Vampires

Just found this review at http://pelicanist.blogspot.de/2013/08/the-universal-vampire.html:

Another observation that caught my eye was that the start of popularising the vampire was, ironically enough, the Enlightenment. Leo Ruickbie gathers together what was, at that time, impressive testimony as to the actual existence of such creatures, from medical, legal and military sources. By way of a slight aside I love the Voltaire quote on p.75: “Nothing was spoken of but vampires, from 1730 to 1735“.

Here's the publisher's page: http://www.fdupress.org/book_descriptions/9781611475807.html.

Ruickbie certainly knows his stuff

From The Vampirologist blog:

It features another excellent article, by Leo Ruickbie. Readers may recognise him as the author of A brief guide to the supernatural (2012).

A brief guide serves as a classic example to why you (ok, I) shouldn't judge a book by its cover. I was expecting a threadbare pop-culture treatment, but it's incredibly well-researched. Ruickbie certainly knows his stuff.

See  http://thevampirologist.blogspot.de/2012/10/belated-anniversary-musings.html

A Brief Guide to the Supernatural featured on The Ghost Club website.

The perfect introduction to the world of all things eerie, inexplicable and otherworldly.

http://www.ghostclub.org.uk/Books.html

Good Ghost Guide

Magonia Review of Books: A Brief Guide to Ghost Hunting

With more than 300 pages of text and more than 50 of endnotes, this book is not really a ‘brief’ guide. Combining practical assistance on preparation, equipment and investigation techniques and protocol, including the all-important health and safety advice, with a brief history of ghost hunting and a sociological analysis of ghost hunters, and a roundup of the various theories about ghosts, this is clearly quite comprehensive and remarkable good value for the price.

[...]

This is an interesting and useful book one can recommend to ghost hunters and psychical researchers.

http://pelicanist.blogspot.de/2013/10/good-ghost-guide.html

A Brief Guide to Ghost Hunting on YouTube

A Brief Guide to Ghost Hunting now has its own youtube video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svGNB4qNvhY

It looks and sounds like a computer generated video for http://www.thebookwoods.com/book3/9780762450770.html

Approved by Egon Spengler

Egon Spengler Would Approve: A Review of Dr. Leo Ruickbie's "A Brief Guide to Ghost Hunting"

Dr. Leo Ruickbie may be a specialist in the field of witchcraft, but if A Brief Guide to Ghost Hunting is any indication, the man knows he way around a haunted house as well.

[...]

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, it doesn't really matter as far as this book goes, because the catalog of information is just a banquet for the imagination.

http://waggingthefox.blogspot.de/2013/10/egon-spengler-would-approve-review-of.html

Universal Vampire Book Project

Here's a description of the project from the editors:

The Universal Vampire Series, 2 Vols. 

Vol. 1 – The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend 

Vol. 2 – The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire

Editors 

Barbara Brodman, Nova Southeastern University 

James E. Doan, Nova Southeastern University

Project Overview 

For almost 200 years, since the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early 19th century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires. A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? 

In Volume I, Part 1 of the collection, “Origins of a Legend: Early Mythic Images of the Vampire,” we hope to shed light on this question. By tracing the development of the early Norse draugr figure into later European lore, we may see the underpinnings of Dracula who, of course, first appears as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, published in 1897. The Romantic vampire, upon which we focus in Part 2 of this volume of the collection, first coalesced around the figure of Lord Byron and his associates in the early 1800s; but what were its earlier sources? Could these have included the legendary Spanish “lady-killer,” Don Juan? And did they constitute resistance to the dominant culture of the time? As several of the essays in this collection deal with these literary connections, others will move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual and the existence of similar or identical vampiric traditions in Asian and other non-European settings. 

Volume I, Part II, “A Tradition Takes Form: The Imprint of the Romantic Vampire,” will focus on various aspects of the classic Dracula of Bram Stoker, including the author’s use of colonized language and colonial discourse and manifestations of the Stoker image in film, literature and lore around the world. This set of essays will also examine from various perspectives the relations between other hallmark works of 19th-century vampire literature, such as J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and modern films, including Interview with the Vampire and Let the Right One In. 

Volume II of the Universal Vampire Series, The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire, will be an eclectic mélange of essays, including a discussion of evolution and atavism in the vampire film, The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998); critical pieces that examine the modern Asian vampire, on stage, in graphic novels and in film; images of the Vampire in contemporary Japan (where, according to its author, vampires should be “beautiful”); an analysis of the vampire in popular Russian culture; and the obligatory studies of vampires in The Twilight Saga and the True Blood series. Each volume in the collection will contain 15 original, thought-provoking essays, chosen to both augment and challenge the classical vampire corpus and examine the evolutionary path the legend has taken in modern arts and letters. 

Audience 

The book is intended for an informed popular audience interested in the vampire legend and its manifestations in literature, film, visual arts and popular culture. Given the popularity of the vampire and the almost insane pace at which authors, artists and film makers strive to present newer and more innovative takes on the legend, we anticipate that the book will appeal to a broad readership throughout the English-speaking world. With the growing number of academic conferences that focus on the theme of the vampire, and the proliferation of courses dealing with the vampire legend in colleges and universities, we are confident that a large academic audience exists as well.

