He first revisits the old stories--Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America, among others--and then holds them up against the life and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Duchamp, Ginsberg, John Cage, and Frederick Douglass. Authoritative in its scholarship, loose-limbed in its style, Trickster Makes This World ranks among the great works of modern cultural criticism.

    Dr. Hoeller traces this fascinating story throughout time and shows how Gnosticism has inspired such great thinkers as Voltaire, Blake, Yeats, Hesse, Melville, and Jung.

    P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Grant, and the followers of Julius Evola and Aleister Crowley • Provides instructions on how to identify egregores, free yourself from parasitic and destructive entities, and destroy an egregore, should the need arise One of most important but little known concepts of Western occultism is that of the egregore, an autonomous psychic entity created by a collective group mind. An egregore is sustained by belief, ritual, and sacrifice and relies upon the devotion of a group of people, from a small coven to an entire nation, for its existence. An egregore that receives enough sustenance can take on a life of its own, becoming an independent deity with powers its believers can use to further their own spiritual advancement and material desires. Presenting the first book devoted to the study of egregores, Mark Stavish examines the history of egregores from ancient times to present day, with detailed and documented examples, and explores how they are created, sustained, directed, and destroyed. He explains how egregores were well known in the classical period of ancient Greece and Rome, when they were consciously called into being to watch over city states. He explores the egregore concept as it was understood in various Western Mystery traditions, including the Corpus Hermeticum, and offers further examples from Tibetan Buddhism, Islam, modern esoteric orders such as the Order of the Golden Dawn and Rosicrucianism, the writings of H. P. Lovecraft and Kenneth Grant, and the followers of Julius Evola and Aleister Crowley. The author discusses how, even as the fundamental principles of the egregore were forgotten, egregores continue to be formed, sometimes by accident. Stavish provides instructions on how to identify egregores, free yourself from a parasitic and destructive collective entity, and destroy an egregore, should the need arise. Revealing how egregores form the foundation of nearly all human interactions, the author shows how egregores have moved into popular culture and media--underscoring the importance of intense selectivity in the information we accept and the ways we perceive the world and our place in it.

    Their supposed author, a mythical figure named Hermes Trismegistus, was thought to be a contemporary of Moses. The Hermetic philosophy was regarded as an ancient theology, parallel to the revealed wisdom of the Bible, supporting Biblical revelation and culminating in the Platonic philosophical tradition. This new translation is the only English version based on reliable texts, and Professor Copenhaver's introduction and notes make this accessible and up-to-date edition an indispensable resource to scholars.

    Julius Evola sheds new light on the mystical and spiritual expression of sexual love. This in-depth study explores the sexual rites of sacred traditions, and shows how religion, mysticism, folklore, and mythology all contain erotic forms in which the deep potentialities of human beings are recognized.

    Americans all, they were among the famous figures whose paths intertwined with the mystical and esoteric movement broadly known as the occult. Brought over from the Old World and spread throughout the New by some of the most obscure but gifted men and women of early U.S. history, this “hidden wisdom” transformed the spiritual life of the still-young nation and, through it, much of the Western world.Yet the story of the American occult has remained largely untold. Now a leading writer on the subject of alternative spirituality brings it out of the shadows. Here is a rich, fascinating, and colorful history of a religious revolution and an epic of offbeat history. From the meaning of the symbols on the one-dollar bill to the origins of the Ouija board, Occult America briskly sweeps from the nation’s earliest days to the birth of the New Age era and traces many people and episodes, including:•The spirit medium who became America’s first female religious leader in 1776 •The supernatural passions that marked the career of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith •The rural Sunday-school teacher whose clairvoyant visions instigated the dawn of the New Age •The prominence of mind-power mysticism in the black-nationalist politics of Marcus Garvey•The Idaho druggist whose mail-order mystical religion ranked as the eighth-largest faith in the world during the Great Depression Here, too, are America’s homegrown religious movements, from transcendentalism to spiritualism to Christian Science to the positive-thinking philosophy that continues to exert such a powerful pull on the public today. A feast for believers in alternative spirituality, an eye-opener for anyone curious about the unknown byroads of American history, Occult America is an engaging, long-overdue portrait of one nation, under many gods, whose revolutionary influence is still being felt in every corner of the globe.

    ROCKET SCIENTIST KILLED IN PASADENA EXPLOSIONscreamed the headline of the Los Angeles Times. John Parsons, a maverick rocketeer who helped transform the rocket from a derided sci-fi plot line into a reality, was at first mourned as a scientific prodigy. But reporters soon uncovered a more shocking story: Parsons had been a devotee of black magic. George Pendle re-creates the world of John Parsons in this dazzling portrait of prewar superstition, cold war paranoia, and futuristic possibility. Fueled by childhood dreams of space flight, Parsons was a leader of the motley band of enthusiastic young men who founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a cornerstone of the American space program. But Parsons's wild imagination also led him into the occult- for if he could make rocketry a reality, why not magic? With a cast of characters including Howard Hughes, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein, Strange Angel explores the unruly consequences of genius.

