Rigorous Magic

In the marketing world, communication ideas are revered for their magical ability to affect how consumers behave towards brands. Despite this, they are poorly understood. How many types are there? What are their characteristics? How should you use them? And what makes a good one? Most marketers simply cannot answer these questions. Rigorous Magic answers these questions, bringing science to the art of ideas. Jim Taylor and Steve Hatch dispel the myths around communication ideas and create a practical ‘road map’ for marketers to select which types are best for their brand to compete. Only through a rigorous process of cataloguing and evaluation can ideas truly be understood - and the right ones selected to change consumer behaviour in today’s global, multi-channel marketing world.

The first comprehensive history of magical treasure hunting from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, revealing a magical universe of treasure spirits, and wizards who tried to deal with them. Combining history and anthropology, this study sees treasure hunting as an expression of shifting economic mentalities and changing ideas about history.

First, she lost her sense of security. Then she lost her job. Now she has seven days to prove she's a witch or risk losing it all. Magic Crimes Consultant Emily Davenport’s prestigious family coven may have been disappointed in her lack of magical talent, but they never took issue with how she lived her life—until she registered as a witch. Now the gloves are off, and she’s under investigation by the Circle, a powerful alliance of ancient covens. But with an important case three months in the making finally starting to bear fruit, she can't just stop and walk away. The witches of Santa Fe need her. A mysterious, illicit drug that only affects witches is gaining more traction by the day, and every minute she spends worrying about her own future is an opportunity for another witch to die. Can Emily stop the flow of the deadly narcotic and prove herself before her clock runs out, or will she be carted off to face tribunal in chains? Breaking Bad meets A Discovery of Witches in this spellbinding third installment of Lori Drake’s captivating Secondhand Magic series. If you like strong yet vulnerable heroines, mind-bending mysteries, and succulent Southwestern settings, this is the sequel for you! Buy Witch Hunt today! **Author not responsible for New Mexican food cravings that may result from the consumption of this series.**

A comprehensive illustrated reference guide with more than 400 entries on the subjects of magic and alchemy.

Stones Beneath the Mountain regards the adventurous tale within the fantasy land of Bauzzurath. Hod and GaRod Gravelback are two dwarven brothers who were born and raised in the mountainous land of DuLock. One fateful day, accompanied by Hod's daughter, KaRina, they set off in search of four mysterious stones that were to be acquired by their leader, King Greyshield. Along the way, the group encounters many strange and bizarre people, creatures and events. A tale of love and of loss, and a tale of power and of hardship, new details from the adventure await on every page.

This book shows that mysticism is incomplete without scientific rationalism, and that our current social and political projects cannot be completed without assimilating the values and practices of mysticism. It discusses cross-cultural ethics, mysticism and value theory, mysticism and metaphysics, mysticism and the theory of knowledge, ethics and religion, parapsychology, patriarchy, and social and political history.

A revelatory new account of the magus—the learned magician—and his place in the intellectual, social, and cultural world of Renaissance Europe. In literary legend, Faustus is the quintessential occult personality of early modern Europe. The historical Faustus, however, was something quite different: a magus—a learned magician fully embedded in the scholarly currents and public life of the Renaissance. And he was hardly the only one. Anthony Grafton argues that the magus in sixteenth-century Europe was a distinctive intellectual type, both different from and indebted to medieval counterparts as well as contemporaries like the engineer, the artist, the Christian humanist, and the religious reformer. Alongside these better-known figures, the magus had a transformative impact on his social world. Magus details the arts and experiences of learned magicians including Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Trithemius, and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa. Grafton explores their methods, the knowledge they produced, the services they provided, and the overlapping political and social milieus to which they aspired—often, the circles of kings and princes. During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, these erudite men anchored debates about licit and illicit magic, the divine and the diabolical, and the nature of “good” and “bad” magicians. Over time, they turned magic into a complex art, which drew on contemporary engineering as well as classical astrology, probed the limits of what was acceptable in a changing society, and promised new ways to explore the self and exploit the cosmos. Resituating the magus in the social, cultural, and intellectual order of Renaissance Europe, Grafton sheds new light on both the recesses of the learned magician’s mind and the many worlds he inhabited.

The only comprehensive, single-volume survey of magic available, this compelling book traces the history of magic, witchcraft, and superstitious practices such as popular spells or charms from antiquity to the present day. Focusing especially on Europe in the medieval and early modern eras, Michael Bailey also explores the ancient Near East, classical Greece and Rome, and the spread of magical systems_particularly modern witchcraft or Wicca_from Europe to the United States. He examines how magic and superstition have been defined in various historical eras and how these constructions have changed over time. He considers the ways in which specific categories of magic have been condemned, and how those identified as magicians or witches have been persecuted and prosecuted in various societies. Although conceptions of magic have changed over time, the author shows how magic has almost always served as a boundary marker separating socially acceptable actions from illicit ones, and more generally the known and understood from the unknown and occult.