Innovative history of the popular magical imagination and ordinary people's experience of urbanization in nineteenth-century England.

This innovative history of popular magical mentalities in nineteenth-century England explores the dynamic ways in which the magical imagination helped people to adjust to urban life. Previous studies of modern popular magical practices and supernatural beliefs have largely neglected the urban experience. Karl Bell, however, shows that the magical imagination was a key cultural resource which granted an empowering sense of plebeian agency in the nineteenth-century urban environment. Rather than portraying magical beliefs and practices as a mere enclave of anachronistic 'tradition' and the fantastical as simply an escapist refuge from the real, he reveals magic's adaptive and transformative qualities and the ways in which it helped ordinary people navigate, adapt to and resist aspects of modern urbanization. Drawing on perspectives from cultural anthropology, sociology, folklore and urban studies, this is a major contribution to our understanding of modern popular magic and the lived experience of modernization and urbanization.

The knowledge and use of magical images was once a closely guarded secret of initiates and adepts in the Mystery Schools. Gareth Knight gives easy-to-follow classifications of the various kinds of magical image, along with instructions for their use as agents of self realisation and spiritual service. Indispensible for beginners and advanced practitioners alike, this book presents the theory and techniques of creative visualisation and meditation. These practical teachings range from the circulation of force within the aura for the purpose of balancing the personality to the development of a full magical system of pathworking, enabling deep contact with inner sources of wisdom. Now in its third edition, a new section is included on the magical images of the Tarot, plus an extensive chapter on Qabalistic pathworking in the Western Mystery Tradition.

Through techniques of pathworking (guided meditation), your imagination can shine a magic mirror on your personality. This inner landscape reveals your world as your unconscious sees it. This work shows the mystical use of pathworking as a method for contacting the divine.

Escape into the imagination of a childs mind. Take a journey and launch into a fantasy of magic, fairies, talking animals, a magical wishing tree, and the all-important ingredientthe power to believe! Do you believe in magic?