Did Jesus and his disciples use cannabis and other drugs in magical ceremonies? Author and cannabis historian Chris Bennett takes us through some of the startling ancient evidence of early Christianity’s drug-fuelled rituals.

An illustrated version of this article can be accessed here - https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2016/12/20/early-christianitys-drug-fuelled-magic-rituals/

The Bible is full of references to magic and divination, but we rarely find attestations of witches and witchcraft, i.e. women performing acts of black magic. However, there is a mysterious passage in the Book of Ezekiel which seems to relate exactly that. In this compelling lecture Dr Alinda Damsma throws light on the identity and practices of these women, seeing them in the context of other known activities in the Ancient Near East. More info: https://www.treadwells-london.com/events-1/the-bibles-own-witches?mc_cid=27225007b0&mc_eid=50358b363f

“The Elven Way” by The Silver Elves describes the Mystical, Magical, Spiritual Path of the Elf folk and their connection to the Shining Ones, those supra-dimensional beings who are our guides, guardians, ancient kindred and the source of our enlightenment. This is High Elven Spirituality and Magic and written for advanced elven adepts and magical folk of all kinds.
"The Elven Way passes beyond the fields of the known into the forest of the unknown illuminated by the glow of the elves."
(From the cover)

"One of the central questions in the study of modern Western Esotericism concerns the continued appeal of magic; how did magic survive “the disenchantment of the world”? An appealing explanation has been that the emergence of “occultist magic”, based on the writings of Eliphas Lévi (1810–1875) and the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (est. 1888) in particular, resulted in a “psychologisation” of magic. By interpreting magical practices as psychological techniques, and the trafficking with esoteric entities as manipulation of internal, psychological states rather than externally real spiritual beings it has become possible for well-educated, upper middle class moderners to retain both their belief in magic and their rational integrity.
By presenting a case study of one of the most influential modern occultists, Aleister Crowley (1875– 1947), this article seeks to demonstrate that “the psychologisation thesis” is not entirely tenable. Special notice will be given to Crowley’s magical system, presented as “Scientific Illuminism”, and the role and appeal of science in that system. Contrary to the psychologisation thesis, which it will be argued represents a sort of “psychological escapism”, Crowley did not seek to insulate his magical beliefs from his rational beliefs by withdrawing them to the realm of psychology and internal states; instead, influenced by the ideals of scientific naturalism, he sought to devise a naturalistic method by which magical practice could be rationally criticised, tested and refined. In short, it will be argued that Crowley’s system represent a move towards the naturalisation rather than the psychologisation of magic.
In addition to presenting a close reading of some of Crowley’s ideas on the relation between science and magic, a historical contextualisation will be provided, in which special notice will be given to Crowley’s relation to prominent intellectual currents with interest in this issue, including the Society for Psychical Research, Sir James Frazer, and naturalist philosophers and psychologists, from T. H. Huxley to Henry Maudsley.
"

Contained within the twenty-two picture cards of the Visconti-Sforza Tarot is a sacred open secret. 2 The Major Arcana is a visual representation of an ancient mnemonic system the formation of which is the central operation of the seminal Kabbalistic text the Sefer Yetzirah.
The paper was presented at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies on Saturday, February 6th, 2016.

For the past forty years shamanism has drawn increasing attention among the general public and academics. There is an enormous literature on shamanism, but no one has tried to understand why and how Western intellectual and popular culture became so fascinated with the topic. Behind fictional and non-fictional works on shamanism, Andrei A. Znamenski uncovers an exciting story that mirrors changing Western attitudes toward the primitive. The Beauty of the Primitive explores how shamanism, an obscure word introduced by the eighteenth-century German explorers of Siberia, entered Western humanities and social sciences, and has now become a powerful idiom used by nature and pagan communities to situate their spiritual quests and anti-modernity sentiments. The major characters of The Beauty of the Primitive are past and present Western scholars, writers, explorers, and spiritual seekers with a variety of views on shamanism. Moving from Enlightenment and Romantic writers and Russian exile ethnographers to the anthropology of Franz Boas to Mircea Eliade and Carlos Castaneda, Znamenski details how the shamanism idiom was gradually transplanted from Siberia to the Native American scene and beyond. He also looks into the circumstances that prompted scholars and writers at first to marginalize shamanism as a mental disorder and then to recast it as high spiritual wisdom in the 1960s and the 1970s. Linking the growing interest in shamanism to the rise of anti-modernism in Western culture and intellectual life, Znamenski examines the role that anthropology, psychology, environmentalism, and Native Americana have played in the emergence of neo-shamanism. He discusses the sources that inspire Western neo-shamans and seeks to explain why lately many of these spiritual seekers have increasingly moved away from non-Western tradition to European folklore. A work of intellectual discovery, The Beauty of the Primitive shows how scholars, writers, and spiritual seekers shape their writings and experiences to suit contemporary cultural, ideological, and spiritual needs. With its interdisciplinary approach and engaging style, it promises to be the definitive account of this neglected strand of intellectual history.

