The workbook formats includes exam questions at the end of each lesson, so you can build a permanent record of your spiritual and magical training.

    What is certain is that this 1899 classic has become a foundational document of modern Wicca and neopaganism. Leland claimed his "witch informant," a fortune-teller named Maddalena, supplied him with the secret writings that he translated and combined with his research on Italian pagan tradition to create a gospel of pagan belief and practice. Here, in the story of the goddess Aradia, who came to Earth to champion oppressed peasants in their fight against their feudal overlords and the Catholic Church, are the chants, prayers, spells, and rituals that have become the centerpieces of contemporary pagan faiths. American journalist and folklorist CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (1824-1903) was editor of Continental Monthly during the Civil War and coined the term emancipation as an alternative to abolition, but he is best remembered for his books on ethnography, folklore, and language, including The Gypsies (1882), The Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria (1892), and Unpublished Legends of Virgil (1899).

    Psychoanalyst Jean Bolen's career soared in the early 1980s when Goddesses in Everywoman was published. Thousands of women readers became fascinated with identifying their own inner goddesses and using these archetypes to guide themselves to greater self–esteem, creativity, and happiness.Bolen's radical idea was that just as women used to be unconscious of the powerful effects that cultural stereotypes had on them, they were also unconscious of powerful archetypal forces within them that influence what they do and how they feel, and which account for major differences among them. Bolen believes that an understanding of these inner patterns and their interrelationships offers reassuring, true–to–life alternatives that take women far beyond such restrictive dichotomies as masculine/feminine, mother/lover, careerist/housewife. And she demonstrates in this book how understanding them can provide the key to self–knowledge and wholeness.Dr. Bolen introduced these patterns in the guise of seven archetypal goddesses, or personality types, with whom all women could identify, from the autonomous Artemis and the cool Athena to the nurturing Demeter and the creative Aphrodite, and explains how to decide which to cultivate and which to overcome, and how to tap the power of these enduring archetypes to become a better "heroine" in one's own life story.

    Under her, women's roles were far more prominent than in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures. Stone describes this ancient system and, with its disintegration, the decline in women's status. Index, maps and illustrations.

    A historical work and important read for scholars of religion, this book allows readers to study the beliefs and ideas and King James. Demonology is known as one of the most interesting and controversial books in the history of Christianity.

    Anyone caught by surprise in the open fields or depths of the woods would see a bizarre procession of demons, giants, hounds, ladies of the night, soldiers, and knights, some covered in blood and others carrying their heads beneath their arms. This was the Wild or Infernal Hunt, the host of the damned, the phantom army of the night--a theme that still inspires poets, writers, and painters to this day. Millennia older than Christianity, this pagan belief was employed by the church to spread their doctrine, with the shapeshifters' and giants of the pagan nightly processions becoming sinners led by demons seeking out unwary souls to add to their retinues. Myth or legend, it represents a belief that has deep roots in Europe, particularly Celtic and Scandinavian countries. The first scholar to fully examine this myth in each of its myriad forms, Claude Lecouteux strips away the Christian gloss and shows how the Wild Hunt was an integral part of the pagan worldview and the structure of their societies. Additionally, he looks at how secret societies of medieval Europe reenacted these ghostly processions through cult rituals culminating in masquerades and carnival-like cavalcades often associated with astral doubles, visions of the afterlife, belief in multiple souls, and prophecies of impending death. He reveals how the nearly infinite variations of this myth are a still living, evolving tradition that offers us a window into the world in which our ancestors lived.

