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pseudoscience --- superstition --- paranoia --- irrationality

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The Assyro-Babylonian omen series Enūma Anu Enlil , written on seventy cuneiform tablets, bears witness to the early understanding of the mutual interactions of heaven and earth on both the physical and the religious levels. To facilitate accessibility, technical and linguistic commentaries as well as an excerpt series were compiled by the scholars of old. This ancient knowledge, which was still largely characterized by mythological concepts, was never completely abandoned, not even when the ‘calculating’ astronomy became prevalent in the first millennium B.C. The series deals in four parts with the moon, the sun, weather phenomena, and fixed stars and planets. This book offers an edition of the texts of the second half of the weather section with the accompanying material.

Akkadian language --- Omens --- Portents --- Prodigies (Omens) --- Signs (Omens) --- Superstition --- Signs and symbols

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Superstitions are commonplace in the modern world. Mostly, however, they evoke innocuous images of people reading their horoscopes or avoiding black cats. Certain religious practices might also come to mind-praying to St. Christopher or lighting candles for the dead. Benign as they might seem today, such practices were not always perceived that way. In medieval Europe superstitions were considered serious offenses, violations of essential precepts of Christian doctrine or immutable natural laws. But how and why did this come to be? In Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, Michael D. Bailey explores the thorny concept of superstition as it was understood and debated in the Middle Ages.Bailey begins by tracing Christian thinking about superstition from the patristic period through the early and high Middle Ages. He then turns to the later Middle Ages, a period that witnessed an outpouring of writings devoted to superstition-tracts and treatises with titles such as De superstitionibus and Contra vitia superstitionum. Most were written by theologians and other academics based in Europe's universities and courts, men who were increasingly anxious about the proliferation of suspect beliefs and practices, from elite ritual magic to common healing charms, from astrological divination to the observance of signs and omens. As Bailey shows, however, authorities were far more sophisticated in their reasoning than one might suspect, using accusations of superstition in a calculated way to control the boundaries of legitimate religion and acceptable science. This in turn would lay the conceptual groundwork for future discussions of religion, science, and magic in the early modern world. Indeed, by revealing the extent to which early modern thinkers took up old questions about the operation of natural properties and forces using the vocabulary of science rather than of belief, Bailey exposes the powerful but in many ways false dichotomy between the "superstitious" Middle Ages and "rational" European modernity.

Civilization, Medieval. --- Superstition --- Civilization, Medieval --- Medieval civilization --- Middle Ages --- Civilization --- Chivalry --- Renaissance --- Folk beliefs --- Traditions --- Folklore --- Religion --- Religious aspects --- Catholic Church --- History. --- History --- Religious aspects&delete& --- Catholic Church&delete& --- Superstitions --- Civilisation médiévale --- Histoire --- Aspect religieux --- Eglise catholique --- Superstition - Europe - History. --- Superstition - Religious aspects - Catholic Church - History.

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A classic study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind, and the progress through magic and religion to scientific thought, The Golden Bough has a unique status in modern anthropology and literature. First published in 1890, The Golden Bough was eventually issued in a twelve-volume edition (1906-15) which was abridged in 1922 by the author and his wife. That abridgement has never been reconsidered for a modern audience. In it some of the more controversial passages were dropped, including Frazer's daring speculations on the Crucifixion of Christ. For the first time this one-volume edition r

Mythology --- Religion --- Magic --- Superstition --- Philosophy & Religion --- Mythology, Comparative --- Folk beliefs --- Traditions --- Folklore --- Magick --- Necromancy --- Sorcery --- Spells --- Occultism --- Religion, Primitive --- Atheism --- Irreligion --- Religions --- Theology --- Myths --- Legends --- Gods --- Myth

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"A collection of essays on various aspects of the position of magic in the modern world. Essays explore the ways in which modernity has been defined in explicit opposition to magic and superstition, and the ways in which modern proponents of magic have worked to legitimate their practices"--Provided by publisher.

Magic. --- Magic --- Magick --- Necromancy --- Sorcery --- Spells --- Occultism --- History. --- Esoteric sciences --- History of civilization --- Wiccan. --- disenchantment. --- legitimization. --- modernity. --- supernatural. --- superstition. --- twentieth century. --- witchcraft.