Demonic Divination

In early modern Germany, soothsayers known as wise women and men roamed the countryside. Fixtures of village life, they identified thieves and witches, read palms, and cast horoscopes. German villagers regularly consulted these fortune-tellers and practiced divination in their everyday lives. Jason Phillip Coy brings their enchanted world to life by examining theological discourse alongside archival records of prosecution for popular divination in Thuringia, a diverse region in central Germany divided into a patchwork of princely territories, imperial cities, small towns, and rural villages. Popular divination faced centuries of elite condemnation, as the Lutheran clergy attempted to suppress these practices in the wake of the Reformation and learned elites sought to eradicate them during the Enlightenment. As Coy finds, both of these reform efforts failed, and divination remained a prominent feature of rural life in Thuringia until well into the nineteenth century. The century after 1550 saw intense confessional conflict accompanied by widespread censure and disciplinary measures, with prominent Lutheran theologians and demonologists preaching that divination was a demonic threat to the Christian community and that soothsayers deserved the death penalty. Rulers, however, refused to treat divination as a capital crime, and the populace continued to embrace it alongside official Christianity in troubled times. The Devil’s Art highlights the limits of Reformation-era disciplinary efforts and demonstrates the extent to which reformers’ efforts to inculcate new cultural norms relied upon the support of secular authorities and the acquiescence of parishioners. Negotiation, accommodation, and local resistance blunted official reform efforts and ensured that occult activities persisted and even flourished in Germany into the modern era, surviving Reformation-era preaching and Enlightenment-era ridicule alike. Studies in Early Modern German History

In this updated version of Divining & Speaking with Demons, J. Thorp covers the basics of demonic divination and some necromantic spirit-pot work. Also included is a section about working with the servitors under Ashtaroth. Publishers Note: Pair with Drawing Down Belial and Sigillum Diaboli for a full working library of Daemonic Divination instruction.

What are good-intentioned, God-loving Christians, church leaders and pastors overlooking? The message that many Christians are missing today is that self-discipline alone is not enough to stop Satan from his onslaught against the Church. In "Deliverance: Rescuing God's People," authors Cyndi Gribble and Pat Legako provide a ground breaking, scripture-supported teaching on what the Bible says about Satan, step-by-step instructions on how to cast out demons and how to establish and operate the ministry in your local church.

I'm not a demon hunter, and I don't believe we'll be eaten by all things demonic. This could not be further from the truth. I'm writing this book because I've had to deal with the demonic when it's come into contact with me. To advance to the next level, I needed to break through. If we are bringing God's Kingdom to the Earth, it would be absurd for us to believe we will not have to deal with the demonic realm. Every time I confronted a challenge, God rewarded me with enlightenment that enabled me to overcome. Those revelations are being passed on to you. You are to be a Lord's fighter. Are you prepared for it? Every day, a large number of Christians are pursuing the devil. When Satan's diabolical domain prevents me from moving forward, I go after the enemy. We are not to pursue the devil himself, according to the Bible. We are to foil his plots and devilish schemes. There's no need to be afraid of the adversary because Jesus is alive, and He who lives in us is greater than he who lives in the world. 6:11 (Ephesians) Put on the complete armor of God so that you can stand against the devil's schemes. This book will take you on a journey through some of the most powerful demonic entities ever encountered. I understand that as you begin to read this book, the enemy may try to persuade you not to finish it. Press on and open your heart as you receive God's mysteries of the Demonic Realm if you wish to be a competitor for God's Glory. God is assembling his army and preparing us to face whatever the devil has in store to prevent us from bringing the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. May the insights of the Demonic Realm bless you as you read this book.

In Defeating the Demonic Realm, author and preacher Bill Vincent takes readers on a spiritual discovery of biblical principles that will help the reader understand evil and the Demonic Realm. Is something blocking your life and ministry? What curses may be affecting you, and how do you break demonic Spirits and Curses in order to hasten your healing? Being consumed by demonic energy is not the only option--but rather, dealing with evil when it crosses your path can help one grow. Bill Vincent has dealt with the demonic and within that experience was given a breakthrough from God. His revelations will teach you how to be a warrior of the Lord, to break the devil's schemes, and to identify the weapons, plans, and blueprints God has provided for your defense. With these crucial strategies for fighting triumphantly in spiritual warfare, you'll become fully alert, strengthened, and equipped to win any battle that wages around you.

While pre-modern Europe is often seen as having an 'enchanted' or 'magical' worldview, the full implications of such labels remain inconsistently explored. Witchcraft, demonology, and debates over pious practices have provided the main avenues for treating those themes, but integrating them with other activities and ideas seen as forming an enchanted Europe has proven to be a much more difficult task. This collection offers one method of demystifying this world of everyday magic. Integrating case studies and more theoretical responses to the magical and preternatural, the authors here demonstrate that what we think of as extraordinary was often accepted as legitimate, if unusual, occurrences or practices. In their treatment of and attitudes towards spirit-assisted treasure-hunting, magical recipes, trials for sanctity, and visits by guardian angels, early modern Europeans showed more acceptance of and comfort with the extraordinary than modern scholars frequently acknowledge. Even witchcraft could be more pervasive and less threatening than many modern interpretations suggest. Magic was both mundane and mysterious in early modern Europe, and the witches who practiced it could in many ways be quite ordinary members of their communities. The vivid cases described in this volume should make the reader question how to distinguish the ordinary and extraordinary and the extent to which those terms need to be redefined for an early modern context. They should also make more immediate a world in which magic was an everyday occurrence.

The Devil's Tabernacle is the first book to examine in depth the intellectual and cultural impact of the oracles of pagan antiquity on modern European thought. Anthony Ossa-Richardson shows how the study of the oracles influenced, and was influenced by, some of the most significant developments in early modernity, such as the Christian humanist recovery of ancient religion, confessional polemics, Deist and libertine challenges to religion, antiquarianism and early archaeology, Romantic historiography, and spiritualism. Ossa-Richardson examines the different views of the oracles since the Renaissance--that they were the work of the devil, or natural causes, or the fraud of priests, or finally an organic element of ancient Greek society. The range of discussion on the subject, as he demonstrates, is considerably more complex than has been realized before: hundreds of scholars, theologians, and critics commented on the oracles, drawing on a huge variety of intellectual contexts to frame their beliefs. In a central chapter, Ossa-Richardson interrogates the landmark dispute on the oracles between Bernard de Fontenelle and Jean-François Baltus, challenging Whiggish assumptions about the mechanics of debate on the cusp of the Enlightenment. With erudition and an eye for detail, he argues that, on both sides of the controversy, to speak of the ancient oracles in early modernity was to speak of one's own historical identity as a Christian.

This volume presents a critical edition of Laurens Pignon's treatise "Contre les devineurs" (1411) and examines its literary and historical context of courtly magic and astrology in Burgundy and France during the reign of Charles VI.