Chaos Magick From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained A postmodern form of occultism which strives to reduce ritual magic to those techniques common to all magical systems; practitioners are encouraged to adopt any belief or method which allows them to attain the altered state of consciousness necessary to bring about the desired magical effect.
Gnosticism: Topic Dualistic religious and philosophical movement of the late Hellenistic and early Christian eras. The term designates a wide assortment of sects, numerous by the 2nd century C. Tyana, Cappadocia. A philosopher of the Neo-Pythagorean school, he traveled widely and became famous for his wisdom and reputed magical powers.
He was accused of treason by both Nero and Domitian, but escaped by supposedly magical means. Blavatsky: Topic —91, Russian theosophist and occultist. Giordano Bruno: Topic The first to enunciate what is now called the cosmic theory, he pictured the world as composed of individual elements of being, governed by fixed laws of relationship.
These elements, called monads, were in constant motion, ultimate, and irreducible and were based on a pantheistic infinite principle, or cause, or Deity, manifest in us and in all the world.
He claimed the secret of the philosopher's stone and of miraculous philters and potions. Aleister Crowley From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained English writer and magician, the most notorious occultist of his generation.
Robert Fludd —, English mystic philosopher. Strongly influenced by the mystical doctrines of Paracelsus, he attempted to reconcile these speculations with the new science of the 17th cent.
Albertus Magnus From Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained German philosopher, theologian and alchemist, often described as the most influential scientist of the Middle Ages. His enigmatic predictions, written in rhymed quatrains, have established him as one of the most famous prophets in history. The history of magic fascinates me because it is a history of people — of human faults and foibles, vanities, hopes and needs — rather than because of any genuine investment in the esoteric.
This story is part of Conversation Insights The Insights team generates long-form journalism and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges. Videos labelled WitchTok have so far clocked up an impressive Cottagecore is a popular fashion and lifestyle aesthetic that evokes the bucolic idyll of country living.
Cottagecore videos are saccharine and safe: jam is preserved, mushrooms are picked, and flowing dresses stream across ripe fields while a girlfriend holds the camera and gentle music plays. In short, it is pure escapism, and so is WitchTok; creators of WitchToks often also make Cottagecore videos. Yet, where Cottagecore offers hope for a good, green world that just might be baked and planted into existence, WitchTok audaciously skips past the bounds of possibility, and promises supernatural means of making life more bearable.
The abundance of magic on TikTok piqued my interest, representing as it does a new frontier in popular belief. It has also caught the attention of mainstream media.
In April , for example, the Financial Times consulted anthropologists and theologians who scrambled to interpret this strange turnout of events. Its author noted with astonishment that WitchTok had surpassed Biden by over 2 billion views and is now leading by around 6 billion and counting. TikTok allows its users to make second video clips, or a string of second clips of no more than 60 seconds in total. This format lends itself to fast-paced, visually appealing content, and this has shaped the kind of magic found on WitchTok.
Spells using candles , bottles , crystals and herbs make for snappy and succinct tutorials which can be readily imitated by the viewer. Interactive WitchToks are particularly popular, usually using tarot cards or pendulum boards , where a crystal is dangled over a set of words, supposedly swinging over the truth when asked a simple question. Brevity is the soul of WitchTok, where complex tarot spreads are abandoned for a one or three card message told to an audience of millions in 30 seconds.
Carving a magical symbol into a candle upstages convoluted and expensive ritual magic from more formal, structured esoteric systems, where a single spell can take a day or more. What, then, are TikTok users looking for in their magical clips of 60 seconds or less? The most common functions of a spell seem to be love, money, healing or revenge, particularly vengeance on behalf of a loved one, whether wronged by a school bully or abusive husband.
Magic appeals because life is unfair, and power is a pleasant fantasy. In this regard, WitchTok is no different from any other magical tradition. The occult subculture is a controversial one, and the witches of TikTok are a particularly powerful magnet for outrage and mockery. They have come under fire from three main types of enemies who appear in turn as caricatures in WitchTok videos. When pantomimed in a WitchTok, the angry Christian blazes with furious indignation, railing against the evils of magic, till they are silenced with a sassy retort or threat of a hex.
The angry Christian believes in magic, in Satan and in the occult. Magic: Topic Page The belief in and practice of magic is probably as old as human history.
Magic may be defined as the influencing of events and physical phenomena by humans using mystical, paranormal or supernatural means. Necromancy From Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience Necromancy is defined as the ability of a sage, shaman, or priest to raise the dead from the grave and communicate with them as one would talk normally with the living.
Numerology: Topic Page Divination by numbers. The basis of numerology is the belief that numbers connect the world of humans to the structure of the universe. A superstitious fear of the number 13 is its most common expression in the West.
Sorcery From Encyclopedia of Anthropology The word sorcery usually means some sort of individual manipulation of supernatural forces to harm another person or to enrich the self at the expense of another, and in this sense belief in it seems to be absolutely universal. Witchcraft: Topic Page As the practice or the production of malign or beneficial magic, witchcraft has an enduring place in the western, and in much of the non-western, imagination of the dynamics of esoteric and exotic powers.
I8K This book offers a comparison of lay and inquisitorial witchcraft prosecutions. In most of the early modern period, witchcraft jurisdiction in Italy rested with the Roman Inquisition, whereas in Denmark only the secular courts raised trials. Kallestrup explores the narratives of witchcraft as they were laid forward by people involved in the trials. As most ancient texts on magical literature are rare and hard to come by, it becomes very difficult for modern scholars to ascertain an accurate knowledge of ancient spells and rituals.
Waite responds to this lack of accessible literature and approaches this text as a methodical and systematic account of magical procedures of the past. The book's scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism.
For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. H39 The Crown and the Cosmos examines the complex ways that political practice and astrological discourse interacted at the Habsburg court, a key center of political and cultural power in early modern Europe.
Like other monarchs, Maximilian I used astrology to help guide political actions, turning to astrologers and their predictions to find the most propitious times to sign treaties or arrange marriage contracts. Perhaps more significantly, the emperor employed astrology as a political tool to gain support for his reforms and to reinforce his own legitimacy as well as that of the Habsburg dynasty.
This book draws on extensive printed and manuscript sources from archives across northern and central Europe, including Poland, Germany, France, and England. A34 Now fully revised-the classic study of Neo-Paganism Almost thirty years since its original publication, Drawing Down the Moon continues to be the only detailed history of the burgeoning but still widely misunderstood Neo- Pagan subculture.
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. Evil in Africa by William C.
Olsen Editor ; Walter E. E96 William C. Olsen, Walter E. Grouped around notions of evil as a cognitive or experiential problem, evil as malevolent process, and evil as an inversion of justice, these essays investigate what can be accepted and what must be condemned in order to evaluate being and morality in African cultural and social contexts. These studies of evil entanglements take local and national histories and identities into account, including state politics and civil war, religious practices, Islam, gender, and modernity.
F72 Sir James George Frazer's monumental study of 'magic and religion' is here presented in its edition, containing all three volumes. From Rome to Egypt to Polynesia, Frazer covered it all.
Corn gods, dying gods, to fertility gods; Frazer explored and examined them all, identifying common themes throughout the world.
The implications to Christianity were controversial: Either Christianity was myth like these myths, or else Christianity is true in its claim that all men are made in God's image so that no matter how far they fall from the knowledge of God, revealed or otherwise, they cannot but help to act on their created, religious instincts.
These questions and more will arise in the mind of the honest seeker of truth through Frazer's thorough and forthright presentations of facts and analysis. P Chilling real-life accounts of witches, from medieval Europe through colonial America.
0コメント