    This text sets out to explain what life was like in the most immediate way, through taking the reader to the Middle Ages, and showing everything from the horrors of leprosy and war to the ridiculous excesses of roasted larks and haute couture.

    his incontrovertible excellence as an historian, and his authoritative and highly readable prose'. Recent events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics have since reinforced the central importance of nationalism in the history of political evolution and upheaval. This second edition has been updated in the light of those events, with a final chapter addressing the impact of the dramatic changes that have taken place. It also includes additional maps to illustrate nationalities, languages and political divisions across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

    By selecting fifty key people, places, battles, objects and events, he casts a clear eye over the way the world has developed and how we live today.Injecting life into familiar historical landmarks as well as bringing lesser-known events to the forefront, Hugh shapes the fifty things into themes as all-encompassing today as they were over two thousand years ago: wealth, religion, conquest, discovery and freedom.The Fifty Things include…Origin of SpeciesModel T FordThe Russian RevolutionPlatoConquest of MexicoMao Tse TungCrucifixion of JesusVia EgnatiaWorldwide webOzymandias9/11Nelson MandelaCoronation of CharlemagneAmerican Declaration of IndependenceFranco-Prussian WarMahabharataThe Black DeathAnd many more…

    Salem Possessed explores the lives of the men and women who helped spin that web and who in the end found themselves entangled in it.From rich and varied sources--many previously neglected or unknown--Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the events of 1692 more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the already massive literature on Salem. "Salem Possessed," wrote Robin Briggs in The Times Literary Supplement, "reinterprets a world-famous episode so completely and convincingly that virtually all the previous treatments can be consigned to the historical lumber-room."Not simply a dramatic and isolated event, the Salem outbreak has wider implications for our understanding of developments central to the American experience: the breakup of Puritanism, the pressures of land and population in New England towns, the problems besetting farmer and householder, the shifting role of the church, and the powerful impact of commercial capitalism.

    This encyclopedia aims to dispel such notions, with a comprehensive guide to witchcraft throughout history and around the world.

    This guide to the history and modern celebrations of Ostara shows you how to perform rituals and work magic to renew your power and passion for living and growing. Rituals Recipes Lore Spells Divination Crafts Correspondences Invocations Prayers MeditationsLlewellyn's Sabbat Essentials explore the old and new ways of celebrating the seasonal rites that are the cornerstones of the witch's year.

    In Moonology , world-renowned astrologist Yasmin Boland unveils: -why connecting with the moon can change your life for the better -powerful rituals and ceremonies for each moon phase -how the moon connects us to nature and the cosmos -how to work out where the moon is in each cycle -international New Moon and Full Moon dates for the next 10 years You will also learn affirmations, visualizations, and chants to use during each phase of the moon, and will discover the role of Angels, Goddesses, and Ascended Masters during the New and Full Moons. This is a book for all those wishing to deepen their connection with nature and take their spiritual practice to a new level.

    Ranging from 700,000 BC to 311 AD, this volume portrays the emergence and development of Egypt from its prehistoric roots to its conquest by the Roman Empire. The contributors--all leading scholars working at the cutting edge of Egyptology--incorporate the latest findings in archaeological research as they chart the principal political events of Egyptian history, from the rise of the Pharaohs and the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, to the ascension of the Ptolemies and the coming of Roman legions. The book also includes the first detailed examinations of three periods which were previously regarded as dark ages. Against the backdrop of the birth and death of ruling dynasties, the writers also examine cultural and social patterns, including stylistic developments in art and literature, monumental architecture, funerary beliefs, and much more. The contributors illuminate the underlying patterns of social and political change and describe the changing face of ancient Egypt, from the biographical details of individuals to the social and economic factors that shaped the lives of the people as a whole. The only up-to-date, single-volume history of ancient Egypt available in English, The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt is a must read for everyone interested in one of the great civilizations of antiquity.

    Miguel León-Portilla had the incomparable success of organizing texts translated from Nahuatl by Ángel María Garibay Kintana to give us the The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico: Indigenous people of Tenochtitlán, Tlatelolco, Texcoco, Chalco and Tlaxcala were formed about the struggle against the conquerors and the final ruin of the Aztec world.An account of the omens that announced the disaster, a description of Cortes' progress, a chronicle of the heroic battle of the ancient Mexicans in defense of their culture and of their own lives, a civilization that was lost forever, a great epic poem of the origins of Mexican nationality, The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico is already a classic book and an indispensable reading work.