A deep study of the magical aspects of ritual, both anthropological, social as wel a psychological. Various models about how rituals works, how the mind deals with magic, how rituals help to overcome time and space limitations, can help in transformation. The importance of rituals as social, transformational, but also as magical acts. New theories about ritual efficacy, the nature of time, and how the mind deals with rituals. Endorsed by prof. Stan Krippner and Prof. Cees Hamelink. 820 pages, totally original vision on ritual.

Objective The project aims to explore Ottoman notions and belief systems concerning the supernatural. Its major objectives will be to explore the meaning and content of the perceptions of the "supernatural" , to localize such beliefs in the various Ottoman systems of thought, to analyze the changes that took place and to associate them with emerging or declining layers of culture and specific social groups. The project will address larger debates in recent historiography about the relevance of the " disenchantment " and " enlightenment " paradigms, integrating Ottoman intellectual history into the broader early modern cultural history. The research team, composed of the PI, three post-doctoral fellows, four collaborating researchers, five postgraduate students and a technical assistant, will explore these objectives and produce a web portal (containing crowd-sourced dictionaries and bibliographies, open access papers and other material), three international meetings, monographs and papers, and an annual open-access periodical journal. Specific research modules will study the rationalist trends in Ottoman science, various aspects of the Ottoman occult and magic, and the formation and development of the Ottoman cosmological culture. A monograph will be written by the PI and dwell in: the various conceptions of the supernatural/preternatural and their development, the presence of spirits/jinn in Ottoman world image, theory and practice of Ottoman magic, attitudes toward folklore traditions, saintly miracles, and " marvelous geographies ". Monographs will also be produced by the post-doctoral fellows. The project proposes an innovative approach in many ways, in a subject very much in the frontiers of the field; by exploring the supernatural and the occult in the context of the Ottoman Weltanschauung, the project will address a wider problématique on the Ottoman culture and its place in early modernity, especially as it will focus to the role of different cultural and social layers.

The Seven Seals of medieval Islamic magic, which are believed to constitute the Greatest Name of God, also feature in Jewish Kabbalah from the same period. While many Seal symbols make sporadic appearances in early Islamic amulets bearing Kufic script, the source of the symbols and their eventual ordering remains a matter of legend. As this topic was first – and last – examined systematically by Dr. Hans Winkler in 1930, a wider-ranging and more modern review is long overdue. The present survey focuses on potential sources for the symbols rather than on their exegesis. It first examines the possibility that a precedent for the Seal series exists in an undecipherable “seven signs repeated seven times” inscribed on a Late Babylonian amulet. It then considers the possibility that the Seals’ origins lie in other cuneiform symbols from ancient Mesopotamia; in Egyptian hieroglyphs or scripts; in paleo-Hebrew characters or the letters of ancient South Arabian scripts; in Libyco-Berber or Tifinagh letters from North Africa; or in the symbol repertoire of Late Antique magic, including the highly potent seven Greek vowels. The review also explores the possibility that at least some of the symbols originated in numerological ciphers or religious emblems, canvassing sources as diverse as Indian Hinduism and Byzantine Christendom. The article concludes by considering the recent suggestion that the Seal series may have acquired its privileged status because its symbols reflect “shape archetypes” that are hard-wired into the human nervous system.

This work critically examines every one of the spells and rites translated in Hans Dieter Betz's "Greek Magical Papyri in Translation" and Daniel & Maltomini's "Supplementum Magicum" (plus texts drawn from a number of other lamellae, amulets, etc) with a view to identifying the precise magical technique used in each case. This categorisation is done on the basis of the original Greek or Demotic headwords or key words rather than upon the translation or later imprecise descriptions. The result is an identification of 40+ magical techniques such as autoptos, systasis, agoge, niketikon, oneiropompos, etc, rather than a simple but unhelpful identification each passage as a 'spell' or 'charm'. This is fully tabulated with line count for every single rite, presenting the full panorama of Graeco-Egyptian magic in the form, and with the structure, that the original scribes or magicians would have used. This enables ready access to all of the passages relevant to any one technique. It also removes the difficulties presented by varying translations of a specific Greek technical term by a range of different English approximations (such as 'love spell' for more than 7 different processes). Each of these techniques is then expanded upon showing where they influenced later systems of magic or remained unique in the Graeco-Egyptian world.