Source: h-net

Universal Vampire Update

Just heard from the editors that the forthcoming multi-volume blockbuster The Universal Vampire is scheduled for publication in April 2012. The publishers were 'very impressed with the quality of the essays in the collection'. A brief description of my chapter can be found here http://www.academia.edu/1536481/Evidence_for_the_Undead

Magonia Review of The Supernatural

 Magonia Review of Books, review of Leo Ruickbie, A Brief Guide to the Supernatural: Ghosts, Vampires and the Paranormal (Constable and Robinson, 2012), dated 29 March 2012:

The book is well referenced in the form of footnotes and makes a good general introduction.

See the full review at http://pelicanist.blogspot.de/2012/04/shortreviews04.html

Harry Potter and Witchcraft

Satanist to some, saint to others, why have the religious reactions to Harry Potter been so contradictory?

Plus, just how do you make a Horcrux?

New pages on the website exploring my recent work on Harry Potter from fundamentalism to the concept of the external soul. Read it all here http://www.witchology.com/contents/harrypotter/articles.php

Magic, Witches and Parapsychology

Books received for review:

Butler, Alison, Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)

Description
In the midst of increasing secularization and the birth of scientific naturalism, a curious group emerged in Victorian Britain. From 1888-1900, hundreds of men and women were initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn at temples across Britain and in Paris. Amongst them were famous personalities such as William Butler Yeats, Florence Farr, Annie Horniman, Maud Gonne and the infamous Aleister Crowley. These men and women met in secret temples for even more secretive rituals, in order to learn the techniques of ritual magic. Members put this magic to use in various ways including attempting murder, preserving peace, and travelling to other planets.
This examination of the rituals and personalities associated with the Golden Dawn demonstrates how Victorian magic provided an alternative to the tightening camps of science and religion in an intellectual environment that heightened the allure of magic. Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic explores how nineteenth-century occultism encompassed many of the aspirations and ideals of the middle-class, while completely revolutionizing Western magic.

Pickering, Andrew, and David Pickering, Witch-Hunting in England (Amberley, 2010)

Description
This book will address the origins of witch-hunting in England in the sixteenth century, the methods by which it was conducted, its distribution, its causes and consequences, and its decline. While addressing a general readership it will be a scholarly work that is informed by the historiography of the subject - e.g. feminist perspectives, functional explanations, post-modern interpretations. The text will be rich in primary source material including trial records and contemporary literature, including demonological texts and the papers of the Royal Society. Most of the illustrations will also be engravings from the period but some maps and location photographs will be included.

About the Author
David Pickering is an experienced reference books compiler. He has contributed to (and often been sole author and editor of) some 150 reference books, mostly in the areas of the arts, language, local history and popular interest. These include a Dictionary of Theatre (1988), an Encyclopedia of Pantomime (1993), Brewer's Twentieth-Century Music (1994; 1997), a Dictionary of Superstitions (1995) and a Dictionary of Witchcraft (1996). Andrew Pickering is Senior Lecturer in History and Archaeology at Strode College, Somerset, and is Programme Manager of the History, Heritage and Archaeology Foundation Degree with the University of Plymouth.

Smith, Matthew D., Anomalous Experiences: Essays from Parapsychological and Psychological Perspectives (McFarland, 2010)

From the back cover:
Thirteen essays on the psychology and parapsychology of anomalous experience explore extrasensory perception, haunting experiences, apparitions, alien contacts, séance room phenomena, and out-of-body experiences. The contributors are Daryl Bem, Etzel Cardena, Jezz Fox, Chris French, Craig Murray, Ciaran O'Keeffe, Chris Roe, Simon Sherwood, Christine Simmonds-Moore, Paul Stevens, Caroline Watt, Richard Wiseman and Robin Woofitt

Contents:
Feeling the future: studies of precognitive emotional arousal / Daryl J. Bem — Experimenter effects in parapsychology: three studies — With a remote helping task / Caroline Watt — The role of altered states of consciousness in extrasensory — Experiences / Chris A. Roe — Are our assumptions more anomalous than the phenomena? / Paul Stevens — Will we ever know whether extrasensory perception exists? / Jezz Fox — Towards a sociological parapsychology / Robin Wooffitt — Psychological perspectives — Anomalous experiences during deep hypnosis / Etzel Cardea — Haunting experiences: an integrative approach / Ciarn O'Keeffe and Steve Parsons — Apparitions of black dogs / Simon J. Sherwood — Psychological aspects of the alien contact experience / Christopher C. French, Julia Santomauro, Victoria Hamilton — Rachel fox and michael thalbourne — Observing the impossible: eyewitness testimony for — Darkroom seances / Richard Wiseman — Developing a dissociational account of out-of-body — Experiences / Craig D. Murray — Anomalous experiences and boundary thinness in — The mind and brain / Christine Simmonds-Moore.

