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Books > Health, Home & Family > Mind, body & spirit > The Occult
Bestselling author Philip Matyszak explores how the Greeks and
Romans used magic, who performed it – and why. Magic was
everywhere in the ancient world. The supernatural abounded, turning
flowers into fruit and caterpillars into butterflies. Magic packed
a cloud of water vapour with energy enough to destroy a house with
one well-aimed thunderbolt. It was everyday magic, but it was still
magical. Philip Matyszak takes readers into that world. He shows us
how to make a love potion or cast a curse, how to talk to the dead
and how to identify and protect oneself from evil spirits. He takes
us to a world where gods, like humans, were creatures of space and
time; where people could not just talk to spirits and deities, but
could even themselves become divine; and where divine beings could
fall from – or be promoted to – full godhood. Ancient Magic
offers us a new way of understanding the role of magic, looking at
its history in all of its classical forms. Drawing on a wide array
of sources, from Greek dramas to curse tablets, lavishly
illustrated throughout, and packed with information, surprises,
lore and learning, this book offers an engaging and accessible way
into the supernatural for all.
Charles Fort's classic recording of unexplained, paranormal events
and phenomena offer fascinating insights into bizarre occurrences
the author felt had been unjustly damned from formal, scientific
study. The title derives from the author's perception that the
book's subjects were so stigmatized and excluded from ordinary
scientific inquiry that they had become 'damned'. Perhaps
permanently forbade for formal study, the oddities and unexplained
events in this text were felt worthy of attention by the author,
who eventually became an authority on anomalous phenomena. The
topics in Fort's thesis include unexplained disappearances of large
groups of people, frogs and fish suddenly raining from the sky, the
possibility that mythical beasts such as giants exist, UFOs
manifest as glowing and sometimes moving lights in the sky, and
bizarre weather phenomena. Fort attributes credence to many of
these oddities, and argues that science - by dismissing them - has
become a religion in itself.
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