Many of the herbal and magical practices of the Scots are echoed in traditional Norwegian folk medicine and magic. This is a valuable resource book not only for the serious folklorist, but also for a wider audience interested in a deeper look at rural Scottish practices. Ms. Hopman has done an amazing amount of research, and her Scottish herbalism section is far more detailed than I've seen elsewhere. A "must have" for the northern European folklorist's library.
Jane T. Sibley, Ph.D., author of "The Hammer of the Smith" and "The Divine Thunderbolt: Missile of the Gods."
Through her books, Ellen Evert Hopman lifts the veil between worlds of the present and the past. She guides the reader on a fascinating journey to our ancient Celtic history, simultaneously restoring lost knowledge and entertaining the reader. Be prepared to be educated and delighted.
Wendy Farley, Clan McKleod
The first things is WOW Ellen Hopman has given us a volume that belongs in Harry Potter's library. This wonderful collection of enchantments, faery lore and herbal potions, is presented by a practicing herbalist and (I suspect) magician. It is a useful manual of magic, an unusual tourist guide to Scotland, certainly a delightful read, and at the very least, a comprehensive and thoroughly footnoted collection of folk lore for humorless librarians and scholars.
Matthew Wood MS (Scottish School of Herbal Medicine) Registered Herbalist (American Herbalists Guild)
Every now and again, a book emerges from the waves of occult and magical authorship that delves into the deep and ancestral waters of old magic This book is one of those rare occasions. From the lore of herbs to the blessing of stones; from avioding the elf-blast to healing through Faerie blessing - Ellen guides the reader through ancient groves of oral lore to discover a power and spirit that connects the reader to the oldest of magics, the earth and her elements. I am confident that the Scottish Ancestral Wise Ones, are renewed through this book and the old ways live once again
Orion Foxwood, Traditional Witch Elder, Conjurer in Southern Root-Doctoring and Faery Seer (www.orionfoxwood.com), author of "The Faery Teachings" (R.J. Stewart Books) and "The Tree of Enchantment" (Weiser Books).

2011 Reprint of 1928 Edition. The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for "The Hammer of Witches") is a famous treatise on witches, written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, an Inquisitor of the Catholic Church, and was first published in Germany in 1487. Jacob Sprenger is also often attributed as an author. The main purpose of the Malleus was to attempt to systematically refute arguments claiming that witchcraft does not exist, discredit those who expressed skepticism about its reality, to claim that witches were more often women than men, and to educate magistrates on the procedures that could find them out and convict them. This edition of Malleus Maleficarum is here translated into English for the first time. It contains a note upon the bibliography of the Malleus Maleficarum and includes bibliographical references. Translated, with introductions, bibliography and notes by Montague Summers.

In 1682, ten years before the infamous Salem witch trials, the town of Great Island, New Hampshire, was plagued by mysterious events: strange, demonic noises; unexplainable movement of objects; and hundreds of stones that rained upon a local tavern and appeared at random inside its walls. Town residents blamed what they called "Lithobolia" or "the stone-throwing devil." In this lively account, Emerson Baker shows how witchcraft hysteria overtook one town and spawned copycat incidents elsewhere in New England, prefiguring the horrors of Salem. In the process, he illuminates a cross-section of colonial society and overturns many popular assumptions about witchcraft in the seventeenth century.

Color Magick is the most effective, yet the most simple method of knowledge and practice in all the fields of psychic and spiritual development. Color surrounds us in our world and this book can show you how to put that color to work. Color Magick is powerful, yet safe. It is creative and fun to do. It is the use of a natural element in a practical way. Color Magick can be used in meditation, healing, ESP, Tarot, crystal-gazing, ritual, candle-magick, and many other forms of magical practice. Learn all of its secrets in this exciting book!

In "The Specter of Salem", Gretchen A. Adams reveals the many ways that the Salem witch trials loomed over the American collective memory from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond. Schoolbooks in the 1790s, for example, evoked the episode to demonstrate the new nation's progress from a disorderly and brutal past to a rational present, while critics of new religious movements in the 1830s cast them as a return to Salem-era fanaticism, and during the Civil War southerners evoked witch burning to criticize Union tactics. Shedding new light on the many, varied American invocations of Salem, Adams ultimately illuminates the function of collective memories in the life of a nation.

