Download or read book Pathways in Modern Western Magic written by Nevill Drury and published by Concrescent Scholars. This book was released on 2012 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exciting multi-authored volume provides a fascinating overview of the many different pathways that help defi ne esoteric belief and practice in modern Western magic. Included here are chapters on the late 19th century Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the infl uential Thelemic doctrines of Aleister Crowley, and the different faces of the Universal Goddess in Wicca and the Pagan traditions. Also included are chapters on Neoshamanism in Europe and the United States-and an account of how these traditions have in turn infl uenced the rise of techno-shamanism in the West. Additional features of this collection include insider perspectives on Seidr oracles, hybridised Tantra, contemporary black magic, the Scandinavian Dragon Rouge and Chaos magic in Britain-as well as profi les of the magical artists Ithell Colquhoun, Austin Osman Spare and Rosaleen Norton. Contributors: Nikki Bado Jenny Blain Nevill Drury Dave Evans Amy Hale Phil Hine Lynne Hume Marguerite Johnson Thomas Karlsson James R. Lewis Libu e Mart nkov Robert J. Wallis Don Webb Dominique Beth Wilson Andrei A. Znamenski Nevill Drury, editor of this collection, received his PhD from the University of Newcastle, Australia, in 2008. His most recent publications include Stealing Fire from Heaven: the Rise of Modern Western Magic and The Varieties of Magical Experience (co-authored with Dr Lynne Hume).
Download or read book Magic and Witchery in the Modern West written by Shai Feraro and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-26 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book marks twenty years since the publication of Professor Ronald Hutton’s The Triumph of the Moon, a major contribution to the historical study of Wicca. Building on and celebrating Hutton’s pioneering work, the chapters in this volume explore a range of modern magical, occult, and Pagan groups active in Western nations. Each contributor is a specialist in the study of modern Paganism and occultism, although differ in their embrace of historical, anthropological, and psychological perspectives. Chapters examine not only the history of Wicca, the largest and best-known form of modern Paganism, but also modern Pagan environmentalist and anti-nuclear activism, the Pagan interpretation of fairy folklore, and the contemporary ‘Traditional Witchcraft’ phenomenon.
Download or read book Ritual Embodiment in Modern Western Magic written by Damon Zacharias Lycourinos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-15 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Western world, magic has often functioned as an umbrella term for various religious beliefs and ritual practices that seek to influence events by harnessing supernatural power. The definition of these myriad occult and esoteric traditions have, however, usually come from those that are opposed to its practice; notably authorities in religious, legal and intellectual spheres. This book seeks to provide a new perspective, directly from the practitioners of modern Western magic, by exploring how a distinctive mode of embodiment and consciousness can produce a transition from an ‘ordinary’ to a ‘magical’ worldview. Starting with an introduction to the study of magic in the Western academy, the book then presents the author’s own participant observation of five ethnographic case studies of modern Western magic. The focus of these ethnographic case studies is directed towards ideas and methods the informants employ to self-legitimise and self-represent as ‘magicians’. It concludes by discussing the phenomenological implications and issues around embodiment that are inherent to the contemporary practice of magic. This is a unique insight into the lived experience of practitioners of modern magic. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of the Occult and New Religious Movements, as well as Religious Studies academics examining issues around the embodiment and the anthropology of religion.
Download or read book Wicca written by Ethan Doyle White and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past century has born witness to a growing interest in the belief systems of ancient Europe, with an array of contemporary Pagan groups claiming to revive these old ways for the needs of the modern world. By far the largest and best known of these Paganisms has been Wicca, a new religious movement that can now count hundreds of thousands of adherents worldwide. Emerging from the occult milieu of mid twentieth-century Britain, Wicca was first presented as the survival of an ancient pre-Christian Witch-Cult, whose participants assembled in covens to venerate their Horned God and Mother Goddess, to celebrate seasonal festivities, and to cast spells by the light of the full moon. Spreading to North America, where it diversified under the impact of environmentalism, feminism, and the 1960s counter-culture, Wicca came to be presented as a Goddess-centred nature religion, in which form it was popularised by a number of best-selling authors and fictional television shows. Today, Wicca is a maturing religious movement replete with its own distinct world-view, unique culture, and internal divisions. This book represents the first published academic introduction to be exclusively devoted to this fascinating faith, exploring how this Witches' Craft developed, what its participants believe and practice, and what the Wiccan community actually looks like. In doing so it sweeps away widely-held misconceptions and offers a comprehensive overview of this religion in all of its varied forms. Drawing upon the work of historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of religious studies, as well as the writings of Wiccans themselves, it provides an original synthesis that will be invaluable for anyone seeking to learn about the blossoming religion of modern Pagan Witchcraft.
