Cover: Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England, from Harvard University PressCover: Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft in PAPERBACK

Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft

Ritual Magic in Contemporary England

Product Details

PAPERBACK

$33.50 • £29.95 • €30.95

ISBN 9780674663244

Publication Date: 03/01/1991

Academic Trade

396 pages

6 x 9 inches

21 halftones

Not for sale in UK & British Commonwealth (except Canada)

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Related Subjects

  • Acknowledgements
  • I. Speaking with a Different Rhythm: Magicians in the Modern World
    • 1. What Makes Magic Reasonable?
    • 2. Initiation Ritual: My Introduction to the Field
    • 3. Journey to Aquarius: The Sociological Context of Magical Groups
    • 4. The Goat and the Gazelle: Witchcraft
    • 5. Meditations on the Tree of Life: The Western Mysteries
    • 6. Space between the Worlds: Ad hoc Ritual Magic
    • 7. The Old Ways: Non-Initiated Paganism
    • 8. The ‘Child Within’: A Portrait of the Practitioners
  • II. Listening to the Goddess: New Ways to Pay Attention to the World
    • 9. Introduction: The Magician’s Changing Intellectual Habits
    • 10. Drinking from Cerridwen’s Cauldron: Learning to See the Evidence
    • 11. Astrology and the Tarot: Acquiring Common Knowledge
    • 12. Seeing Patterns in the Jumbled Whole: Becoming Comfortable with New Assumptions
  • III. Summoning the Powers: The Experience of Involvement
    • 13. Introduction: Working Intuitively
    • 14. New Experiences: Meditation and Visualization
    • 15. ‘Knowing of’: Language and Imaginative Involvement
    • 16. Ritual: Techniques for Altering the Everyday
    • 17. The Varied Uses of Symbolism
  • IV. Justifying to the Sceptics
    • 18. Introduction: Coping with the Dissonance
    • 19. The Magical Plane: The Emergence of a Protective Metaphor
    • 20. In Defence of Magic: Philosophical and Theological Rationalization
  • V. Belief and Action
    • 21. Interpretive Drift: The Slow Shift towards Belief
    • 22. Serious Play: The Fantasy of Truth
    • 23. Final Thoughts
  • Bibliography
  • Index

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