The Arcane Veil: 'analogue of Craft historiography, brought up to date through the author's own experiential praxis' A discursive investigation of magical beliefs and practises in England since 600CE to the post-modern fall-out of the 21st century, analysing in particular its influences and survival strategies. Emphasis is placed on Christian, Heathen, and Hermetic Praxis, with provocative, critical study of the concepts of Lucifer, Witch-Blood, Sin-Eating and their influences on modern Traditional Craft praxes. "A driving thirst for knowledge is the forerunner of wisdom. Knowledge is a state that all organic life possesses, wisdom is the reward of the spirit, gained in the search for knowledge. Truth is variable - what is true now, will not be true tomorrow, since the temporal truths are dependent upon ethics and social mores - therefore wisdom is possibly eternal Truth, untouched by man's condition. So we must come to the heart of the people, a belief that is based upon Eternity, and not upon social needs or pressures - the 'witch' belief then is concerned with wisdom, our true name, then the wise people and wisdom is our aim." - Robert Cochrane 1931-1966

This book provides impressive dossier on the phenomenon of Saturnism, offering a new interpretation of aspects of Judaism, including the emergence of Sabbateanism. This book explores the phenomenon of Saturnism, namely the belief that the planet Saturn, as described by ancient astrology, influenced Jews, reverberating into Jewish life. Taking into consideration the astrological aspects of Judaism, Moshe Idel demonstrates that they were instrumental in the conviction that Sabbatei Tzevei, the mid-17th-century messianic figure in Rabbinic Judaism, was indeed the Messiah. Offering a new approach to the study of this mass-movement known as Sabbateanism, Idel also explores the possible impact of astrology on the understanding of Sabbath as related to sorcery and thus to the concept of the encounter of witches in the late 14th and early 15th century. This book further analyzes aspects of 20th-century scholarship and thought influenced by Saturnism, particularly lingering themes in the works of Gershom Scholem and seminal figure Walter Benjamin. "The Robert and Arlene Kogod Library of Judaic Studies" publishes new research which provides new directions for modern Jewish thought and life and which serves to enhance the quality of dialogue between classical sources and the modern world. This book series reflects the mission of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a pluralistic research and leadership institute, at the forefront of Jewish thought and education. It empowers scholars, rabbis, educators and layleaders to develop new and diverse voices within the tradition, laying foundations for the future of Jewish life in Israel and around the world.

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, first published in Germany in 1487. Jacob Sprenger is also often attributed as an author.

This title features new translations of primary documents of a crucial period in the development of attitudes to witchcraft. In 1901, a rich collection of extracts from documents relating to witch beliefs and witch trials in the Middle Ages - "Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung in Mittelalter" - was published. Most of the original documents are in Latin, with some in medieval German and French, and it has been left largely untranslated, making the material inaccessible, and neglected. This new translation of the key documents will enable students and scholars to look afresh at this crucial period in the development of attitudes towards witchcraft. Through the translated extracts we can see the beliefs and activities which had been formally condemned by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, but which had not yet become subject to widespread eradicating pogroms, start to be allied with heresy and with changing conceptions of demonic activity. The extensive introductory essay gives the reader the historical, theological, intellectual and social background and contexts of the translated documents. The translations themselves will all have introductory notes. This volume will contribute significantly to our understanding of the witchcraft phenomenon in the Middle Ages.

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.

This volume brings together thirteen studies by as many experts in the study of one or more ancient or medieval magical traditions, from ancient Mesopotamia and Pharaonic and Greco-Roman Egypt to the Greek world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It lays special emphasis on the recurrence of similar phenomena in magical texts as far apart as the Akkadian cuneiform tablets and an Arabic manuscript bought in Egypt in the late-twentieth century. Such similarities demonstrate to what extent many different cultures share a "magical logic" which is strikingly identical, and in particular they show the recurrence of certain phenomena when magical practices are transmitted in written form and often preserve, adopt and adapt much older textual units.

Aradia is perhaps the first 20th century text of Witchcraft revival. It is repeatedly cited as being profoundly influential to the development of Wicca. The text corroborates the thesis of Margaret Murray that early modern and Renaissance witchcraft represented a survival of ancient pagan beliefs, The Charge of the Goddess, an important piece of liturgy used in Wiccan rituals, it was inspired by Aradia's speech in the first chapter of the book. Parts of the speech appeared in an early version of Gardnerian Wicca ritual.Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

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.

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!

Professor Hans Holzer, the bestselling author of Ghosts, explores the myriad aspects and factions of witchcraft, taking you inside the covens and cults where the ancient rituals are practiced. Experience the secrets of the craft, learn spells and incantations, and read interviews and personal testimony from the foremost practitioners. Holzer not only provides the reader with the history of witchcraft, he puts it in context and sheds light on the subject as never before. Hundreds of photographs from the author's own collection illuminate the subject and bring the rituals and rites of "the Craft" to life.

