In tiny Lansquenet, where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin to play havoc with Lenten vows. Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch? Soon the parish no longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation, happiness, and a dramatic face-off between Easter solemnity and the pagan gaiety of a chocolate festival. Chocolat's every page offers a description of chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere. It's a must for anyone who craves an escapist read, and is a bewitching gift for any holiday.

    Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America. Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...

    Written by Lidia Pradas, the creator of the beloved Instagram handle Wiccan Tips, The Complete Grimoire is a magickal beginner's guide to witchcraft practices and knowledge. Elegantly designed, featuring a gold foil–embossed cover and beautiful illustrations, and written in Wiccan Tips' trademark concise and practical style, The Complete Grimoire presents the key pillars of witchcraft, including:Procuring the proper tools and setting up an altarHarnessing your spells and magickSabbats and the Wheel of the YearHow to safely work with deities and spiritsYou'll also learn fundamental spells and rituals, such as casting a circle, creating a sigil, and making moon water. Lidia is a reassuring and trusted guide on your witchcraft journey, addressing key questions and debunking common misconceptions. The Complete Grimoire is an informative, accurate resource the newly initiated and experienced witch alike can use in their daily craft.

    Alex Darken, devastated by a broken marriage, has retreated to a remote village in the bleak flatlands of eastern England. On the Easterness Estate he meets the volatile, aging poet Edward Nesbit and his vibrant, psychic, young American lover, Laura. Slowly, he is drawn into a strange relationship with them as they piece together the lost studies of two of the present lord's ancestors.In 1849, Sir Henry Agnew and his elegant, brilliant daughter Louisa, were about to penetrate the last secrets of the mystical art of alchemy. They, like the researches a century and a half later, see in the "chemical wedding" of opposites -- sulphur and quicksilver, spirit and matter, male and female, reality and imagination -- a key to spiritual rebirth. As Edward, Laura, and Alex mirror the Agnew story, dreams and symbols, erotic ecstasy and philosophical argument, climax in a vision which, like those before them, they can grasp only as they skirt insanity and tragedy . . . ."Engrossing . . . By the time we start wanting to resist, it is too late. The book already has drawn us too deeply into its six intriguing main characters and its rich gothic folds of plot." -- Chicago Tribune

    Running through it is the theme of evil, deftly woven into a story as memorable for its action as for its astonishingly vivid set of characters. In fin de siecle Paris, Arthur and Margaret are engaged to be married. Everyone approves and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves—until the menacing and repulsive Oliver Haddo appears.

    Learning how to cast a circle, work magick, compile a Book of Shadows, and honor the God and Goddess on esbats and sabbats can be exhilarating. But once you've mastered the basics of Witchcraft comes the real challenge of living your faith every moment of every day. Living as a Witch is knowing that you are the magick.Advanced Witchcraft doesn't contain any Wicca 101 information--it assumes that you're already familiar with the nuts and bolts of the Craft. Instead, this book challenges you to think critically about your beliefs and practices, what they mean to you, how they've changed, and where you're going. Along the way you'll also learn many techniques for intermediate and advanced Witches, including:Meeting your shadow Advanced warding and psychic self-defense Power animals, familiars, and shapeshifters Working the labyrinth and the maze Advanced tree spirituality Advanced augury and divination Magick and ritual using the fine arts of storytelling, dance, music, art, and drama The art of Wishcraft Spirits and lost souls Banishing and closing portals The healing arts

    Illustrated throughout with captivating artwork in glorious color, it examines fairy legend and lore through the ages and leads us into fairy cities, landscapes, rings, and paths. Find out what clothes they wear (fairies can be fussy about their dress), what they like to eat and drink, and what plants and animals they cherish. Discover the secrets of fairy festivals, and the various names they like to be called—including the Little Folk and Good Neighbors. Altogether, it’s a privileged glimpse into a paradise that vibrates at a different frequency than ours…and that few can ever see.

    Magical thought is described and contrasted with Science, Art and Religion. The dynamic relationship between them is explained. Modern magic and its role in the 21st century is outlined with respect to practices ranging from ritual magic, through alchemy to New Age therapies. Specific topics include: secrecy, initiation, sacrifice, cyber-animism, Crowleyanity, morality, pseudo-science, demonology, deity, miracles and divination.

