A Manual of Wood Carving, by Charles G. Leland, revised by John J. Holtzapffel, 1891, was a highly regarded and widely popular self-educational craft book of the 19th century Arts & Crafts movement. Produced from the rare original in the collection of Gary Roberts, Publisher - www.toolemerapress.comEmbracing the naturalistic themes of William Morris and others, Leland introduced the public to wood carving as an expressive art form for use on purely decorative as well as on functional forms such as furniture, tankards and platters.

The gods, spirits and sorcery of Italian witches
Etruscan Magic & Occult Remedies by Charles Godfrey Leland was first published as Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition, in 1892. Part One of the book offers a complete and detailed insight in the Etruscan and Roman rooted pantheon of the Tuscan Streghe (witches). Part Two describes many of their spells, incantations, sorcery and several lost divination methods.

Leland found himself at the crossroads of the academic and the romantic and it is precisely this, which makes the reading of his work so enjoyable. His primary aim was to preserve this ancient traditional knowledge, as he feared, it would soon be wiped out by modernism. Much information in this book, Leland received first hand from the Tuscan witches Maddalena and Marietta. His second work on Stregheria: Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches was published seven years later in 1899. One could state he reached his goal, as his books are still of invaluable importance to both the Italian folklore and the modern practitioner of witchcraft. One of Leland's readers was the late Gerald Gardner, which makes one wonder who was the true godfather of modern witchcraft...

Read more about Leland and the index of ancient Etruscan gods and spirits, in the Post Scriptum of Etruscan Magic. Preview on vamzzz.com

Before Gerald Gardner ever thought to write his first book, there was an explorer named Charles Leland who felt he could discover and preserve the secrets of Italian Witchcraft. Leland's original quest was to make contact with practicing Italian Witches. After years of trying he met one by the name of Maddelena, who transmitted to him the teachings he was searching for. The words (stories) have become The Aradia or the Gospel of the Witches. This manuscript, reportedly handed down in an oral tradition, was later translated and published in the late 1800's.

Today, a great amount of debate exists over whether or not Aradia was an authentic representation of Italian Witchcraft at the time Leland published the manuscript. Some go so far as to argue that Maddelena never really existed. While it is true that Maddelena's involvement with Leland can not be proven the fact remains that even with an uncertain origin, Aradia is one of the most important manuscripts available to the Pagan community. Even if it does not reflect the ideology of a hidden tradition of Italian Witchcraft, it most definitely presents such a powerful message that even today its words are found repeatedly in various literature. In fact, it is the foundation for one of the most powerful and well-known documents in modern Pagan lore, The Charge of the Goddess.

The text is a composite. Some of it is Leland's translation into English of an original Italian manuscript, the Vangelo (gospel). Leland reported receiving the manuscript from his primary informant on Italian witchcraft beliefs, a woman Leland referred to as Maddalena and whom he called his witch informant in Italy. The rest of the material comes from Leland's research on Italian folklore and traditions, including other related material from Maddalena. Leland had been informed of the Vangelo's existence in 1886, but it took Maddalena eleven years to provide him with a copy. After translating and editing the material, it took another two years for the book to be published. Its fifteen chapters portray the origins, beliefs, rituals and spells of an Italian pagan witchcraft tradition. The central figure of that religion is the goddess Aradia, who came to Earth to teach the practice of witchcraft to peasants in order for them to oppose their feudal oppressors and the Catholic Church.

This wonderful book describes the creation according to Italian witch-lore. We also read about the witch-meeting or sabbath (treguenda) and it contains many original magical recipes, like spells for love and good fortune. Diana is further connected to the Moon and the fairy world.

Where Leland's Etruscan Magic and Occult Remedies deals with the entire pantheon of old Italian gods and nature spirits, worshiped by the streghe, Aradia is focused on Diana or Tana, her daughter Aradia and Lucifer. Aradia, the queen of the Italian witches, or streghe is as Leland concludes: 'evidently enough Herodias, who was regarded in the beginning as associated with Diana as chief of the witches. This was not, as I opine, derived from the Herodias of the New Testament, but from an earlier replica of Lilith, bearing the same name.'

