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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies > Witchcraft
Can she save herself from a witch's fate?Martha is a feisty and
articulate young woman, the daughter of a wheelwright, living in a
Herefordshire village in Elizabethan England. With no mother
Martha's life is spent running her father's meagre household and
helping out at the local school whilst longing to escape the
confines and small-mindedness of a community driven by religious
bigotry and poverty. As she is able to read and is well-versed in
herbal remedies she is suspected of being a witch. When a landslip
occurs - opening up a huge chasm in the centre of the village - she
is blamed for it and pursued remorselessly by the villagers. But
can her own wits and the love of local stablehand Jacob save her
from a witch's persecution and death... A brilliant and
accomplished novel that perfectly captures the febrile atmosphere
of Elizabethan village life in an age when suspicion and
superstition were rife. Perfect for fans of Tracy Chevalier. What
readers are saying about The Wheelwright's Daughter: 'It's a
gripping story and such accomplished writing. I really enjoyed
every moment of working on it.' Yvonne Holland, editor of Philippa
Gregory and Tracy Chevalier 'A brilliant debut novel' 'An
interesting read and an impressive debut novel' 'A wonderfully
written story' 'A skilfully crafted story of love, betrayal,
superstition and fear in 16th century England.' 'This is a story of
courage, trust, betrayal and love.' 'A great historical novel I
loved.' 'Keeps you hooked til the end.' 'An excellent read, highly
recommended.' 'Full of historical detail and atmosphere' 'I enjoyed
this thoughtful and well-written story by Eleanor Porter.'
'Atmospheric and evocative'
This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from
angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination,
prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural,
religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland
put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The
supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of
understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and
emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and
future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has
much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought
about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising
twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The
supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and
elite understandings of the supernatural. -- .
"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 is the second, and extensively revised, edition of the first
full-scale scholarly study of what is arguably the only
fully-formed religion that England has ever given the world: that
of modern pagan witchcraft, which has now spread from English
shores across four continents. Ronald Hutton examines the nature of
that religion and its development, and offers a history of
attitudes to witchcraft, paganism and magic in British society
since 1800. Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual
magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and
scouting movements, Freemasons, and members of rural secret
societies. We also find some of the leading figures of English
literature, from the Romantic poets to W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence
and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have
represented pagan witchcraft to the public world since 1950.
Thriller writers like Dennis Wheatley, and films and television
programmes, get similar coverage, as does tabloid journalism. The
material is by its very nature often sensational, and care is taken
throughout to distinguish fact from fantasy, in a manner not
hitherto applied to most of the stories involved. Consistently
densely researched, Triumph of the Moon presents an authoritative
insight into an aspect of modern cultural history which has
attracted sensational publicity but has hitherto been little
understood. This edition incorporates all of the new research
carried out into the subject by the author, and by others who have
often been inspired by this book, during the twenty years since it
was first published.
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Elf Magick
(Paperback)
TR Gunter; Illustrated by Robin Elflord; Contributions by Dondi Smith
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R286
Discovery Miles 2 860
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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