In The Sabbats, Edain McCoy reveals the eight major holidays of this faith and the many ways in which they are celebrated.There are two basic types of holidays. The first come at the Solstices and Equinoxes. The others divide the time between those dates in two, resulting in eight major holidays or Sabbats with approximately the same amount of days between them. The balance, here, gives the appearance of spokes in a wheel, so this cycle is commonly called the Wheel of the Year.The holidays represent two things. First, the harvest cycle. Each holiday represents a time in the growth of crops. From planting to growth, from harvesting to letting the lands lie fallow in the cold winter, the festivals follow the agricultural cycles of ancient times. However, they also represent the eternal love of the God and Goddess, following the God's birth from the Goddess and his death before she gives birth to him again. This also follows the pattern of the Sun which moves from warm and high in the sky to cold and low in the sky.The book is filled with ways you can follow the Wheel of the Year, whether you work with a coven, with your family, or by yourself. You will learn the secrets of ritual construction and handicrafts appropriate to each of the festivals. You will also learn recipes for traditional foods for each holiday and even songs appropriate to the Sabbats.This is a wonderful, joyous book filled with color, information, and wisdom. If you are involved with Paganism in any way, this book is a must for your studies and practices. This book functions as both a resource and as a practical manual for the celebration of the holidays. Get your copy today.

    Now, with a new introduction and full-color artwork, this passionate and important text shows even more clearly that the religion of the Goddess—which is tied to the cycles of women’s bodies, the seasons, the phases of the moon, and the fertility of the earth—was the original religion of all humanity.

    . . . [His] arguments are often lively and entertaining.--Los Angeles TimesIn Not in His Image John Lamb Lash explains how a little-known messianic sect propelled itself into a dominant world power, systematically wiping out the great Gnostic spiritual teachers, the Druid priests, and the shamanistic healers of Europe and North Africa. Early Christians burned libraries and destroyed temples in an attempt to silence the ancient truth-tellers and keep their own secrets. But as Lash reveals the truth cannot be hidden or destroyed.Not in His Image delves deeply into the shadows of ancient Gnostic writings to reconstruct the story early Christians tried to scrub from the pages of history, exploring the richness of the ancient European Pagan spirituality-the Pagan Mysteries, the Great Goddess, Gnosis, the myths of Sophia and Gaia.Long before the birth of Christianity, monotheism was an anomaly; Europe and the Near East flourished under the divine guidance of Sophia, the ancient goddess of wisdom. The Earth was the embodiment of Sophia and thus sacred to the people who sought fulfillment in her presence. This ancient philosophy was threatening to the emerging salvation-based creed of Christianity that was based on patriarchal dominion over the Earth and lauded personal suffering as a path to the afterlife. As Derrick Jensen points out in the afterword, in Lash's hands Jesus Christ emerges as the agent provocateur of the ruling classes.Sometimes a book changes the world. Not in His Image is such a book. It is clear, stimulating, well-researched, and sure to outrage the experts. . . . Get it. Improve not just your own life, but civilization's chances for survival.--Roger Payne, author of Among Whales

