In this major new book, Wolfgang Behringer surveys the phenomenon of witchcraft past and present. Drawing on the latest historical and anthropological findings, Behringer sheds new light on the history of European witchcraft, while demonstrating that witch-hunts are not simply part of the European past. Although witch-hunts have long since been outlawed in Europe, other societies have struggled with the idea that witchcraft does not exist. As Behringer shows, witch-hunts continue to pose a major problem in Africa and among tribal people in America, Asia and Australia. The belief that certain people are able to cause harm by supernatural powers endures throughout the world today.

Wolfgang Behringer explores the idea of witchcraft as an anthropological phenomenon with a historical dimension, aiming to outline and to understand the meaning of large-scale witchcraft persecutions in early modern Europe and in present-day Africa. He deals systematically with the belief in witchcraft and the persecution of witches, as well as with the process of outlawing witch-hunts. He examines the impact of anti-witch-hunt legislation in Europe, and discusses the problems caused in societies where European law was imposed in colonial times. In conclusion, the relationship between witches old and new is assessed.

This book will make essential reading for all those interested in the history and anthropology of witchcraft and magic.

'A major work ... an extraordinary tour de force, [this book] will materially help to bring both sides (science and paranormal studies) together in a way which could lead to real and important advances in our view of the universe' - New Scientist First published in 1978, Mysteries is the powerful and enlightening sequel to The Occult, continuing Colin Wilson's investigations into the paranormal, the occult and the supernatural. The experience of his own panic attacks gave Wilson his insight into the concept of the ladder or hierarchy of selves with which we are all associated. In this book he fully explores this idea of multiple selves, explaining how our lower, childish selves are linked to depression and anxiety. The book offers an optimistic message to counteract our contemporary tendency towards pessimism and nihilism: purposeful activity will always allow us to call on our higher selves and bring concentration, control and a sense of meaning into life. Wilson uses the concept of the multi-personality to explain a wide range of paranormal phenomenon, from dowsing and demonic possession to precognition and spoon-bending, and he analyses the work of all the big names in 20th-century supra-rational research (from T C Lethbridge to Margaret Murray to Carl Jung) from this perspective. The story ranges widely, from the stone circles to 1960s LSD adventures, and Wilson's analysis is woven with hundreds of entertaining paranormal anecdotes and case studies taken from throughout history, including his own experiences of dowsing at the Merry Maidens stone circle and of visions and lucid dreaming.

What actually took place in the private laboratory of a mid-seventeenth century alchemist? How did he direct his quest after the secrets of Nature? What instruments and theoretical principles did he employ?
Using, as their guide, the previously misunderstood interactions between Robert Boyle, widely known as "the father of chemistry," and George Starkey, an alchemist and the most prominent American scientific writer before Benjamin Franklin as their guide, Newman and Principe reveal the hitherto hidden laboratory operations of a famous alchemist and argue that many of the principles and practices characteristic of modern chemistry derive from alchemy. By analyzing Starkey's extraordinary laboratory notebooks, the authors show how this American "chymist" translated the wildly figurative writings of traditional alchemy into quantitative, carefully reasoned laboratory practice--and then encoded his own work in allegorical, secretive treatises under the name of Eirenaeus Philalethes. The intriguing "mystic" Joan Baptista Van Helmont--a favorite of Starkey, Boyle, and even of Lavoisier--emerges from this study as a surprisingly central figure in seventeenth-century "chymistry." A common emphasis on quantification, material production, and analysis/synthesis, the authors argue, illustrates a continuity of goals and practices from late medieval alchemy down to and beyond the Chemical Revolution.
For anyone who wants to understand how alchemy was actually practiced during the Scientific Revolution and what it contributed to the development of modern chemistry, "Alchemy Tried in the Fire" will be a veritable philosopher's stone.

The History of the Devil (1900) is a philosophical study by Paul Carus. A lifelong Monist, Carus sought to apply a scientific analysis to the principles of humanity's religions. Credited with bridging the gap between Eastern and Western beliefs, Carus believed that the dualism rampant in the West could be replaced in order to establish a more equitable world where difference and diversity would be accepted and nurtured, rather than suppressed. "This world of ours is a world of opposites. There is light and shade, there is heat and cold, there is good and evil, there is God and the Devil. The dualistic conception of nature has been a necessary phase in the evolution in human thought." Recognizing the need for dualism in the history of humanity, Carus sought to promote the principles of Monism in the West, believing it could lead to a universal worldview capable of uniting East and West. A positivist and pantheist, Carus believed that by pursuing "in religion the same path that science travels, [...] the narrowness of sectarianism [would] develop into a broad cosmical religion which shall be as wide and truly catholic as is science itself." To lay the groundwork for this "cosmical religion," he investigates the figure of the Devil and the historical evolution of the concept of evil, which he saw as predating belief in goodness and God. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Paul Carus' The History of the Devil is a classic of philosophy reimagined for modern readers.

