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× The Witch : A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present

by Ronald Hutton (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

376 pages, 16 b-w illus.

Publisher:Yale University Press

Imprint:Yale University Press

ISBN:9780300238679

Published:11 Sep 2018

Dimensions:178 x 157 x 29 (mm)

Pub. Country:United States

Description

Why have societies all across the world feared witchcraft? This book delves deeply into its context, beliefs, and origins in Europe's history "Traces the idea of witches far beyond the Salem witch trials to beliefs and attitudes about witches around the world throughout history."-Los Angeles Times. The witch came to prominence-and often a painful death-in early modern Europe, yet her origins are much more geographically diverse and historically deep. In this landmark book, Ronald Hutton traces witchcraft from the ancient world to the early-modern stake. This book sets the notorious European witch trials in the widest and deepest possible perspective and traces the major historiographical developments of witchcraft.

Hutton, a renowned expert on ancient, medieval, and modern paganism and witchcraft beliefs, combines Anglo-American and continental scholarly approaches to examine attitudes on witchcraft and the treatment of suspected witches across the world, including in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Australia, and North and South America, and from ancient pagan times to current interpretations. His fresh anthropological and ethnographical approach focuses on cultural inheritance and change while considering shamanism, folk religion, the range of witch trials, and how the fear of witchcraft might be eradicated.

× Pagan Britain

by Ronald Hutton (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

496 pages, 103 b-w illus.

Publisher:Yale University Press

Imprint:Yale University Press

ISBN:9780300268348

Published:11 Oct 2022

Dimensions:135 x 197 x 40 (mm)

Pub. Country:United States

Country of Origin:GB

Description

Britain's pagan past, with its mysterious monuments, atmospheric sites, enigmatic artifacts, bloodthirsty legends, and cryptic inscriptions, is both enthralling and perplexing to a resident of the twenty-first century. In this ambitious and thoroughly up-to-date book, Ronald Hutton reveals the long development, rapid suppression, and enduring cultural significance of paganism, from the Paleolithic era to the coming of Christianity. He draws on an array of recently discovered evidence and shows how new findings have radically transformed understandings of belief and ritual in Britain before the arrival of organized religion.

Setting forth a chronological narrative, along the way Hutton makes side visits to explore specific locations of ancient pagan activity. He includes the well-known sacred sites-Stonehenge, Avebury, Seahenge, Maiden Castle, Anglesey-as well as more obscure locations across the mainland and coastal islands. In tireless pursuit of the elusive "why" of pagan behavior, Hutton astonishes with the breadth of his understanding of Britain's deep past and inspires with the originality of his insights.

× The Triumph of the Moon : A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft

by Ronald Hutton (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

544 pages, Black and white images

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Imprint:Oxford University Press

Edition:2 Revised edition

ISBN:9780198870371

Published:14 Jan 2021

Dimensions:134 x 214 x 43 (mm)

Pub. Country:United Kingdom

Country of Origin:GB

Description

'a brilliant history' The Sunday Times 'makes for riveting reading' The Independent Modern pagan witchcraft is arguably the only fully-formed religion England has given the world, and has now spread across four continents. This second edition of The Triumph of the Moon extensively revises the first full-scale scholarly study of modern pagan witchcraft. Ronald Hutton examines the nature and development of this religion, and offers a history of attitudes to witchcraft, paganism and magic in British society since 1800.

Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements, Freemasons, and members of rural secret societies. We also find some of the leading figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W. B.

Yeats, D. H. Lawrence and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have represented pagan witchcraft to the public world since 1950.

Thriller writers like Dennis Wheatley, and films and television programmes, get similar coverage, as does tabloid journalism. The material is by its nature often sensational, and care is taken throughout to distinguish fact from fantasy, in a manner not previously applied to most of the stories involved. Meticulously researched, The Triumph of the Moon presents an authoritative insight into an aspect of modern cultural history which has attracted sensational publicity but has hitherto been little understood.

This edition incorporates new research carried out by the author as well as research by others who have been inspired by this book over the twenty years since its first publication.

