Recommended Reading List 1

I've posted below a short list of reading materials for those of you who are interested in knowing more about the different books I read and often reference during Full Moon Circle meetings. As a Traditional Witch I tend to stray away from what most consider to be standard books on Witchcraft and the occult, I prefer to read the harder to find and lessor known books because they are the ones which contain the real dark wisdom of the ages. -Merlin )0(

Promethean Flame is an excellent study into particular developments of magickal practice and esoteric spirituality. With determination, the author blends well-researched information about key figures known for their involvement in free-thinking magickal spirituality, and examines occult orders from ancient times to modernity, even illuminating significant concepts by linking historical details to modern cinema! From John Dee to Isaac Newton; from the Golden Dawn to the Illuminati; from Zeus to Baphomet, Promethean Flame documents a wide array of history pertinent to anyone immersing themselves in the magickal arts, be they a Hermeticist, Ceremonial Magician, Witch, or esotericist.

~ Raven Digitalis, Author: Goth Craft: The Magickal Side of Dark Culture (Llewellyn, 2007)

"This basic study by a renowned folklorist includes eye-opening information on your doctors, charms, spells, witches, ghosts, weather magic, crops and livestock, courtship and marriage, pregnancy and childbirth, animals and plants, death and burial, household superstitions, and much more". -Editorial Review: Amazon.com

From Library Journal: "Remote viewing" is the ability to perceive psychically and describe unknown objects, people, places, or events. McMoneagle (Mind Trek, The Ultimate Time Machine), a former U.S. Army officer who worked for the Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), was recruited for the top-secret remote-viewing program known as STARGATE. Other books on this subject (e.g., Jim Schnabel's Remote Viewers, Dell, 1997; David Morehouse's Psychic Warrior, St. Martin's, 1996) are more biographical; McMoneagle instead offers basic definitions, examples, and qualifications that would be needed by the potential remote viewer. The second half of the book includes detailed training methods, technical applications, and protocols omitted in his previous titles. Because there is a lot of new information here, this is recommended for larger public and academic libraries. -Kimberly A. Bateman, Broward Cty. Lib., Deerfield Beach, FL Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly: The "Lucifer Principle" is freelance journalist Bloom's theory that evil-which manifests in violence, destructiveness and war-is woven into our biological fabric. A corollary is that evil is a by-product of nature's strategy to move the world to greater heights of organization and power as national or religious groups follow ideologies that trigger lofty ideals as well as base cruelty. In an ambitious, often provocative study, Bloom applies the ideas of sociobiology, ethology, and the "killer ape" school of anthropology to the broad canvas of history, with examples ranging from Oliver Cromwell's reputed pleasure in killing and raping to Mao Tse-tung's bloody Cultural Revolution, India's caste system and Islamic fundamentalist expansion. Bloom says Americans suffer "perceptual shutdown" that blinds them to the United States' downward slide in the pecking order of nations. His use of concepts like pecking order, memes (self-replicating clusters of ideas), the "neural net" or group mind of the social "superorganism" seem more like metaphors than explanatory tools. -Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book goes far beyond the confines of pop dream psychology, establishing a scientifically researched framework for using lucid dreaming--that is, consciously influencing the outcome of your dreams. Based on Dr. Stephen LaBerge's extensive laboratory work at Stanford University mapping mind/body relationships during the dream state, as well as the teachings of Tibetan dream yogis and the work of other scientists, including German psycholgist Paul Tholey, this practical workbook will show you how to use your dreams to: Solve problems; Gain greater confidence; improve creativity, and more. -From the Publisher

Rodman, Julius Scammon. The Kahuna Sorcerers of Hawaii, Past and Present. New York: Exposition-Banner, 1979

A detailed study of the kahunas' rigorous training and miraculous healing arts and their role in Hawaiian religion. The book contains a glossary of kahuna terminology, compiled by Hawaiian scholar Leinani Melville Jones. These topics will be used to explore the religious-political and health impacts of kahuna belief systems.

