Margot Adler attended ritual gatherings and interviewed a diverse, colorful gallery of people across the United States, people who find inspiration in ancient deities, nature, myth, even science fiction. In this new edition featuring an updated resource guide of newsletters, journals, books, groups, and festivals, Margot Adler takes a fascinating and honest look at the religious experiences, beliefs, and lifestyles of modern America's Pagan groups.

    Twenty-five years in preparation, this unique, comprehensive sourcebook focuses on mythology anthropology, religion, and sexuality to uncover precisely what other encyclopedias leave out or misrepresent. The Woman's Encyclopedia presents the fascinating stories behind word origins, legends, superstitions, and customs. A browser's delight and an indispensable resource, it offers 1,350 entries on magic, witchcraft, fairies, elves, giants, goddesses, gods, and psychological anomalies such as demonic possession; the mystical meanings of sun, moon, earth, sea, time, and space; ideas of the soul, reincarnation, creation and doomsday; ancient and modern attitudes toward sex, prostitution, romance, rape, warfare, death and sin, and more.Tracing these concepts to their prepatriarchal origins, Barbara G. Walker explores a "thousand hidden pockets of history and custom in addition to the valuable material recovered by archaeologists, orientalists, and other scholars."Not only a compendium of fascinating lore and scholarship, The Woman's Encyclopedia is a revolutionary book that offers a rare opportunity for both women and men to see our cultural heritage in a fresh light, and draw upon the past for a more humane future.

    This bestselling classic is both an unparalleled reference on the practices and philosophies of Witchcraft and a guide to the life-affirming ways in which readers can turn to the Goddess to deepen their sense of personal pride, develop their inner power, and integrate mind, body, and spirit. Starhawk's brilliant, comprehensive overview of the growth, suppression, and modern-day re-emergence of Wicca as a Goddess-worshipping religion has left an indelible mark on the feminist spiritual consciousness.In a new introduction, Starhawk reveals the ways in which Goddess religion and the practice of ritual have adapted and developed over the last twenty years, and she reflects on the ways in which these changes have influenced and enhanced her original ideas. In the face of an ever-changing world, this invaluable spiritual guidebook is more relevant than ever.

    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.

    Women's rights and rites merge in this complete guide to the principles and practices of matriarchal religion.

    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.

    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

    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.

    Fortune explores the elusive psychic element in mental illness and, more importantly, details the methods, motives, and physical aspects of psychic attack, and how to overcome this energy. The revised edition of this New Age classic includes an index and an additional explanatory note for contemporary readers. Index.

    His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics.While Campbell’s work reached wide and deep as he covered the world’s great mythological traditions, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs.In this provocative volume, editor Safron Rossi—a goddess studies scholar, professor of mythology, and curator of collections at Opus Archives, which holds the Joseph Campbell archival manuscript collection and personal library—collects these lectures for the first time. In them, Campbell traces the evolution of the feminine divine from one Great Goddess to many, from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance. He sheds new light on classical motifs and reveals how the feminine divine symbolizes the archetypal energies of transformation, initiation, and inspiration.

    It has continued to sell for decades. And no wonder. Up until the time this book was published, very little information about true high magic was available to the public.In this book, Regardie reveals the secrets of real magic. He begins with an explanation of what magic is and, just as importantly, what magic is not. He explains that it is a spiritual study and practice which, along with forms of yoga, forms the two branches of the tree that is mysticism. Magic is not being a medium or a psychic. Then he explains the tools of the magician, what they mean, and how to use them. He explains the techniques of evocation and invocation, skrying, and astral travel. He shows how the Qabalah unites everything. He even gives a description of the secrets of sexual magick. All of this is in a clear, lucid writing style. This book is simply a must for anyone who is, or aspires to be, a real magician.Although Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero were friends of Regardie and are Senior Adepts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, what changes could they have made to this classic book? Well, they did change the spelling from British style to American. And they did change his transliterations of Hebrew into the more popular style he used in his later books. But nothing vital was changed or removed. Everything else they added was complementary to the text that was there. And what incredible additions they are! Extensive annotations throughout every chapter; over 100 illustrations; more descriptive contents pages; a glossary, a bibliography and an index. They've even added a biographical note on Regardie and the importance of this book to him and to the occult world.This book contains some of the finest occult writing that has ever been produced. And with the new material by the Ciceros, it becomes a must-have for any magician!

    The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past.

    Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind.

    In this beautifully illustrated and far-reaching history. Elinor Gadon vividly weaves words and images to demonstrate the powerful connections between ancient and contemporary art, between the Goddess of the Ice Age and the Goddess of today.This panoramic view of Goddess imagery extends from the prehistoric Goddess representations of Catal Huyuk, Malta, Avebury, and Crete, tot he more patriarchal images of the Sumerians, Greeks, and Christians, to the wide range of contemporary artists inspired by the Goddess, including Frida Kahlo, Mayumi Oda, and Judy Chicago.

    This is the foundation for the veneration of Santa Muerte, or "Holy Death." Considered to be the female personification of death, she is associated with protection and safe passage to the afterlife. She is also the patron saint of people who live on the fringes of society and often face violence and death. In recent years her constituency has expanded to include the LGBT community and people who are marginalized or whose jobs put them at significant risk of death such as military and police personnel. Santa Muerte is hailed as their potent and powerful protector, capable of delivering them from harm and even granting miracles.Santa Muerte is a complete ritual guide to working with this famous--and infamous!--Mexican folk saint. It takes us beyond the sensational headlines to reveal the truth about why Santa Muerte is so beloved by so many. Author Tracey Rollin presents simple, straightforward methods for working with Holy Death that may be used alone or easily incorporated into your own magical practice.