Download or read book The Possession at Loudun written by Michel de Certeau and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is August 18, 1634. Father Urbain Grandier, convicted of sorcery that led to the demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of provincial Loudun in France, confesses his sins on the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre, then perishes in flames lit by his own exorcists. A dramatic tale that has inspired many artistic retellings, including a novel by Aldous Huxley and an incendiary film by Ken Russell, the story of the possession at Loudun here receives a compelling analysis from the renowned Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau. Interweaving substantial excerpts from primary historical documents with fascinating commentary, de Certeau shows how the plague of sorceries and possessions in France that climaxed in the events at Loudun both revealed the deepest fears of a society in traumatic flux and accelerated its transformation. In this tour de force of psychological history, de Certeau brings to vivid life a people torn between the decline of centralized religious authority and the rise of science and reason, wracked by violent anxiety over what or whom to believe. At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. He was author of eighteen books in French, three of which have appeared in English translation as The Practice of Everyday Life,The Writing of History, and The Mystic Fable, Volume 1, the last of which is published by The University of Chicago Press. "Brilliant and innovative. . . . The Possession at Loudun is [de Certeau's] most accessible book and one of his most wonderful."—Stephen Greenblatt (from the Foreword)
Download or read book The Devils of Loudun written by Aldous Huxley and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping biography by the author of Brave New World In 1634 Urbain Grandier, a handsome and dissolute priest of the parish of Loudun was tried, tortured and burnt at the stake. He had been found guilty of conspiring with the devil to seduce an entire convent of nuns. Grandier maintained his innocence to the end but four years after his death the nuns were still being subjected to exorcisms to free them from their demonic bondage. Huxley's vivid account of this bizarre tale of religious and sexual obsession transforms our understanding of the medieval world.
Download or read book Demons written by Alexandre Dumas and published by . This book was released on 2023-01-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE DEVILS (1971) Ken Russell's horrifying film of the possession and resultant exorcism of the "Loudun Nuns," (based upon the book THE DEVILS OF LOUDON by Aldous Huxley), scourged the eyes of audiences in the 1970s, with its harsh, brutal, and sickening depiction of blasphemous torture, hideous pain, possession, and wild, orgiastic rites to fallen spirits. Now here is the classic full account of this bizarre, startling, and tragic chapter in the history of possession and exorcism, the annals of primitive witch hysteria: the exorcism of the Loudun Nuns, and the subsequent trial and hideous execution, by burning, of Father Urbain Grandier, (claimed by some to have entered into a pact with Satan to torment and afflict the sisters of the afflicted Ursuline order). Was Urbain Grandier an emissary of Satan? Or was he simply a man caught up in the crosshairs of his vindictive enemies and powerful forces, those willing to send a man to his death for purely political reasons? What of the hunchbacked Sister Jeanne? Was she really the focus of a black, demonic incubus? Or was she simply a disturbed, repressed woman, one whose life of piety, self-abnegation, penance, and sacrifice, lead her to the brink of madness? To read this chilling account is to step back through a doorway in time, gaining an insight into the hysteria of the witchcraft hysteria of the old world, and what it might tell us about our own contemporary society. Published by Zem Books
Download or read book The Possession at Loudun written by Michel de Certeau and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-08 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is August 18, 1634. Father Urbain Grandier, convicted of sorcery that led to the demonic possession of the Ursuline nuns of provincial Loudun in France, confesses his sins on the porch of the church of Saint-Pierre, then perishes in flames lit by his own exorcists. A dramatic tale that has inspired many artistic retellings, including a novel by Aldous Huxley and an incendiary film by Ken Russell, the story of the possession at Loudun here receives a compelling analysis from the renowned Jesuit historian Michel de Certeau. Interweaving substantial excerpts from primary historical documents with fascinating commentary, de Certeau shows how the plague of sorceries and possessions in France that climaxed in the events at Loudun both revealed the deepest fears of a society in traumatic flux and accelerated its transformation. In this tour de force of psychological history, de Certeau brings to vivid life a people torn between the decline of centralized religious authority and the rise of science and reason, wracked by violent anxiety over what or whom to believe. At the time of his death in 1986, Michel de Certeau was a director of studies at the école des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. He was author of eighteen books in French, three of which have appeared in English translation as The Practice of Everyday Life,The Writing of History, and The Mystic Fable, Volume 1, the last of which is published by The University of Chicago Press. "Brilliant and innovative. . . . The Possession at Loudun is [de Certeau's] most accessible book and one of his most wonderful."—Stephen Greenblatt (from the Foreword)
Download or read book The Divine Within written by Aldous Huxley and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-07-02 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A genius . . . a writer who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine.” — The New Yorker Brave New World author Aldous Huxley on enlightenment and the "ultimate reality." In this anthology of twenty-six essays and other writings, Aldous Huxley discusses the nature of God, enlightenment, being, good and evil, religion, eternity, and the divine. Huxley consistently examined the spiritual basis of both the individual and human society, always seeking to reach an authentic and clearly defined experience of the divine. Featuring an introduction by renowned religious scholar Huston Smith, this celebration of "ultimate reality" proves relevant and prophetic in addressing the spiritual hunger so many feel today.
