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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2007

        The Malleus Maleficarum

        by P. Maxwell-Stuart

        The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. It was written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theological discussion, illustrative anecdotes, and useful advice for those involved in suppressing witchcraft, its influence on witchcraft studies has been extensive. The only previous translation into English, that by Montague Summers produced in 1928, is full of inaccuracies. It is written in a style almost unreadable nowadays, and is unfortunately coloured by his personal agenda. This new edited translation, with an introductory essay setting witchcraft, Institoris, and the Malleus into clear, readable English, corrects Summers' mistakes and offers a lean, unvarnished version of what Institoris actually wrote. It will undoubtedly become the standard translation of this important and controversial late-medieval text. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2020

        The Malleus Maleficarum

        by P. G. Maxwell-Stuart

        The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. It was written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theological discussion, illustrative anecdotes, and useful advice for those involved in suppressing witchcraft, its influence on witchcraft studies has been extensive. The only previous translation into English, that by Montague Summers produced in 1928, is full of inaccuracies. It is written in a style almost unreadable nowadays, and is unfortunately coloured by his personal agenda. This new edited translation, with an introductory essay setting witchcraft, Institoris, and the Malleus into clear, readable English, corrects Summers' mistakes and offers a lean, unvarnished version of what Institoris actually wrote. It will undoubtedly become the standard translation of this important and controversial late-medieval text.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2020

        The supernatural in early modern Scotland

        by Julian Goodare, Martha McGill, Janet Hadley Williams, Lizanne Henderson, Liv Helene Willumsen, Michelle D. Brock, Alasdair Raff, Jane Ridder-Patrick, Michael B. Riordan, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart, Felicity Loughlin, Hamish Mathison

        This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and elite understandings of the supernatural.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2017

        A familiar compound ghost

        Allusion and the Uncanny

        by Sarah Annes Brown

        A Familiar Compound Ghost explores the relationship between allusion and the uncanny in literature. An unexpected echo or quotation in a new text can be compared to the sudden appearance of a ghost or mysterious double, the reanimation of a corpse, or the discovery of an ancient ruin hidden in a modern city. In this scholarly and suggestive study, Brown identifies moments where this affinity between allusion and the uncanny is used by writers to generate a particular textual charge, where uncanny elements are used to flag patterns of allusion and to point to the haunting presence of an earlier work. A Familiar Compound Ghost traces the subtle patterns of connection between texts centuries, even millennia apart, from Greek tragedy and Latin epic, through the plays of Shakespeare and the Victorian novel, to contemporary film, fiction and poetry. Each chapter takes a different uncanny motif as its focus: doubles, ruins, reanimation, ghosts and journeys to the underworld.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2020

        The supernatural in early modern Scotland

        by Julian Goodare, Martha McGill, Janet Hadley Williams, Lizanne Henderson, Liv Helene Willumsen, Michelle D. Brock, Alasdair Raff, Jane Ridder-Patrick, Michael B. Riordan, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart, Felicity Loughlin, Hamish Mathison

        This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and elite understandings of the supernatural.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2023

        The supernatural in early modern Scotland

        by Julian Goodare, Martha McGill

        This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and elite understandings of the supernatural.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2020

        The supernatural in early modern Scotland

        by Julian Goodare, Martha McGill, Janet Hadley Williams, Lizanne Henderson, Liv Helene Willumsen, Michelle D. Brock, Alasdair Raff, Jane Ridder-Patrick, Michael B. Riordan, Domhnall Uilleam Stiùbhart, Felicity Loughlin, Hamish Mathison

        This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and elite understandings of the supernatural.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2023

        A defence of witchcraft belief

        A sixteenth-century response to Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft

        by Eric Pudney

        This is the first published edition of a fascinating manuscript on witchcraft in the collection of the British Library, written by an unknown sixteenth-century scholar. Responding to a pre-publication draft of Reginald Scot's sceptical Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), the treatise represents the most detailed defence of witchcraft belief to be written in the early modern period in England. It highlights in detail the scriptural and theological justifications for a belief in witches, covering ground that may well have been considered too sensitive for print publications and presenting learned arguments not found in any other contemporary English work. Consequently, it offers a unique insight into elite witchcraft belief dating from the very beginning of the English witchcraft debate. This edition, which includes a comprehensive analytical introduction, presents the treatise with modernised spelling and relevant excerpts from Scot's book.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2021

        A defence of witchcraft belief

        A sixteenth-century response to Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft

        by Eric Pudney

        This is the first published edition of a fascinating manuscript on witchcraft in the collection of the British Library, written by an unknown sixteenth-century scholar. Responding to a pre-publication draft of Reginald Scot's sceptical Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), the treatise represents the most detailed defence of witchcraft belief to be written in the early modern period in England. It highlights in detail the scriptural and theological justifications for a belief in witches, covering ground that may well have been considered too sensitive for print publications and presenting learned arguments not found in any other contemporary English work. Consequently, it offers a unique insight into elite witchcraft belief dating from the very beginning of the English witchcraft debate. This edition, which includes a comprehensive analytical introduction, presents the treatise with modernised spelling and relevant excerpts from Scot's book.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2021