× Blood and Mistletoe : The History of the Druids in Britain

by Ronald Hutton (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

492 pages, 32 b-w illus.

Publisher:Yale University Press

Imprint:Yale University Press

ISBN:9780300267754

Published:11 Oct 2022

Dimensions:154 x 233 x 42 (mm)

Pub. Country:United States

Country of Origin:GB

Description

Crushed by the Romans in the first century A.D., the ancient Druids of Britain left almost no reliable evidence behind. Because of this, historian Ronald Hutton shows, succeeding British generations have been free to reimagine, reinterpret, and reinvent the Druids. Hutton's captivating book is the first to encompass two thousand years of Druid history and to explore the evolution of English, Scottish, and Welsh attitudes toward the forever ambiguous figures of the ancient Celtic world.

Druids have been remembered at different times as patriots, scientists, philosophers, or priests; sometimes portrayed as corrupt, bloodthirsty, or ignorant, they were also seen as fomenters of rebellion. Hutton charts how the Druids have been written in and out of history, archaeology, and the public consciousness for some 500 years, with particular focus on the romantic period, when Druids completely dominated notions of British prehistory. Sparkling with legends and images, filled with new perspectives on ancient and modern times, this book is a fascinating cultural study of Druids as catalysts in British history.

× A New History of Witchcraft : Sorcerers, Heretics & Pagans

by Jeffrey B. Russell (Author) , Brooks Alexander (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

216 pages, 105 Illustrations, black and white

Publisher:Thames & Hudson Ltd

Imprint:Thames & Hudson Ltd

Edition:New Edition

ISBN:9780500286340

Published:2 Apr 2007

Dimensions:236 x 171 x 15 (mm)

Pub. Country:United Kingdom

Description

For nearly thirty years, during which it has been continuously in print, Jeffrey Russell's A History of Witchcraft has been the one authoritative concise illustrated history of witchcraft. Now, in collaboration with Brooks Alexander, this classic book has been fully revised with additional chapters accompanied by new illustrations. It now includes an analysis of the importance of the Internet and films in the dissemination of witchcraft today, and the potential tensions as a movement that was originally a closed, secretive cult becomes an open, recognized public religion.

× The True History of Merlin the Magician

by Anne Lawrence-Mathers (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

272 pages, 10 b-w illus.

Publisher:Yale University Press

Imprint:Yale University Press

ISBN:9780300253085

Published:14 Apr 2020

Dimensions:139 x 215 x 25 (mm)

Pub. Country:United States

Country of Origin:US

Description

Who was the historical Merlin? Merlin the Magician has remained an enthralling and curious individual since he was first introduced in the twelfth century though the pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae. But although the Merlin of literature and Arthurian myth is well known, Merlin the "historical" figure and his relation to medieval magic are less familiar. In this book Anne Lawrence-Mathers explores just who he was and what he has meant to Britain.

The historical Merlin was no rough magician: he was a learned figure from the cutting edge of medieval science and adept in astrology, cosmology, prophecy, and natural magic, as well as being a seer and a proto-alchemist. His powers were convincingly real-and useful, for they helped to add credibility to the "long-lost" history of Britain which first revealed them to a European public. Merlin's prophecies reassuringly foretold Britain's path, establishing an ancient ancestral line and linking biblical prophecy with more recent times.

Merlin helped to put British history into world history. Lawrence-Mathers also explores the meaning of Merlin's magic across the centuries, arguing that he embodied ancient Christian and pagan magical traditions, recreated for a medieval court and shaped to fit a new moral framework. Linking Merlin's reality and power with the culture of the Middle Ages, this remarkable book reveals the true impact of the most famous magician of all time.