Download or read book The Penguin Book of Exorcisms written by Joseph P. Laycock and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haunting accounts of real-life exorcisms through the centuries and around the world, from ancient Egypt and the biblical Middle East to colonial America and twentieth-century South Africa A Penguin Classic Levitation. Feats of superhuman strength. Speaking in tongues. A hateful, glowing stare. The signs of spirit possession have been documented for thousands of years and across religions and cultures, even into our time: In 2019 the Vatican convened 250 priests from 50 countries for a weeklong seminar on exorcism. The Penguin Book of Exorcisms brings together the most astonishing accounts: Saint Anthony set upon by demons in the form of a lion, a bull, and a panther, who are no match for his devotion and prayer; the Prophet Muhammad casting an enemy of God out of a young boy; fox spirits in medieval China and Japan; a headless bear assaulting a woman in sixteenth-century England; the possession in the French town of Loudun of an entire convent of Ursuline nuns; a Zulu woman who floated to a height of five feet almost daily; a previously unpublished account of an exorcism in Earling, Iowa, in 1928--an important inspiration for the movie The Exorcist; poltergeist activity at a home in Maryland in 1949--the basis for William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist; a Filipina girl "bitten by devils"; and a rare example of a priest's letter requesting permission of a bishop to perform an exorcism--after witnessing a boy walk backward up a wall. Fifty-seven percent of Americans profess to believe in demonic possession; after reading this book, you may too.
Download or read book The History of the Devils of Loudun written by Edmund Goldsmid and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-11-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. THE following extraordinary account of the "Cause Célèbre" of Urbain Grandier, the Curé of Loudun, accused of Magic and of having caused the Nuns of the Convent of Saint Ursula to be possessed of devils, is written by an eye-witness, and not only an eye-witness but an actor in the scenes he describes. It is printed at "Poitiers, chez J. Thoreau et la veuve Ménier, Imprimeurs du Roi et de l'Université, 1634." I believe two copies only are known: my own, and the one in the National Library, Paris. The writer is Monsieur des Niau, Counsellor at la Flèche, evidently a firm believer in the absurd charges brought against Grandier.
Download or read book Into the Dark Night and Back The Mystical Writings of Jean Joseph Surin written by Moshe Sluhovsky and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-12-24 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Into the Dark Night and Back is the first comprehensive English language selection of the mystical writings, poems, and letters of the French mystic and exorcist Jean-Joseph Surin, S.J. (1600–65).
Download or read book The Devil Within written by Brian Levack and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating, wide-ranging survey of the history of demon possession and exorcism through the ages. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of the Reformation, thousands of Europeans were thought to be possessed by demons. In response to their horrifying symptoms—violent convulsions, displays of preternatural strength, vomiting of foreign objects, displaying contempt for sacred objects, and others—exorcists were summoned to expel the evil spirits from victims’ bodies. This compelling book focuses on possession and exorcism in the Reformation period, but also reaches back to the fifteenth century and forward to our own times. Entire convents of nuns in French, Italian, and Spanish towns, thirty boys in an Amsterdam orphanage, a small group of young girls in Salem, Massachusetts—these are among the instances of demon possession in the United States and throughout Europe that Brian Levack closely examines, taking into account the diverse interpretations of generations of theologians, biblical scholars, pastors, physicians, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and historians. Challenging the commonly held belief that possession signals physical or mental illness, the author argues that demoniacs and exorcists—consciously or not—are following their various religious cultures, and their performances can only be understood in those contexts. “Riveting [and] readable . . . must-reading for students of history, psychology and religion.” —Publishers Weekly “Levak, a distinguished historian of early modern witchcraft, now sets exorcism in a long historical perspective, providing the most comprehensive and scholarly overview of the theme yet published.” —Peter Marshall, Times Literary Supplement
Download or read book Possession and Exorcism written by Brian P. Levack and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1992 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Case of Witchcraft written by Robert Rapley and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1998-08-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a Catholic priest, Grandier was an influential figure in the Loudun community and local government. A brilliant speaker, he was popular with his parishioners. But he had enemies, including Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII, who was trying to wrest political autonomy from local governors and centralize power in Paris. Grandier's support of the governor of Loudun meant that he was seen as an enemy of the crown. In addition, the debonair priest's romantic intrigues brought him into conflict with some of the town's most influential power brokers. When a nearby convent of Ursuline nuns began experiencing strange visions and hallucinations, Grandier's enemies seized the opportunity to orchestrate his downfall. These mass possessions, which spread through the convent despite attempts at exorcism, were regarded as witchcraft and Grandier was accused of having caused them. Condemned by Richelieu and the king, Grandier was tortured and burned at the stake for his alleged crimes. He maintained his innocence to the end. This tale of conspiracy, corruption, and mass hysteria provides a fascinating exploration of human behaviour and community dynamics.
