Western Esotericism, Eastern Spirituality, and the Global Future

Western Esotericism, Eastern Spirituality, and the Global Future

The heart of “esotericism” has long been centred around the belief that certain spiritual (or religious) teachings are best transmitted to others only after sufficient preparation and initiatic training. Such preparations are regarded as requiring long periods of discipline and often special empowerment rituals.

Was Ergotism that Satan Once Loosed in Salem?

Was Ergotism that Satan Once Loosed in Salem?

Prior to the Salem witchcraft trials, only five executions on the charge of witchcraft are known to have occurred in Massachusetts. Such trials were held periodically, but the outcomes generally favoured the accused.

Albert the Great and the Visio Mystica Epistemology

Albert the Great and the Visio Mystica Epistemology

In order to come to a sound understanding of any aspect of the thought of Albert the Great insofar as it pertains to the adjective “mystical”, great care must be taken to avoid importing into Albert’s ideas any of the modern connotations of that term which may have been alien to his time and culture. And the best way to achieve this goal is to try to learn how Albert used the term.

Approaches to Magic, Heresy and Witchcraft in Time

Approaches to Magic, Heresy and Witchcraft in Time

In medieval thought, the concept of witchcraft held a place in the moral cosmology as a necessary evil receptacle of the hierarchically contrasting good of the community of Christians, God, piety and virtue. Still, the contents of the concept of witchcraft were dependent on the contents of its superior counterparts — and vice versa. In medieval and early modern thought, there could be no Christianity without the Devil and without witchcraft. This gave witchcraft an inherently unstable place on the threshold between orthodoxy, heterodoxy and heresy.

Three Early Modern Magic Rituals to Spoil Witches

Three Early Modern Magic Rituals to Spoil Witches

Pre-modern learned magic practitioners and the less educated cunning-folk who began to take up the learned tradition in the sixteenth-century regarded their practices as fundamentally opposed to witchcraft, a fact beautifully illustrated by these three charms to identify witches.

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