Download or read book The Varieties of Magical Experience written by Lynne L. Hume Ph.D. and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rare combination of personal and academic, this book showcases the myriad avenues for transcending the boundaries of reality through direct sensory experience. The Varieties of Magical Experience: Indigenous, Medieval, and Modern Magic provides a comprehensive volume that examines magic in all its aspects. Through detailed case studies, verbatim accounts of personal experiences, and first-hand experience from the authors' own active participation in many alternative religious rituals and ceremonies, this unique book reveals how magic can be a universal phenomenon that crosses cultural, historical, and spatial boundaries. The work is organized in five sections that embrace several broad themes: indigenous magical and shamanic practices; medieval witchcraft; sorcery and hermetic magic; and contemporary Western magical practices, including the role of sexuality, trance, and meditation. The introductory section explores the idea of magic, other realities, and the employment of all the senses, while the final section discusses contemporary issues of ecology and cybermagic. The authors give voice to the powerful emotions and feelings that result from a magical encounter, providing engaging and accessible information to general readers, while those well versed in the opaque world of magic and occultism, consciousness studies, and imaginal and disembodied realms will appreciate the book's content at a deeper level.
Download or read book Occultism in a Global Perspective written by Henrik Bogdan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of the ideas and practices associated with occultism is a rapidly growing branch of contemporary scholarship. However, most research has focused on English and French speaking areas and has not addressed the wider spread and significance of occultism. Occultism in a Global Perspective presents a broad international overview. Essays range across the German magical order of the Fraternitas Saturni, esoteric Satanism in Denmark, sexual magic in Colombia and the reception of occultism in modern Turkey, India and the former Yugoslavia. As any other form of cultural practice, the occult is not isolated from its social, discursive, religious, and political environment. By studying occultism in its global context, the book offers insights into the reciprocal relationships that colour and shape regional occultism.
Download or read book Stealing Fire from Heaven written by Nevill Drury and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-02 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Western magical traditions are currently undergoing an international resurgence. In Stealing Fire from Heaven, Nevill Drury offers an overview of the modern occult revival and seeks to explain this growing interest in ancient magical belief systems. Gnosticism and the Hermetica, the medieval Kabbalah, Tarot and Alchemy, and more recently, Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, collectively laid the basis for the modern magical revival, which first began to gather momentum in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Western magic has since become increasingly eclectic, drawing on such diverse sources as classical Greco-Roman mythology, Celtic cosmology, Kundalini yoga and Tantra, shamanism, chaos theory, and the various spiritual traditions associated in many different cultures with the Universal Goddess. Drury traces the rise of various forms of magical belief and practice, from the influential Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn to the emergence of Wicca and Goddess worship as expressions of contemporary feminine spirituality. He also explores Chaos Magick and the occult practices of the so-called Left-Hand Path, as well as twenty-first-century magical forays into cyberspace. He believes that the rise of modern Western magic stems essentially from the quest for personal spiritual transformation and direct experience of the sacred--a quest which the trance occultist and visionary artist Austin Osman Spare once referred to as "stealing fire from heaven." Considered in this light, Drury argues, modern Western magic can be regarded as a form of alternative spirituality in which the practitioners seek direct engagement with the mythic realm.
Download or read book Real Magic written by Isaac Bonewits and published by Weiser Books. This book was released on 1989-01-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines every category of occult phenomena from ESP to Eastern ritual and explores the basic laws of magic, relating them to the natural laws of the universe.
