In early modern England, the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic - the attempted communication with angels and demons - both reinforced and subverted existing concepts of gender. The majority of male magicians acted from a position of control and command commensurate with their social position in a patriarchal society; other men, however, used the notion of magic to subvert gender ideals while still aiming to attain hegemony. Whilst women who claimed to perform magic were usually more submissive in their attempted dealings with the spirit world, some female practitioners employed magic to undermine the patriarchal culture and further their own agenda. Frances Timbers studies the practice of ritual magic in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries focusing especially on gender and sexual perspectives. Using the examples of well-known individuals who set themselves up as magicians (including John Dee, Simon Forman and William Lilly), as well as unpublished diaries and journals, literature and legal records, this book provides a unique analysis of early modern ceremonial magic from a gender perspective.

A Community of Witches explores the beliefs and practices of Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft-generally known to scholars and practitioners as Wicca. While the words ""magic,"" ""witchcraft,"" and ""paganism"" evoke images of the distant past and remote cultures, this book shows that Wicca has emerged as part of a new religious movement that reflects the era in which it developed. Imported to the United States in the later 1960s from the United Kingdom, the religion absorbed into its basic fabric the social concerns of the time: feminism, environmentalism, self-development, alternative spirituality, and mistrust of authority. Helen A. Berger's ten-year participant observation study of Neo-Pagans and Witches on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and her collaboration on a national survey of Neo-Pagans form the basis for exploring the practices, structures, and transformation of this nascent religion. Responding to scholars who suggest that Neo-Paganism is merely a pseudo religion or a cultural movement because it lacks central authority and clear boundaries, Berger contends that Neo-Paganism has many of the characteristics that one would expect of a religion born in late modernity: the appropriation of rituals from other cultures, a view of the universe as a cosmic whole, an emphasis on creating and re-creating the self, an intertwining of the personal and the political, and a certain playfulness. Aided by the Internet, self-published journals, and festivals and other gatherings, today's Neo-Pagans communicate with one another about social issues as well as ritual practices and magical rites. This community of interest-along with the aging of the original participants and the growing number of children born to Neo-Pagan families-is resulting in Neo-Paganism developing some of the marks of a mature and established religion.

The books in this bite-sized new series contain no complicated techniques or tricky materials, making them ideal for the busy, the time-pressured or the merely curious. First Steps in Witchcraft is a short, simple and to-the-point guide to the works of Witchcraft. In just 96 pages, the reader will learn all about the God and Goddess, the Wiccan Rede and much more. Ideal for the busy, the time-pressured or the merely curious, First Steps in Witchcraft is a quick, no-effort way to break into this fascinating topic. discover the god and goddess learn the power of the four elements join a coven perform magic celebrate wiccan festivals

From 1563 to 1736 Scotland put thousands of women to death for witchcraft. Their supposed crimes have much to tell us about attitudes to women in the past, and in the present day. This book introduces sixteen women who lost their lives or lived in the long shadow of the persecutions. 'Witches' who, like MARGARET AITKEN, confessed, implicated others, even aided the hunters before they were burned. Nonconforming women like MARY MACLEOD, who saw their reputations tarnished when they did not bend to society's expectations. Creatures of the imagination, like Robert Burns's NANNY, who embody deep-seated associations between womanhood and the occult. Weaving fiction with the facts where these are known, We Are All Witches invites the reader to explore the forces at work in one of the darkest episodes of Scotland's history and consider their echoes in the present day.

Despierte la pasion con violetas o adquiera prosperidad y abundancia para usted y su familia con avena. Desde el perejil hasta la canela, la gente disfruta de las plantas por sus aromas, sabores y capacidades curativas, pero muy pocas personas conocen sus beneficios y sus extraordinarios poderes. Ellen Dugan nos conduce al lado magico del segundo reino natural, presentandonos los poderes de las flores, raices, arboles, especies y otras hierbas que se pueden conseguir facilmente. Siguiendo sus consejos, los lectores aprenderan como pueden explorar la magia blanca de una manera segura, utilizando hierbas para mejorar su salud, obtener prosperidad, encontrar el romance, lograr proteccion y mucho mas.

