Religion and Magic in Western Culture - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Religion and Magic in Western Culture write by Daniel Dubuisson. This book was released on 2016-04-08. Religion and Magic in Western Culture available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. In the history of Western culture, theology, and science, a strict dichotomy exists between religion and magic: religion as the intellectually and morally superior one – magic as the primitive, superstitious, demonic other. The present work aims to break with this tradition, and traces the origin of this dichotomy as well as its many purposes. Whose powers does it serve? Which interests and ideological stakes does it conceal? Moreover, the author proposes a new epistemological framework for the study of magisms as well as their “rehumanisation”, and argues for a rehabilitation of their studies.
Magic in Western Culture
Magic in Western Culture - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Magic in Western Culture write by Brian P. Copenhaver. This book was released on 2015-09-09. Magic in Western Culture available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The story of the beliefs and practices called 'magic' starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino - whose work on magic was the most influential account written in premodern times - this groundbreaking book treats magic as a classical tradition with foundations that were distinctly philosophical. Besides Ficino, the premodern story of magic also features Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Aquinas, Agrippa, Pomponazzi, Porta, Bruno, Campanella, Descartes, Boyle, Leibniz, and Newton, to name only a few of the prominent thinkers discussed in this book. Because pictures play a key role in the story of magic, this book is richly illustrated.
Magic, Mystery, and Science
Magic, Mystery, and Science - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Magic, Mystery, and Science write by Dan Burton. This book was released on 2004. Magic, Mystery, and Science available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. "[P.D. Ouspensky's] yearning for a transcendent, timeless reality—one that cancels out physical disintegration and death—figures into science at some fundamental level. Einstein found solace in his theory of relativity, which suggested to him that events are ever-present in the space-time continuum. When his friend Michele Besso passed on shortly before his own death, he wrote: 'For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.'" —from Magic, Mystery, and Science The triumph of science would appear to have routed all other explanations of reality. No longer does astrology or alchemy or magic have the power to explain the world to us. Yet at one time each of these systems of belief, like religion, helped shed light on what was dark to our understanding. Nor have the occult arts disappeared. We humans have a need for mystery and a sense of the infinite. Magic, Mystery, and Science presents the occult as a "third stream" of belief, as important to the shaping of Western civilization as Greek rationalism or Judeo-Christianity. The occult seeks explanations in a world that is living and intelligent—quite unlike the one supposed by science. By taking these beliefs seriously, while keeping an eye on science, this book aims to capture some of the power of the occult. Readers will discover that the occult has a long history that reaches back to Babylonia and ancient Egypt. It proceeds alongside, and frequently mingles with, religion and science. From the Egyptian Book of the Dead to New Age beliefs, from Plato to Adolf Hitler, occult ways of knowing have been used—and hideously abused—to explain a world that still tempts us with the knowledge of its dark secrets.
Making Magic
Making Magic - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Making Magic write by Randall Styers. This book was released on 2004-01-15. Making Magic available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Since the emergence of religious studies and the social sciences as academic disciplines, the concept of "magic" has played a major role in defining religion and in mediating the relation of religion to science. Across these disciplines, magic has regularly been configured as a definitively non-modern phenomenon, juxtaposed to distinctly modern models of religion and science. Yet this notion of magic has remained stubbornly amorphous. In Making Magic, Randall Styers seeks to account for the extraordinary vitality of scholarly discourse purporting to define and explain magic despite its failure to do just that. He argues that this persistence can best be explained in light of the Western drive to establish and secure distinctive norms for modern identity, norms based on narrow forms of instrumental rationality, industrious labor, rigidly defined sexual roles, and the containment of wayward forms of desire. Magic has served to designate a form of alterity or deviance against which dominant Western notions of appropriate religious piety, legitimate scientific rationality, and orderly social relations are brought into relief. Scholars have found magic an invaluable tool in their efforts to define the appropriate boundaries of religion and science. On a broader level, says Styers, magical thinking has served as an important foil for modernity itself. Debates over the nature of magic have offered a particularly rich site at which scholars have worked to define and to contest the nature of modernity and norms for life in the modern world.
Polarity Magic
Polarity Magic - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Polarity Magic write by Wendy Berg. This book was released on 2003. Polarity Magic available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Polarity magic is at the heart of the Western Mystery Tradition, though few are aware of its theory and practice. Even so, it constitutes the core of all mythology and mystery teachings. It recognizes that the most powerful creative force is found in the fundamental energies exchanged between a man and a woman. It exalts, rather than negates, human sexuality in spiritual and magical endeavor. This book explores the hidden traditions of the Western mysteries, focusing on the divine feminine and the sexual dynamics of magic. It shows why the feminine principle must be restored to magic, and offers practical magical examples of how this may be done. Sympathetic reconstructions of priest and priestess rituals are offered, which feature ancient historical and mythological couples such as Isis and Osiris, Taliesen and Ceridwen, Arthur and Gwenevere, Merlin and Gwendydd, and Akhenaten and Nefertiti. The magical implications of the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Christ are also addressed. Also featured in this one-of-a-kind magical volume is advice on forming working partnerships with beings of the faery realm, and techniques for the lone magician who works with inner-plane partners.
