An eclectic and fascinating collection of horror stories, including tales of hauntings, devil worship, witchcraft and ancient evil. Featuring such classic authors as J. Sheridan le Fanu, Bram Stoker, Charles Dickens, Evelyn Nesbit and many more.

To early European colonists the swamp was a place linked with sin and impurity; to the plantation elite, it was a practical obstacle to agricultural development. For the many excluded from the white southern aristocracy—African Americans, Native Americans, Acadians, and poor, rural whites—the swamp meant something very different, providing shelter and sustenance and offering separation and protection from the dominant plantation culture. Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture explores the interplay of contradictory but equally prevailing metaphors: first, the swamp as the underside of the myth of pastoral Eden that defined the antebellum South; and second, the swamp as the last pure vestige of undominated southern ecoculture. As the South gives in to strip malls and suburban sprawl, its wooded wetlands have come to embody the last part of the region that will always be beyond cultural domination. Examining the southern swamp from a perspective informed by ecocriticism, literary studies, and ecological history, Shadow and Shelter considers the many representations of the swamp and its evolving role in an increasingly multicultural South.

The Shadow Kingdom and other weird tales Robert Ervin Howard was an American pulp writer and is especially noted for his memorable depictions of ""a sombre universe of swashbuckling adventure and darkling horror."" He is well known for having created the character Conan the Barbarian. Meet Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mak Morn, Black Vulmea, James Allison and others in Howards weird tales of fantasy and horror. In these classics Howard spins tales of unrelenting terror, the legacy of one of the world's great masters of the macabre.

• Explains how to work with baneful herbs through rituals and spells, as plant spirit familiars, as potent medicines, and as visionary substances • Details the spiritual, alchemical, astrological, and symbolic associations of each plant, its active alkaloids, how to safely cultivate and harvest it, and rituals and spells suited to its individual nature and powers • Shares plant alchemy methods, magical techniques, and recipes featuring the plants, including a modern witches’ flying ointment Part grimoire and part herbal formulary, this guide to the Poison Path of occult herbalism shares history, lore, and information regarding the use of poisonous, consciousness-altering, and magical plants. Author Coby Michael explains how, despite their poisonous nature, baneful herbs can become powerful plant allies, offering potent medicine, magical wisdom, and access to the spirit realm. Detailing the spiritual, alchemical, astrological, and symbolic associations of each plant, the author explores their magical uses in spells and rituals. He focuses primarily on the nightshade family, or Solanaceae, such as mandrake, henbane, and thorn apple, but also explores plants from other families such as wolfsbane, hemlock, and hellebore. He also examines plants in the witch’s pharmacopoeia that are safer to work with and just as chemically active, such as wormwood, mugwort, and yarrow. The author shares rituals suited to the individual nature and powers of each plant and explains how to attract and work with plant spirit familiars. He offers plant alchemy methods for crafting spagyric tinctures and magical techniques to facilitate working with these plants as allies and teachers. He shares magical recipes featuring the plants, including a modern witches’ flying ointment. He also explores safely cultivating baneful herbs in a poison garden.

Examines the left-hand path and reveals the masters of the tradition • Explores the practices and beliefs of many left-hand path groups, including the Cult of Set, the Hell-Fire Club, and heretical Sufi, Zoroastrian, Christian, and Muslim sects • Investigates many infamous occult personalities, including Helena Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley, the Marquis de Sade, and Anton LaVey • Explains the true difference between the right-hand path and the left-hand path--union with and dependence on God versus individual freedom and self-empowerment From black magic and Satanism to Gnostic sects and Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, the left-hand path has been linked to many practices, cults, and individuals across the ages. Stephen Flowers, Ph.D., examines the methods, teachings, and historical role of the left-hand path, from its origins in Indian tantric philosophy to its underlying influence in current world affairs, and reveals which philosophers, magicians, and occult figures throughout history can truly be called “Lords of the Left-Hand Path.” Flowers explains that while the right-hand path seeks union with and thus dependence on God, the left-hand path seeks a “higher law” based on knowledge and power. It is the way of self-empowerment and true freedom. Beginning with ancient Hindu and Buddhist sects and moving Westward, he examines many alleged left-hand path groups, including the Cult of Set, the Yezidi Devil Worshippers, the Assassins, the Neoplatonists, the Hell-Fire Club, the Bolsheviks, the occult Nazis, and several heretical Sufi, Zoroastrian, Christian, and Muslim sects. Following a carefully crafted definition of a true adherent of the left-hand path based on two main principles--self-deification and challenge to the conventions of “good” and “evil”--the author analyzes many famous and infamous personalities, including H. P. Blavatsky, Faust, the Marquis de Sade, Austin Osman Spare, Aleister Crowley, Gerald Gardner, Anton LaVey, and Michael Aquino, and reveals which occult masters were Lords of the Left-Hand Path. Flowers shows that the left-hand path is not inherently evil but part of our heritage and our deep-seated desire to be free, independent, and in control of our destinies.

This book documents the manifestations of the Black Sun's power in our thoughts, our lives, and the world at large. It is a first written testament of the philosophy, symbology, sorcery and ideology of Kâmûd-Dûn ("the Shadow Path"), as conceived and practiced at our Black Sanctum. It is the foundational document of Borzûm-Gâzûl--the Order of the Black Sun--which hereby supersedes and encompasses all other Orders and ideologies propagated previously by the Dark Lords. As the founders of this Order, we record these thoughts so that others may know why it came into existence and what its "terrible truths" consist of.We offer this book not as idle philosophy or mysticism, but as a call to re-examine reality and your place within it. It comes from the endarkened minds of two who have had close encounters with the Black Sun's power and returned as darker, stranger beings, with a message for others. For we have walked under the Shadow for many years, and wish to convey some of what we have learned to those who would follow in our footsteps.In a world of Shadow-blind sleepers, may this book awaken a chosen few, open their Third Eyes to the Black Sun and bring them under its Shadow. May it inspire them to join the ranks of our invisible Empire and leave behind the White Sunlit world of illusions forever. May the Black Sun burn a hole in your mind as it has ours, giving you the eyes to see a new path, and the strength to walk it onward forever, into the infinite Darkness.Borzûm-râk âm chod! (Black Sun power to you!)Kârzathor and Ravuk, Founders and Dark Lords of the Order of the Black SunYear 8 of the Black Sun Aeon

Ronald Hutton is known for his colourful and provocative writings on original subjects. This work is no exception: for the first full-scale scholarly study of the only religion England has ever given the world; that of modern pagan witchcraft, which has now spread from English shores across four continents. Hutton examines the nature of that religion and its development, and offers a microhistory of attitudes to paganism, witchcraft, and magic in British society since 1800. Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and scouting movements, Freemasons, and members of rural secret societies. We also find some of the leading of figures of English literature, from the Romantic poets to W.B. Yeats, D.H. Lawrence, and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have represented pagan witchcraft to the world since 1950. Densely researched, Triumph of the Moon presents an authoritative insight into a hitherto little-known aspect of modern social history.