Download or read book The Realities of Reality Part I It All Starts from Within written by Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS and published by Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS. This book was released on 2018-03-16 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first of a series that considers the many aspects of reality. I call it ‘It all starts from within’ because reality starts with each of us individually and independently. It starts from our inner self before evolving into what I would call the collective reality, meaning a generally agreed upon state in which groups of people, entire nations, or the whole world believe. That reality includes beliefs, cultures, ideologies, etc. As we change and adapt to our environment, our reality changes as well. New realities emerge… Chapter one is about perception and our senses. It demonstrates how perception is impossible without our senses. Whatever angle of reality that’s being analyzed, one or more of our senses plays a momentous role in its understanding… Chapter two considers the role of the brain in the making of reality. It delves into how the brain can make the mind behave a certain way under certain circumstances… Chapter three looks at the mind, which I call the ultimate maker of reality. This chapter describes the mind as that intangible component of the brain and where reality or all realities stem from after, of course, being picked up by the senses and the brain… Chapter four attempts to define reality itself after it’s perceived by our senses, analyzed by our brain, and processed by our mind…I consider five questions in my attempt to answer the question: what is reality? They are: what are things and why do they look different from one another? What is life and its origins? What is death? What is superstition? What is space and are we alone in the universe?
Download or read book Traditional Witchcraft and the Pagan Revival written by Suzanne Ruthven and published by Moon Books. This book was released on 2013-08-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional Witchcraft and the Pagan Revival takes us on a journey into the past, along the highways and byways of our pagan heritage to discover when the different aspects of magical influence entered traditional witchcraft. It will appeal to everyone with an interest in magic, witchcraft and paganism - from grass roots to the more advanced levels of Wicca - who wish to learn more about the different traditions and their antecedents. ,
Download or read book Religious Individualisation written by Martin Fuchs and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 1086 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together key findings of the long-term research project ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’ (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past. Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an essentially Western or Christian phenomenon, the chapters reveal processes of religious individualisation in a large variety of non-Western and pre-modern scenarios. Furthermore, the volume challenges prevalent views that regard religions primarily as collective phenomena and provides nuanced perspectives on the appropriation of religious agency, the pluralisation of religious options, dynamics of de-traditionalisation and privatisation, the development of elaborated notions of the self, the facilitation of religious deviance, and on the notion of dividuality.
Download or read book The Magical Path written by Marc Allen and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This extraordinary work presents a series of simple, powerful tools that anyone can use to find a short, effortless route to success and fulfillment. You will discover tried-and-true techniques that deliver quick results. In fact, these shortcuts to success are so simple, accessible, and effective that you will quickly call them magical. Marc Allen developed these tools over several decades, and refined them over many years in a series of life-changing seminars. The results have been wonderful, even miraculous, for a great many people. Work and play with any part of this book and you’ll start seeing remarkable things happening in your life and in your world.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Shamanism written by Graham Harvey and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable array of people have been called shamans, while the phenomena identified as shamanism continues to proliferate. This second edition of the Historical Dictionary of Shamanism contains with examples from antiquity up to today, and from Siberia (where the term “shaman” originated) to Amazonia, South Africa, Chicago and many other places. Many claims about shamans and shamanism are contentious and all are worthy of discussion. In the most widespread understandings, terms seem to refer particularly to people who alter states of consciousness or enter trances in order to seek knowledge and help from powerful other-than-human persons, perhaps “spirits”. But this says only a little about the artists, community leaders, spiritual healers or hucksters, travelers in alternative realities and so on to which the label “shaman” has been applied. This second edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and extensive bibliography. The dictionary contains over 500 cross-referenced dictionary entries on individuals, groups, practices and cultures that have been called “shamanic”. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Shamanism.
Download or read book The Witchcraft Reader written by Darren Oldridge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-04 with total page 709 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Witchcraft Reader offers a wide range of historical perspectives on the subject of witchcraft in a single, accessible volume, exploring the enduring hold that it has on human imagination. The witch trials of the late Middle Ages and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have inspired a huge and expanding scholarly literature, as well as an outpouring of popular representations. This fully revised and enlarged third edition brings together many of the best and most important works in the field. It explores the origins of witchcraft prosecutions in learned and popular culture, fears of an imaginary witch cult, the role of religious division and ideas about the Devil, the gendering of suspects, the making of confessions and the decline of witch beliefs. An expanded final section explores the various "revivals" and images of witchcraft that continue to flourish in contemporary Western culture. Equipped with an extensive introduction that foregrounds significant debates and themes in the study of witchcraft, providing the extracts with a critical context, The Witchcraft Reader is essential reading for anyone with an interest in this fascinating subject.
