciation of the surprising breadth of women's "arts of knowledge" in biblical times. Unlike earlier approaches to the subject that have viewed prophecy separately from other forms of divination, Hamori's study encompasses the full range of divinatory practices and the personages who performed them, from the female prophets and the medium of En-dor to the matriarch who interprets a birth omen and the "wise women" of Tekoa and Abel and more. In doing so, the author brings into clearer focus the complex, rich, and diverse world of ancient Israelite divination.

The Book of the Law, the holy text that forms the basis of Thelema, was transmitted to Crowley by the entity known as Aiwass in Cairo, on three successive days during April 1904. Acting as a medium, Crowley recorded the communications on hotel notepads and later organized his automatic writing into a short, coherent document. Aiwass/Crowley presents The Book of the Law as an expression of three god-forms in three chapters: Nuit, Hadit, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit.

Magic is usually defined as a non-modern phenomenon, contrasted with modern rationalism and science. However, the idea of magic has remained persistent in scholarly discourse throughout history from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment and beyond. This volume explores how the notion of magic is articulated and theorised in the writing of history. Departing from writing "about" magic in history, this volume addresses magic as it relates to the trajectories of intellectual history as a whole, with particular reference to a diverse series of case studies in thought about magic. The author also engages with the history and philosophy of science; operating within this framework, the author argues that magic has always been figured as "medieval" in the formulation of the discourses of modernity, and that thinking or writing about magic has engendered multiple epistemological crises. Through these controversies, the idea of magic and the occult has profoundly unsettled the understanding of history in Western culture. The resulting study is an investigation of the implications of magic (and the study of magic) for intellectual history.