Anglo-Saxon Leechcraft PDF Download

Author: Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Anglo-Saxons
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Author: Stephen Pollington
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Botany
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
A comprehensive and detailed examination of every aspect of the early English approach to illness and healing, including a full list of the plants used and the properties they contain. Other themes include witchcraft, magic and paganism and appendices present healing theories, amulets, causes of disease, charms, dreams, omens and tree-lore. Three key Old English texts are reproduced in full, accompanied by new translations: Bald's Third Leechbook, the Lacnunga Manuscript, and 'The Old English Herbarium' Manuscript 5. This is a fascinating work of reference, packed full of information and interesting details.

Author: Mindy MacLeod
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843832058
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
A fresh examination of one of the most contentious issues in runic scholarship - magical or not? The runic alphabet, in use for well over a thousand years, was employed by various Germanic groups in a variety of ways, including, inevitably, for superstitious and magical rites. Formulaic runic words were inscribed onto small items that could be carried for good luck; runic charms were carved on metal or wooden amulets to ensure peace or prosperity. There are invocations and allusions to pagan and Christian gods and heroes, to spirits of disease, and even to potential lovers. Few such texts are completely unique to Germanic society, and in fact, most of the runic amulets considered in this book show wide-ranging parallels from a variety of European cultures. The question ofwhether runes were magical or not has divided scholarship in the area. Early criticism embraced fantastic notions of runic magic - leading not just to a healthy scepticism, but in some cases to a complete denial of any magical element whatsoever in the runic inscriptions. This book seeks to re-evaulate the whole question of runic sorcery, attested to not only in the medieval Norse literature dealing with runes but primarily in the fascinating magical texts of the runic inscriptions themselves. Dr MINDY MCLEOD teaches in the Department of Linguistics, Deakin University, Melbourne; Dr BERNARD MEES teaches in the Department of History at the University of Melbourne.

Author: Christina Stapley
Publisher: Aeon Books
ISBN: 180152095X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
A comprehensive guide detailing the story of healing with herbs from pre-history to modern times. Drawing on her decades of experience as an established herbalist and historian, Christina Stapley presents an encyclopaedic and accessible guide to the theory and practice of Western herbal medicine throughout history. Spanning an impressive timeline of two thousand years, A History of Plant Medicine is a fundamental textbook for students and practitioners of herbal medicine to enhance their study and practice, as well as an enjoyable narrative for anyone interested in this bountiful and fascinating subject. Using a wealth of historical research, Stapley invites readers on a journey from the beginnings of botany, through to the development of Greek and Celtic medicine, including Roman medicine and the Roman settlement of Britain. It moves on to explore Anglo-Saxon leechbooks, Arabic Medicine, Norman influenced physicians and surgeons and pharmacy in the Medieval Period. It also examines the physic garden in Britain, Culpeper and Astrology, concluding with changes and developments to herbal medicine in the modern day. As well as offering a detailed chronology of herbalism in the Western world, A History of Plant Medicine provides practical advice and recipes which can be implemented in the daily practice of the modern herbalist. Stapley creates tangible threads through time, focusing on the most used herbs at different periods, and following them over the centuries. Special emphasis is put upon seeking out effective recipes and practices abandoned in favour of new ideas and foreign herbs, and each is presented clearly and accessibly throughout. A History of Plant Medicine also illuminates the work of women physicians across the ages, whose work has often been obscured or forgotten. Ultimately, A History of Plant Medicine invites herbalists (both new and old), historians, or interested lay people, to re-evaluate their relationship with herbal medicine, in understanding how different herbs are perceived in the light of knowledge and beliefs at particular times, in order to aid a greater understanding of the Western herbal tradition.

Author: J. Roper
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230583539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Bringing together many of today's key scholars of verbal charming, these essays cover vernacular magical texts and practice from Malaysia to Madagascar, and from England to Estonia. As the most comprehensive collection of research on charms, charmers and charming available in the English language, it forms an essential reader on the topic.

Author: Matthew Skelton
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0375895329
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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London, 1783. Orphan Cirrus Flux is being watched. Merciless villains are conniving to steal the world’s most divine power—The Breath of God—which they believe Cirrus has inherited. Now he faces a perilous journey through the dirty backstreets of the city as a sinister mesmerist, a tiny man with an all-seeing eye, and a skull-collecting scoundrel pursue him. Cirrus must escape them, but he’ll need to trust some unlikely allies if he hopes to thwart his foes . . . and survive a grand and terrifying showdown.

Author: Oswald Cockayne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Author: J. Roper
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230524311
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
Historical records of charms, the verbal element of vernacular magic, date back at least as far as the late middle ages, and charming has continued to be practiced until recently in most parts of Europe. And yet, the topic has received only scattered scholarly attention to date. By bringing together many of the leading authorities on charms and charming from Europe and North America, this book aims to rectify this neglect, and by presenting discussions covering a variety of periods and of locations - from Finland to France, and from Hungary to England - it forms an essential reader on the topic.

Author: Asa Simon Mittman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135501041
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This study centers on issues of marginality and monstrosity in medieval England. In the middle ages, geography was viewed as divinely ordered, so Britain's location at the periphery of the inhabitable world caused anxiety among its inhabitants. Far from the world's holy center, the geographic margins were considered monstrous. Medieval geography, for centuries scorned as crude, is now the subject of several careful studies. Monsters have likewise been the subject of recent attention in the growing field of monster studies, though few works situate these creatures firmly in their specific historical contexts. This book sits at the crossroads of these two discourses (geography and monstrosity), treated separately in the established scholarship but inseparable in the minds of medieval authors and artists.

Author: W.H.R. Rivers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134524544
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
One of the most fascinating men of his generation, W.H.R. Rivers was a British doctor and psychiatrist as well as a leading ethnologist. Immortalized as the hero of Pat Barker's award-winning Regeneration trilogy, Rivers was the clinician who, in the First World War, cared for the poet Siegfried Sassoon and other infantry officers injured on the western front. His researches into the borders of psychiatry, medicine and religion made him a prominent member of the British intelligentsia of the time, a friend of H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell. Part of his appeal lay in an extraordinary intellect, mixed with a very real interest in his fellow man. Medicine, Magic and Religion is a prime example of this. A social institution, it is one of Rivers' finest works. In it, Rivers introduced the then revolutionary idea that indigenous practices are indeed rational, when viewed in terms of religious beliefs.