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.

For more than a year, between January 1692 and May 1693, the men and women of Salem Village lived in heightened fear of witches and their master, the Devil. Hundreds were accused of practicing witchcraft. Many suspects languished in jail for months. Nineteen men and women were hanged; one was pressed to death. Neighbors turned against neighbors, children informed on their parents, and ministers denounced members of their congregations. Approaching the subject as a legal and social historian, Peter Charles Hoffer offers a fresh look at the Salem outbreak based on recent studies of panic rumors, teen hysteria, child abuse, and intrafamily relations. He brings to life a set of conversations - in taverns and courtrooms, at home and work - which took place among suspected witches, accusers, witnesses, and spectators. The accusations, denials, and confessions of this legal story eventually resurrect the tangled internal tensions that lay at the bottom of the Salem witch hunts. Hoffer demonstrates that Salem, far from being an isolated community in the wilderness, stood on the leading edge of a sprawling and energetic Atlantic empire. His story begins in the slave markets of West Africa and Barbados and then shifts to Massachusetts, where the English, Africans, and Native Americans lived under increasing pressures from overpopulation, disease, and cultural conflict. In Salem itself, traditional piety and social values appeared endangered as consumerism and secular learning gained ground. Guerrilla warfare between Indians and English settlers - and rumors that the Devil had taken a particular interest in New England - panicked common people and authorities. The stage was set, Hoffer concludes, for the witchcraft hysteria.