VAMzzz Publishing revised this book with a Post Scriptum, containing biographical info on Charles Godfrey Leland, his witch-informant Maddalena and historical proof the witch-tradition is indeed linked to 2000 years of Diana worship. Preview on www.vamzzz.com

The Mystic Will by Charles Godfrey Leland is a self help classic that describes a Method of Developing and Strengthening the Faculties of the Mind, through the Awakened Will, by a Simple, Scientific Process Possible to Any Person of Ordinary Intelligence

Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 - March 20, 1903) was an American humorist, writer, and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe.This work was published when the author was nearly seventy years of age. It represents twenty years' collecting of spells, customs, ceremonies, superstitions, fetishes, exorcisms, incantations and usages gathered from living sources throughout America, Europe and the East, as well as from the works of earlier writers, all among the Gypsies, as regards to fortune telling, witch doctoring, love philtering and other sorcery. It is illustrated by many anecdotes and instances, taken either from the works as yet very little known to the English reader, or from personal experiences.

In a magical collection of ancient Italian folklore, tradition, and belief, Aradia, Queen of Witchcraft is a profound gospel, foundational in modern Wicca and neopaganism.

This folkloric tome invites you to explore the ancient lore and magical practices of the streghe, the wise women of Italy. Offering a glimpse into the traditions and secrets of Italian witchcraft, this classic book reveals the rituals, spells, and stories that form the heart of this rich spiritual tradition, centred around the Goddess Aradia, the Queen of Witches.

Aradia, Queen of Witchcraft presents Charles Godfrey Leland's 1899 translation of an original Italian gospel alongside his curated collection of authentic poetry, charms, and folk tales from Tuscany. Exploring the history of witchcraft, this treasure trove of age-old practise embraces the powerful rituals and enduring beliefs of ancient practitioners.

Charles Godfrey Leland (August 15, 1824 - March 20, 1903) was an American humorist, writer, and folklorist, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was educated at Princeton University and in Europe. Leland worked in journalism, travelled extensively, and became interested in folklore and folk linguistics, publishing books and articles on American and European languages and folk traditions. He worked in a wide variety of trades, achieved recognition as the author of the comic Hans Breitmann's Ballads, fought in two conflicts, and wrote what was to become a primary source text for Neopaganism half a century later, Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. Early life: Leland was born to Charles Leland, a commission merchant, and Charlotte Godfrey, on 15 August 1824 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Leland told a story that shortly after his birth his nurse took him to the family attic and performed a ritual involving a Bible, a key, a knife, lighted candles, money and salt to ensure a long life as a scholar and a wizard, a fact which his biographers have commented upon as foreshadowing his interest in folk traditions and magic. Leland's early education was in the United States, and he attended college at Princeton University. During his schooling, Leland studied languages, wrote poetry, and pursued a variety of other interests, including Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and the writings of Rabelais and Villon. After college, Leland went to Europe to continue his studies, first in Germany, at Heidelberg and Munich, and in 1848 at the Sorbonne in Paris. He got involved in the revolution that year, fighting at constructed barricades against the King's soldiers as a captain in the revolution. Leland was also a pioneer of art and design education, becoming an important influence on the Arts and Crafts movement. In his memoirs he wrote, The story of what is to me by far the most interesting period of my life remains to be written. This embraces an account of my labour for many years in introducing Industrial Art as a branch of education in schools He was involved in a series of books on industrial arts and crafts, including a title he co-authored in 1876 with Thomas Bolas, entitled Pyrography or burnt-wood etching (revised by Frank H Ball and G J Fowler in 1900). He was, more significantly, the founder and first director of the Public School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia.This originated as a school to teach crafts to disadvantaged children and became widely known when it was praised by Oscar Wilde, who predicted his friend would be recognised and honoured as one of the great pioneers and leaders of the art of the future.The Home Arts and Industries Association was founded in imitation of this initiative.His biography was written by his niece Elizabeth Robins Pennell, an American who also settled in London and made her living in part by writing about travels in Europe. Leland had encouraged her as a young woman to consider writing as a career, which she did with some success................

If Gerald Brosseau Gardner is the father of the religion that calls itself Wicca, then Charles Godfrey Leland is the grandfather of Witchcraft as a religion in the English-speaking world, and his small book, Aradia, is that religion's birth-announcement.

