A significant number of Americans spend their weekends at UFO conventions hearing whispers of government cover-ups, at New Age gatherings learning the keys to enlightenment, or ambling around historical downtowns learning about resident ghosts in tourist-targeted "ghost walks". …
"The career of John Dee has played a significant role in recent historiographical debates about the relationship between magic and science in the early modern period. This collection of interdisciplinary essays, which addresses a wide range of Dee's diverse intellectual activiti…
In its historical development from late antiquity to the present, western esotericism has repeatedly been the issue of polemical discourse. This volume engages the polemical structures that underlie esoteric identities and the controversy about esoteric currents in European hist…
The late Victorian period witnessed the remarkable revival of magical practice and belief. Butler examines the individuals, institutions and literature associated with this revival and demonstrates how Victorian occultism provided an alternative to the tightening camps of scienc…
The name "Aleister Crowley" instantly conjures visions of diabolic ceremonies and orgiastic indulgences'and while the sardonic Crowley would perhaps be the last to challenge such a view, he was also much more than "the Beast," as this authoritative biography shows. Perdurabo (th…
Colin Wilson's great classic work is a comprehensive history of mystery and "magic". His genius lies in producing a skilful synthesis of the available material; clarifying without simplifying, seeing the occult in the light of reason and reason in the light of the mystical and p…
Sex, Magick, Aleister Crowley, Orgasms, Erotic Dances, Angelic Beings, Revolutionary Activism, Liberation, Persecution, Defiance and Suicide. Persecuted by Anthony Comstock and his Society for the Suppression of Vice, this turn-of-the-century heroine was also a spiritualist who …
Scholars have debated the role of the occult in Nazism since it first appeared on the German political landscape in the 1920s. After 1945, a consensus held that occultism - an ostensibly anti-modern, irrational blend of pseudo-religious and -scientific practices and ideas - had …
"The Supernatural in Tudor and Stuart England reflects upon the boundaries between the natural and the otherworldly in early modern England as they were understood by the people of the time. The book places supernatural beliefs and events in the context of the English Reformatio…
"Did you know that a dream about a blanket can either be a warning to guard your investments or a sign that you can expect financial gain - depending on the context? Or that a dream about lightening generally precedes good luck? From the time Jacob dreamt of a ladder to heaven, …
"In this fascinating exploration of 100 of the most intriguing conspiracies and secret societies in the Western world -- extending from ancient times to the modern era -- John Michael Greer sheds light on mysterious organizations such as the Knights Templar, the First Masonic Gr…
"Esotericism is the search for an absolute but hidden knowledge accessed through mystical vision, the mediation of higher beings, or personal experience. In Western cultural history esoteric approaches to religion have often been in conflict with - and suffered at the hands of -…