This concise introductory textbook emphasizes the major concepts of both anthropology and the anthropology of religion. It is aimed at students encountering anthropology for the first time. Reviewers describe the text as vivid, rich, user-friendly, accessible, and well-organized. The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft examines religious expression from a cross-cultural perspective while incorporating key theoretical concepts. In addition to providing a basic overview of anthropology, including definition of key terms and exposure to ethnographies, the text exposes students to the varying complexity of world religions.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

"Witchcraft and Welfare is a delightful and insightful book, evocative and well-written, which unpacks the multilayered history of Puerto Rican folk beliefs and practices convincingly showing not only how brujeri a makes sense in people's everyday lives, but also how it is becoming institutionalised as an integral part of official Puerto Rican society, and indeed how beliefs and practices of this kind can be complementary, not opposed, to bureaucratic rationality." -- Anthropos Overall, Witchcraft and Welfare is an excellent analysis of Puerto Rican Brujeri a and other African diasporic religions. This book, however, is not only useful for students and scholars of Puerto Rican or Caribbean culture and religion. It is also, through its ingenious analysis of the influences of 21st century globalization on the processes of syncretization, a window on the macrocosm of future trends in world religion. -- The Journal of Latin American Anthropology "This book makes an important addition to the literature on magic and spirits in the modern world. . . . In comparison with other well-known anthropological works on magic and modernity, this stands out on account of its skill at evocation, at getting inside people and events and not merely using them as examples or 'case studies.'" -- Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

Persecuted as evil during colonial times, considered charlatans during the nation-building era, Puerto Rican brujos (witch-healers) today have become spiritual entrepreneurs who advise their clients not only in consultation with the spirits but also in compliance with state laws and new economic opportunities. Combiningtrance, dance, magic, and healing practices with expertise in the workings of the modern welfare state, they help lawyers win custody suits, sick employees resolve labor disability claims, single mothers apply for government housing, or corporation managers maximize their commercial skills.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork among practicing brujos, this book presents a masterful history and ethnography of Puerto Rican brujeri a (witch-healing). Raquel Romberg explores how brujeri a emerged from a blending of popular Catholicism, Afro-Latin religions, French Spiritism, and folk Protestantism and also looks at how it has adapted to changes in state policies and responded to global flows of ideas and commodities. She demonstrates that, far from being an exotic or marginal practice in the modern world, brujeri a has become an invisible yet active partner of consumerism and welfare capitalism.

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.

"This is a useful collection of material on witchcraft."
--" Journal of World History"

"This is undoubtedly one of the best reference works ever published on witchcraft. Breslaw, fresh from her well-received revisionist history "Tituba: Reluctant Witch of Salem," brings together work by some of the best-known scholars of the field, including Elizabeth Reis, Carol Karlsen, John Demos, Paul Boyer, Stephen Nissenbaum and David Hall. She organizes primary sources (including the 1486 manifesto "Why Women Are Chiefly Addicted to Superstitions") and insightful secondary essays around topics of European, Native American and African witchcraft. The anthology is to be applauded for its commitment to representing cultural variance--showing how, for example, indigenous American magical traditions differed greatly from tribe to tribe. Breslaw's awareness of diverse cultural contexts highlights the multiple functions that witchcraft and anti-witchcraft served in individual communities."
--Publishers Weekly

.,."covers a tremendous amount of spatial and temporal ground."--"Maryland Historical Magazine"

This unique anthology is the first to provide a multicultural perspective on witchcraft from the 15th to 18th century. Featuring primary documents as well as scholarly interpretations," Witches of the Atlantic World" builds upon information regarding both Christian and non-Christian beliefs about possession and the demonic. Elaine G. Breslaw draws on Native American, African, South American, and African-American sources, as well as the European and New England heritage, to illuminate the ways in which witchcraft in early America was an attempt to understand and control evil andmisfortune in the New World.

Organized into sections on folklore and magic, diabolical possession, Christian perspectives, and the question of gender, the volume includes selections by Cotton Mather, Matthew Hopkins, and Samuel Willard, among others; Salem trial testimonies; and commentary by a host of distinguished scholars.

Together the materials demonstrate how the Protestant and Catholic traditions shaped American concepts, and how multicultural aspects played a key role in the Salem experience. Witches of the Atlantic World sheds new light on one of the most perplexing aspects of American history and provides important background for the continued scholarly and popular interest in witches and witchcraft today.

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.

"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.

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.