Method & Theory in the Study of Religion
June 24, 2025
Carole M. Cusack
The emergence of the academic study of Esotericism was closely linked to both Religious Studies and Sociology. In the 1970s sociologists Colin Campbell, Marcello Truzzi, Edward A. Tiryakian, and Patricia A. Hartman, with historian of religion Mircea Eliade, wrote pioneering studies on occult and esoteric subjects. These initially marginal works gained traction in the study of new religious...
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
June 1, 2022
Carole M. Cusack
Reviewed by: The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England by Frank Klaassen and Sharon Hubbs Wright Carole M. Cusack frank klaassen AND sharon hubbs wright. The Magic of Rogues: Necromancers in Early Tudor England. University Park, Penn.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. Pp. ix + 161. This fascinating study situates primary sources for magic in sixteenthcentury England in...
International Journal for the Study of New Religions
August 14, 2011
Carole M. Cusack
Discordianism, founded in 1957 and generally regarded as a “parody religion,” has only recently received scholarly consideration as a valid religious expression within modern Paganism (Cusack 2010). Yet ritual practice within Discordianism remains largely unexamined; Hugh Urban’s brief discussion of Discordian magical workings as a sub-category of Chaos Magic is the extent of academic...
Journal for the Academic Study of Religion
March 4, 2009
Carole M. Cusack
Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2006, pp. xi + 336, ISBN 978-0-520-24776-5 (Hbk). R