Esotericism
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Harmful Misfortune, Witchcraft, and the Will of God
Even in the ‘Malleus Maleficarum’, God was not so passive; Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger were careful to remind their…
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Male Witches in Early Contemporary Europe Witch-Hunting
An entire body of literature, mainly by avowed feminists, has argued that witch-hunting was in essence woman-hunting, despite the fact…
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Myth, Belief and Past Finno-Ugric Modes of Thinking
The interest in myth studies depends on the central position of myths in worldview and on its possibility to illuminate…
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Monstrosity, Catholicism and Revising 1641 Inhuman Rising
Monstrosity and paranoia dialogue with desire and toleration; the ability of the Gothic to express such competing positions explains why…
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Mediumship or Spiritualism in End-of-the-Century America
In the last few decades, the rise and evolution of the spiritualist movement in nineteenth-century North America has been the…
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Witch-Hunting Inquisitorial Courts and Belief in Spirits or Magic
Historical witchcraft is to be distinguished from popular and romantic witchcraft, and professional magic. Witch-hunting was an episode in the…
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The Devil of the Inquisitors: Cases of Maleficium and Witchcraft
During the Counter-Reformation in Italy, both the devil and demon possession served as malleable cultural spaces which were successively defined…
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Renaissance Witchcraft and the Evildoing of the Phenomenon
Renaissance witchcraft was inherited from ancient literature, and case studies and primary documents still reveal the need for hesitation as…
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Occult Revival in the Origins of the Victorian Hermeticism
Occult revival in the late nineteenth-century, lead to the formation of a society of practising magicians marked the climax of…
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Devil Worship and Great European Witch-Hunts in the Middle Ages
Devil Worship was prevalent in the Middle Ages by the time the fires of the great European witch-hunts burned out…
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Speech, Sexuality, and Witchcraft in Modern Scotland
In 1671, Janet McMuldroch and Elspeth Thomson were both arrested and tried for the serious crime of witchcraft in Dumfries,…
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The Esoteric and Occult Appeal of Neopaganism
Modern paganism is deeply embedded in esotericism, in particular in its nineteenth- and twentieth-century manifestations as romanticism and occultism.