Witch hunts are the products of intense fear and paranoia and the results are often terrible. The accused in three famous witchcraft cases - in Bamberg and Wurzburg, Germany, in Loudun, France, and in Salem, Massachusetts - were assumed to be guilty without proof. Secret accusations were accepted, evidence was falsified, and extreme pressures, including torture, were used. Arguing that fear was, and still is, a prerequisite to any witch hunt, Robert Rapley shows that the current hunt for terrorists mirrors the witch crazes of the past. Rapley analyses witch hunts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finds many of the same elements repeated in more recent miscarriages of justice - from the Dreyfus case for treason in late nineteenth-century France, to the persecution of the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama for the gang rape of two white girls in the 1930s, to the Guildford and Maguire terrorist prosecutions in Britain in the 1970s. All three cases took place during times of extreme fear and paranoia and in all cases the accused were innocent.Today, argues Rapley, the "witch" lives on in the "terrorist." He cites as evidence Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, the first prisons created for "witches" since Salem. In Witch Hunts he makes a compelling case that, in the wake of 9/11, witch hunts threaten today's America.

The figure of the witch still has the ability to exert a powerful fascination on the modern mind. The vision of the elderly crone begging for charity at the crossroads, an object of fear and revulsion for her local community, has combined with the memory of prolonged judicial persecution and oppression to inspire contemporary movements as far removed from each other as Wiccans and women's liberation. In tackling such an emotive issue, where misogyny and violence combine with superstition and the basest of human instincts, Scarre and Callow chart a clear and refreshingly level-headed approach to the subject. Distinguishing between fact and fiction, they set the witch trials firnly back within the context of their own times and, without seeking to exonerate those responsible, demonstrate how it was possible for judiciaries and social elites to believe wholeheartedly in the reality and efficacy of witchcraft as a valid system of belief and as a dangerous threat to the fabric of society in which they lived. This new edition has been comprehensively updated to take account of the vast expansion in interest and scholarly research that has taken place in the field since the publication of the first edition. This work provides a provocative thesis for those seeking to understand the basis for the politics of persecution and a firm interpretative basis around which further exploratory research may be conducted.

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

Different conceptions of the world and of reality have made witchcraft possible in some societies and impossible in others. How did the people of early modern Europe experience it, what was it, and what was its place in their culture? The news essays in this collection illustrate the latest trends in witchcraft research and in cultural history in general. After three decades in which the social analysis of witchcraft accusations has dominated the subject, they turn instead to its significance and meaning as a cultural phenomenon—to the "languages" of witchcraft, rather than its causes. As a result, witchcraft seems less startling than it once was, yet more revealing of the world in which it occurred.

"Sociologist Victor began his involvement with satanic-cult phenomena by investigating a local panic centered in southwestern New York state. After an introductory section, his book begins with a description of this research, then proceeds with an excellent general review of recent fear about satanic cults in the U.S. He concludes that there is no evidence for the actual existence of organized satanic cults." -- Choice

To find out why reasonable people are drawn to the seemingly bizarre practices of magic and witchcraft, Tanya Luhrmann immersed herself in the secret lives of Londoners who call themselves magicians. She came to know them as friends and equals and was initiated into various covens and magical groups. She explains the process through which once-skeptical individuals--educated, middle-class people, frequently of high intelligence--become committed to the ideas behind witchcraft and find magical ritual so compellingly persuasive. This intriguing book draws some disturbing conclusions about the ambivalence of belief within modern urban society.

This is the first book to consider the general course and significance of the European witch craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries since H.R. Trevor-Roper's classic and pioneering study appeared some fifteen years ago. Drawing upon the advances in historical and social-science scholarship of the past decade and a half, Joseph Klaits integrates the recent appreciations of witchcraft in regional studies, the history of popular culture, anthropology, sociology, and psychology to better illuminate the place of witch hunting in the context of social, political, economic and religious change.

"In all, Klaits has done a good job. Avoiding the scandalous and sensational, he has maintained throughout, with sensitivity and economy, an awareness of the uniqueness of the theories and persecutions that have fascinated scholars now for two decades and are unlikely to lose their appeal in the foreseeable future." American Historical Review

"This is a commendable synthesis whose time has come.... fascinating... " The Sixteenth Century Journal

..". comprehensive and clearly written... An excellent book... " Choice

"Impeccable research and interpretation stand behind this scholarly but not stultifying account... " Booklist

"A good, solid, general treatment... " Erik Midelfort

"Servants of Satan is a well written, easy to read book, and the bibliography is a good source of secondary materials for further reading." Journal of American Folklore"

An ethnographic contribution describing the beliefs and ideas associated with witchcraft as shared "knowledge" that the Apaches have about their universe. Uncovers the types of interpersonal relationships with which witchcraft accusations are regularly associated and posits explanations for these associations.