× The Jesus Mysteries : Was the ‘Original Jesus’ a Pagan God?

by Timothy Freke (Author) , Peter Gandy (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

432 pages, 20 b/w illus, 8 col plates

Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers

Imprint:Thorsons

ISBN:9780722536773

Published:3 Apr 2000

Dimensions:177 x 114 x 28 (mm)

Pub. Country:United Kingdom

Country of Origin:GB

Description

This groundbreaking book looks at one of the greatest cover-ups in history and dares to think the unthinkable about Christianity, that it was in fact a Jewish Mystery School modelled on the ancient Pagan Mysteries. The myth of Dionysus bears startling resemblances to the story of Jesus Christ. It compares with the biblical story in the following ways: Dionysus is God made flesh and is hailed as the Saviour of Mankind and the Son of God. His father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin who afterwards becomes worshipped as the Mother of God. He is born in a cowshed. He drives out demons, turns water into wine and raises people from the dead. He rides triumphantly into town while people wave palms to honour him. The date revered by the first Christians as Jesus' birthday was originally that of Dionysus, also the three day Spring Festival of Dionysus celebrating his death and resurrection coincides with the Christian festival of Easter.

The last Supper and the Eucharist are also parallel Dionysian rites. This is not common knowledge as the story was a closely guarded secret of the Pagan mysteries. Secondly the evidence of Christianity's pagan roots were systematically covered up the Roman Church.

× The Childhood of Jesus : The Unknown Years

by Emil Bock (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

320 pages

Publisher:Floris Books

Imprint:Floris Books

Edition:2 Revised edition

ISBN:9780863156199

Published:29 Nov 2007

Dimensions:233 x 153 x 25 (mm)

Pub. Country:United Kingdom

Language:English

Country of Origin:GB

Description

The gospel accounts of the birth and childhood of Jesus have puzzling discrepancies and contradictions. In particular, Matthew and Luke give different versions of the genealogy and birth of Jesus, and of the events that follow. A long forgotten tradition held that there were, in fact, two families and two Jesus children whose destinies would come together: one from the kingly line of Solomon, and the other from the priestly line of Nathan.

There are various apocryphal texts, as well as works of art, in which both children clearly occur. Emil Bock shows how the pattern and structure of the four gospels support the stories of two boys called Jesus, living side by side in Nazareth until the age of twelve, right up to the dramatic day of their visit to the temple in Jerusalem. He also recreates the years between this time and Jesus' baptism.

This book is essential reading for every Christology student, and for anyone who has ever wondered about the gospel accounts of Jesus' birth.

× Genesis Of The Grail Kings

by Laurence Gardner (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

448 pages, 16pp b&w photos

Publisher:Transworld Publishers Ltd

Imprint:Bantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of

ISBN:9780553825091

Published:8 Dec 2009

Dimensions:178 x 109 x 36 (mm)

Pub. Country:United Kingdom

Country of Origin:GB

Description

Adam and Eve were not the first man and woman on Earth, but they were certainly the first of a kind. When the Israelites made their exodus from Egypt, their spiritual leader was not Moses, but Miriam - a queen and high priestess of the pharaonic succession. Joseph, the father of Jesus, was not a humble carpenter, but a trained alchemical metallurgist of the highest order.

These and other contentious facts are disclosed for the first time in this remarkable study of the original kings - the early Pendragons, the unique royal ancestors of King David and Jesus. Drawing on files and hitherto secret archives of the ancient Dragon Sovereignity, Genesis of the Grail Kings tells the ultimate story of earthly kingship from its early Mesopotamian foundation. It reveals why the Messianic bloodline was so important, and explains in detail the true heritage of the Holy Grail.

The author draws comparisons throughout between the biblical scripture and the historical documents from which the Old Testament is derived, so that a very different and highly controversial picture emerges. Here are the documented records of the hermetic Phoenix, the Philosophers' Stone and the Tables of Testimony - records which give stunning insight into active longevity, the transmutation of gold and the anti-gravitational science of the pharaohs.

Not many copies available before Manufactured on Demand (Delivery could take 2-4 weeks).