REPRINT 2009 of 1891 edition. John C. Bourke was Captain of the U.S. Third Cavalry, and an author of several books. Perhaps he is most famous for On the Border with Crook, published in 1891. Scatalogic Rites of All Nations is a curious and fascinating treatise on the employment of excrementitious agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, and witchcraft in all parts of the world. Included are such exotic chapters as "The Urine Dance of the Zunis," "The employment of Excrement in Food by Savage Tribes," "Posture in Latrines," and dozens of other titles.

When Rainer Decker was researching a sensational seventeenth-century German witchcraft trial, he discovered, much to his surprise, that in this case the papacy functioned as a force of skepticism and restraint. His curiosity piqued, he tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a secret Vatican archive housing the records of the Roman Inquisition that had been sealed to outsiders from its sixteenth-century beginnings. In 1996 Decker was one of the first of a small group of scholars allowed access. Originally published as "Die Papste und die Hexen, " Witchcraft and the Papacy is based on these newly available materials and traces the role of the papacy in witchcraft prosecutions from medieval times to the eighteenth century. Decker found that although the medieval church did lay the foundation for witch hunts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the postmedieval papacy, and the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, played the same kind of skeptical, restraining role during the height of the witch-hunting frenzy in Germany and elsewhere in Europe as it had in the trial that was the initial focus of his research. "Witchcraft and the Papacy" overturns a large body of scholarship that confuses the medieval papacy with its markedly skeptical successors, and that mistakenly portrays the papacy as fanning rather than quelling the flames of the witchcraft mania sweeping northern Europe from the mid-sixteenth century onward.

In "The Specter of Salem," Gretchen A. Adams reveals the many ways that the Salem witch trials loomed over the American collective memory from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond. Schoolbooks in the 1790s, for example, evoked the episode to demonstrate the new nation's progress from a disorderly and brutal past to a rational present, while critics of new religious movements in the 1830s cast them as a return to Salem-era fanaticism, and during the Civil War, southerners evoked witch burning to criticize Union tactics. Shedding new light on the many, varied American invocations of Salem, Adams ultimately illuminates the function of collective memories in the life of a nation.

"Imaginative and thoughtful. . . . Thought-provoking, informative, and convincingly presented, "The Specter of Salem" is an often spellbinding mix of politics, cultural history, and public historiography."-- "New England"" Quarterly"

"This well-researched book, forgoing the usual heft of scholarly studies, is not another interpretation of the Salem trials, but an important major work within the scholarly literature on the witch-hunt, linking the hysteria of the period to the evolving history of the American nation. A required acquisition for academic libraries."--"Choice," Outstanding Academic Title 2009

When the first edition of this book was released, conservative Gardnerian Witches attempted to suppress it, claiming that it discredited their religion. Dr. Aidan A. Kelly has thoroughly investigated the history, rituals, and documents behind the evolution of modern Witchcraft, and has concluded that Gerald Gardner invented Wicca as a new religion. Although Wicca claims to be a persecuted pagan religion dating from before the rise of Christianity, it draws upon controversial historical sources, modern occult practices, including those of Alistair Crowley and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 19th century translations of medieval grimoires, and the poetry of Gardner's priestess, Doreen Valiente.This extensively revised edition contains new research which was unavailable at the time, as well as detailed textual comparisons of Gerald Gardner's own manuscripts, magical books, and rituals that could not be included in the earlier edition.

Adam Ashforth, an Australian who has spent many years in Soweto, finds his longtime friend Madumo in dire circumstances: his family has accused him of using witchcraft to kill his mother and has thrown him out on the street. Convinced that his life is cursed, Madumo seeks help among Soweto's bewildering array of healers and prophets. An inyanga, or traditional healer, confirms that he has indeed been bewitched. Ashforth, skeptical yet supportive, remains by Madumo's side as he embarks upon a physically grueling treatment regimen that he follows religiously - almost to the point of death. Asforth's beautifully written account of Madumo's struggle shows that the problem of witchcraft is not simply superstition but a complex response to spiritual insecurity in a troubling time of political and economic upheaval. Through Madumo's story, Ashforth opens up a world that few have seen, a deeply unsettling place where the question, "Do you believe in witchcraft?" is not a simple one at all. The insights that emerge as Ashforth accompanies his friend on an odyssey through Soweto's supernatural perils have profound implications even for those of us who live in worlds without witches.