        A defence of witchcraft belief

        A sixteenth-century response to Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft

        by Eric Pudney

        This is the first published edition of a fascinating manuscript on witchcraft in the collection of the British Library, written by an unknown sixteenth-century scholar. Responding to a pre-publication draft of Reginald Scot's sceptical Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), the treatise represents the most detailed defence of witchcraft belief to be written in the early modern period in England. It highlights in detail the scriptural and theological justifications for a belief in witches, covering ground that may well have been considered too sensitive for print publications and presenting learned arguments not found in any other contemporary English work. Consequently, it offers a unique insight into elite witchcraft belief dating from the very beginning of the English witchcraft debate. This edition, which includes a comprehensive analytical introduction, presents the treatise with modernised spelling and relevant excerpts from Scot's book.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2021

        A defence of witchcraft belief

        A sixteenth-century response to Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft

        by Eric Pudney

        This is the first published edition of a fascinating manuscript on witchcraft in the collection of the British Library, written by an unknown sixteenth-century scholar. Responding to a pre-publication draft of Reginald Scot's sceptical Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), the treatise represents the most detailed defence of witchcraft belief to be written in the early modern period in England. It highlights in detail the scriptural and theological justifications for a belief in witches, covering ground that may well have been considered too sensitive for print publications and presenting learned arguments not found in any other contemporary English work. Consequently, it offers a unique insight into elite witchcraft belief dating from the very beginning of the English witchcraft debate. This edition, which includes a comprehensive analytical introduction, presents the treatise with modernised spelling and relevant excerpts from Scot's book.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2024

        The Malleus Maleficarum

        by Peter Maxwell-Stuart

        A shocking glimpse into the mind of a medieval witch hunter. In 1487, the zealous Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer wrote a treatise that would have a remarkable influence on European history. Blaming women for his own lust, and frustrated by official complacency before what he saw as a monstrous spiritual menace, Kramer penned a practical guide to aid law officers in the identification and prosecution of witches. Fusing theology, lurid anecdotes and advice for those engaged in combating sorcery, The Malleus Maleficarum transports the reader into the dark heart of medieval belief - where fear of the supernatural provokes a gripping struggle for understanding and control. Kramer's book led to the burning of numerous innocents and had a lasting impact on the popular image of witchcraft. It remains a sinister symbol of fanaticism and cruelty to this day.

      • Humanities & Social Sciences

        Die Magie der verbotenen Märchen / The Magic of the Forbidden Fairy Tales

        by Sergius Golowin

        What do folk tales teach us today? Fairy godmothers, bitches, gnomes, dwarfs and many others are thoroughly described in this book. In his ethnic study Sergius Golowin explores the figures of the folk tales as symbols of our unconsciousness. Golowin decodes the symbolic language of fairy tales and enlightens the secret science of Celtic priests and the magic knowledge of Nordic warlocks. Golowin shows that mandrake, toadstool and monkshood were well known in past times. Those who knew their secrets had superhuman power and wisdom. The possibility to see new realities is shown as one of the oldest, but always banned knowledge.

      • Humanities & Social Sciences

        Magie und Macht in Italien / Magic and Power in Italy

        Über Frauenzauber, Kirche und Politik / Witches, Church and Politics

        by Thomas Hauschild

        An exciting book about Italy, the hidden power structures of the Catholic Church and the question of what is - after all post-modern discussion - essentially human In the early 1980ies Thomas Hauschild started his anthropological fieldwork in Southern Italy. He discovered a kind of modern European shamanism, which has been in dialogue with the almighty Catholic Church for a long time. These traditions of magic, trance, and vision are kept as a form of religious daily life and are still very vivid. Thomas Hauschild describes and explains rites of birth, life and death, how women and men make their living by healing, and how this regenerates local and national politics. Since the church was likely to loose control, it always tried to obliterate popular rituals and, by doing so, revitalized their powers even more. This is a book against a ‘the politics of’ stance in anthropological reasoning that asks for the very processes through which political power is created and installed. Most remarkable: the language – “the sound” – of the book: although it deals with all the urgent questions of humanity it is never academic.

      • Magic, alchemy & hermetic thought

        The Keys to the Gateway of Magic: Summoning the Solomonic Archangels & Demon Princes

        Being a Transcription of Janua Magica Reserata, Dr Rudd's Nine Hierarchies of Angels & Nine Celestial Keys, the Demon Princes : In Mss Sloane 3825 and Harley 6482 With Other Pertinent Discourses from Sloane 3821, Sloane 3824, Sloane 3628, and Rawlinson D. 1363

        by Stephen Skinner

        This work includes the complete unabridged version with variants of The Nine Great Keys, a vital early 17th century manuscript detailing the invocation of the Archangels and nine Orders of Angels. The full practical techniques of summoning the Archangels, details of the hierarchies of spiritual beings, and how the full Enochian system fits in with the Angelic and Demonic hierarchies are all covered, as well as the theology and philosophy associated with Angelic magic, giving the context that these magical practitioners were working with. It includes the evocation of the Four Demon Princes and their role within the traditional system of magic. The book deals clearly with the full continuum of spiritual creatures from Archangels through Angels to Demon Princes (Fallen Angels), to Olympic Spirits and Elementals. This is presented in practical detail, with much rare manuscript material being made available in print for the first time.

