23.10.2021

“A Salem Witch: The Trial, Execution, and Exoneration of Rebecca Nurse” by Daniel A. Gagnon

Magick Matters

"In the winter of 1692 something terrible and frightening began in Salem Village. It started with several villagers having strange fits, screaming, and unnaturally contorting themselves, and ended with almost two hundred people in jail, and at least twenty-five dead. Witchcraft accusations--claims that some inhabitants had forsaken God to become servants of the Devil--spread from Salem Village across Massachusetts, ensnaring innocent people from all strata of society under a burden of assumed guilt. One of the most significant accusations, and most unlikely, was against a seventy-one-year-old grandmother, Rebecca Nurse. The accusations against Nurse, a well-respected member in the community, seemed unbelievable. Unflinchingly, this ailing elderly woman insisted on her innocence and refused to falsely confess....>>

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22.10.2021

“Positive Magic: A Toolkit for the Modern Witch” by Marion Weinstein (2020 edition)

Magick Matters

"Here is a new edition of one of the best-loved introductions to magic that is still used in metaphysical classes around the world. The author makes ancient magic techniques accessible, offering them as practical tools for daily life. Addressing the needs of today’s readers—beginners and adepts alike—the author provides well-researched historical background on astrology, witchcraft, tarot, and the I Ching as well as channeling, spirit contact, and the connections between quantum physics and traditional magic."...>>

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22.10.2021

“The Engineering of Coincidence: a scientific explanation of magic” by Robert Ramsay

Magick Matters

"Fireballs. Wands. Turning people into frogs. Everyone knows that wizards like Harry Potter are fictional. But is there real magic in the world? The psychiatrist Carl Jung was obsessed with coincidences that seemed too incredible to be truly coincidental. He was convinced that they revealed a deeper level of reality, and called this revelation ‘synchronicity’. Years of rigorous scientific experiments have shown that people are capable of reading each other’s minds, influencing random number generators, and even seeing into the future. Millions of self-help books are sold every year on the premise that you can change your life by the power of thought. These forms of...>>

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22.10.2021

“God 4.0: On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called God” by Robert Ornstein

Magick Matters

"A stunning unification of science and tradition for a revolutionary new concept of spirituality to address the challenges of the modern world, the book explores how our “everyday” mind works as a device for selecting just a few parts of the outside reality that are important for our survival. We don’t experience the world as it is, but as a virtual reality—a small, limited system which evolved to keep us safe and ensure our survival. This system, though essential for getting us safely across a busy street, is insufficient for understanding and solving the challenges of the modern world. But we are also endowed with a quiescent “second network” of cognition which, when activated, can...>>

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22.10.2021

“Cyberpunk Culture and Psychology: Seeing through the Mirrorshades” by Anna McFarlane

Magick Matters

"This book traces developments in cyberpunk culture through a close engagement with the novels of the ‘godfather of cyberpunk’, William Gibson. Connecting his relational model of ‘gestalt’ psychology and imagery with that of the posthuman networked identities found in cyberpunk, the author draws out relations with key cultural moments of the last 40 years: postmodernism, posthumanism, 9/11, and the Anthropocene. By identifying cyberpunk ways of seeing with cyberpunk ways of being, the author shows how a visual style is crucial to cyberpunk on a philosophical level, as well as on an aesthetic level. Tracing a trajectory over Gibson’s work that brings him from an emphasis on the visual that elevates the human over posthuman entities...>>

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