Sex, Death and Witchcraft

Sex, Death and Witchcraft PDF

Author: Douglas Ezzy

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-05-22

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 147252201X

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Faunalia is a controversial Pagan festival with a reputation for being wild and emotionally intense. It lasts five days, 80 people attend, and the two main rituals run most of the night. In the tantalisingly erotic Baphomet rite, participants encounter a hermaphroditic deity, enter a state of trance and dance naked around a bonfire. In the Underworld rite participants role play their own death, confronting grief and suffering. These rituals are understood as "shadow work" - a Jungian term that refers to practices that creatively engage repressed or hidden aspects of the self. Sex, Death and Witchcraft is a powerful application of relational theory to the study of religion and contemporary culture. It analyses Faunalia's rituals in terms of recent innovations in the sociology of religion and religious studies that focus on relational etiquette, lived religion, embodiment and performance. The sensuous and emotionally intense ritual performances at Faunalia transform both moral orientations and self-understandings. Participants develop an ethical practice that is individualistic, but also relational, and aesthetically mediated. Extensive extracts from interviews describe the rituals in participants' own words. The book combines rich and evocative description of the rituals with careful analysis of the social processes that shape people's experiences at this controversial Pagan festival.

Demon Lovers

Demon Lovers PDF

Author: Walter Stephens

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2003-08-15

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 9780226772622

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On September 20, 1587, Walpurga Hausmännin of Dillingen in southern Germany was burned at the stake as a witch. Although she had confessed to committing a long list of maleficia (deeds of harmful magic), including killing forty—one infants and two mothers in labor, her evil career allegedly began with just one heinous act—sex with a demon. Fornication with demons was a major theme of her trial record, which detailed an almost continuous orgy of sexual excess with her diabolical paramour Federlin "in many divers places, . . . even in the street by night." As Walter Stephens demonstrates in Demon Lovers, it was not Hausmännin or other so-called witches who were obsessive about sex with demons—instead, a number of devout Christians, including trained theologians, displayed an uncanny preoccupation with the topic during the centuries of the "witch craze." Why? To find out, Stephens conducts a detailed investigation of the first and most influential treatises on witchcraft (written between 1430 and 1530), including the infamous Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches). Far from being credulous fools or mindless misogynists, early writers on witchcraft emerge in Stephens's account as rational but reluctant skeptics, trying desperately to resolve contradictions in Christian thought on God, spirits, and sacraments that had bedeviled theologians for centuries. Proof of the physical existence of demons—for instance, through evidence of their intercourse with mortal witches—would provide strong evidence for the reality of the supernatural, the truth of the Bible, and the existence of God. Early modern witchcraft theory reflected a crisis of belief—a crisis that continues to be expressed today in popular debates over angels, Satanic ritual child abuse, and alien abduction.

Eros and Evil

Eros and Evil PDF

Author: R. E. L. Masters

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2018-12-01

Total Pages: 535

ISBN-13: 1789125197

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Eros and Evil is the first systematic modern study of the sexual behavior of witches (and of witch hunters) and, as such, is an important contribution to psychological literature. Emphasizing the period between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries (the witch era, when sexual licentiousness in fact and fantasy was rampant), R. E. L. Masters contends that intercourse with devils and demons was the central fact of witchcraft. His discussion ranges over such subjects as the anatomy of the devil, the sexual psychology of demons, and erotic cannibalism, and he shows how hysteria, mental disorders, and drugs may explain some of demonic sexuality’s strangest aspects. Most significantly, Eros and Evil throws light on the origins and development of Western sexual (or antisexual) morals. No other work makes so clear the superstitious and often diseased foundation of the sexual code by which we are still attempting to live. This edition of Eros and Evil, first published in 1962, contains the complete text of Ludovico Maria Sinistrari’s Demoniality, one of the great classics of demonology.

Hoodwitch

Hoodwitch PDF

Author: Faylita Hicks

Publisher: ACRE (CHUP)

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781946724243

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This riveting debut from poet Faylita Hicks is a reclamation of power for black women and nonbinary people whose bodies have become the very weapons used against them. HoodWitch tells the story of a young person who discovers that they are "something that can & will survive / a whole century of hunt." Through a series of poems based on childhood photographs, Hicks invokes the spirits of mothers and daughters, sex workers and widows, to conjure an alternative to their own early deaths and the deaths of those whom they have already lost. In this collection about resilience, Hicks speaks about giving her child up for adoption, mourning the death of her fianc , and embracing the nonbinary femme body--persevering in the face of medical malpractice, domestic abuse, and police violence. The poems find people transformed, "remade out of smoke & iron" into cyborgs and wolves, machines and witches--beings capable of seeking justice in a world that refuses them the option. ​Exploring the intersections of Christianity, modern mysticism, and Afrofuturism in a sometimes urban, sometimes natural setting, Hicks finds a place where "everyone everywhere is hands in the air," where "you know they gonna push & pull it together. / Just like they learned to." It is a place of natural magick--where someone like Hicks can have more than one name: where they can be both dead and alive, both a mortal and a god.