In Darkness and Secrecy brings together ethnographic examinations of Amazonian assault sorcery, witchcraft, and injurious magic, or “dark shamanism.� Anthropological reflections on South American shamanism have tended to emphasize shamans’ healing powers and positive influence. This collection challenges that assumption by showing that dark shamans are, in many Amazonian cultures, quite different from shamanic healers and prophets. Assault sorcery, in particular, involves violence resulting in physical harm or even death. While highlighting the distinctiveness of such practices, In Darkness and Secrecy reveals them as no less relevant to the continuation of culture and society than curing and prophecy. The contributors suggest that the persistence of dark shamanism can be understood as a form of engagement with modernity.These essays, by leading anthropologists of South American shamanism, consider assault sorcery as it is practiced in parts of Brazil, Guyana, Venezuela, and Peru. They analyze the social and political dynamics of witchcraft and sorcery and their relation to cosmology, mythology, ritual, and other forms of symbolic violence and aggression in each society studied. They also discuss the relations of witchcraft and sorcery to interethnic contact and the ways that shamanic power may be co-opted by the state. In Darkness and Secrecy includes reflections on the ethical and practical implications of ethnographic investigation of violent cultural practices. Contributors. Dominique Buchillet, Carlos Fausto, Michael Heckenberger, Elsje Lagrou, E. Jean Langdon, George Mentore, Donald Pollock, Fernando Santos-Granero, Pamela J. Stewart, Andrew Strathern, Márnio Teixeira-Pinto, Silvia Vidal, Neil L. Whitehead, Johannes Wilbert, Robin Wright

Ameth is the first definitive biography of Doreen Valiente (1922-1999), an English Witch who became known as 'the Mother of Modern Witchcraft'. Based on the author's work collating her artefacts, interviewing people who knew her, reading and researching numerous personal magical documents and correspondence bequeathed by Doreen, this book gives unparalleled insight into her magical life. Evocatively recreating the atmosphere of British Witchcraft post-1951 after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act of 1735, the author explores Doreen's magical journey, including her initiation and relationship with Gerald Gardner. We are guided on a journey from the 1950's through to the early 1970's as she worked and interacted with Charles Cardell and the Coven of Atho, Robert Cochrane and the Clan of Tubal Cain, as well as the Regency coven. Ameth chronicles the whole of Doreen Valiente's colourful and varied life. It emphasises her fight to establish Pagan rights, and her subsequent role as one of the leading spokespersons for the pagan revival from the 1960s until her death in 1999. Through her own published books and her contribution to the work of Janet and Stewart Farrar, she has reinforced her position as one of the most significant and influential priestesses of the twentieth century. Her research to find Dorothy Clutterbuck may have saved the credibility of traditional Witchcraft, and took her to what was arguably the height of her achievements helping to shape the world's fastest growing religion - Wicca. As an author, priestess, researcher and pagan spokeswoman, Doreen Valiente occupied a unique position in leading the resurgence of magic, perhaps best exemplified by her creation of the Wiccan Rede - "an it harm none, do what ye will." Possessed of a fiery spirit and willingness to challenge dogma in her search for truth (the meaning of Ameth, her witch name), Doreen's tireless quest serves as an example of the power of the human spirit to accomplish transformation on a major scale. "Within Doreen's teachings, one feels she is conveying a message to all, of a gateway to the Goddess and personal enlightenment" - Jonathan Tapsell

Originally published in Brazil as O Diabo e a Terra de Santa Cruz, this translation from the Portuguese analyzes the nature of popular religion and the ways it was transferred to the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Using richly detailed transcripts from Inquisition trials, Mello e Souza reconstructs how Iberian, indigenous, and African beliefs fused to create a syncretic and magical religious culture in Brazil.

Focusing on sorcery, the author argues that European traditions of witchcraft combined with practices of Indians and African slaves to form a uniquely Brazilian set of beliefs that became central to the lives of the people in the colony. Her work shows how the Inquisition reinforced the view held in Europe (particularly Portugal) that the colony was a purgatory where those who had sinned were exiled, a place where the Devil had a wide range of opportunities. Her focus on the three centuries of the colonial period, the multiple regions in Brazil, and the Indian, African, and Portuguese traditions of magic, witchcraft, and healing, make the book comprehensive in scope.