It is a great honor to comment on Maurice Bloch's writings, as his work has been very inspirational to my youthful ethnography. A Marxist theorist with a Durkheimian style (Gellner 1999), as well as an indefatigable fieldworker, Bloch has been one of the most stimulating thinkers of religious persistence-or ritual persistence, one might say, given the trickiness of the word'religion (Bloch 2005). In this short article, I would like to develop what I see as

A discussion of how G.R.S. Mead shaped 20th-century Anglophone discourse about Gnosticism decades prior to the Nag Hammadi discovery, through his interpretation of the Askew and Bruce Codices, and his popularization of the work of Berlin Coptologist Carl Schmidt. Thanks in part to Mead, the reception-history of the Askew and Bruce Codices goes straight through histories of esotericism, occultism, and magic in the twentieth century.

In the spring of 1946 L. Ron Hubbard and John W. Parsons performed a series of magical rituals with the aim of incarnating the Thelemic goddess Babalon in a human being. Hubbard’s cooperation with Parsons, known as the Babalon Working, remains one of the most controversial events in Hubbard’s pre-Scientology days. This article sets out to describe the content of the magical rituals, as well as their purpose. It is argued that in
order to fully understand these events, it is necessary to approach the Babalon Working from the study of Western esotericism in general, and the study of Enochian magic in particular.

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Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (SHERM) is a biannual, not-for-profit, peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes the latest social scientific, historiographic, and ecclesiastic research on religious institutions and their practices. SHERM is dedicated to the critical and scholarly inquiry of historical and contemporary religious phenomena, both from within particular religious traditions and across cultural boundaries, so as to inform the broader socio-historical analysis of religion and its related fields of study.

In partnership with the FaithX Project, SHERM is a full, no-fee, open access academic journal, which means it publishes and publicly makes available your research without charging subscription dues or publishing fees. Whereas other open access journals still require authors to pay for making their publications available, SHERM believes in making high-quality scholarship accessible to the public while promoting the wide dissemination and visibility of your published article. Our goal is to increase the opportunity for erudite academicians to publish their work, gain a larger readership outside the confines of conventional journals, and receive citations from future researchers.

Looking at two distinctly different approaches to the occult and performance, this article demonstrates that a range of late-Victorians turned to theatrical performance as an avenue to mystical communication. The editors of Borderland: A Psychical Quarterly, W. T. Stead and Ada Goodrich Freer, focused on performance in large part for strategic purposes intended to assist in the popularization of spiritualism and other psychical phenomena. Meanwhile, Moina and Samuel ‘MacGregor’ Mathers, central members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, developed their Ceremony of Isis not only for marketing purposes, but also to engage performance as a mode of human transmigration and a powerfully allusive embodiment of key values of pagan occultism.

In 2007 I conducted fieldwork among the present-day Maya People of the Yucatan Peninsula in South Mexico. For six month I stayed in Loldzonot 1 , a small village of about 1.500 inhabitants in the district of Chemax. The purpose of this fieldwork was to investigate the notion of so called wáay-beings. In Yucatec Maya Society, the wáay is believed to be a person, who posesses the ability to transform himself into an animal at will.

A 'Dakshinavarti Shankh' is considered to be very auspicious and powerful as per Hindu religion. It is believed that a Dakshinavarti Shankh has the power to energize the surrounding with power, wealth and a positive aura. Thus it is often suggested to establish a Dakshinavarti Shankh in your home temple and offer puja/worship regularly. This conch shell can be large or small in size and is found in the Indian ocean. A Dakshinavarti Shankh is also known as Valampuri Shankh/Sanggu. Most species of sea snails are dextral and some are naturally sinistral. But, also to mention that within a normal dextral species some rare individuals may develop sinistral coiling. Let's first understand what a Dakshinavarti Shankh is and learn about its physical appearance and its spiritual importance.

