In early modern England, the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic - the attempted communication with angels and demons - both reinforced and subverted existing concepts of gender.
In the febrile religious and political climate of late sixteenth-century England, when the grip of the Reformation was as yet fragile and insecure, and underground papism still perceived to be rife, Lancashire was felt by the Protestant authorities to be a sinister corner of superstition, lawlessness and popery.
The fables of witchcraft have taken so fast hold and deepe root in the heart of man, that few or none can indure with patience the hand and correction of God.
In early modern England, the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic - the attempted communication with angels and demons - both reinforced and subverted existing concepts of gender.
'The fables of witchcraft have taken so fast hold and deepe root in the heart of man, that few or none can indure with patience the hand and correction of God.
On a foggy November day in 1589, when one of the five daughters of Robert and Elizabeth Throckmorton suddenly fell sick, no one in the small English village of Warboys could have predicted the terrifying events that would follow.
The enigmatic and richly illustrative tarot deck reveals a host of strange and iconic mages, such as The Tower, The Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man and The Fool: over which loom the terrifying figures of Death and The Devil.
With their ability to enter trances, to change into the bodies of other creatures, and to fly through the northern skies, shamans are the subject of both popular and scholarly fascination.
Anthropologists have long sought to engage and describe foreign or "e;alien"e; societies, yet few have considered the fluid communities centered around a shared belief in alien beings and UFO sightings and their effect on popular and expressive culture.
In Living Spirit, Living Practice, the well-known cultural studies scholar Ruth Frankenberg turns her attention to the remarkably diverse nature of religious practice within the United States today.
Through an examination of caste in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexico, Hall of Mirrors explores the construction of hierarchy and difference in a Spanish colonial setting.
Fresh new perspectives on the study of religion, ranging from SoulCycle to Mark Twain American Examples: New Conversations about Religion, Volume Two, is the second in a series of annual anthologies produced by the American Examples workshop hosted by the Department of Religious Studies at The University of Alabama.
John Macaulay's model study of Unitarianism in the antebellum south reestablishes the denomination's position as an influential religious movement in the early history of the region.
In 1631, at the epicenter of the worst excesses of the European witch-hunts, Friedrich Spee, a Jesuit priest, published the Cautio Criminalis, a book speaking out against the trials that were sending thousands of innocent people to gruesome deaths.
Inspired by recent efforts to understand the dynamics of the early modern witch hunt, Johannes Dillinger has produced a powerful synthesis based on careful comparisons.
A product of the "e;spiritual hothouse"e; of the Second Great Awakening, Spiritualism became the fastest growing religion in the nation during the 1850s, and one of the principal responses to the widespread perception that American society was descending into atomistic particularity.
Wall Street Journal's Five Best Books About CultsFor five days in December 1908 the body of Cyrus Teed lay in a bathtub at a beach house just south of Fort Myers, Florida.
Against the backdrop of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New Orleans, A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau disentangles the complex threads of the legend surrounding the famous Voudou priestess.
A product of the "e;spiritual hothouse"e; of the Second Great Awakening, Spiritualism became the fastest growing religion in the nation during the 1850s, and one of the principal responses to the widespread perception that American society was descending into atomistic particularity.