      • Mind, Body, Spirit

        Practical Angel Magic of John Dee's Enochian Tables

        From Three Previously Unpublished Manuscripts On Angel Magic, Being a Complete Transcription of Tabula Bonorum Angelorum Invocationes in Manuscripts Bl Sloane 307 and 3821 and Bodleian Rawlinson D1067 and D1363

        by Stephen Skinner

        Stephen Skinner has been interested in magic for as long as he can remember. He wrote, with Francis King, the classic Techniques of High Magic in 1976. He followed that with Oracle of Geomancy and Terrestrial Astrology which has become the standard work on Western divinatory geomancy. Books on Nostradamus and Millennium Prophecies followed in highly illustrated editions. Stephen is also the author of eight books on feng shui, including the first one written in English in the 20th century. In the 1970s he was responsible for stimulating interest in John Dee and Enochian magic by publishing the first reprint of Casaubon's True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers between Dr John Dee and some Spirits. and Dr Donald Laycock's key reference book on the angelic language The Complete Enochian Dictionary. With David Rankine, he discovered what happened to Dee's most important manuscript, his personal book of angelic invocations which he kept in Latin, and how it was preserved and developed in the 17th century into a full working Enochian system. Only ten percent of this material reached the unpublished archives of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and even this was then suppressed by the chiefs of the Order, so it did not appear in Israel Regardie's monumental work on the Order rituals and documents. They have also traced the routes down which were passed the classic techniques of invocation and evocation from late mediaeval grimoires, through Dee's magic, via Ashmole, and the aristocratic angel magicians of the 17th century, and Frederick Hockley to the senior magicians of the Golden Dawn.

      • Occult studies

        Veritable Key of Solomon

        Three Complete Versions of the "key of Solomon" Now in Full Colour

        by Stephen Skinner

        "The Key of Solomon" is the most famous and infamous of the Grimoires ever produced. Yet amazingly only one version of it has ever been published, by S L MacGregor Mathers, over 100 years ago. What Mathers may not have known is that there were much more detailed and complete versions of this grimoire available in many other languages. This is not just a variant of Mathers' text, but a translation of three completely different and beautifully illustrated 1796 French manuscripts of the Key of Solomon. These are the most beautiful and complete manu-scripts of the Key of Solomon ever published. Much of the detail omitted from Mathers' edition is given here, providing a complete and workable system of high magic with full details of implements, procedures, and a wide range of talismans. Much material not available to Mathers is also found in this extraordinary book, including planetary prayers, names of angels and demons, and a vast array of pentacles, as well as material on the Olympic Spirits, Planetary Spirits and Intelligences. The commentary by two of the best known scholar-magicians provides much addi-tional material, a full survey of all the extant manuscripts of this famous grimoire and how they relate to each other, as well as the historical influence of the Key of Solomon on the development of magic from the Renais-sance until now. The pentacles as drawn by Fyot, the original scribe, are reproduced here, with more than twice as many pentacles as were produced in Mathers' text. The Key of Solomon is the most significant magical grimoire ever penned, certainly for the period from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth century. This present work finally restores the Key of Solomon back to its place at the heart of practical Western magic.

      • Magic, alchemy & hermetic thought

        The Goetia of Dr Rudd

        The Angels & Demons of Liber Malorum Spirituum Seu Goetia Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis : With a Study of the Techniques of Evocation in the Context of the Angel Magic Tradition of the Seventeenth Century

        by Stephen Skinner

        The Goetia is the most famous grimoire after the Key of Solomon. This volume contains a transcription of a hitherto unpublished manuscript of the Lemegeton which includes four whole grimoires: Liber Malorum Spituum seu Goetia; Theurgia-Goetia; Ars Paulina (Books 1 & 2); Ars Almadel. This was owned by Dr Thomas Rudd, a practising scholar-magician of the early seventeenth century. There are many editions of the Goetia, of which the most definitive is that of Joseph Peterson, but here we are interested in how the Goetia was actually used by practising magicians in the 16th and 17th century, before the knowledge of practical magic faded into obscurity. To evoke the 72 demons listed here without the ability to bind them would be foolhardy indeed. It was well known in times past that invocatio and ligatio, or binding, was a key part of evocation, but in the modern editions of the Goetia this key technique is expressed in just one word 'Shemhamaphorash', and its use is not explained. This volume explains how the 72 angels of the Shem ha-Mephorash are used to bind the spirits, and the correct procedure for safely invoking them using special seals incorporating the necessary controlling angel, whose name is also engraved on the breastplate and Brass Vessel.

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