Occultism Witchcraft And Cultural Fashions

Author : Mircea Eliade
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022616330X
Total Pages : 160 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions written by Mircea Eliade and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-04-02 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the period domoninated by the triumphs of scientific rationalism, how do we account for the extraordinary success of such occult movements as astrology or the revival of witchcraft? From his perspective as a historian of religions, the eminent scholar Mircea Eliade shows that such popular trends develop from archaic roots and periodically resurface in certain myths, symbols, and rituals. In six lucid essays collected for this volume, Eliade reveals the profound religious significance that lies at the heart of many contemporary cultural vogues. Since all of the essays except the last were originally delivered as lectures, their introductory character and lively oral style make them particularly accessible to the intelligent nonspecialist. Rather than a popularization, Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions is the fulfillment of Eliade's conviction that the history of religions should be read by the widest possible audience.

Author : Mircea Eliade
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 148 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions written by Mircea Eliade and published by . This book was released on 1976 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Ariel Glucklich
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195355237
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The End of Magic written by Ariel Glucklich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-06 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, magic has been as widely and passionately practiced as religion. But while religion continues to flourish, magic stumbles towards extinction. What is magic? What does it do? Why do people believe in magic? Ariel Glucklich finds the answers to these questions in the streets of Banaras, India's most sacred city, where hundreds of magicians still practice ancient traditions, treating thousands of Hindu and Muslim patients of every caste and sect. Through study and interpretation of the Banarsi magical rites and those who partake in them, the author presents fascinating living examples of magical practice, and contrasts his findings with the major theories that have explained (or explained away) magic over the last century. These theories, he argues, ignore an essential sensory phenomenon which he calls "magical experience": an extraordinary, though perfectly natural, state of awareness through which magicians and their clients perceive the effects of magic rituals.

Author : Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004378936
Total Pages : 598 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book New Age Religion and Western Culture written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-09-24 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen a spectacular rise of the New Age movement and an ever-increasing interest in its beliefs and manifestations. This fascinating work presents the first-ever comprehensive analysis of New Age Religion and its historical backgrounds, thus providing the reader with a means of orientation in the bewildering variety of the movement. Making extensive use of primary sources, the author thematically analyses New Age beliefs from the perspective of the study of religions. While looking at the historical backgrounds of the movement, he convincingly argues that its foundations were laid by so-called western esoteric traditions during the Renaissance. Hanegraaff finally shows how the modern New Age movement emerged from the increasing secularization of those esoteric traditions during the 19th century. This ground-breaking publication is compulsive reading for all those involved or interested in the New Age movement.

Author : Margot Adler
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101549769
Total Pages : 672 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Drawing Down the Moon written by Margot Adler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential text and classic study of Neo-Paganism 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 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.

Author : Christopher I. Lehrich
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801462258
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.52/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Occult Mind written by Christopher I. Lehrich and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-24 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Given the historical orientation of philosophy, is it unreasonable to suggest a wider cast of the net into the deep waters of magic? By encountering magical thought as theory, we come to a new understanding of a thought that looks back at us from a funhouse mirror."—The Occult Mind Divination, like many critical modes, involves reading signs, and magic, more generally, can be seen as a kind of criticism that takes the universe—seen and unseen, known and unknowable—as its text. In The Occult Mind, Christopher I. Lehrich explores the history of magic in Western thought, suggesting a bold new understanding of the claims made about the power of various belief systems. In closely interlinked essays on such disparate topics as ley lines, the Tarot, the Corpus Hermeticum, writing and ritual in magical practice, and early attempts to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics, Lehrich treats magic and its parts as an intellectual object that requires interpretive zeal on the part of readers/observers. Drawing illuminating parallels between the practice of magic and more recent interpretive systems—structuralism, deconstruction, semiotics—Lehrich deftly suggests that the specter of magic haunts all such attempts to grasp the character of knowledge. Offering a radical new approach to the nature and value of occult thought, Lehrich's brilliantly conceived and executed book posits magic as a mode of theory that is intrinsically subversive of normative conceptions of reason and truth. In elucidating the deep parallels between occult thought and academic discourse, Lehrich demonstrates that sixteenth-century occult philosophy often touched on issues that have become central to philosophical discourse only in the past fifty years.

Author : Miriam Wallraven
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317581393
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.90/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Women Writers and the Occult in Literature and Culture written by Miriam Wallraven and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book visits the occult in literature from the 1880s to the 20th century, analyzing work by women occultists such as Alice Bailey, Dion Fortune, and Starhawk, and revisiting texts with occult motifs by canonical authors. It covers movements such as Theosophy, Spiritualism, Golden Dawn, Wicca, and Goddess spirituality, engaging with how literature creates occult worlds and identities, namely the female Lucifer, witch, priestess, and Goddess. The occult in literature incorporates topical discourses including psychoanalysis, feminism, pacifism, and ecology, hence this book will be of interest to scholars of literary and cultural studies, religious studies, sociology, and gender studies.

Author : Wouter J. Hanegraaff
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009302876
Total Pages : 455 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination written by Wouter J. Hanegraaff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-30 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Egypt during the first centuries CE, men and women would meet discreetly in their homes, in temple sanctuaries, or insolitary places to learn a powerful practice of spiritual liberation. They thought of themselves as followers of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary master of ancient wisdom. While many of their writings are lost, those that survived have been interpreted primarily as philosophical treatises about theological topics. Wouter J. Hanegraaff challenges this dominant narrative by demonstrating that Hermetic literature was concerned with experiential practices intended for healing the soul from mental delusion. The Way of Hermes involved radical alterations of consciousness in which practitioners claimed to perceive the true nature of reality behind the hallucinatory veil of appearances. Hanegraaff explores how practitioners went through a training regime that involved luminous visions, exorcism, spiritual rebirth, cosmic consciousness, and union with the divine beauty of universal goodness and truth to attain the salvational knowledge known as gnôsis.

Author : Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801483318
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.1X/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture written by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive account of the influence of occult beliefs and doctrines on intellectual and cultural life in twentieth-century Russia.

Author : Christopher Dell
Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0500518882
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Occult, Witchcraft and Magic written by Christopher Dell and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The curious history of magic and the powers of the occult, witchcraft, ritual, and the imagination, from their earliest appearances to modern times From the days of the earliest Paleolithic cave rituals, magic has gripped the imagination. Magic and magicians appear in early Babylonian texts, the Bible, Judaism, and Islam. Secret words, spells, and incantations lie at the heart of nearly every mythological tradition. But for every genuine magus there is an impostor. During the Middle Ages, religion, science, and magic were difficult to set apart. The Middle Ages also saw the pursuit of alchemy—the magical transformation of base materials—which led to a fascination with the occult, Freemasonry, and Rosicrucianism. The turn of the twentieth century witnessed a return to earlier magical traditions, and today, magic means many things: contemporary Wicca is practiced widely as a modern pagan religion in Europe and the US; “magic” also stretches to include the nonspiritual, rapid-fire sleight of hand performed by slick stage magicians who fill vast arenas. The Occult, Witchcraft and Magic is packed with authoritative text and a huge and inspired selection of images, some chosen from unusual sources, including some of the best-known representations of magic and the occult from around the world spanning ancient to modern times.