How was magic practiced in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterized this fascinating period? This much revised and expanded new edition of Magic in the Middle Ages surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval Europe. It takes into account the extensive new developments in the history of medieval magic in recent years, featuring new material on angel magic, the archaeology of magic, and the magical efficacy of words and imagination. Richard Kieckhefer shows how magic represents a crossroads in medieval life and culture, examining its relationship and relevance to religion, science, philosophy, art, literature, and politics. In surveying the different types of magic that were used, the kinds of people who practiced magic, and the reasoning behind their beliefs, Kieckhefer shows how magic served as a point of contact between the popular and elite classes, how the reality of magical beliefs is reflected in the fiction of medieval literature, and how the persecution of magic and witchcraft led to changes in the law.

Historians of the early modern witch-hunt often begin histories of their field with the theories propounded by Margaret Murray and Montague Summers in the 1920s. They overlook the lasting impact of nineteenth-century scholarship, in particular the contributions by two American historians, Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918) and George Lincoln Burr (1857-1938). Study of their work and scholarly personae contributes to our understanding of the deeply embedded popular understanding of the witch-hunt as representing an irrational past in opposition to an enlightened present. Yet the men's relationship with each other, and with witchcraft sceptics - the heroes of their studies - also demonstrates how their writings were part of a larger war against 'unreason'. This Element thus lays bare the ways scholarly masculinity helped shape witchcraft historiography, a field of study often seen as dominated by feminist scholarship. Such meditation on past practice may foster reflection on contemporary models of history writing.

A new history that overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain-named a Best Book of 2020 by the Financial Times In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science - and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

The strix was a persistent feature of the folklore of the Roman world and subsequently that of the Latin West and the Greek East. She was a woman that flew by night, either in an owl-like form or in the form of a projected soul, in order to penetrate homes by surreptitious means and thereby devour, blight or steal the new-born babies within them. The motif-set of the ideal narrative of a strix attack - the 'strix-paradigm' - is reconstructed from Ovid, Petronius, John Damascene and other sources, and the paradigm's impact is traced upon the typically gruesome representation of witches in Latin literature. The concept of the strix is contextualised against the longue-duree notion of the child-killing demon, which is found already in the ancient Near East, and shown to retain a currency still as informing the projection of the vampire in Victorian fiction.

Imagining the Witch explores emotions, gender, and selfhood through the lens of witch-trials in early modern Germany. Witch-trials were clearly a gendered phenomenon, but witchcraft was not a uniquely female crime. While women constituted approximately three quarters of those tried for witchcraft in the Holy Roman Empire, a significant minority were men. Witchcraft was also a crime of unbridled passion: it centred on the notion that one person's emotions could have tangible and deadly physical consequences. Yet it is also true that not all suspicions of witchcraft led to a formal accusation, and not all witch-trials led to the stake. Indeed, just over half the total number put on trial for witchcraft in early modern Europe were executed. In order to understand how early modern people imagined the witch, we must first begin to understand how people understood themselves and each other; this can help us to understand how the witch could be a member of the community, living alongside their accusers, yet inspire such visceral fear. Through an examination of case studies of witch-trials that took place in the early modern Lutheran duchy of Wurttemberg in southwestern Germany, Laura Kounine examines how the community, church, and the agents of the law sought to identify the witch, and the ways in which ordinary men and women fought for their lives in an attempt to avoid the stake. The study further explores the visual and intellectual imagination of witchcraft in this period in order to piece together why witchcraft could be aligned with such strong female stereotypes on the one hand, but also be imagined as a crime that could be committed by any human, whether young or old, male or female. By moving beyond stereotypes of the witch, Imagining the Witch argues that understandings of what constituted witchcraft and the 'witch' appear far more contested and unstable than has previously been suggested. It also suggests new ways of thinking about early modern selfhood which moves beyond teleological arguments about the development of the 'modern' self. Indeed, it is the trial process itself that created the conditions for a diverse range of people to reflect on, and give meaning, to emotions, gender, and the self in early modern Lutheran Germany.