Stuart Schwartz of Yale University says, "It is arguably the best book of this genre about Latin America...all in all, a wonderful book." Alida Metcalf of Trinity University, San Antonio, says, "This book is a major contribution to the field of Brazilian history...the first serious study of popular religion in colonial Brazil...Mello e Souza is a wonderful writer."

Commemorating its 50th anniversary, an expanded edition of the first Wicca book, by the father of the Pagan renaissance. Written shortly after the repeal of the English Witch laws in 1954, WITCHCRAFT TODAY offered the world a new religion, Wicca, and captured the imaginations of spiritual seekers everywhere. The author, Gerald Gardner, was writing about a small, secret coven of hereditary Witches, brave people who had hidden their faith for centuries to avoid persecution. His descriptions of their practices and history, their working tools and festivals, impelled a rediscovery of indigenous British religion and, globally, fueled a movement now boasting between 3 and 5 million members, making Wicca one of the fastest growing religions in the United States. To celebrate the anniversary, Citadel Press is proud to be republishing Gardner's book in an expanded edition with contributions from today's Wiccan elders on the religion's past, present, and future. From Picts and pixies to Knights Templars and persecution; from Celtic cauldrons to Kabbalitic magic, Witchcraft Today also includes important biographical information on Gardner and his historical context. This is an urgently needed reissue of a classic work to be used for study, reflection, inspiration, and transformative ideas, invaluable to understanding the Craft and its path.

A unique collection of materials, including works of literature as well as historical documents, Witchcraft and Society in England and America, 1550 1750 provides a broad view of how witches and magicians were represented in print and manuscript over three centuries. It combines newly annotated selections from famous texts, such as Macbeth, Doctor Faustus, and The Faerie Queene with unjustly obscure ones: portrayals of witchcraft and magic from private papers, court records, and little-known works of fiction. In this rich, broad context, Marion Gibson presents the voices of "witches," accusers, ministers, physicians, poets, dramatists, magistrates, and witchfinders from both sides of the Atlantic. Each text is introduced with a short essay and fully annotated to explain unfamiliar words and concepts, give biographical details of participants and/or authors, and explore the context in which the text was produced."

PrefaceAcknowledgments1. Prelude in Antiquity2. Changing views of the Devil and his power3. The demonization of medieval heretics (1)4. The demonization of medieval heretics (2)5. The crushing of the Knights Templars6. The reality of ritual magic7. Demon-worshipping magicians that never were8. The society of witches that never was9. The night-witch in popular imagination10. How the great witch-hunt did not start11. How the great witch-hunt really started (1)12. How the great witch-hunt really started (2)Note on the IllustrationsBibliographical NotesIndex

This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist. It provides hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully comprehensible, as well as full texts of the pamphlet News from Scotland and James' Demonology, all in a readable, modernised, scholarly form. Full introductory sections and supporting notes provide information about the contexts needed to understand the texts: court politics, social history and culture, religious changes, law and the workings of the court, and the history of witchcraft prosecutions in Scotland before 1590. The book also brings to bear on this material current scholarship on the history of European witchcraft.

"Shaman of Oberstdorf " tells the fascinating story of a sixteenth-century mountain village caught in a panic of its own making. Four hundred years ago the Bavarian alpine town of Oberstdorf, surrounded by the towering peaks of the Vorarlberg, was awash in legends and rumors of prophets and healers, of spirits and specters, of witches and soothsayers. The book focuses on the life of a horse wrangler named Chonrad Stoeckhlin 1549-1587], whose extraordinary visions of the afterlife and enthusiastic practice of the occult eventually led to his death--and to the death of a number of village women--for crimes of witchcraft.

In addition to recounting Stoeckhlin's tale, this book examines the larger world of alpine myths concerning ghosts and other spirits of the night, documenting how these myths have been abused by German political movements over the years. As an introduction to modern German witchcraft research, as a study of the local impact of the Counter Reformation, and as a historical investigation into popular culture, Behringer's book has the advantage of telling a compelling individual story amidst larger discussions of peasant raptures, magical healing, and unfamiliar alpine notions such as the "furious army," the "wild hunt," popular bonfire festivals, and eerie echoes of pagan Wotan.

