Now fully revised-the classic study of Neo-Paganism Almost thirty years since its original publication, Drawing Down the Moon continues to be the only detailed history of the burgeoning but still widely misunderstood Neo- Pagan subculture.
Margot Adler attended ritual gatherings and interviewed a diverse, colorful gallery of people across the United States, people who find inspiration in ancient deities, nature, myth, even science fiction. In this new edition featuring an updated resource guide of newsletters, journals, books, groups, and festivals, Margot Adler takes a fascinating and honest look at the religious experiences, beliefs, and lifestyles of modern America's Pagan groups.
Evil in Africa by William C. Olsen Editor ; Walter E. E96 William C. Olsen, Walter E. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts.
These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity. F72 Sir James George Frazer's monumental study of 'magic and religion' is here presented in its edition, containing all three volumes.
From Rome to Egypt to Polynesia, Frazer covered it all. Corn gods, dying gods, to fertility gods; Frazer explored and examined them all, identifying common themes throughout the world. The implications to Christianity were controversial: Either Christianity was myth like these myths, or else Christianity is true in its claim that all men are made in God's image so that no matter how far they fall from the knowledge of God, revealed or otherwise, they cannot but help to act on their created, religious instincts.
These questions and more will arise in the mind of the honest seeker of truth through Frazer's thorough and forthright presentations of facts and analysis. P Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America. From a manual for witch hunters written by King James himself in , to court documents from the Salem witch trials of , to newspaper coverage of a woman stoned to death on the streets of Philadelphia while the Continental Congress met, The Penguin Book of Witchesis a treasury of historical accounts of accused witches that sheds light on the reality behind the legends.
Bringing to life stories like that of Eunice Cole, tried for attacking a teenage girl with a rock and buried with a stake through her heart; Jane Jacobs, a Bostonian so often accused of witchcraft that she took her tormentors to court on charges of slander; and Increase Mather, an exorcism-performing minister famed for his knowledge of witches, this volume provides a unique tour through the darkest history of English and North American witchcraft. Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain investigates the physical evidence for magic in medieval and modern Britain, including ritual marks and designs, concealed objects, amulets hung about the person and home, and the equipment of folk magicians.
Satan and Salem by Benjamin C. R28 The result of a perfect storm of factors that culminated in a great moral catastrophe, the Salem witch trials of took a breathtaking toll on the young English colony of Massachusetts. Over people were imprisoned, and nineteen men and women, including a minister, were executed by hanging. The colonial government, which was responsible for initiating the trials, eventually repudiated the entire affair as a great "delusion of the Devil.
It involves the study of occult powers of ritual magic and its relationship with religion. This is a complete edition containing all three books combined. Book I. L48 The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, now in its fourth edition, is the perfect resource for both students and scholars of the witch-hunts written by one of the leading names in the field.
For those starting out in their studies of witch-beliefs and witchcraft trials, Brian Levack provides a concise survey of this complex and fascinating topic, while for more seasoned scholars the scholarship is brought right up to date.
This new edition includes the most recent research on children, gender, male witches and demonic possession as well as broadening the exploration of the geographical distribution of witch prosecutions to include recent work on regions, cities and kingdoms enabling students to identify comparisons between countries.
W5S35 It began in , over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's daughter began to scream and convulse. It ended less than a year later, but not before 19 men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death.
The panic spread quickly, involving the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, parents and children each other. Aside from suffrage, the Salem Witch Trials represent the only moment when women played the central role in American history.
In curious ways, the trials would shape the future republic. Prior to the invention of the printing press, handwritten texts were passed around in manuscript form between those lucky enough to have been taught how to read.
Costly and time-consuming, the production of a book was simply not worth the effort unless the contents truly mattered. In spite of this, from the midth century onwards, a series of treatises that dealt with occult knowledge were translated into Latin and various European languages, slipping covertly between the personal libraries of wealthy men. Grimoires were frequently attributed to famous men of esoteric learning, and the wise king Solomon in particular appealed to Christian readers.
If Solomon had authored such a text, could not the wise Christian reader likewise practice the occult without endangering his soul? Rumour of the grimoires and their grim rituals would circulate widely throughout the medieval era while the actual, often comparatively bland contents, remained obscure. The introduction of printing press technology to Europe in the 15th century revolutionised the speed and scale by which all texts could be produced.