    This concise guide offers a modern interpretation of the doctrine, distilling its teachings with seven compelling principles that can be applied to self-development in daily life.

    Illustrated throughout with photographs from Joseph Campbell's family archive and with a new, revised introduction, The Hero's Journey introduces the reader first-hand to Joseph Campbell the man, his discoveries, his terminology, and his thinking.

    Then, in a dramatic change, described by scientists as 'the greatest riddle in human history', all the skills & qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as tho bestowed on us by hidden powers. In Supernatural Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious before-&-after moment & to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to the modern mind. His quest takes him on a detective journey from the beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain & Italy to rock shelters in the mountains of S. Africa, where he finds extraordinary Stone Age art. He uncovers clues that lead him to the Amazon rainforest to drink the hallucinogen Ayahuasca with shamans, whose paintings contain images of 'super-natural beings' identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves. Hallucinogens such as mescaline also produce visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other dimensions. Could the supernaturals 1st depicted in the painted caves be the ancient teachers of humankind? Could it be that human evolution isn't just the meaningless process Darwin identified, but something more purposive & intelligent that we've barely begun to understand?AcknowledgementsPart 1: Visions 1: Plant that enables men to see the dead 2: Greatest riddle of archeology 3: Vine of souls Part 2: Caves 4: Therianthropy5: Riddles of the caves6: Shabby academy 7: Searching for a Rosetta Stone8: Code in the mind 9: Serpents of the Drakensberg10: Wounded healer Part 3: Beings 11: Voyage into the supernatural 12: Shamans in the sky 13: Spirit love 14: Secret commonwealth15: Here is a thing that will carry me away16: Dancers between worlds Part 4: Codes 17: Turning in to channel DMT18: Amongst the machine elves19: Ancient teachers in our DNA?20: Hurricane in the junkyard Part 5: Religions 21: Hidden Shamans22: Flesh of the GodsPart 6: Mysteries 23: Doors leading to another world Appendices Critics & criticisms of David Lewis-Williams' Neuropsychological theory of rock & cave artPsilocybe semilanceata-a hallucinogenic mushroom native to Europe / Roy Watlng Interview with Rick StrassmanReferences Index

    This legendary underground classic contains absolutely everything worth knowing about absolutely anything. Discordianism is the religion for these screwed-up times, and Principia Discordia reveals it here for your enlightenment, confusion and entertainment.

    Explored are the many tales of an ancient race said to have lived in the Arctic regions, such as Thule and Hyperborea. Progressing onward, the book looks at modern polar legends: including the survival of Hitler, German bases in Antarctica, UFOs, the hollow earth, and the hidden kingdoms of Agartha and Shambhala. Chapters include: Prologue in Hyperborea; The Golden Age; The Imperishable Sacred Land; The Northern Lights; The Arctic Homeland; The Aryan Myth; The Thule Society; The Black Order; The Hidden Lands; Agartha and the Polaires; Shambhala; The Hole at the Pole; Antarctica; Arcadia Regained; The Symbolic Pole; Polar and Solar Traditions; The Spiritual Pole; The Catastrophists; The Uniformitarians; Polar Wandering; more.

    With fascinating historical anecdotes and incisive scientific analysis, this important work combines ancient thought with modern theory to reveal a new way of viewing our universe that can expand our awareness, our lives, and may well point the way to a new science for the twenty-first century.

    Bigfoot may be howling from a lonely mountaintop, but the bigfoot phenomenon is whispering secrets... if we will only listen.Eyewitnesses, investigators, and cryptozoologists worldwide contend ample evidence exists supporting the survival of large, hairy, apelike creatures alongside mankind today, lurking in the wilderness. By all appearances, these beings seem wholly natural, interacting with their surroundings and leaving behind hair, blood, droppings, and, of course, footprints.Yet despite their apparently physical nature, bigfoot and its hairy hominid kin consistently appear mired in High Strangeness—the peculiar, ineffable, and nonsensical absurdities so often encountered in paranormal phenomena.Some sightings seem more consistent with mythology than biology. Bigfoot often present supernatural attributes, like luminescent eyes or the ability to pass, ghostlike, through structures. Anomalous lights are regulalry seen in areas of frequent sasquatch activity. Footprints persistently, if rarely, display odd numbered toes, and—most bafflingly—bigfoot trackways suddenly terminate in the middle of open, untouched terrain.In Volume 1 of Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon, authors Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner carefully examine not only the intersection of hairy apemen with global folklore—of poltergeists, faeries, extraterrestrials, magic, witches, ghosts, and archetypal women-in-white—but also question the fundamental assumptions underlying contemporary cryptozoological beliefs surrounding bigfoot.

    With more than 300,000 copies sold to date, this is the definitive work on the extraordinary phenomenon of out-of-body experiences, by the founder of the internationally known Monroe Institute.