Download or read book The Occult Imagination in Britain 1875 1947 written by Christine Ferguson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1875 and 1947, a period bookended, respectively, by the founding of the Theosophical Society and the death of notorious occultist celebrity Aleister Crowley, Britain experienced an unparalleled efflorescence of engagement with unusual occult schema and supernatural phenomena such as astral travel, ritual magic, and reincarnationism. Reflecting the signal array of responses by authors, artists, actors, impresarios and popular entertainers to questions of esoteric spirituality and belief, this interdisciplinary collection demonstrates the enormous interest in the occult during a time typically associated with the rise of secularization and scientific innovation. The contributors describe how the occult realm functions as a turbulent conceptual and affective space, shifting between poles of faith and doubt, the sacrosanct and the profane, the endemic and the exotic, the forensic and the fetishistic. Here, occultism emerges as a practice and epistemology that decisively shapes the literary enterprises of writers such as Dion Fortune and Arthur Machen, artists such as Pamela Colman Smith, and revivalists such as Rolf Gardiner

Download or read book The Lady and the Beast written by Deja Whitehouse and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although Lady Harris is acknowledged as the artist of Aleister Crowley's Book of Thoth, to date, most studies have focused predominantly on Harris's role as Crowley's 'artist executant'. Whitehouse argues that Harris's involvement extended far beyond the artwork itself. The Book of Thoth was a collaboration in which each partner fulfilled a variety of roles; building on Crowley's magical theories and practices, and Harris's artistic skills and social awareness that enabled her to promote and exhibit their work as it evolved. The author presents a study of Harris's life and works, seeking to assess her true contribution to Western Esotericism.

Download or read book Fictional Practice Magic Narration and the Power of Imagination written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tying on case studies from late antiquity to the 21st century, this is the first volume that systematically explores the inter-relationship between fictional narratives about magic and the real-world ritual art of practicing magicians.

Download or read book Ancient Egypt in the Modern Imagination written by Eleanor Dobson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Egypt has always been a source of fascination to writers, artists and architects in the West. This book is the first study to address representations of Ancient Egypt in the modern imagination, breaking down conventional disciplinary boundaries between fields such as History, Classics, Art History, Fashion, Film, Archaeology, Egyptology, and Literature to further a nuanced understanding of ancient Egypt in cultures stretching from the eighteenth century to the present day, emphasising how some of the various meanings of ancient Egypt to modern people have traversed time and media. Divided into three themes, the chapters scrutinise different aspects of the use of ancient Egypt in a variety of media, looking in particular at the ways in which Egyptology as a discipline has influenced representations of Egypt, ancient Egypt's associations with death and mysticism, as well as connections between ancient Egypt and gendered power. The diversity of this study aims to emphasise both the multiplicity and the patterning of popular responses to ancient Egypt, as well as the longevity of this phenomenon and its relevance today.

Download or read book The Sacred Life of Modernist Literature written by Allan Kilner-Johnson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Probing the relationship between modernist literary experimentation and several key strands of occult practice which emerged in Europe from roughly 1894 to 1944, this book sets the work of leading modernist writers alongside lesser known female writers and writers in languages other than English to more fully portray the aesthetic and philosophical connections between modernism and the occult. Although the early decades of the twentieth century-the era of cocktails, motorcars, bobbed hair, and war-are often described as a period of newness and innovation, many writers of the time found inspiration and visionary brilliance by turning to the mysterious occult past. This book's principle intervention is to reimagine the contours and boundaries of literary modernism by welcoming into the conversation a number of significant female writers and writers in languages other than English who are often still relegated to the fringes of modernist studies. Well-remembered poets and novelists such as Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, and Aleister Crowley were tied to occult beliefs, and this book sets these leading figures alongside less well-remembered but equally splendid modernists including Paul Brunton, Mary Butts, Alexandra David-Neel, Florence Farr, Dion Fortune, Hermann Hesse, and Rudolf Steiner. From the little magazines where occultism and Fabianism were comfortable companions, to consulting rooms of psychoanalysts where archetypes were revealed to be both mystical and mundane, to the forbidden mountain trails that led to formidable spiritual teachers, the conditions of modernism were invariably those conditions which inspired a return to the occult traditions that many thinkers believed had long evaporated. Indeed, in many ways these traditions were the making of the modern world. By uncovering hidden hopes and anxieties that faced a newly modern Western Europe, this book demonstrates how literary modernists understood occultism as a universal form of cultural expression which has inspired creative exuberance since the dawn of civilisation.

Download or read book Essays on Women in Western Esotericism written by Amy Hale and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-21 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first collection to feature histories of women in Western Esotericism while also highlighting women’s scholarship. In addition to providing a critical examination of important and under researched figures in the history of Western Esotericism, these fifteen essays also contribute to current debates in the study of esotericism about the very nature of the field itself. The chapters are divided into four thematic sections that address current topics in the study of esotericism: race and othering, femininity, power and leadership and embodiment. This collection not only adds important voices to the story of Western Esotericism, it hopes to change the way the story is told.