Author Corvis Nocturnum brings you an unprecedented collection of Satanists, vampires, modern primitives, dark pagans, and gothic artists, all speaking to you in their own words. These are people who have taken something most others find frightening or destructive, and woven it into amazing acts of creativity and spiritual vision. Corvis himself is a dark artist and visionary, and so it is with the eye of a kindred spirit that he has sought these people out to share their stories with you.

An enduring classic since its publication in 1970, Mastering Witchcraft is one of the best how-to manuals for those wishing to practice traditional European Witchcraft as a craft rather than a New Age religion. Starting from first principles, Huson instructs the novice step by step in the arts of circle casting, blessing and banning, the uses of amulets and talismans, philters, divination, necromancy, waxen images, knots, fascination, conjuration, magical familiars, spells to arouse passion or lust, attain vengeance, and of course, counter-spells to exorcize and annul the malice of others. "A genuine vade mecum."-The Catholic Herald.

World of the Paranormal: The Next Frontier by Lawrence LeShaun. LeShaun argues that parapsychology has failed to consider the real insights offered by 20th-century science into the nature of reality. He demonstrates with elegance that humans no longer live in a single-track universe, but in a multi-track one. What is impossible and paranormal on one track is perfectly possible on another. This book presents new ways of studying telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.

Holding up such anomalies as ESP, psychokinesis, prayer, near-death experiences, and reincarnation under the cool light of scientific scrutiny can be a daunting task. Dean Radin, director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, rises to the challenge in the pioneering and exhaustively researched The Conscious Universe. Fans of The X-Files will need no further convincing, but for the remaining skeptics, this easy-to-read mix of history, scientific evidence, and proclamations ("When modern science began about three hundred years ago, one of the consequences of separating mind and matter was that science slowly lost its mind.") will authenticate the existence of psychic phenomena.

Radin creates two categories: the perceiving of objects or events beyond our ordinary sense capabilities and the triggering or influencing of action through mental powers. Radin aims to present simply and clearly the basic elements from science, psychology, and physics that prove the existence psychic phenomena. Given the tacit acceptance of psychic phenomena as "real," why do both government and mainstream science repudiate the claims and the evidence, yet continue to exploit them?

The Conscious Universe challenges our most basic assumptions about reality, those that exist in both the upper echelons of science and in the basic daily interactions. It�s a mind-bending exploration of how and what we see.

An intelligent fair and logical examination of the modern UFO phenomenon that countless readers have been looking for. If you want to know the truth behind the aliens who walk among us this is the book you should add to your library.

Alien Dawn is the most comprehensive bird's eye view of the subject ever undertaken, and the conclusions Wilson draws are of overwhelming significance to us all. Here Wilson describes what he found as he set out to piece together this vast, complex jigsaw puzzle, whose components include poltergeists, lake monsters, ancient folklore, time slips, out-of-body experiences, mystical awareness and psychic travel to other worlds, as well as allegations of worldwide government cover-ups.

This book is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the work of Carl Gustav Jung. This book is illustrated throughout with revealing images and will leave the reader with a clear understanding of what Carl Jung's research was all about. This is the first and only work in which the world-famous Swiss psychologist explains to the layperson his enormously influential theory of symbolism as revealed in dreams.

On December 26, 1985, at a secluded cabin in upstate New York, Whitley Strieber went siding with his wife and son, ate Christmas dinner leftovers, and went to bed early. Six hours later, he found himself suddenly awake...and forever changed. Thus begins the most astonishing true-life odyssey ever recorded -- one man's riveting account of his extraordinary experiences with visitors from"elsewhere"... how they found him, where they took him, what they did to him and why. Believe it. Or don't believe it. But read it -- for this gripping story will move you like no other... will fascinate you, terrify you, and alter the way you experience your world.

Hexes, curses and other unsavory notions. As magical practitioners, our minds don't usually even wander in that direction, for we believe that to do so is to allow negativity to invade our lives. And that's a place we simply don't want to go. There comes a time, however, when we've exhausted all the other possibilities. We've tried being nice. We've tried releasing the mess and the folks involved. We've even tried removing ourselves from the situation. But regardless of what we do, none of it seems to matter. The problem is still there, and we're in exactly in the same place we started. Unless we make a decision.And that's what Utterly Wicked is truly all about. Yes, it's about making the decision to stand tough, be strong, and do something more about our circumstances than simply piss and moan. It's about taking definitive action to defend ourselves. But more than that, it's about owning that action and taking responsibility for it. If you're ready to do that, then Utterly Wicked is definitely the book for you! Jam-packed with more than a hundred spells, rituals, incantations, hexes and curses, is the quintessential primer for learning all those magical tricks that no one wants to talk about. You'll learn the proper way to enter a cemetery, how to collect and use graveyard dirt, and from which sites it should be gathered. You'll explore the little known secrets of the 11" fashion doll and find out why it's become such a valuable magical tool. Then it's off to the kitchen to whip up hot foot powder, four thieves vinegar, goofer dust, and other magical ammunition designed specifically to obliterate your toughest problems. But that's not all. You'll also discover how to protect yourself, your family and your home from ever being bothered with this sort of crap again. And if that's not something to smile about, I don't know what is!

Zecharia Sitchen's The 12th Planet is the starting point on a quest that spans six books and 20 years worth of ancient aliens, genetic manipulation, and scrutiny of linguistic minutiae. If we trust Sitchen's translation abilities, we must be prepared for the imminent return of an alien race who created us some 300,0x00 years ago. The 12th Planet is perhaps the best written of Sitchin's Earth Chronicles series; full of example after example of ancient Sumerian passages, astronomical observations, archaeological finds, and technological coincidences supporting his theories. The price we pay for all this evidence is a bit of a dry read at times, but the ideas Sitchin proposes are more than scintillating enough to make up for the overtly scholastic tone of his text. --Brian Patterson

Over the years, startling evidence has been uncovered, challenging established notions of the origins of life on Earth�evidence that suggests the existence of an advanced group of extraterrestrials who once inhabited our world. The first book of the revolutionary Earth Chronicles series offers indisputable documentary evidence of the existence of the mysterious planet Nibiru and tells why its astronauts came to Earth eons ago to fashion mankind in their image. The product of more than thirty years of meticulous research, The 12th Planet treats as fact, not myth, the tales of Creation, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, and the Nefilim who married the daughters of man. By weaving together the biblical narrative with Sumerian and Babylonian clay-tablet texts, it challenges the established notions of the origins of Earth and mankind, and offers a compelling alternative history and prehistory of both.

In this small masterpiece, the great French thinker Alain de Benoist claims that only the pagan deities of ancient Europe offer a spiritual recourse to the present religious malaise. The guilt, the fear, the narrow petty-bourgeois obsession with well-being, and the self-loathing love of the Other that has left Western man defenseless before the destructive behaviors of our nihilist age derive from the alien belief system that Christianity introduced to the West. They are not part of the pagan spirit that lives still in the Rig Veda, the Iliad, or the Edda. Benoist helps us rediscover these ancient wellsprings and the fonts from which future greatnesses may again flow. But let the reader be warned, his On Being a Pagan proposes no folkloric or New Age "return to the past," but rather a Nietzschean recurrence in which the future bears all the promise of our distant origins�and thus of another great beginning. �Michael O�Meara, author of New Culture, New Right (First Books, 2004)

The Intention Experiment is revolutionary, it is a groundbreaking exploration of the science of intention. Drawing on the findings of leading scientists from around the world, The Intention Experiment demonstrates that thought is a thing that affects other things. It is also the first book to invite you, the reader, to take an active part in its original research.

Using cutting-edge research conducted at Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and many other prestigious universities and laboratories, The Intention Experiment reveals that the universe is connected by a vast quantum energy field. Thought generates its own palpable energy, which you can use to improve your life and, when harnessed together with an interconnected group, to change the world.

In The Intention Experiment, internationally bestselling author Lynne McTaggart takes you on a gripping, mind-blowing journey to the furthest reaches of consciousness. As she narrates the exciting developments in the science of intention, she also profiles the colorful scientists and renowned pioneers who study the effects of focused group intention on scientifically quantifiable targets -- animal, plant, and human.

McTaggart offers a practical program to get in touch with your own thoughts, to increase the activity and strength of your intentions, and to begin achieving real change in your life. You are then invited to participate in an unprecedented experiment: Using The Intention Experiment website to coordinate your involvement and track results, you and other participants around the world will focus your power of intention on specific targets, giving you the opportunity to become a part of scientific history. A new Afterword by the author recounts the successes of the several Intention Experiments so far.

The Intention Experiment forces you to rethink what it is to be human. It proves that we're connected to everyone and everything -- and that discovery demands that we pay better attention to our thoughts, intentions, and actions. Here's how you can.

Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch�s Mouth, inspired by the British Gerald Gardner�s Witchcraft Today, was the first book to be published on popular American witchcraft and remains the classic survey of white and black magic. Newly revised and updated for twenty-first-century readers, the author�an ordained but marvelously fallen exorcist�tells all about the evil eye, the queer eye, women and witch trials, the Old Religion, magic Christianity, Satanism, and New Age self-help. Jack Fritscher sifts through legends of sorcery and the twisted history of witchcraft, including the casting of spells and incantations, with a focus on the growing role of witchcraft in popular culture and its mainstream commercialization through popular music, Broadway, Hollywood, and politics. As seriously historical as it is fun to read, there is no other book like it.

If you had the power within your reach to insure your own immortality, would you risk all to grasp it? Think about it. No longer would you plead for the mercy of others. No longer would you bow to invisible masters. No longer would you struggle for table scraps. You could become master of your own destiny. You become as God.

Drawing on the findings of science, religion, sociology, psychology, philosophy, mythology, history, ancient texts, and metaphysics, The Dark Arts of Immortality: Transformation through War, Sex, & Magic explains how to harness and augment the energy of our innate drives. Through personal combat, sexual fantasy, and mystic rituals the death drive (mortido), sex drive (libido), and growth drive (physis) can provide doorways to supra-consciousness. These core altered states of being (fury, ecstasy, and exaltation) grant preternatural physical, mental, and spiritual abilities. The synthesis of these attributes will elevate personal power in this world and allow one to manifest a divine Being in the afterlife.

One might expect The Satanic Bible at least to offer a few prancing demons or a virgin sacrifice, but if you hopped this train expecting a tour of the house of horrors, you're on the wrong ride. Far from a manual for conquering the realms of earth, air, fire, and water, The Satanic Bible is Anton LaVey's manifesto of a new religion separate from the "traditional" Judeo-Christian definitions of Satanism. While LaVey rails against the deceit of the Christian church and white magicians, he busily weaves his own deceptions.

The Satanic Bible claims the heritage of a horde of evil deities--Bile', Dagon, Moloch, and Yao Tzin to name a few--but these ancient gods have no coherent connection between each other or to Satanism, except that all have been categorized by Christianity as "evil." Calling on these ancient names like a magician shouting, "Abracadabra," LaVey attempts to shatter the classical depiction of Satanism as a cult of black mass and child sacrifice. As the smoke clears, he leads us through a surprisingly logical argument in favor of a life focused on self-indulgence. The Satanic Bible is less bible and more philosophy (with a few rituals thrown in to keep us entertained), but this philosophy is the backbone of a religion that, until LaVey entered the scene, was merely a myth of the Christian church. It took LaVey, and The Satanic Bible, to turn this myth into a legitimate public religion. --Brian Patterson

All of these books and more can be purchased at Amazon.com

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