P. G. Maxwell-Stuart - Böcker

Witchcraft and the occult sciences are areas which have benefited enormously from the spread of more sophisticated cultural studies in recent years. The old debate as to whether or not witches were really believed to exist has collapsed in the face of the overwhelming bodies of evidence suggesting a genuine and widespread acceptance of the occult in a notionally Christian Europe.This excellent and wide-ranging documentary anthology shows the genuinely pan-European nature of the phenomenon, its spread through all classes and its importance in people's thinking about the natural world. It covers magic, witchcraft, astrology, alchemy and other related occult themes and presents them, not as disparate elements of folkloric belief and intellectual aberrations, but as parts of a coherent, intellectually rigorous and scientifically challenging world-view, consistently argued in accordance with its given basic principles. This collection is drawn from a very wide range of authors from the early modern period and includes many newly translated documents which appear in English here for the first time.

Witchcraft and the occult sciences are areas which have benefited from the spread of more sophisticated cultural studies in recent years. The old debate as to whether or not witches were really believed to exist has collapsed in the face of the bodies of evidence suggesting a widespread acceptance of the occult in a notionally Christian Europe. This wide-ranging documentary anthology shows the pan European nature of the phenomenon, its spread through all classes and its importance in people's thinking about the natural world. It covers magic, witchcraft, astrology, alchemy and other related occult themes and presents them, not as disparate elements of folkloric belief and intellectual aberrations, but as parts of a coherent world view, argued in accordance with its given basic principles. This collection is drawn from a wide range of authors from the early modern period and includes many newly translated documents which appear in English.

Throughout the ages the wizard, magician, sorcerer, has claimed to defy scientific explanation. The rich diversity of Wizards offers new insights into our continuing fascination with magic.

The history of a unique reign of terror. A thoroughly readable book on the lives and careers of possibly the most sadistic group of people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the 'great age' of witch-hunting in Europe and North America.From the doyen of witch-hunters, the Jesuit del Rio, to the British Matthew Hopkins, not to mention Pierre de Lancre, a judge who was responsible for burning 600 women, Maxwell-Stuart charts the progress of these fierce and dangerous zealots, while providing an insight into the world they perceived as evil and which they sought to destroy.

Traces the history of ghost phenomena from the ancient world and the ways in which people have tried to deal with the hope, the fear, the curiosity, and the disbelief which ghosts have aroused.

The ghost experience is a remarkably common one. Ghosts are seen or heard, or the their presence is felt in almost every kind of place by almost every kind of person. They appear once, or regularly, with a purpose, or for no apparent reason. They may be friendly, hostile, or peculiar, and seen by one person or several. Most are recognisably human, but some are merely bright lights or animals or even objects, such as an aeroplane. Some take the form of poltergeists, vampires or zombies. Most are dead, but some are still alive, and a number of people have seen ghosts themselves. They are recorded from the earliest times down to the present, and each age has asked, 'Why ghosts?' and offered its own explanation.P.G. Maxwell-Stuart's book traces the history of ghost phenomena through the ages and the ways in which people have tried to deal with the hope, the fear, the curiosity, and the disbelief which ghosts have aroused, and to the question, 'Why ghosts?', he poses another, 'Why not?'.

Scotland, in common with the rest of Europe, was troubled from time to time by outbreaks of witchcraft which the authorities sought to contain and then to suppress, and the outbreak of 1658-1662 is generally agreed to represent the high water mark of Scottish persecution. These were peculiar years for Scotland. This work deals with this subject.

Of all the epithets popularly attached to the Middle Ages, 'superstitious' is perhaps the most common and most misleading. The 18th century view that the era was represented by the Catholic Church and therefore backward and 'dark', in contrast to their own times which were forward-looking, rational and 'scientific', has created a myth which successive centuries have perpetuated.This fascinating study challenges the assumption that the medieval period was an age of superstition, offering students a varied collection of documents surveying what people throughout Europe actually thought and believed about the occult sciences at the time. Using translated extracts - many of which appear in English for the first time - from religious, legal, medical and scientific documents, P. G. Maxwell-Stuart presents and explores the various branches of magic, divination, astrology and alchemy which helped people to make sense of their world.