× Bloodline of The Holy Grail : The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed

by Laurence Gardner (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

464 pages, (16 page plate section (24 colour photos, 21 b/w line illustrations))

Publisher:HarperCollins Publishers

Imprint:Element Books

ISBN:9780007333905

Published:1 Aug 2009

Dimensions:198 x 129 x 26 (mm)

Pub. Country:United Kingdom

Country of Origin:GB

Description

Did Jesus marry and have children with Mary Magdalene? If so, what happened to his family? Are descendants of Jesus still alive today? This extraordinary account of the potential family line that the author believes was born from Jesus Christ encompasses some of the most romantic, colourful and sacred territory of the past 2,000 years. From royal and suppressed archives, Gardner presents proof of the heritage of Jesus in the West and new findings on the long awaited discovery of the Holy Grail. Featuring all the charm and adventure of Arthurian romance, coupled with enthralling Rosicrucian and Templar disclosures, this work has a cutting edge of intrigue and exposure of conspiracy in the vein of Michael Baigent’s international bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (Arrow).

Bringing together revelatory insights into the descendant heirs of Jesus and his brother James, Gardner: Proves that there is an authentic line of succession from the sons of Jesus and James• Documents a hidden legacy of the Messiah and unveils hitherto guarded secrets about Mary Magdalene (was married to Jesus) and Joseph of Arimathea (was Jesus’s brother). • Traces the sacred lineage through centuries of persecution and Inquisition, revealing a systematic suppression of authentic records and a strategic manipulation of the New Testament Gospels• The author was granted privileged access to royal and religious archives and repositories across Europe.

× The Tree of Life and the Holy Grail : Ancient and Modern Spiritual Paths and the Mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau

by Sylvia Francke (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

240 pages, 8 pages colour plates + 20 halftones

Publisher:Temple Lodge Publishing

Imprint:Temple Lodge Publishing

Edition:2 Revised edition

ISBN:9781902636870

Published:8 Jun 2007

Dimensions:233 x 158 x 28 (mm)

Pub. Country:United Kingdom

Country of Origin:GB

Description

Recent works of fiction and popular history have promoted the idea that the Holy Grail symbolizes a physical bloodline resulting from the union of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. This, supposedly, is the 'secret' that esoteric movements have kept tirelessly for the past 2,000 years. From her groundbreaking research, Sylvia Francke exposes this notion to be a blatant misinterpretation of the mystery traditions that preceded and ran parallel to the birth of Christianity.

She traces the ancient spiritual paths of knowledge from the Cathars, the Knights Templar and the enigmatic Rosicrucians, to the work of Rudolf Steiner in the twentieth century. Here, she concludes, is true Grail knowledge: the Tree of Life and the Holy Grail itself explained in their metaphysical context. From her research, she suggests a solution to the riddle of the sudden wealth and strange behaviour of Berenger Sauniere, the mysterious priest of Rennes-le-Chateau in southern France.

True Grail knowledge, she concludes, has nothing to do with bloodlines or worldly status, but is an ancient lifeline to the spiritual origins of creation. Its energetic forces ray up from the earth and down from the constellations and planets while interacting with individual human beings. It holds the key to the fulfilment of mankind's quest, a step to the next phase of human evolution...The recent explosion of interest in an alternative history of Christianity - the shadow Grail - prompted Sylvia Francke to revise "The Tree of Life and the Holy Grail", first published in 1996.

The result is a completely reworked and expanded book that constitutes a powerful and convincing refutation of distorted esoteric truths.

× The Ninth Century and the Holy Grail by W.J. Stein (Author)

Format:

Paperback / softback

384 pages, Illustrations

Publisher:Temple Lodge Publishing

Imprint:Temple Lodge Publishing

Edition:2 Revised edition

ISBN:9781906999049

Published:29 Sep 2009

Dimensions:233 x 156 x 25 (mm)

Pub. Country:United Kingdom

Country of Origin:GB

Description

Much plagiarized and its contents distorted over the years, Stein's seminal work is a classic of original scholarly and spiritual research. In studying the central Grail narrative of Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Stein takes a twofold approach. On the one hand he searches historical records in order to identify actual people and events hidden behind the Grail epic's veil of romance, and on the other hand he deciphers Eschenbach's hidden spiritual messages, showing Parzival to be an esoteric document containing mighty pictures of the human being's inner path of development.

Stein reveals the period of the ninth century to be of more than historical and academic interest. It is the karmic ground out of which the destiny of modern times grows - the mighty battle that must take place between the powers of the Grail and the sinister anti-Grail forces at large today.