The Meaning Of Witchcraft

Author : Gerald B. Gardner
Publisher : Weiser Books
ISBN 13 : 160925189X
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Meaning of Witchcraft written by Gerald B. Gardner and published by Weiser Books. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thought to be the father of modern witchcraft, Gerald Gardner published The Meaning of Witchcraft in 1959, not long after laws punishing witches were repealed. It was the first sympathetic book written from the point of view of a practicing witch. The Meaning of Witchcraft is an invaluable source book for witches today. Chapters include: Witch's Memories and Beliefs, The Stone Age Origins of Witchcraft, Druidism and the Aryan Celts, Magic Thinking, Curious Beliefs about Witches, Signs and Symbols, The Black Mass, Some Allegations Examined. The Meaning of Witchcraft is a record of witches' roots-and a tribute to a founding pioneer with the courage to set that record straight.

Author : Gerald B. Gardner
Publisher : Weiser Books
ISBN 13 : 1633412784
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Meaning of Witchcraft written by Gerald B. Gardner and published by Weiser Books. This book was released on 2022-12-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Those of us who use the word witch with all of the pride and fortification that it offers us do so thanks to Gardner’s lucid, liberating vision.”—Pam Grossman, author of Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power Often called the father of modern witchcraft, Gerald Gardner’s life and works were ground-breaking in opening the door for the modern revival of Wicca and neo-paganism. The Meaning of Witchcraft (originally published in 1959) was the first sympathetic book written from the point of view of a practicing witch. “The foundation of magical beliefs,” Gardner wrote, “of which witchcraft is a form, is that unseen Powers exist, and that by performing the right sort of ritual, these Powers can be contacted and either forced or persuaded to assist one in some way. People believed this in the Stone Age, and they believe it, consciously or not, today. It is now well known that most superstition is, in fact, broken-down ritual. The meaning of witchcraft is to be found not in strange religious theories about God and Satan but in the deepest levels of the human mind, the collective unconscious, and the earliest developments of human society.” The Meaning of Witchcraft is an enduring and invaluable source book for witches today. This Weiser Classics edition includes a new foreword by Pam Grossman, author of Waking the Witch. In it, Grossman revisits the historical role and mixed legacy that Gardner has played in the revival of witchcraft and magic in modern times.

Author : Gerald Brosseau Gardner
Publisher : DigiCat
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 149 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Witchcraft Today written by Gerald Brosseau Gardner and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-11-23 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Meaning of Witchcraft is a non-fiction book written by Gerald Gardner. Gardner, known to many in the modern sense as the "Father of Wicca", based the book around his experiences with the religion of Wicca and the New Forest Coven. He claimed he was allowed to tell more than ever before and cast light on the rituals and beliefs of witches. The book's main message was that neither the practices of witches nor their intents were harmful. The book tells the history of witchcraft in Europe. The author traces back to pre-Christian times, studies the rituals and beliefs of templars, and states that the belief in fairies in ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe was connected with a secretive pygmy race that lived alongside other communities. The preface to this book was Margaret Murray, who stated that witchcraft took its root in the pre-Christian religions and had nothing to do with spell-casting and other evil practices. Instead, Murray proposes to view witchcraft as "the sincere expression of that feeling towards God which is expressed, perhaps more decorously though not more sincerely, by modern Christianity in church services."

Author : Raymond Buckland
Publisher : Llewellyn Worldwide
ISBN 13 : 0875420508
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft written by Raymond Buckland and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 1986 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This complete self-study course in modern Wicca is a treasured classic - an essential and trusted guide that belongs in every witch's library."---Back cover

Author : Koen Stroeken
Publisher : Berghahn Books
ISBN 13 : 9781845457358
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Moral Power written by Koen Stroeken and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neither power nor morality but both. Moral power is what Sukuma farmers in Tanzania in times of crisis attribute to an unknown figure they call their witch. A universal process is involved, as much bodily as social, which obstructs the patient's recovery. Healers turn the table on the witch through rituals showing that the community and the ancestral spirits side with the victim. In contrast to biomedicine, their magic and divination introduce moral values that assess the state of the system and that remove the obstacles to what is taken as key: self-healing. The implied 'sensory shifts' and therapeutic effectiveness have largely eluded the literature on witchcraft. This book shows how to comprehend culture other than through the prism of identity politics. It offers a framework to comprehend the rise of witch killings and human sacrifice, just as ritual initiation disappears.

