Within Magic

A magical world -- The meanings of magic -- Magical acts -- Magic contested and condemned -- Magical identities -- The reality of magic -- Magic in the modern world.

Stranded across dimensions, what will they do to reach each other? Troubled by dreams of her beloved in danger, Karina finds a new portal. But instead of going to Whyland, she breaks the defenses against a sinister ethereal city, putting Whyland--and her friends--in danger. Not only that, she ends up trapped and helpless, in a place where even her mind is not safe. Sian has an impossible task: defeat the gigantic Maris king. A victory doesn't mean a ticket home, though. In his struggle, he'll come across magic more powerful than he ever imagined. Intruders in Whyland force Cayla and Darian to the Light Gardens, where more truths and secrets are about to be revealed, and where Darian has a chance to reconnect with his brother. Old wounds are about to be opened—and cleansed. But the process might be painful. Get immersed in this action-packed, emotional conclusion to Portals to Whyland, recommended for teens 13 and up. You'll find adventure, romance, intrigue, revelations, and magic. Start reading it now! Keywords: portal fantasy, YA trilogy, YA fantasy series, YA romantic fantasy, YA romance, young adult romantic fantasy, young adult romance, trilogy conclusion.

The ultimate book of magic for kids from a world-famous magician, complete with photographs for easy to follow instructions. From one of the world's premier practitioners of classic magic, with years of experience instructing younger readers in the magical arts, comes this new revision of his complete guide to learning and performing fantastic feats of prestidigitation. Acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as "the text that young magicians swear by," it's full of step-by-step instructions. More than 2,000 illustrations provide the know-how behind 300 techniques, from basic card tricks to advanced levitation, along with advice on planning and staging a professional-quality magic show.

The award-winning New York Times bestseller about the extraordinary things that can happen when we harness the power of both the brain and the heart Growing up in the high desert of California, Jim Doty was poor, with an alcoholic father and a mother chronically depressed and paralyzed by a stroke. Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor. But back then his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires. Her final mandate was that he keep his heart open and teach these techniques to others. She gave him his first glimpse of the unique relationship between the brain and the heart. Doty would go on to put Ruth’s practices to work with extraordinary results—power and wealth that he could only imagine as a twelve-year-old, riding his orange Sting-Ray bike. But he neglects Ruth’s most important lesson, to keep his heart open, with disastrous results—until he has the opportunity to make a spectacular charitable contribution that will virtually ruin him. Part memoir, part science, part inspiration, and part practical instruction, Into the Magic Shop shows us how we can fundamentally change our lives by first changing our brains and our hearts.

During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine’s in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, in spite of the dangers involved in studying condemned works, and how the monks combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.

This volume presents editions of two fascinating anonymous and untitled manuscripts of magic produced in Elizabethan England: the Antiphoner Notebook and the Boxgrove Manual. Frank Klaassen uses these texts, which he argues are representative of the overwhelming majority of magical practitioners, to explain how magic changed during this period and why these developments were crucial to the formation of modern magic. The Boxgrove Manual is a work of learned ritual magic that synthesizes material from Henry Cornelius Agrippa, the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, Heptameron, and various medieval conjuring works. The Antiphoner Notebook concerns the common magic of treasure hunting, healing, and protection, blending medieval conjuring and charm literature with materials drawn from Reginald Scot’s famous anti-magic work, Discoverie of Witchcraft. Klaassen painstakingly traces how the scribes who created these two manuscripts adapted and transformed their original sources. In so doing, he demonstrates the varied and subtle ways in which the Renaissance, the Reformation, new currents in science, the birth of printing, and vernacularization changed the practice of magic. Illuminating the processes by which two sixteenth-century English scribes went about making a book of magic, this volume provides insight into the wider intellectual culture surrounding the practice of magic in the early modern period.

Anna is a teenage girl pulled from our world into a world of magic, myth, and mystery by a warlock who intends to sacrifice her to the demon lords. Rescued in the nick of time by a powerful sorceress, she discovers that she possesses magical powers and must go to Starhold Academy to learn how to master them. There, she learns the other students believe that she is a child of a living "god," a belief that earns her both friends and enemies. A stranger in a very strange land, she may never fit into her new world... ...and the warlock is still hunting her. If Anna can't stop him, he might bring about the end of days.

In this fully updated edition of Believing in Magic, renowned superstition expert Stuart Vyse investigates our tendency towards these irrational beliefs.