The subject matter instantly grabbed my attention, as someone who has long held a fascination with spiritualism and the supernatural, especially from an anthropological point of view. I’ve always been in two minds about the rise of spiritualism during both world wars, questioning the motives of many mediums of that time. Brilliantly captured the wave…
Tag: review
Impossible Zoo Recommended on Reddit
The Impossible Zoo from booksuggestions If you like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Impossible Zoo may be for you. List of monsters and such from myth and legend.
Nothing was spoken of but vampires
Just found this review at http://pelicanist.blogspot.de/2013/08/the-universal-vampire.html: Another observation that caught my eye was that the start of popularising the vampire was, ironically enough, the Enlightenment. Leo Ruickbie gathers together what was, at that time, impressive testimony as to the actual existence of such creatures, from medical, legal and military sources. By way of a slight…
Ruickbie certainly knows his stuff
From The Vampirologist blog: It features another excellent article, by Leo Ruickbie. Readers may recognise him as the author of A brief guide to the supernatural (2012). A brief guide serves as a classic example to why you (ok, I) shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. I was expecting a threadbare pop-culture treatment, but it’s incredibly…
Good Ghost Guide
Magonia Review of Books: A Brief Guide to Ghost Hunting With more than 300 pages of text and more than 50 of endnotes, this book is not really a ‘brief’ guide. Combining practical assistance on preparation, equipment and investigation techniques and protocol, including the all-important health and safety advice, with a brief history of ghost…
Magonia Review of The Supernatural
Magonia Review of Books, review of Leo Ruickbie, A Brief Guide to the Supernatural: Ghosts, Vampires and the Paranormal (Constable and Robinson, 2012), dated 29 March 2012: The book is well referenced in the form of footnotes and makes a good general introduction. See the full review at http://pelicanist.blogspot.de/2012/04/shortreviews04.html
Magic, Witches and Parapsychology
Books received for review: Butler, Alison, Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) Description In the midst of increasing secularization and the birth of scientific naturalism, a curious group emerged in Victorian Britain. From 1888-1900, hundreds of men and women were initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden…
Reinventing the Renaissance Occult
Review of ‘Reinventing the Renaissance Occult in Modern and Postmodern Culture’ now available at http://jwmt.org/v2n20/reinventing.html Five hundred years ago the occult – what we think of as ‘the occult’ – was taught in university and practised by many of the foremost personalities of the age. Still it was persecuted. Dangerous. Between the Church and the…
Book Recommended on Yahoo Answers
There are several books on the history of Witchcraft: a particularly good one is “Witchcraft out of the shadows” by Leo Ruickbie. from Yahoo Answers, accessed 26/02/10.
Witchcraft: in the shadows no more
An old review, but a good one, written before I got my PhD, hence the use of ‘Mr’: Witchcraft: Out of the Shadows Leo Ruickbie (Hale) Mr Ruickbie has written a tight overview of the history and current trends (including some interesting statistical analysis) in Witchcraft. Unlike some books on the subject, there is no…
On the Shelf Review – Ruickbie’s Faustus: The Life and Times of a Renaissance Magician
I don’t know what I pay you guys for, because nobody mentioned to me that the most thorough treatment of the Renaissance magus Faust, Leo Ruickbie’s Faustus, had just appeared. Nevertheless, you’re all forgiven, and I’ll review it for you. Writing a biography of Jorg Faust is an extremely daunting task. […] This is the…