Download or read book Possession written by Craig E. Stephenson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first edition of this illuminating study, addressed both to readers new to Jung and to those already familiar with his work, offered fresh insights into a fundamental concept of analytical psychology. This revised edition has been fully updated to reflect the publication of the DSM-5. Craig Stephenson anatomizes Jung’s concept of possession, reinvesting Jungian psychotherapy with its positive potential for practice. Analogizing the concept – lining it up comparatively beside the history of religion, anthropology, psychiatry, and even drama and film criticism – offers not a naive syncretism, but enlightening possibilities along the borders of these diverse disciplines. An original, wide-ranging exploration of phenomena both ancient and modern, Possession offers a conceptual bridge between psychology and anthropology, challenges psychiatry to culturally contextualize its diagnostic manual, and posits a much more fluid, pluralistic and embodied notion of selfhood. It will prove essential reading for Jungian psychotherapists, analytical and depth psychologists and psychiatrists as well as academics and students of anthropology, mythology and religious studies.
Download or read book The History of the Devils of Loudun written by Des Niau and published by . This book was released on 1887 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Witchcraft Sourcebook written by Brian P. Levack and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of trial records, laws, treatises, sermons, speeches, woodcuttings, paintings and literary texts illustrates how contemporaries from various periods have perceived alleged witches and their activities.
Download or read book Diabolical Possession and the Case Behind The Exorcist written by Sergio A. Rueda and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-10-29 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reexamining the purported 1949 exorcism of a 13-year old boy in Mount Ranier, Maryland--the most famous and widely documented case in history--the author explores the subject of demonic possession in the light of science. Eyewitness accounts, unpublished photos and never before published documents from the archives of the Rhine Research Foundation provide fresh perspective on the events that inspired the novel, and later the film, The Exorcist.
Download or read book Spirit Possession written by Éva Pócs and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Possession, a seemingly irrational phenomenon, has posed challenges to generations of scholars rooted in Western notions of body-soul dualism, self and personhood, and a whole set of presuppositions inherited from Christian models of possession that was “good” or “bad.” The authors of the essays in this book present a new and more promising approach. They conceive spirit possession as a form of communication, of expressivity, of culturally defined behavior that should be understood in the context of local, vernacular theories and empiric reflections. With the aim of reformulating the comparative anthropology of spirit possession, the editors have opened corridors between previously separate areas of research. Together, anthropologists and historians working on several historical periods and in different European, African, South American, and Asian cultural areas attempt to redefine the very concept of possession, freeing it from the Western notion of the self and more clearly delineating it from related matters such as witchcraft, devotion, or mysticism. The book also provides an overview of new research directions, including novel methods of participant observation and approaches to spirit possession as indigenous historiography
Download or read book Believe Not Every Spirit written by Moshe Sluhovsky and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-11-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1400 through 1700, the number of reports of demonic possessions among European women was extraordinarily high. During the same period, a new type of mysticism—popular with women—emerged that greatly affected the risk of possession and, as a result, the practice of exorcism. Many feared that in moments of rapture, women, who had surrendered their souls to divine love, were not experiencing the work of angels, but rather the ravages of demons in disguise. So how then, asks Moshe Sluhovsky, were practitioners of exorcism to distinguish demonic from divine possessions? Drawing on unexplored accounts of mystical schools and spiritual techniques, testimonies of the possessed, and exorcism manuals, Believe Not Every Spirit examines how early modern Europeans dealt with this dilemma. The personal experiences of practitioners, Sluhovsky shows, trumped theological knowledge. Worried that this could lead to a rejection of Catholic rituals, the church reshaped the meaning and practices of exorcism, transforming this healing rite into a means of spiritual interrogation. In its efforts to distinguish between good and evil, the church developed important new explanatory frameworks for the relations between body and soul, interiority and exteriority, and the natural and supernatural.