Magic enjoyed a vigorous revival in sixteenth-century Europe, attaining a prestige lost for over a millennium and becoming, for some, a kind of universal philosophy. Renaissance music also suggested a form of universal knowledge through renewed interest in two ancient themes: the Pythagorean and Platonic "harmony of the celestial spheres" and the legendary effects of the music of bards like Orpheus, Arion, and David. In this climate, Renaissance philosophers drew many new and provocative connections between music and the occult sciences.
In "Music in Renaissance Magic," Gary Tomlinson describes some of these connections and offers a fresh view of the development of early modern thought in Italy. Raising issues essential to postmodern historiography--issues of cultural distance and our relationship to the others who inhabit our constructions of the past --Tomlinson provides a rich store of ideas for students of early modern culture, for musicologists, and for historians of philosophy, science, and religion.
"A scholarly step toward a goal that many composers have aimed for: to rescue the "idea" of New Age Music--that music can promote spiritual well-being--from the New Ageists who have reduced it to a level of sonic wallpaper."--Kyle Gann, "Village Voice"
"An exemplary piece of musical and intellectual history, of interest to all students of the Renaissance as well as musicologists. . . . The author deserves congratulations for introducing this new approach to the study of Renaissance music."--Peter Burke, "NOTES"
"Gary Tomlinson's "Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others" examines the 'otherness' of magical cosmology. . . . [A] passionate, eloquently melancholy, and important book."--Anne Lake Prescott, "Studies in English Literature"

Vampires and Vampirism (1914) is a work from another era, a time when belief and wonder led some to travel down pathways of knowledge in search of truth and terror, not knowing what they would find. Written in response to an "awakened [popular] interest in supernormal phenomena" in the early twentieth century, Dudley Wright's Vampires and Vampirism traces the history of vampirism around the world, from ancient Babylonia, Assyria, and Greece, to Great Britain, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Beginning with the question "What is a vampire?", Wright seeks to first define the term before moving into an analysis of how belief in vampirism emerged from various and distant religious and cultural traditions. Each chapter uses a scholarly mix of ancient and modern sources to enlighten the reader, and the book culminates in a chapter titled "Fact or Fiction?", which allows the reader to hear from believers and skeptics alike. The book includes harrowing personal accounts of outbreaks of vampirism in British India and Mexico, as well as a lengthy bibliography. In a world where matters of occult nature, such as astrology, have reentered the popular consciousness, Vampires and Vampirism is sure to be of interest. It is also a fascinating document of a time when Europeans-faced with spiritual doubt and inspired by religious traditions and myths from the outer reaches of empire-sought to establish new systems of belief, new orders they hoped could replace those they feared were quickly becoming lost. At times despicable, and always controversial, Dudley Wright was a tireless searcher whose life included conversions to Islam and Catholicism, forays into anti-Semitism-later retracted-and a deep, spiritual involvement with organizations dedicated to matters both visible and invisible, true and beyond belief. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this new edition of Dudley Wright's Vampires and Vampirism is a classic of history and horror reimagined for modern readers.

The essays in this Handbook, written by leading scholars working in the rapidly developing field of witchcraft studies, explore the historical literature regarding witch beliefs and witch trials in Europe and colonial America between the early fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries. During these years witches were thought to be evil people who used magical power to inflict physical harm or misfortune on their neighbours. Witches were also believed to have made pacts with the devil and sometimes to have worshipped him at nocturnal assemblies known as sabbaths. These beliefs provided the basis for defining witchcraft as a secular and ecclesiastical crime and prosecuting tens of thousands of women and men for this offence. The trials resulted in as many as fifty thousand executions. These essays study the rise and fall of witchcraft prosecutions in the various kingdoms and territories of Europe and in English, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in the Americas. They also relate these prosecutions to the Catholic and Protestant reformations, the introduction of new forms of criminal procedure, medical and scientific thought, the process of state-building, profound social and economic change, early modern patterns of gender relations, and the wave of demonic possessions that occurred in Europe at the same time. The essays survey the current state of knowledge in the field, explore the academic controversies that have arisen regarding witch beliefs and witch trials, propose new ways of studying the subject, and identify areas for future research.