    This essential handbook contains everything an aspiring Wizard needs to know. It is profusely illustrated with original art by Oberon and friends, as well as many woodcuts from medieval and alchemical manuscripts--plus charts, tables, and diagrams. It also contains: Biographies of famous Wizards in history and legend; Descriptions of magickal tools and regalia (with full instructions for making them); spells and workings for a better life; rites and rituals for special occasions; a bestiary of mythical creatures; systems of divination; the Laws of Magick; myths and stories of gods and heroes; lore and legends of the stars and constellations; instructions for performing amazing illusions, special effects,! and many other wonders of the magickal multiverse. To those who study the occult, in particular, Witchcraft, the name of Oberon Zell-Ravenheart is internationally-known and respected. He is a genuine Wizard, and he has written this book for any person wishing to become one. Perhaps, as some have written, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart is the real Albus Dumbledore to aspiring Harry Potters!In addition to his own writings in this collection, he also presents other writers who add some highly thoughtful insights. Such as Raymond Buckland among others.The illustrations and photographs which accompany the text are among the finest found anywhere, and are a helpful boon to those wanting to see what they are reading about. Biographies of many famous Wizards of history and legend appear in the book. Detailed descriptions of magickal tools with information for making them appears in this book. Additional information includes rites and rituals for special occasions, a bestiary of mythical creatures, a detailed and educational discussion on the laws of magick, myths, and lore of the stars and constellations. This book is full of instructions!As a handbook and guide for becoming a Wizard, this is as near perfect and honest a book as one will find today. New Page Books has done a great service to the paranormal and occult community readers by publishing this worthwhile reference book.Oberon Zell-Ravenheart has written a classic on Wizardry. This is his masterpiece. One of the American pioneers of Paganism in the United States, his lifetime of learning and information is shared with readers from all walks of life. He started in 1968 with the publication of his award-winning journal, Green Egg, and is often considered by readers as one of their favorite Pagan writers. The lessons in this fine book are accurate, honest, and entertaining.If you want to become a Wizard, this is the book to start with, and learn from. This Grimoire is must-have reading for readers interested in true magick. The information given on ghosts will hold the reader spellbound, as will all information in this reference book!

    A photograph of a gravely joyful crowd gathered on a Prague street in November 1989 provokes reflection on the meaning of democracy and the reunion of a people with long-banished hopes and dreams.With the luminous essays in Keeping a Rendezvous, we are given to see the world as Berger sees it -- to explore themes suggested by the work of Jackson Pollock or J. M. W. Turner, to contemplate the wonder of Paris. Rendezvous are manifold: between critic and art, artist and subject, subject and the unknown. But most significant are the rendezvous between author and reader, as we discover our perceptions informed by John Berger's eloquence and courageous moral imagination.

    In this translation, the author discusses books of the black art, old gods, daemons of hell, runes and magical signs, theory and practice of magic.

    Now greatly expanded, the classic anthology of contemporary texts reexamines the phenomenon of witchcraft, taking into account the remarkable scholarship since the book's publication almost thirty years ago.Spanning the period from 400 to 1700, the second edition of Witchcraft in Europe assembles nearly twice as many primary documents as the first, many newly translated, along with new illustrations that trace the development of witch-beliefs from late Mediterranean antiquity through the Enlightenment. Trial records, inquisitors' reports, eyewitness statements, and witches' confessions, along with striking contemporary illustrations depicting the career of the Devil and his works, testify to the hundreds of years of terror that enslaved an entire continent.Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Thomas Hobbes, and other thinkers are quoted at length in order to determine the intellectual, perceptual, and legal processes by which folklore was transformed into systematic demonology and persecution. Together with explanatory notes, introductory essays--which have been revised to reflect current research--and a new bibliography, the documents gathered in Witchcraft in Europe vividly illumine the dark side of the European mind.

    This excursion into the history of bizarre entertainments includes armless calligraphers, mathematical dogs, tightrope-walking fleas and assorted quacks, flimflammers and charlatans of spectacle.

    It is, however, a notoriously difficult text, full of hidden codes, concealed meanings, obscure symbols, and ecstatic expression. This illuminating study, based upon the last several decades of modern Zohar scholarship, unravels the historical and intellectual origins of this rich text and provides an excellent introduction to its themes, complex symbolism, narrative structure, and language. A Guide to the Zohar is thus an invaluable companion to the Zohar itself, as well as a useful resource for scholars and students interested in mystical literature, particularly that of the west, from the Middle Ages to the present.

    Motherpeace recovers the positive, nurturing peace-oriented values of prepatriarchal times, and brilliantly combines art, history, mythology, folklore, philosophy, and comparative religion with an informed spiritual and feminist perspective.Vicki Noble challenges us to celebrate our ancient peaceful heritage and to reclaim our right as a people to a life without war. The book is a vision of hope and transformation, made even more powerful by the vibrant pictorial images of the seventy-eight Motherpeace tarot cards.Motherpeace shows how traditional myths and symbols can provide ideas and images for understanding the meaning and power of the Goddess for women and men today.