It was the printing press which facilitated the Protestant Reformation, and it was also the printing press which was responsible for the introduction of the occult grimoires to a larger audience than ever before. Surprisingly, this occult reformation was enacted not by magicians themselves, but by a series of sceptics who believed that, by revealing in print the content of infamous esoteric manuscripts, they could expose them to the ridicule that they deserved.
It was one of the first great sceptical works debunking magic, criticising notorious witch hunting manuals like the Malleus Maleficarum and, indeed, successfully curbing some of the continental witch trials.
Weyer had included, as an appendix to De Praestigiis Daemonum , a direct translation of a Solomonic grimoire which listed the names and ranks of various demons, and how a magician might go about conjuring and commanding them as, supposedly, could Solomon.
Surely the genie was out of the bottle or demon out of the brazen bowl, as the Solomonic grimoires would describe it. Now that occult beliefs had been so thoroughly exposed and ridiculed, how could they possibly survive? The book was not, as the name might suggest, a grimoire-like guide to the conjuration of demons, but rather a serious study of demonic power and the harm it could inflict.
King James did not accept the suggestion that any man, even if he was as wise as Solomon, could seriously practise magic without risk to his soul. Nor did he believe, as the smarmy sceptics did, that there was no real threat whatsoever. James was an angry Christian, a man who believed, sincerely, in the power of the occult and felt duty-bound to protect his people from it in all its forms.
Even worse, Scot and his fellows had inadvertently introduced into printed English, for the first time, the detail of dangerous grimoire magic which had formerly reached only limited circulation. While it is a myth that James ordered copies of The Discovery to be burned, extracts from the text were indeed consigned to the fire during the witch trials of the 17th century, when sections were found, freed from their original sceptical context, in the documents of those accused of witchcraft.
My PhD looks specifically at the fallout of this fascinating cultural clash in the work of the early modern dramatists, and I am particularly interested in the overlooked presence of Solomon in these debates.
Faustus succeeds in summoning the demon Mephistopheles, and signs away his soul in a contract written with his own blood in return for 24 years of power.
After wasting his time on petty vengeances, greed and lust, Faustus is finally sent to hell. Rumour circulated that an extra devil had been seen on stage during the play, a fact which the Puritan William Prynne would gleefully repeat as proof of the evils of theatre in his Histriomastix , Magicians who both did and did not achieve their hoped-for Solomonic command of occult forces would populate the English stage for decades.
Scot and the sceptics had indeed laid bare the detail of occult belief, and their work was highly influential, but it had precisely the opposite of their desired effect. There are 59 Bible verses dealing with the occult. Thus, we should stay away from the occult! I have never seen a ghost and do not know from personal experience that any such exist. Nevertheless, once a month I get my hair cut by a hairdresser who tells me that he has seen many and has done so since an early age.
In his youth he had a teacher named Sylvia Browne, who was one of the better-known psychics of the 20th century. Listening to the accounts of his experiences is fascinating. My wife, who also gets her hair done by this man, is fairly skeptical about his stories, as are most of my colleagues at the university. But it is also the case that most of them have no knowledge of the relevant literature. Believing in the unseen is a fundamental concept in Islam. However, believing that any creation possesses the ability to foretell the future or know the unseen is forbidden.
Only Allah SWT knows. Islam also condemns magic, which uses the power of Jinn an unseen creation of Allah for evil purposes, and forbids Muslims from practicing it. Furthermore, believing in what a magician or sorcerer says renders one a disbeliever.
Magic cannot even be used to counteract another magic spell. Any practice that tries to gain supernatural power, abilities, or knowledge apart from the Creator is prohibited. Meanwhile, viable alternatives to these practices are reading the Quran and establishing prayers. Prayers, such as Ruqyah, can heal and magic can be dispelled by the power of the Glorious Quran. People who search for meaning, purpose and control in their lives attempt to use this hidden power through stars, runes, tea leaves, tarot cards, etc.
Therefore as Catholics, we do not place our faith in horoscopes, good luck charms, tarot cards or any such activities or objects. Our faith is in God alone. The human condition is to want to have as much control as possible.
Yet, humility is to accept that we only can control ourselves and only a small bit of that.
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