Download or read book Shadow Worlds written by Andrew Wood and published by Massey University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-13 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vigorous strand of interest in the occult, the spooky and the mysterious has been part of New Zealand's history since 1840.Shadow Worlds takes a lively look at communicating with spirits, secret ritualistic societies, the supernatural, the New Age — everything from The Golden Dawn and Rosicrucianism to Spiritualism, witchcraft and Radiant Living — and introduces the reader to a cast of fascinating characters who were generally true believers and sometimes con artists.It' s a fresh and novel take on the history of a small colonial society that was not quite as ploddingly conformist as we may have imagined.

Download or read book Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland written by Matthew Cheeseman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores folklore and folkloristics within the diverse and contested national discourses of Britain and Ireland, examining their role in shaping the islands’ constituent nations from the eighteenth century to our contemporary moment of uncertainty and change. This book is concerned with understanding folklore, particularly through its intersections with the narratives of nation entwined within art, literature, disciplinary practice and lived experience. By following these ideas throughout history into the twenty-first century, the authors show how notions of the folk have inspired and informed varied points from the Brothers Grimm to Brexit. They also examine how folklore has been adapting to the real and imagined changes of recent political events, acquiring newfound global and local rhetorical power. This collection asks why, when and how folklore has been deployed, enacted and considered in the context of national ideologies and ideas of nationhood in Britain and Ireland. Editors Cheeseman and Hart have crafted a thoughtful and timely collection, ideal for students and scholars of folklore, history, literature, anthropology, sociology and media studies.

Download or read book Folk Horror written by Dawn Keetley and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2023-04-15 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the undisputed heyday of folk horror was Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, the genre has not only a rich cinematic and literary prehistory, but directors and novelists around the world have also been reinventing folk horror for the contemporary moment. This study sets out to rethink the assumptions that have guided critical writing on the genre in the face of such expansions, with chapters exploring a range of subjects from the fiction of E. F. Benson to Scooby-Doo, video games, and community engagement with the Lancashire witches. In looking beyond Britain, the essays collected here extend folk horror’s geographic terrain to map new conceptualisations of the genre now seen emerging from Italy, Ukraine, Thailand, Mexico and the Appalachian region of the US.

Download or read book Strange Attractor Journal Five written by Mark Pilkington and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-04-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The return of the Strange Attractor Journal, offering a characteristically eclectic collection of high weirdness from the margins of culture. After seven years of silence, the acclaimed Strange Attractor Journal returns with a characteristically eclectic collection of high weirdness from the margins of culture. Covering previously uncharted regions of history, anthropology, art, literature, architecture, science, and magic since 2004, each Journal has presented new and unprecedented research into areas that scholarship has all too often ignored. Featuring essays from academics, artists, enthusiasts, and sorcerers, Journal Five explores matters including the folklore of foghorns; the occult origins of the dissident surrealist secret society the Acéphale; the pleasures of heathen falconry; the dark cosmological mysteries of Bremen's Haus Atlantis; a provisional taxonomy of animals with human faces; a twentieth-century crucifixion on Hampstead Heath, and an unpublished horror script by David MacGillivray and Ken Hollings. Journal Five sees Strange Attractor continuing in its mission to celebrate unpopular culture. Join us. Contributors Nadia Choucha, William Fowler, Jeremy Harte, Ken Hollings, Christopher Josiffe, Phil Legard, David MacGillivray, Karen Russo, Robert J. Wallis, Dan Wilson, E. H. Wormwood

Download or read book Marie Corelli A Romance of Two Worlds written by Corelli Marie Corelli and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new scholarly edition of a major late-Victorian scientific romance novelMarie Corelli's A Romance of Two Worlds is regarded as one of the most culturally important Victorian bestsellers. This critical edition offers instructive access to this multifaceted but still largely underappreciated novel that is a key text for scholars and students of late-Victorian women's writing. It also raises urgent questions about a wide array of textual and cultural concerns, especially the form and function of the Victorian 'bestseller'.Key FeaturesContains a thorough critical and analytical introduction, annotations and appendicesProvides context and underlines the aesthetic significance of Corelli's supernatural romanceEngages with the full range of secondary scholarship on this neglected late-Victorian author

Download or read book The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women s Writing written by Lesa Scholl and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 1753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late twentieth century, there has been a strategic campaign to recover the impact of Victorian women writers in the field of English literature. However, with the increased understanding of the importance of interdisciplinarity in the twenty-first century, there is a need to extend this campaign beyond literary studies in order to recognise the role of women writers across the nineteenth century, a time that was intrinsically interdisciplinary in approach to scholarly writing and public intellectual engagement.

