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Elizabeth Butler's classic study of the traditions and practices of ritual magic uses a wide range of texts and sources - from the pre-Christian rites of the Akkadians and Chaldeans to the Salomonic Clavicles of medieval Europe - to create a lively, detailed and absorbing history of human attempts to achieve mastery over the spiritual world. Througout, there is extensive quotations from the documents themselves, providing the reader with an authentic sense of the richness and power of these texts. Professor Bulter also examines the careers of noted magicians of the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, and considers the history of ceremonial magic in England, the myth of Satanism, and thr rituals involved in the Faustian pact with the devil. Ritual Magic is a work of deep scholarship which wears its immense learning very lightly, and which will be essential reading for all interested in the history of magic and in the way magic traditions have altered as they move from culture to culture and from century to century.
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