Wolfgang Behringer is one of the premier historians of German witchcraft, not only because of his mastery of the subject at the regional level, but because he also writes movingly, forcefully, and with an eye for the telling anecdote. Reminiscent of such classics as "The Cheese and the Worms" and "The Return of Martin Guerre," "Shaman of Oberstdorf" is an unforgettable look at early modern German folklore and culture.

In her analysis of the cultural construction of gender in early America, Elizabeth Reis explores the intersection of Puritan theology, Puritan evaluations of womanhood, and the Salem witchcraft episodes. She finds in those intersections the basis for understanding why women were accused of witchcraft more often than men, why they confessed more often, and why they frequently accused other women of being witches. In negotiating their beliefs about the devil's powers, both women and men embedded womanhood in the discourse of depravity.Puritan ministers insisted that women and men were equal in the sight of God, with both sexes equally capable of cleaving to Christ or to the devil. Nevertheless, Reis explains, womanhood and evil were inextricably linked in the minds and hearts of seventeenth-century New England Puritans. Women and men feared hell equally but Puritan culture encouraged women to believe it was their vile natures that would take them there rather than the particular sins they might have committed.Following the Salem witchcraft trials, Reis argues, Puritans' understanding of sin and the devil changed. Ministers and laity conceived of a Satan who tempted sinners and presided physically over hell, rather than one who possessed souls in the living world. Women and men became increasingly confident of their redemption, although women more than men continued to imagine themselves as essentially corrupt, even after the Great Awakening.

To many Westerners, the disappearance of African traditions of witchcraft might seem inevitable with continued modernization. In The Modernity, of Witchcraft, Peter Geschiere uses his own experiences among the Maka and in other parts of eastern and southern Cameroon, as well as other anthropological research, to argue that contemporary ideas and practices of witchcraft are more a response to modern exigencies than a lingering cultural custom. The prevalence of witchcraft, especially in African politics and entrepreneurship, demonstrates the unlikely balance it has achieved with the forces of modernity. Geschiere explores why modern techniques and commodities, usually of Western provenance, have become central in rumors of the occult.

Witchcraft is viewed as both a leveling and an oppressive force: a weapon of the weak to attack the powerful but also a tool of the powerful to maintain their position. Modern witchdoctors play a pivotal role not only in local cultures but also in stories of success and failure of state politicians, businessmen, and local football teams. Since the early 1980s they have been used as expert witnesses in state trials, helping to condemn defendants by their supposed expertise, rather than by hard evidence. The belief in witchcraft pervades all political levels: President Soglo of Benin, one of the few democratically elected on the continent, nearly missed his own inauguration because of an alleged witchcraft attack. Geschiere suggests that the African state is a true breeding ground for modern transformations of witchcraft because the ambiguity of this discourse can contain both the obsession of power and the increasing feelings of powerlessness among thepeople in the face of modern developments. There are unexpected parallels here with certain aspects of politics in Western democracies.

The ease with which witchcraft has incorporated the money economy, new power relations, and modern consumer goods is a striking example of its resilience in the face of Western influences. Geschiere uses the evolving relationship of witchcraft and modernity to demonstrate that democracy in Africa can succeed only if it is related to local cultures and their discourse on power.

This study is one that anthropologists, political scientists, and others concerned with contemporary Africa cannot afford to ignore.

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"

Published to coincide with the Pagan holiday Samhain on October 31st, this new title by a renowned author and Witch will appeal to spiritualists and environmentalists alike as it celebrates the eight holidays in the Pagan tradition.  The Pagan origins of many of our everyday traditions, including the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, are celebrated here as holidays that spring from the seasons of the earth. Wit its practical suggestions for enjoying seasonal renewal, Celebrate The Earth blends all the richness and ancient lore of Witchcraft with how-to advice to create a modern-day celebration of nature.  For each holiday, it offers instructions on: Earth magic--sample rituals, preparation, garb, herbcraft, spellcraft, and magical stones, for promoting love, romance, and healing. Holiday fare--recipes and menus to prepare. Ancient activities--crafts and games passed down through generations. Also included is a list of sources--an extensive bibliography, plus lists of specialty shops and mail order catalogs.

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.