你可以在第135或326页快速获得这本书的摘要。如果你对进化心理学没有跟上速度,你应该先阅读标题中这个术语的最近许多文本之一。其中最好的是《进化心理学手册》第二部,由Buss出版。直到大约15年前,对行为的解释还不是对心理过程的真正解释,而是对人们做了什么和说什么的模糊和基本上无用的描述,而对原因却一无所知。我们可以说,人们聚集纪念一个事件,赞美上帝,接受他(或她或他们)的祝福,等等。,但这一切都没有描述相关的心理过程,因此,我们可以说,他们是解释的方式,它解释了为什么一个苹果下降到地面,如果我们说它,因为我们释放它,而且它很重,没有机制,也没有解释或预测能力。这本书继续阐明人类行为的遗传基础,学术界、宗教界、政界和公众几乎普遍忽视和否认(见平克的优秀书《空白斯莱特》)。他的陈述(p3)认为,问宗教是否遗传是没有意义的,因为任何行为因基因和环境而发生变异的百分比都可以被研究,就像所有其他行为一样(见Pinker)。标题应该是"初步尝试解释原始宗教的某些方面",因为他根本不对待更高的意识(例如,萨托里,启蒙等),这是迄今为止最有趣的现象,也是唯一的21世纪对聪明、受过教育的人个人感兴趣的宗教的一部分。读整本书,你永远不会猜到这样的事情存在。同样,对于毒品和宗教的巨大领域。它缺乏一个理性的框架,没有提及思想观的双重体系,这种观念现在如此富有成效。因为我建议我最近的一些论文。然而,这本书有很多的兴趣,尽管日期仍然值得一读。

那些希望从现代两个系统的观点来看为人类行为建立一个全面的最新框架的人,可以查阅我的书《路德维希的哲学、心理学、Mind 和语言的逻辑结构》维特根斯坦和约翰·西尔的《第二部》(2019年)。那些对我更多的作品感兴趣的人可能会看到《会说话的猴子——一个末日星球上的哲学、心理学、科学、宗教和政治——文章和评论2006-2019年第3次(2019年)和自杀乌托邦幻想21篇世纪4日(2019年)。

The author analyses the evolution of the idea of magic reflected in the decrees of Christian Roman Emperors included in the Theodosian Code. He describes the place of the chapter De maleficis in the structure of Book IX of the Theodosian Code and analyses its constitutions. Special attention is paid to the possible sources of the norms described and to the connection between the evolution of Christianity and the tightening of anti-magic legislation.
Article is written on Russian

To the reader: Please note, I removed this paper because I cover the same material greatly expanded in my book, published February 25, 2020, titled Duchamp's Pipe: A Chess Romance between Marcel Duchamp and George Koltanowski.
Published by North Atlantic Press, Berkeley, California and Penguin Random House NY, February 25, 2020.
The book may be purchased here:
https://www.amazon.com/Duchamps-Pipe-Romance-Between-Koltanowski-ebook/dp/B07JYTP2NJ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Duchamp%27s+Pipe&qid=1588472856&s=books&sr=1-1

or here:
https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/shop/duchamps-pipe/
or here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605086/duchamps-pipe-by-celia-rabinovitch/9781623173562

Thanks for your patience, please email me with any questions you have about the book's content.

About Duchamp’s Pipe

Art, chess, and an $87,000 pipe frame an inside look at the relationship between Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp and chess Grandmaster George Koltanowski

Spanning three decades, two continents, two world wars, and the international art and chess scenes of the mid twentieth century, Duchamp’s Pipe explores the remarkable friendship between art world enfant terrible Marcel Duchamp and blindfold chess champion George Koltanowski. Artist and cultural historian Celia Rabinovitch describes each man’s rise to prominence, the chess matches that sparked their relationship, and the recently discovered pipe that Duchamp gave to Koltanowski. This tale of genius and resilience offers fresh insights into the essence of the gift in the bohemian underground. Rabinovitch invites us to discover the chess wizard and a Duchamp slightly off pedestal–and ultimately more human.

Note to readers that this article was employed by Christie's New York as the primary research for the Marcel Duchamp Pipe in its online auction catalog:
My article is cited on the Christie’s online website under the lot notes for the Marcel Duchamp Pipe, and may have been used by other writers without permission or citation.
//www.christies.com/lotfinder/Sculptures-Statues-Figures/marcel-duchamp-pipe-5993805-details.aspx?lid=1
“As Celia Rabinovitch has related in her exhaustive study on the present pipe, Duchamp and Koltanowski first met in 1923 at the Belgian Chess tournament and later again in Duchamp’s famous defeat of the chess master at the Chess Olympiad in Paris in 1929. They would come together in New York in 1942 (both had left Europe due to the outbreak of the Second World War) and founded the Greenwich Village Chess Club (see C. Rabinovitch, Duchamp a Smoking Pipe, From Marcel Duchamp to George Koltanowski, March 2015).”

