Witchcraft & Occult

Halloween"s origins date back more than 2,000 years. On what we consider November 1, Europe"s Celtic peoples celebrated their New Year"s Day, called Samhain (SAH-win). The night before Samhain—what we know as Halloween—spirits were thought to walk the Earth as they traveled to the afterlife. Fairies, demons, and other creatures were also said to be abroad. Celtic Costumes: In addition to sacrificing animals to the gods and gathering around bonfires, Celts often wore costumes—probably animal skins—to confusespirits, perhaps to avoid being possessed, according to the American Folklife Center at the U.S.

Library of Congress. By wearing masks or blackening their faces, Celts are also thought to have impersonated dead ancestors. Young men may have dressed as women and vice versa, marking a temporary breakdown of normal social divisions. In an early form of trick-or-treating, Celts costumed as spirits are believed to have gone from house to house engaging in silly acts in exchange for food and drink—a practice inspired perhaps by an earlier custom of leaving food and drink outdoors as offerings to supernatural beings. ChristianInfluence: Samhain was later transformed as Christian leaders co-opted pagan holidays. In the seventh century Pope Boniface IV decreed November 1 All Saints" Day, or All Hallows" Day. The night before Samhain continued to be observed with bonfires, costumes, and parades, though under a new name: All Hallows" Eve—later "Halloween."

View: Full Article | Source: National Geographic

It was among the unlikeliest literary friendships of the 20th century. On the one hand, Fernando Pessoa, the painfully shy Portuguese poet, master of pseudonyms and melancholy, whose literary genius went all but unrecognised in his lifetime. On the other, Aleister Crowley, the flamboyant, self-publicising British mystic and occultist who earned the title of 'the wickedest man in the world'.Yet for several years these two very different men kept up an extensive correspondence that is now at the centre of a potentially explosive literary controversy. The Portuguese government is deciding whether to step in to prevent an auction of more than 2,000 pages of documentskept by Pessoa, an official source in Lisbon confirmed.

The documents include 800 pages of letters and other papers relating to Pessoa's friendship with Crowley.This singular literary trove is due to go under the hammer at a photographic gallery and auction house in Lisbon known as P4. Luis Trindade, the founder and director, told the Agencia Lusa news agency: 'There is still not an exact date.' But, he said, he was aiming to sell the documents in October. 'We'd like to stage the auction this year because it is a special date - the 120th anniversary of Fernando Pessoa's birth,' said Trindade. Pessoa is a celebrated figure in the history of Portuguese literature, a poet who perhaps embodied better than any other writer a national gift for lyrical diffidence, reserve and nostalgia. The papers have been released for sale by Pessoa' s heirs -his niece, Manuela Nogueira, and his nephew, Miguel Roza. The writer's surviving relatives have stressed copies will be made. Roza, himself the author of a book in Portuguese on the links between his uncle and Crowley, said: 'Researchers suggested to us that everything should be digitalised and put in the Casa Fernando Pessoa [a municipally owned cultural centre founded in the writer' s honour].' He said that would ensure 'all the documents will be available, even if the originals are sold'. The Casa Fernando Pessoa already contains about 1,200 of the author's manuscripts. But the bulk of his papers are in Portugal's national library, the Biblioteca Nacional. Pessoa' s relatives are insisting that the documents they still hold - about 10 per cent of the total - should be sold off in lots. The financial incentive is immense. Jerónimo Pizarro,the ......

When you think about witches you conjure up the image of crooked noses, pointy hats, an evil cackle and a black cat. But blonde Stacey Demarco, who “came out of the broom closet” in her early 20s, couldn’t be further from the stereotype. Granted, she may have two cats but she insists they are black and white and promises she has never used a broomstick for getting around town.  “When you think of witches, people think of mind control, Satanism, black cats, I can give you the list,” she said over the phone from Sydney. “Ithink that’s changing a lot, people on the witches path is growing.

We have doctors, lawyers; you name it we’ve got it. We’ve had a bad PR day for the last 3000 years, you know, we’ve been burnt, we’ve been tortured, we’ve been laughed at. I’ve had my wheelie bins burnt. I’ve been ordered out of cafes.  “You have a coffee in the same place every day then they find out you are a witch and say I’m no longer welcome here.” Her mother also had a hard time dealing with the revelation. She said, “oh my god it’s a cult” — but now regularly rang her on a full moon to see what she was up to. Because of her psychic ability Demarco was asked to join the judging panel for the new Channel 7 show The One, which pitsAustralia’s most gifted psychics against each other, along with sceptic Richard Saunders.   She says she was pleasantly surprised when asked by producers to join the show because she had been used in program pitches that made psychics look bad.   “The premise of this show is to make up your own mind,” she said.   “We have some really, really tough parameters. They have to get up there and perform under immense pressure. They are put in a very unreal situation, with time limits, a live audience. So you are seeing a wide variety of people with a wide variety of skills. So they either crash and burn or succeed beautifully in front of your eyes. It’s compelling.”   The yin to Demarco’s yang in The Oneis......

All of a sudden, late on a moonlit June night, the assault began. Flying rocks - hundreds of them. Some the size of apples; some weighing as much as 8 pounds; others blazing hot, as if retrieved from a fire. During the four-hour onslaught, launched by invisible attackers, stones pummeled the tavern walls, coming in like a horizontal rain. They plummeted down the chimney. They seemed to clatter out of nowhere on the ceiling. They shattered windows.The attack ceased at dawn, but others spontaneously erupted - always rocks, always thrown by unseen hands - over the summer of 1682 on Great Island, a boxy, 512-acre spot of land nowknown as New Castle, N.H. As far as witchcraft cases go, this siege is nowhere near the most notorious - nothing seems to be able to rival the stamina of the Salem Witch Trials - and in fact, it's become little more than a historical footnote.Still, to Salem State College history professor Emerson Baker, who has written a book on the incident, it is a perfect petri dish from which to analyze witchcraft hysteria in early New England. "I did something no one in Salem has done before: I wrote a book about witchcraft that isn't about Salem," 49-year-old Baker said, sitting on a patio behind his 200-year-old white colonial in York, Maine.

"Witchcraft is a timeless crime." But it is also, in many cases, fueled by much more than fears of spirits or the wrath of Lucifer. As Bakerexplains in his 207-page tome, "The Devil of Great Island," although people firmly believed in witchcraft, incidents linked to it were most often the result of a swirl of politics, religion, and property disputes. For starters, let us describe the "victim," 67-year-old George Walton. He was: A Quaker - a group that always raised suspicion because, although they worshiped God, they didn't follow strict Puritan beliefs. A royalist - he supported England, bristling other colonists. A rowdy tavern owner - drunken, boisterous sailors from all over the world populated his salty establishment. Most of all, a contentious man. He was "a graspy, greedy neighbor" involved in all kinds of land quibbles, explained Baker. With allthese affronts,&q......