Download or read book Nineteenth Century Religion Literature and Society written by Naomi Hetherington and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-05 with total page 1478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This four-volume historical resource provides new opportunities for investigating the relationship between religion, literature and society in Britain and its imperial territories by making accessible a diverse selection of harder-to-find primary sources. These include religious fiction, poetry, essays, memoirs, sermons, travel writing, religious ephemera, unpublished notebooks and pamphlet literature. Spanning the long nineteenth century (c.1789–1914), the resource departs from older models of ‘the Victorian crisis of faith’ in order to open up new ways of conceptualising religion. A key concern of the resource is to integrate non-Christian religions into our understanding and representations of religious life in this period. Each volume is framed around a different meaning of the term ‘religion’. Volume one on ‘Traditions’ offers an overview of the different religious traditions and denominations present in Britain in this period. Volume two on ‘Mission and Reform’ considers the social and political importance of religious faith and practice as expressed through foreign and domestic mission and philanthropic and political movements at home and abroad. Volume three turns to ‘Religious Feeling’ as an important and distinct category for understanding the ways in which religion is embodied and expressed in culture. Volume four on ‘Disbelief and New Beliefs’ explores the transformation of the religious landscape of Britain and its imperial territories during the nineteenth century as a result of key cultural and intellectual forces. The resource is aimed primarily at researchers and students working within the fields of literature and social and religious history. It supplies an interpretative context for sources in the form of explanatory headnotes to each source or group of sources and volume introductions that explore overarching themes. Each volume can be read independently, but they work together to elucidate the complex and multi-faceted nature of nineteenth-century religious life.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature written by Dennis Denisoff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 753 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature offers 45 chapters by leading international scholars working with the most dynamic and influential political, cultural, and theoretical issues addressing Victorian literature today. Scholars and students will find this collection both useful and inspiring. Rigorously engaged with current scholarship that is both historically sensitive and theoretically informed, the Routledge Companion places the genres of the novel, poetry, and drama and issues of gender, social class, and race in conversation with subjects like ecology, colonialism, the Gothic, digital humanities, sexualities, disability, material culture, and animal studies. This guide is aimed at scholars who want to know the most significant critical approaches in Victorian studies, often written by the very scholars who helped found those fields. It addresses major theoretical movements such as narrative theory, formalism, historicism, and economic theory, as well as Victorian models of subjects such as anthropology, cognitive science, and religion. With its lists of key works, rich cross-referencing, extensive bibliographies, and explications of scholarly trajectories, the book is a crucial resource for graduate students and advanced undergraduates, while offering invaluable support to more seasoned scholars.

Download or read book Decadent Ecology in British Literature and Art 1860 1910 written by Dennis Denisoff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decadent Ecology illuminates the networks of nature, paganism, and desire in 19th- and early 20th-century decadent literature and art. Combining the environmental humanities with aesthetic, queer and literary theory, this study reveals the interplay of art, eco-paganism and science during the formation of modern ecological and evolutionary thought.

Download or read book A Pioneer of Connection written by James Mussell and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Oliver Lodge was a polymathic scientific figure who linked the Victorian Age with the Second World War, a reassuring figure of continuity across his long life and career. A physicist and spiritualist, inventor and educator, author and authority, he was one of the most famous public figures of British science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A pioneer in the invention of wireless communication and later of radio broadcasting, he was foundational for twentieth-century media technology and a tireless communicator who wrote upon and debated many of the pressing interests of the day in the sciences and far beyond. Yet since his death, Lodge has been marginalized. By uncovering the many aspects of his life and career, and the changing dynamics of scientific authority in an era of specialization, contributors to this volume reveal how figures like Lodge fell out of view as technical experts came to dominate the public understanding of science in the second half of the twentieth century. They account for why he was so greatly cherished by many of his contemporaries, examine the reasons for his eclipse, and consider what Lodge, a century on, might teach us about taking a more integrated approach to key scientific controversies of the day.

Download or read book Modern Spiritualism and Scottish Art written by Michelle Foot and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-08-10 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering account of Modern Spiritualism in late 19th and early 20th-century Scotland is a compelling history of the international movement's cultural impact on Scottish art. From spirit-mediums creating séance art to mainstream artists of the Royal Scottish Academy, this exposition reveals for the first time the extent of Spiritualist interest in Scotland. With its interdisciplinary scope, Modern Spiritualism and Scottish Art combines cultural and art history to explore the ways in which Scottish art reflected Spiritualist beliefs at the turn of the 20th century. More than simply a history of the Spiritualist cause and its visual manifestations, this book also provides a detailed account of scepticism, psychical research, and occulture in modern Scotland, and the role that these aspects played in informing responses to Spiritualist ideology. Utilising extensive archival research, together with in-depth analyses of overlooked paintings, drawings and sculpture, Michelle Foot demonstrates the vital importance of Spiritualist art to the development of Spiritualism in Scotland during the 19th century. In doing so, the book highlights the contribution of Scottish visual artists alongside better-known Spiritualists such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Daniel Dunglas Home.