    Illustrated with visual artifacts of the period. With the long-awaited publication of this book, we have for the first time in any modern literary form one of the most vital and important of ancient myths: that of Inanna, the world's first goddess of recorded history and the beloved deity of the ancient Sumerians.The stories and hymns of Inanna (known to the Semites as Ishtar) are inscribed on clay tablets which date back to 2,000 B.C. Over the past forty years, these cuneiform tablets have gradually been restored and deciphered by a small group of international scholars. In this groundbreaking book, Samuel Noah Kramer, the preeminent living expert on Sumer, and Diane Wolkstein, a gifted storyteller and folklorist, have retranslated, ordered, and combined the fragmented pieces of the Cycle of Inanna into a unified whole that presents for the first time an authentic portrait of the goddess from her adolescence to her completed womanhood and godship. We see Inanna in all her aspects: as girl, lover, wife, seeker, decision maker, ruler; we witness the Queen of Heaven and Earth as the voluptuous center and source of all fertile power and the unequaled goddess of love.Illustrated throughout with cylinder seals and other artifacts of the period, the beautifully rendered images guide the reader through Inanna's realm on a journey parallel to the one evoked by the text. And the carefully wrought commentaries providing an historical overview, textual interpretations, and aannotations on the art at once explicate and amplify the power, wonder, and mystery embedded in these ancient tales.Inanna--the world's first love story, two thousand years older than the Bible--is tender, erotic, frightening, and compassionate. It is a compelling myth that is timely in its rediscovery."A great masterpiece of universal literature."--Mircea Eliade

    A laboratory scientist and chemist, Robert Allen Bartlett provides an overview of the history of alchemy, as well as an exploration of the theories behind the practice. Clean, clear, simple, and easy to read, Real Alchemy provides excellent directions regarding the production of plant products and transitions the reader-student into the basics of mineral work--what some consider the true domain of alchemy. New students to practical laboratory alchemy will enjoy reading Real Alchemy and hopefully find the encouragement needed to undertake their own alchemical journey. Bartlett also explains what the ancients really meant when they used the term "Philosopher's Stone" and describes several very real and practical methods for its achievement. Is the fabled Philosopher's Stone an elixir of long life or is it a method of transforming lead into gold? Judge for yourself.

    It is a complete Book of Shadows. In it you will find the history of this ancient tradition, its legends and myths, as well as the rituals and rites that you can do today. You can be a Strega!The book includes a full set of rituals that you can do. You'll find rituals for all of the Italian Witchcraft holidays including Shadow Fest, Lupercus, Tana's Day and more. You'll also find rituals for the Full Moon, births, funerals.There is a practical side to this book, too. It is filled with instructions so that you can cast spells and work with the powers of incense, oils, herbs, and candles. You'll learn to work with the magick of the Moon and Stars. You'll be able to do protection rituals and learn how to cure someone who has received the Malocchio (Evil Eye).Many of the mysteries revealed here have never been published before. You'll learn secret gestures of power and secret symbols. And you can use them all! Also revealed are the secrets of the tools of the Italian Witch. You'll learn how to prepare the Spirit Blade and the ritual wand. You'll learn how to make the Spirit Bowl and use to consecrate other tools and talismans.If you're looking to discover real Witchcraft, or if you're already a Witch but are thinking about other traditions, this is the book for you.

    When her daughter is stolen from her by bigots and zeealots who have labeled Pippa an unfit parent, Pippa retreats into the dark, wild wood on a transforming inner quest, determined to unlock the strengths she will need to win back her Winterbelle.

    A masterful, mesmerizing modern tale about worlds dangerously colliding, the monsters that are unleashed when reason recedes, and a beautiful testament to the power of love and humanity in chaotic times. Inspired by 2,000 years of storytelling yet rooted in the concerns of our present moment, this is a spectacular achievement--enchanting, both very funny and terrifying. It is narrated by our descendants 1000 years hence, looking back on "The War of the Worlds" that began with "the time of the strangenesses": a simple gardener begins to levitate; a baby is born with the unnerving ability to detect corruption in people; the ghosts of two long-dead philosophers begin arguing once more; and storms pummel New York so hard that a crack appears in the universe, letting in the destructive djinns of myth (as well as some graphic superheroes). Nothing less than the survival of our world is at stake. Only one, a djinn princess who centuries before had learned to love humankind, resolves to help us: in the face of dynastic intrigue, she raises an army composed of her semi-magical great-great--etc.--grandchildren--a motley crew of endearing characters who come together to save the world in a battle waged for 1,001 nights--or, to be precise, two years, eight months and twenty-eight nights.

    A book that has definitions & explanation about numerous signs & symbols

    Hitler's Germany is about to employ the secret arts of evil witchcraft to destroy England. What can stop them?Ancient WeaponIt is the mission of John Graham, colonel in British Intelligence, to stop the onslaught of evil with an extraordinary strategy that defies all the rules of twentieth-century warfare: Unite the different witches' covens throughout England, drawing upon powers that reach back through dark centuries, in a ritual of awesome sacrifice on the first night of August, the magicalLammas Night