Spiritualism and the Golden Dawn

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the most important magical society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was established on the basis of spirit communication with supernatural entities. Known as the ‘Secret Chiefs’, these entities provided the source of authority for the leaders of the Order as well as later becoming the subject of dissension, functioning in a similar way to the contemporary Theosophical ‘Mahatmas’. However, the Golden Dawn is generally not considered in relation to the Spiritualist Movement. This chapter will re-examine that perspective by investigating the historical importance of alternative forms of mediumship within this magical society and its off-shoots.

Prof. Christopher Moreman, California State University, is editing a major three volume series on Spiritualism and has just accepted my proposed chapter on Spiritualism and the Golden Dawn.

About the book (from the original call for papers):

Modern Spiritualism as a religious movement finds its roots in mid-nineteenth century upstate New York during a time of great spiritual fervor in New England. Since then, Spiritualism has flourished and spread world-wide. Studies of Spiritualism have largely focused on the movement’s relationship to emergent feminism and gender issues or on its relationship to the paranormal and psychical research. The present series­ a 3 volume edited collection titled, The Spiritualist Movement: Speaking with the Dead in America and Around the World to be published by Praeger seeks to broaden the scope of the study of Spiritualism, and to bring together diverse perspectives on this American-made global religion.

The book will cover a broad range of subjects:

• American origins of the Spiritualist movement and its cultural and political ramifications
• Feminist perspectives on the Spiritualist movement and its leadership
• In-depth overviews of important figures in the history of Spiritualism (i.e. the Fox sisters, Patience Worth, Arthur Conan Doyle, William James, Frederic Myers, Harry Houdini, or William Lyon Mckenzie King)
• The spread of Spiritualism and the Spiritualist movement in
non-American contexts (i.e. Iceland, England, Brazil, Europe, East Asia)
• Ethnographic studies of Spiritualism
• Evidence-based claims made by Spiritualism and Spiritualists
• Debates over the findings of psychical research and parapsychological studies of mediums
• Mediumship as a phenomenon of human experience throughout history and across the globe.
• Spiritualism in relation to other new religious movements like the Theosophical Society, the Thelemic Orders, or Wicca
• Spiritualism and mediums as portrayed in popular media and the popularity of the movement generally
• Death, grief, and the role of Spiritualism in bereavement
• Christian and other dominant religions’ responses to Spiritualism

Paranormal is now Supernatural

My forthcoming book The Paranormal has now been renamed The Supernatural following negotiations for a US deal. Part of Constable & Robinson's Brief Histories/Guides series, the book is scheduled for publication on 19 April 2012, although that change. Already there's been a lot of interest and I'll be posting some advance reviews in the coming months.

The Paranormal is Finished!

Of course I mean my book about the paranormal, not the paranormal itself! Yesterday afternoon I pressed the send button and sent the manuscript flying through the ether to my publishers. The editor's immediate reaction was 'wow'. After working ten hours a day, all the weekends, most of xmas, to produce 100,000 thoroughly researched, double-checked, fully referenced words in a record six months, it's finally over. Over, that is, until the proofs come back. Look out for the finished article in early 2012.

Witchcraft Out of the Shadows 2nd Edition

A second edition of Witchcraft Out of the Shadows is now in the works. First published in hardback in 2004, the last copies of the first edition of Witchcraft Out of the Shadows left the warehouse some months ago. There are now only four copies being sold through Amazon.co.uk. There are more Stateside with ten selling on Amazon.com. But be warned, prices are going through the roof. One seller is charging as much as $160.71 for a used copy. If you can get a copy cheaper, this could be a good investment for the future, as well as a good read.

Witchcraft: in the shadows no more

An old review, but a good one, written before I got my PhD, hence the use of 'Mr':

Witchcraft: Out of the Shadows

Leo Ruickbie

(Hale)

Mr Ruickbie has written a tight overview of the history and current trends (including some interesting statistical analysis) in Witchcraft. Unlike some books on the subject, there is no political or religious motivation to this book. It is factual and unjudgemental on the subject, neither being the craft's cheerleader nor taking the "its all evil" line. Because of this lack of an agenda, the book is much more complete than many books of its kind. His flowing style allows the reader to get to grips with the varied history of Witchcraft without being overwhelmed by minutiae. Not only is the book a fascinating read, it is a pleasant one as well. Needless to say, Ruickbie has included an extensive bibliography for those wishing to read further on the subject. I highly recomend this book to anyone with the slightest interest in the "Craft".

Rating: 5/5

On the Shelf Review – Ruickbie’s Faustus: The Life and Times of a Renaissance Magician

I don’t know what I pay you guys for, because nobody mentioned to me that the most thorough treatment of the Renaissance magus Faust, Leo Ruickbie’s Faustus, had just appeared. Nevertheless, you’re all forgiven, and I’ll review it for you.

Writing a biography of Jorg Faust is an extremely daunting task. [...] This is the task that Leo Ruickbie sets out to do, and his solution is novel.

[...] enjoy the first full biography of Faustus as a window into the life of a fascinating, and likely very misunderstood, individual.

Thanks to Dan Harms for this review. You can read the full review at his webiste.