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 Philosophe...

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...

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 in Bonn. 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 dev...

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 wit...

The Malleus Maleficarum is one of the best-known treatises dealing with the problem of what to do with witches. It was written in 1487 by a Dominican inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, following his failure to prosecute a number of women for witchcraft, it is in many ways a highly personal document, full of frustration at official complacency in the face of a spiritual threat, as well as being a practical guide for law-officers who have to deal with a cunning, dangerous enemy. Combining theo...

The Devil, like the poor, is always with us. Evil has been personified in every religion and culture, and Christianity in particular developed a highly graphic view of him from its earliest period. Sometimes grotesque, sometimes beautiful, sometimes threatening, sometimes seductively helpful, sometimes comical, Satan has played a variety of roles in human existence.Feared and frightening adversary of humankind during the Middle Ages, supposed master and friend of witches during the...

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 anoma...

A fascinating, wide-ranging survey of the history of demon possession and exorcism through the ages.In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the era of the Reformation, thousands of Europeans were thought to be possessed by demons. In response to their horrifying symptoms—violent convulsions, displays of preternatural strength, vomiting of foreign objects, displaying contempt for sacred objects, and others—exorcists were summoned to expel the evil spirits from v...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this “brilliantly lucid, splendidly readable book” (The Sunday Times), one of Britain’s foremost commentators on religion explores how people have perceived and experienced God throughout history, from the time of Abraham to the present.“An admirable and impressive work of synthesis that will give insight and satisfaction to thousands of lay readers.”—The Washington Post Book WorldWh...

THE EXTRAORDINARY FIRST NOVEL BY THE MASTER OF STORYTELLING'Prose that dances and dazzles . . . Gaiman describes the indescribable' SUSANNA CLARKE'It's virtually impossible to read more than ten words by Neil Gaiman and not wish he would tell you the rest of the story' OBSERVER'Much too clever to be caught in the net of a single interpretation' PHILIP PULLMANACCLAIMED BBC RADIO 4 DRA...

A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life—mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstoreThe Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone—and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumb...