Magick Matters

“Paper in My Shoe: Name Papers, Petition Papers, and Prayer Papers in Hoodoo, Rootwork, and Conjure” by Catherine Yronwode

"Learn how to craft spiritual name-paper links to distant people, employ written commands to get your way in life, use printed prayers and paper currency in candle spells, and carry prepared papers on your person for mastery and control. Paper in My Shoe is a practical manual that will teach you the art of written magic in the African American traditions of Hoodoo and Rootwork."...>>

“Reimagining Death: Stories and Practical Wisdom for Home Funerals and Green Burials” by Lucinda Herring

"Natural, legal, and innovative after-death care options are transforming the paradigm of the existing funeral industry, helping families and communities recover their instinctive capacity to care for a loved one after death and do so in creative and healing ways. Reimagining Death offers stories and guidance for home funeral vigils, advance after-death care directives, green burials, and conscious dying. When we bring art and beauty, meaningful ritual, and joy to ease our loss and sorrow, we are greening the gateway of death and returning home to ourselves, to the wisdom of our bodies, and to the earth."...>>

“The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread” by Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall

" Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not? The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by “fake news,” “alternative facts,” and disputes over the validity of...>>

“The Subject’s Matter: Self-Consciousness and the Body” edited by Frederique de Vignemont and Adrian J.T. Alsmith

"An interdisciplinary and comprehensive treatment of bodily self-consciousness, considering representation of the body, the sense of bodily ownership, and representation of the self. The body may be the object we know the best. It is the only object from which we constantly receive a flow of information through sight and touch; and it is the only object we can experience from the inside, through our proprioceptive, vestibular, and visceral senses. Yet there have been very few books that have attempted to consolidate our understanding of the body as it figures in our experience and self-awareness. The study of the body in such psychological disciplines as cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, and neuropsychology has advanced dramatically,...>>

“Islam, Christianity and the Realms of the Miraculous: A Comparative Exploration” by Ian Richard Netton

"This new and dynamic approach to the perennially fascinating subject of miracles adopts a strictly anthropological and phenomenological approach. Allowing the miracles to speak for themselves, Ian Richard Netton examines these phenomena in the Islamic and Christian traditions through the lens of narration. What are the stories of the miracles? What are the contexts which gave rise to these miracles and allowed them to garner belief and flourish? Perspectives covered include the views of believers and non-believers alike in these phenomena. Similarities and differences in content and approach are explored with a primary focus on the five main anthropological topoi of food, water, blood, wood and stone, and cosmology. A range of intertextual elements in...>>