This title features new translations of primary documents of a crucial period in the development of attitudes to witchcraft. In 1901, a rich collection of extracts from documents relating to witch beliefs and witch trials in the Middle Ages - "Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung in Mittelalter" - was published. Most of the original documents are in Latin, with some in medieval German and French, and it has been left largely untranslated, making the material inaccessible, and neglected. This new translation of the key documents will enable students and scholars to look afresh at this crucial period in the development of attitudes towards witchcraft. Through the translated extracts we can see the beliefs and activities which had been formally condemned by ecclesiastical and secular authorities, but which had not yet become subject to widespread eradicating pogroms, start to be allied with heresy and with changing conceptions of demonic activity. The extensive introductory essay gives the reader the historical, theological, intellectual and social background and contexts of the translated documents. The translations themselves will all have introductory notes.This volume will contribute significantly to our understanding of the witchcraft phenomenon in the Middle Ages.

In this title, the history of alchemy traced from its earliest roots through to its influence in modern-day science. Beginning in China in the search for the secret of immortality, and appearing independently in Egypt as an attempt to produce gold through the arts of smelting and alloying metals, alchemy received a great boost in Europe from studies by Islamic and Jewish alchemists. Translated into Latin and then combined with what was known of Greek natural science these accounts provoked an outburst of attempts to manipulate matter and to change it into transformative substances known as the Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Life. Alchemy's heyday in Europe was the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Demonstrations of the art were performed in royal courts and specimens of the gold so transmuted can be seen in various museums today. During the nineteenth century, attempts were made to amalgamate alchemy with the religious and occult philosophies then growing in popularity; and in the twentieth century psychologists - principally Carl Jung - perceived in alchemy a powerful vehicle for aspects of their theories about human nature.

Astrology is a means of interpreting the influence which the positions of certain heavenly bodies have upon the earth and human beings. The earliest records are those of Babylon, which were designed to help its kings understand the will of their gods. It then became a way of making sense of the world as people saw themselves as integral parts of a vast but puzzling whole. Medicine, politics, religion, the sciences, all had astrology woven into their fabric, and the best minds of the Middle Ages and early modern period engaged themselves in its study. Controversy, however, thereafter hastened its decline as a science until the twentieth century saw its return in the highest circles of the Third Reich and a number of post-war democracies. This book traces astrology's chequered history and notes that modern research suggests it should be taken much more seriously than people usually suppose. Includes 31 Illustrations

For over 500 years witches, male and female, practised magic for both harm and good in their communities.Most witches worked locally, used by their neighbours to cure illness, create love, or gratify personal spite against another. Margaret Lindsay from Northumberland was prosecuted for making men impotent, John Stokes in London for curing fevers, Collas de la Rue on Guernsey for killing people by witchcraft, and Isobel Gowdie in Auldearn for a variety of offences including consorting with Satan and fairies.In the fifteenth century witches attacked a succession of English monarchs using enchanted images, and in the sixteenth they also sought ways to kill James VI of Scotland. In response a series of Acts of Parliament were passed which made much magic criminal and punished offenders severely, until a final Act in 1735 repealed them.This impressive history shines a new light on witches, their magic, and the attempts to eradicate them throughout the British Isles, altering our picture of who witches were and why people employed them but also tried to suppress them.

The story of violent ghost phenomena through the ages. The poltergeist of 'noisy ghost' phenomenon is commonly thought to be the result of a dead person's angry spirit expressing that anger by violence in the physical world, or the projected energies of an emotionally volatile human being, often a teenager. In fact, poltergeists are more interesting than either of those suggested explanations, because they are actually something of a mystery. Are they spirits of some kind, natural or anomalous forms of energy, or the products of trickery or self-delusion, or something else altogether? This account sets out to seek answers to those and other questions by providing examples of poltergeist activity from late antiquity to the present day, and discussing who recorded them, why, and for what kind of audience. It also clarifies the mystery and presents the reader with explanations of increasingly common, well-documented and intriguing manifestations of apparently paranormal phenomena.