    By the middle of the twentieth century, the battle appeared to be won; scientific rationalism and skepticism were triumphant. Yet in the last few decades a strong and potent counter-current has emerged. One manifestation of this has been the so-called occult revival.In The Elixir and the Stone, Baigent and Leigh argue that this occult revival — and indeed the entire revolution in attitudes which has taken place recently — owes a profound debt to Hermeticism, a body of esoteric teaching which flourished in Alexandria two thousand years ago and which then went underground. The authors trace the history of this intriguing and all-encompassing philosophy — which has much in common with contemporary holistic thought — charting it’s origin in the Egyptian mysteries, and demonstrating how it continued to exercise enormous influence through the magicians and magi of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.Many remarkable characters feature in the narrative, including the Franciscan friar Roger Bacon and the Elizabethan magus John Dee; prototype of Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest, but the central figure that emerges is that of Faust himself — one of the defining myths of Western civilization.The Elixir and the Stone is a remarkably rich and ambitious book that adds up to a little short of an alternative history of the intellectual world. Perhaps for the first time it puts into their true context those shadowy alchemists and magicians who have haunted the imaginations of people for centuries. Moreover it offers a way of looking at the world that is in one sense ‘alternative’, but in another, deeply historical.

    We are told that whether a picture, a movement, a text, or sound qualifies as a "work of art" largely depends on social attitudes and convention. Drawing on examples ranging from Paleolithic cave paintings to modern pop music and building on the ideas of James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Gilles Deleuze, Carl Jung, and others, J.F. Martel argues that art is an inborn human phenomenon that precedes the formation of culture and even society. Art is free of politics and ideology. Paradoxically, that is what makes it a force of liberation wherever it breaks through the trance of humdrum existence. Like the act of dreaming, artistic creation is fundamentally mysterious. It is a gift from beyond the field of the human, and it connects us with realities that, though normally unseen, are crucial components of a living world.While holding this to be true of authentic art, the author acknowledges the presence--overwhelming in our media-saturated age--of a false art that seeks not to liberate but to manipulate and control. Against this anti-artistic aesthetic force, which finds some of its most virulent manifestations in modern advertising, propaganda, and pornography, true art represents an effective line of defense. Martel argues that preserving artistic expression in the face of our contemporary hyper-aestheticism is essential to our own survival.Art is more than mere ornament or entertainment; it is a way, one leading to what is most profound in us. Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice places art alongside languages and the biosphere as a thing endangered by the onslaught of predatory capitalism, spectacle culture, and myopic technological progress. The book is essential reading for visual artists, musicians, writers, actors, dancers, filmmakers, and poets. It will also interest anyone who has ever been deeply moved by a work of art, and for all who seek a way out of the web of deception and vampiric diversion that the current world order has woven around us.

    Beyond the political sphere his intellectual pursuits ranged from the scientific to the occult. His mathematics anticipated Isaac Newton by nearly a century, while his mapmaking and navigation were critical to exploration. He was also obsessed with alchemy, astrology, and mysticism. His library was one of the finest in Europe, a vast compendium of thousands of volumes. Yet, despite his powerful position and prodigious intellect, Dee died in poverty and obscurity, reviled and pitied as a madman. Benjamin Woolley tells the engrossing story of the rise and fall of this remarkable man, who wielded great influence during the pivotal era when the age of superstition collided with the new world of science and reason. Written with flair and vigor, based on numerous surviving diaries of the period, The Queen's Conjurer is a highly readable account of an extraordinary life.

    In this, his most accessible and evocative book, France’s leading philosopher of postmodernism takes to the freeways in a collection of traveler’s tales from the land of hyperreality.

    Brimming with stories, activities, folklore, and recipes, this popular holiday gift book traces the history behind traditions of the season and provides practical suggestions for celebrating the Winter Solstice as a joyous, life-affirming festival.