Author : Gerald Gardner
Publisher : Library of Alexandria
ISBN 13 : 1465577734
Total Pages : 94 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Gardnerian Book of Shadows written by Gerald Gardner and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magus leaves circle by the doorway, goes to Postulant, and says, "Since there is no other brother here, I must be thy sponsor, as well as priest. I am about to give you a warning. If you are still of the same mind, answer it with these words: 'Perfect Love and Perfect Trust.'" Placing the point of the sword to the Postulant's breast, he says, "O thou who standeth on the threshold between the pleasant world of men and the domains of the Dread Lords of the Outer Spaces, hast thou the courage to make the Assay? For I tell thee verily, it were better to rush on my weapon and perish miserably than to make the attempt with fear in thy heart." Postulant: "I have two Passwords: Perfect Love and Perfect Trust." Magus drops the sword point, saying, "All who approach with perfect love and perfect trust are doubly welcome." Going around behind her, he blindfolds her, then putting his left arm around her waist and his right arm around her neck, he pulls her head back, says, "I give you the 3rd password, a Kiss to pass through this dread Door," and pushes her forward with his body, through the doorway and into the circle. Once inside, he releases her saying, "This is the way all are first brought into the circle." Magus closes the doorway by drawing the point of the sword across it three times, joining all three circles, saying, "Agla, Azoth, Adonai," then drawing three pentacles to seal it. Magus guides Postulant to south of altar, and whispers, "Now there is the Ordeal." Taking a short piece of cord from the altar, he ties it around her right ankle, saying, "Feet neither bound nor free." Taking a longer cord, he ties her hands together behind her back, then pulls them up, so that the arms form a triangle, and ties the cord around her neck, leaving the end dangling down in front as a Cable Tow. With the Cable Tow in his left hand and the sword in his right hand, the Magus leads her sunwise around the circle to the east, where he salutes with the sword and proclaims, "Take heed, O Lords of the Watchtowers of the East, (name), properly prepared, will be made a Priestess and a Witch." Magus leads her similarly to the south, west, and north, making the proclamation at each quarter. , clasping Postulant around the waist with his left arm, and holding the sword erect in his right hand, he makes her circumambulate three times around the circle with a half-running, half-dancing step. He halts her at the south of the altar, and strikes eleven knells on the bell.

Author : Stuart Clark
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 033398529X
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Languages of Witchcraft written by Stuart Clark and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-07-19 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Different conceptions of the world and of reality have made witchcraft possible in some societies and impossible in others. How did the people of early modern Europe experience it and what was its place in their culture? The new essays in this collection illustrate the latest trends in witchcraft research and in cultural history in general. After three decades in which the social analysis of witchcraft accusations has dominated the subject, they turn instead to its significance and meaning as a cultural phenomenon - to the 'languages' of witchcraft, rather than its causes. As a result, witchcraft seems less startling than it once was, yet more revealing of the world in which it occurred.

Author : Margaret Alice Murray
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780195012705
Total Pages : 228 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The God of the Witches written by Margaret Alice Murray and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This celebrated study of witchcraft in Europe traces the worship of the pre-Christian and prehistoric Horned God from paleolithic times to the medieval period. Murray, the first to turn a scholarly eye on the mysteries of witchcraft, enables us to see its existence in the Middle Ages not as an isolated and terrifying phenomenon, but as the survival of a religion nearly as old as humankind itself, whose devotees held passionately to a view of life threatened by an alien creed. The findings she sets forth, once thought of as provocative and implausible, are now regarded as irrefutable by folklorists and scholars in related fields. Exploring the rites and ceremonies associated with witchcraft, Murray establishes the concept of the "dying god"--the priest-king who was ritually killed to ensure the country and its people a continuity of fertility and strength. In this light, she considers such figures as Thomas a Becket, Joan of Arc, and Gilles de Rais as spiritual leaders whose deaths were ritually imposed. Truly a classic work of anthropology, and written in a clear, accessible style that anyone can enjoy, The God of the Witches forces us to reevaluate our thoughts about an ancient and vital religion.

Author : Craig Hawkins
Publisher : Baker Books
ISBN 13 : 1441236708
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Witchcraft written by Craig Hawkins and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 1996-06-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to contemporary witchcraft and neopaganism shows you what witches themselves say they believe, what the Bible says about witchcraft, and philosophical holes in the worldview of witches.

Author : Alex Mar
Publisher : Macmillan
ISBN 13 : 0374291373
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Witches of America written by Alex Mar and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Witches are gathering." When most people hear the word "witches," they think of horror films and Halloween, but to the nearly one million Americans who practice Paganism today, witchcraft is a nature-worshipping, polytheistic, and very real religion. So Alex Mar discovers when she sets out to film a documentary and finds herself drawn deep into the world of present-day magic. Witches of America follows Mar on her immersive five-year trip into the occult, charting modern Paganism from its roots in 1950s England to its current American mecca in the San Francisco Bay Area; from a gathering of more than a thousand witches in the Illinois woods to the New Orleans branch of one of the world's most influential magical societies. Along the way she takes part in dozens of rituals and becomes involved with a wild array of characters. This sprawling magical community compels Mar to confront what she believes is possible--or hopes might be. With keen intelligence and wit, Mar illuminates the world of witchcraft while grappling in fresh and unexpected ways with the question underlying every faith: Why do we choose to believe in anything at all?--Adapted from book jacket.