Practising the Witch's Craft

Practising the Witch's Craft PDF

Author: Douglas Ezzy

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Published: 2005-10

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781865089126

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Telling the stories of ordinary people who have discovered that life is enchanted, this exploration of witchcraft presents the leaders of the movement and experienced practitioners and delves into what it really means to be a witch. Describing powerful rituals and moving magical encounters, these witches discuss working with natural forces, including sexuality and the seasons, and how they craft spells and personal rituals, and use incense and herbs. With insights from many different traditions including Wicca and Paganism, this guide celebrates the pleasures and mysteries of contemporary witchcraft.

Witches, Sluts, Feminists

Witches, Sluts, Feminists PDF

Author: Kristen J. Sollee

Publisher: Stone Bridge Press, Inc.

Published: 2017-05-22

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 0996485287

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“Like being deemed a witch hundreds of years ago, being presumed a slut today is cause for ostracism, abuse, and death.” . . . Archetypes of “witch” and “slut” have been used to police female sexuality and punish women; now, feminists are reclaiming them as positive affirmations. This book unearths the sex positive feminist legacy of the witch in art, music, politics, and popular culture, connecting the fictional witch we love to emulate and fear with real women, past and present. Kristen J. Sollee is instructor at The New School and founding editrix of Slutist, an award-winning sex positive feminist website.

Ecstatic Witchcraft

Ecstatic Witchcraft PDF

Author: Fio Gede Parma

Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide

Published: 2012-06-08

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 0738733776

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Journey down a shamanic path that embraces the ecstatic, the wild, the gnostic, the transformative, and the visionary. Expanding on principles touched on in his book By Land, Sky & Sea: Three Realms of Shamanic Witchcraft, Gede Parma walks you through an apprenticeship designed to ground and orient you on the path of the Shamanic Craft. Discover the meaning of ecstasy. Encounter the three realms. Learn shamanic techniques and rituals that will give you a more primal, authentic experience of Witchcraft, including: Drawing Down the Gods Working with Spirit Allies Trance and Moving Between the Worlds Ecstatic Spellcraft Healing and Soul Retrieval Seership and Divination Praise: "Smart, thought-provoking and useful...A worthy contribution to the continuing growth and evolution of shamanic Wicca by a passionate and poetic member of the next generation."—Phyllis W. Curott, author of Witch Crafting: A Spiritual Guide to Making Magic

Same-Sex Relationships, Law and Social Change

Same-Sex Relationships, Law and Social Change PDF

Author: Frances Hamilton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-01-15

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0429664443

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This edited collection provides a forum for rigorous analysis of the necessity for both legal and social change with regard to regulation of same-sex relationships and rainbow families, the status of civil partnership as a concept and the lived reality of equality for LGBTQ+ persons. Twenty-eight jurisdictions worldwide have now legalised same-sex marriage and many others some level of civil partnership. In contrast other jurisdictions refuse to recognise or even criminalise same-sex relationships. At a Council of Europe level, there is no requirement for contracting states to legalise same-sex marriage. Whilst the Court of Justice of the European Union now requires contracting states to recognise same-sex marriages for the purpose of free movement and residency rights, unlike the US Supreme Court, it does not require EU Member States to legalise same-sex marriage. Law and Sociology scholars from five key jurisdictions (England and Wales, Italy, Australia, Canada, and the Republic of Ireland) examine the role of the Council of Europe, European Union and further international regimes. A balanced approach between the competing views of critically analytical rights based theorists and queer and feminist theorists interrogates the current international consensus in this fast moving area. The incrementalist theory whilst offering a methodology for future advances continues to be critiqued. All contributions from differing perspectives expose that even for those jurisdictions who have legalised same-sex marriage, still further and continuous work needs to be done. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of human rights, family and marriage law and gender studies.

Caliban and the Witch

Caliban and the Witch PDF

Author: Silvia Federici

Publisher: Autonomedia

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1570270597

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"Women, the body and primitive accumulation"--Cover.