The book provides a comprehensive exploration of witchcraft beliefs and practices in the rural region of Eastern Slovenia. Based on field research conducted at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it examines witchcraft in the region from folkloristic, anthropological, as well as historical, perspectives. Witchcraft is presented as part of social reality, strongly related to misfortune and involved in social relationships. The reality of the ascribed bewitching deeds, psychological mechanisms that may help bewitchment to work, circumstances in which bewitchment narratives can be mobilised, reasons for a person to acquire a reputation of the witch in the entire community, and the role that unwitchers fulfilled in the community, are but a few of the many topics discussed. In addition, the intertwinement of social witchcraft with narratives of supernatural experiences, closely associated with supernatural beings of European folklore, forming part of the overall witchcraft discourse in the area, is explored.

This sourcebook provides the first systematic overview of witchcraft laws and trials in Russia and Ukraine from medieval times to the late nineteenth century. Witchcraft in Russia and Ukraine, 1000-1900 weaves scholarly commentary with never-before-published primary source materials translated from Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. These sources include the earliest references to witchcraft and sorcery, secular and religious laws regarding witchcraft and possession, full trial transcripts, and a wealth of magical spells. The documents present a rich panorama of daily life and reveal the extraordinary power of magical words. Editors Valerie A. Kivelson and Christine D. Worobec present new analyses of the workings and evolution of legal systems, the interplay and tensions between church and state, and the prosaic concerns of the women and men involved in witchcraft proceedings. The extended documentary commentaries also explore the shifting boundaries and fraught political relations between Russia and Ukraine.

Just as surely as Haiti is "possessed" by the gods and spirits of vaudun (voodoo), the island "possessed" Katherine Dunham when she first went there in 1936 to study dance and ritual. In this book, Dunham reveals how her anthropological research, her work in dance, and her fascination for the people and cults of Haiti worked their spell, catapulting her into experiences that she was often lucky to survive. Here Dunham tells how the island came to be possessed by the demons of voodoo and other cults imported from various parts of Africa, as well as by the deep class divisions, particularly between blacks and mulattos, and the political hatred still very much in evidence today. Full of the flare and suspense of immersion in a strange and enchanting culture, Island Possessed is also a pioneering work in the anthropology of dance and a fascinating document on Haitian politics and voodoo.

A lavishly illustrated celebration of green witchcraft—romance, mythology, and folklore that are sure to enchant your inner witch!   In these trying times, couldn’t we all use more magic in our lives? Equal parts practical guide and beautiful keepsake, The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers shows you how to bring more love and contentment into your life using elements of nature. In this little grimoire, Chris Young and Susan Ottaviano, 2 Green Witches, unlock the secrets hiding in your garden, transforming everyday flowers, fruits, and plants into bath salts, herbal infusions, soaps, sachets, tinctures, and more.   Enchanting all-natural recipes illuminate pathways to love, health, peace, prosperity, and harmony. Learn how a rose petal bath can stoke your sense of desire, how meadowsweet flowers on your nightstand can restore peace between two lovers, and how facial oil made from tulip petals can protect you from heartbreak.   Celebrate green witchcraft and the magical properties of the natural world with The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers.

To me, Wicca will always be about experiencing the earth, working with what you can find and practising the craft for its true meaning. It promotes equality in all and has brought me many benefits: acceptance, kindness and self-love. Harmony Nice is at the heart of a growing community of modern-day wiccans who practise natural magic to improve their own lives and the world around them. In Wicca she encourages you to explore the positive impact that ritual, meditation and embracing nature can have on your creativity, confidence and sense of self-worth. Discover how to cast spells, start your own Book of Shadows, join a coven and feel empowered to follow a path that feels good and true to you.

This is the first systematic exploration of the intriguing connections between Victorian physical sciences and the study of the controversial phenomena broadly classified as psychic, occult and paranormal. These phenomena included animal magnetism, spirit-rapping, telekinesis and telepathy. Richard Noakes shows that psychic phenomena interested far more Victorian scientists than we have previously assumed, challenging the view of these scientists as individuals clinging rigidly to a materialistic worldview. Physicists, chemists and other physical scientists studied psychic phenomena for a host of scientific, philosophical, religious and emotional reasons, and many saw such investigations as exciting new extensions to their theoretical and experimental researches. While these attempted extensions were largely unsuccessful, they laid the foundations of modern day explorations of the connections between physics and psychic phenomena. This revelatory study challenges our view of the history of physics, and deepens our understanding of the relationships between science and the occult, and science and religion.