Download or read book This Ancient Heart written by Paul Davies and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 13 authors explore the threefold relationship between the landscape, the ancestors and ourselves. By focussing upon the essentials that shape Pagan and Heathen identity, this book reveals the connective pathways where beliefs, actions and metaphors lead to dynamic, practical and spiritual lives. Contributors: Penny Billington (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids); Dr. Jenny Blain (Former Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Sheffield Hallam); Paul Davies (Quaker, Independent Druid) Introduction and Editor; Prof. Camelia Elias. (Roskilde University); Prof. Graham Harvey (Reader in Religious Studies OU) Foreword; Sarah Hollingham MSc res. (Geographer, Quaker & Mother); Prof. Ronald Hutton (University of Bristol) Afterword; David Loxley (Chief of Ancient Druid Order); Caitlin Matthews (Teacher and author) Joint Editor; Emma Restall Orr (Author); Philip Shallcrass (Chief of British Druid Order); Prof. Robert Wallis (University of Richmond, London); Dr. Luzie U. Wingen (Quantitative Geneticist at the John Innes Centre). This Ancient Heart is essential reading for people with an interest in earth spirituality, our shared ancestors, sacred landscapes, shamanism, anthropology, archaeology, religion and heritage studies.
Download or read book Slavic Witches and Social Media written by Marta R. Jabłońska and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-01-23 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slavic Witches and Social Media examines the role of social media in the spiritual practices of modern Slavic witches and draws a comparative analysis between contemporary neopaganism and Catholicism in Poland. This volume presents a fresh and comprehensive examination of Slavic witches within the context of the growing popularity of neopagan religions and the integration of social media in religious practices. It delves into contemporary witchcraft in Poland, including the prominent Wicca tradition, native Slavic beliefs with their diverse pantheon of deities, extensive demonology, and profound respect for nature, as well as individual, eclectic paths. Through a digital religion study, this book investigates how neopagans and Catholics incorporate social media into their spiritual journeys. Its vivid portrait of a Slavic witch provides a deeper understanding of their beliefs, practices, and engagement with social media platforms. This book is dedicated to scholars in the field of religious sociology, digital religion, and ethnography with a deep fascination for exploring folk magic and Slavic traditions and their adaptation to the emerging digital landscape. It is an insightful resource for researchers in theology, communication, and new media, as well as for all researchers and individuals who share an interest in the captivating realm of contemporary witches and witchcraft.
Download or read book Witching Culture written by Sabina Magliocco and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-11-24 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking the reader into the heart of one of the fastest-growing religious movements in North America, Sabina Magliocco reveals how the disciplines of anthropology and folklore were fundamental to the early development of Neo-Paganism and the revival of witchcraft. Magliocco examines the roots that this religious movement has in a Western spiritual tradition of mysticism disavowed by the Enlightenment. She explores, too, how modern Pagans and Witches are imaginatively reclaiming discarded practices and beliefs to create religions more in keeping with their personal experience of the world as sacred and filled with meaning. Neo-Pagan religions focus on experience, rather than belief, and many contemporary practitioners have had mystical experiences. They seek a context that normalizes them and creates in them new spiritual dimensions that involve change in ordinary consciousness. Magliocco analyzes magical practices and rituals of Neo-Paganism as art forms that reanimate the cosmos and stimulate the imagination of its practitioners. She discusses rituals that are put together using materials from a variety of cultural and historical sources, and examines the cultural politics surrounding the movement—how the Neo-Pagan movement creates identity by contrasting itself against the dominant culture and how it can be understood in the context of early twenty-first-century identity politics. Witching Culture is the first ethnography of this religious movement to focus specifically on the role of anthropology and folklore in its formation, on experiences that are central to its practice, and on what it reveals about identity and belief in twenty-first-century North America.