Esistono buone ragioni di ordine teorico per interrogare il rapporto tra i media e la magia restituendo a quest’ultima il suo significato più proprio: obiettivo che il presente numero di «Comunicazioni Sociali» si pone a partire da approcci di tipo antropologico, filosofico e sociologico, andando idealmente ad affiancare l’alquanto episodica (ma non inesistente) letteratura sul tema.

Jesus the Magician by Morton Smith is his attempt to produce a portrait of Jesus based on the traditions among Jesus’ detractors who opposed or did not follow him. He asserts “Jesus the Son of God” is pictured in the gospels; the works that pictured “Jesus the magician” were destroyed in antiquity after Christians got control of the Roman Empire” (Smith 1978, ix). For Smith these two pictures are initially contradictory1 and both “legends”.  This is an outline and summary of his important work.

,,Selbstverwirklichung " ist keineswegs das vorherrschende Motiv von Menschen, die sich einer Sekte oder einem Kult anschließen - wohl aber die Suche nach einem verbindlichen Lebenssinn. Von der Persönlichkeit und der Lebensgeschichte hängt es ab, wer wann welchem Kult beitritt.

This paper examines the position of the Jews in tribal Yemen, with reference to their legal status and economic, social, and religious/
mystical roles in tribal society. It focuses on the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century, until the time when most of the
Jews emigrated from Yemen. The majority of Jews lived in tribal-rural areas alongside local tribesmen (less than 20% lived in СanΚāΜ
and in a number of other towns). The paper discusses the status of Jews as dhimmah (sg. dhimmī), living under tribal protection
customs, and their integration in the tribal economy. The core of the discussion elaborates two new issues: 1) Muslim attitude toward
Jewish religion and customs. Two Jewish religious principles were familiar to Yemeni Muslims: dietary laws and the observation of
the Sabbath. The paper argues that Yemeni tribesmen respected these Jewish religious values, expected the Jews to observe them,
and even used their superior position to monitor the Jews’ religious conduct; 2) the role of the Jews in providing magical services.
The discussion maintains that Jews and Muslims shared common mystical values, and that the Jews were perceived as professing
mystical-magical knowledge and capable of using it to do either good or bad. This notion had intensified the Jews’ position in the
society as the ultimate “other”. The paper concludes that while the Jews were integrated into tribal society they nevertheless remained
outsiders. The methodology for this study is based on both oral history (personal interviews) and written historical sources.

As a somewhat novel cultural medium, video games and pervasive games, constitute an exciting body of research; the form of the medium, its popularity and the different levels of interaction and artistic expression from creators and players, provide rich opportunities for cultural studies. Mainstream games, art games or playful experiences, have been instilled with spiritually significant ideas, themes, symbols and narratives. These ideas are based or inspired from esoteric traditions depicting occult themes; paganism, witchcraft, alchemy and magic just to name a few, all belonging to the domain of Esotericism and the depiction of the spiritual transformation of the self through these themes. To name just a few examples of such games: The Secret World (2012): an MMO of myth, occultism, and conspiracy theory in the modern world, The Fool’s Errand (1987): A tarot-themed puzzle adventure game by Cliff Johnson in which the player pieces together a narrative about the initiatory journey of the Fool from the tarot and Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (2002): a Lovecraftian survival horror game with a unique rune-based magic system and creative sanity effects (Howard, 2012). On the other hand, both in western and eastern esotericism, many different tools of divination such as the tarot, the ouija board and geomantical practices had a cultural journey from entertainment to esotericism, since they were first introduced as games or toys. While the topic of spirituality in games is slowly gaining interest among scholars of religion, the studies done so far has focused “on the occurrence of traditional, “mainstream” religious thematic, regarding representations of, for example, Christian symbols or parallels to Buddhist philosophies” (Wedin, 2014). Esotericism in games, however, is a topic that apart from media sensationalism and religious studies, has been relatively disregarded, despite the interest of game designers, artists, gamers’ communities and occultists’ communities in the interconnections between games and occult practices, between game culture and occulture. In this paper we will present and analyse examples of such interconnections and influences in the different perspectives of cultural game studies: “game narratives”, “game aesthetics”, “game world”, “game play” and “gaming culture” (Heidbrink et al, 2014). Studying games with the gaze not only of the religion scholar, but through the perspective of game and cultural studies, is thus crucial for understanding daily expressions of enchantment and the need for reality manipulation through new media. The study of occult themes in games potentially also offers new insights on the way esotericism, magic and spiritual transformation are perceived in contemporary society and the role they might come to play in the future.