It is the first work in English in which Witchcraft is portrayed as an underground old religion, surviving in secret from ancient Pagan times.

Until now Aradia has been a work more often cited than read. Its first edition (1899) garnered only one review, and sank from sight like a stone cast into murky waters/ it sold poorly and is now a rare book. By chance a copy fell into the hands of Theda Kenyon, who devoted a few pages to it in her sensational Witches Still Live (1929), thereby calling it to the attention of many readers. By the 1950s Doreen Valiente had read Aradia, and she incorporated some of its most beautiful passages into the Wiccan rituals that she wrote. In the '60s and '70s it was reprinted four times, but always from a defective copy of the first edition that had lost its last page. Only in the '90s did another reprint finally restore the missing page.

Aradia has always been a controversial work, among Witches and scholars alike. Scholars have questioned whether it may be a fiction or a forgery by Leland or by his principal informant, Maddalena (Margherita Taludi). Witches have objected to it on theological and ethical grounds, since some of the myths that it tells are about Lucifer and Cain as well as Diana and Aradia, some of its spells work by threatening or coercing the Deities and spirits, and in its revolutionary fervor it does not shrink even from teaching that the poor and downtrodden should use poisons to destroy their feudal overlords. Despite all that, it remains a beautiful and compelling work.

This edition has brought the format and typography up to date, while keeping the text unchanged. A modern reader will undoubtedly find this new edition of Aradia much easier to read than the original or any of its facsimile reprints.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This book, from the series Primary Sources: Historical Books of the World (Asia and Far East Collection), represents an important historical artifact on Asian history and culture. Its contents come from the legions of academic literature and research on the subject produced over the last several hundred years. Covered within is a discussion drawn from many areas of study and research on the subject. From analyses of the varied geography that encompasses the Asian continent to significant time periods spanning centuries, the book was made in an effort to preserve the work of previous generations.

Originally published in London 1896. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. A thorough knowledge of the art of repairing, mending, or restoring various objects and antiques is of very great value, since there is no antique business or household in which it is not often called for.Contents Include: Materials used in mending. Mending broken China, Porcelain, Crockery, Majolica, Terra Cotta, Brick and Tile Work. Mending Glass. Wood Shavings in mending and making many objects. Repairing Woodwork. Repairing and restoring Books, Manuscripts, and Papers. Papier-Mache. Repairing Toys. Mending Stone-Work, Mosaics, Ceresa Work, Porcelain or Crockery Mosaic. Repairing Ivory. Repairing Amber. Mending India Rubber Shoes and Making Garments waterproof. Mending Metal-Work. Repairing Leather Work. Mending Hats etc by Felting. Invisible Mending of Garments, Lace and Embroideries. Mending Mother of Pearl and Coral. Restoring and Repairing Pictures. General Recipes.

Was the west coast of North America visited by travelers from China in the depths of antiquity? Ancient Asian documents provide extraordinary evidence that they did. For this intriguing 1875 book, folklorist Leland collected various interpretations and analyses of the writings of Chinese Buddhist missionary Hoei-Shin, who describes a voyage to the land of Fusang a millennium before Columbus that appears to describe the terrain, the cultures, and the peoples of the Pacific Northwest. A number of arguments by several experts build the case for this early discovery of America in a work that will fascinate students of global history. American journalist CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (1824-1903) was editor of Continental Monthly during the Civil War and coined the term emancipation as an alternative to abolition, but he is best remembered for his books on ethnography, folklore, and language, including The Gypsies (1882), The Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria (1892), and Aradia: Gospels of the Witches (1899).

The Etruscans are one of history's great mysteries -- a sophisticated society that flourished at the heart of the Classical world and then vanished, leaving relatively few archaeological remains and few records of their culture. The Etruscans were adept at magic, and Etruscan books of spells were common among the Romans but they have not survived. While greatly influenced by the Greeks, the Etruscans retained elements of an ancient non-Western culture, and these archaic traits contributed greatly to the civilization once thought of as purely Roman (gladiators, for example, and many kinds of divination). Leland retrieves elements of Etruscan culture from the living popular traditions of remote areas of the Italian countryside where belief in the old religion survives to an astonishing degree. Recorded when many of these secret beliefs and practices were fading away, this remarkable volume deals with ancient gods, spirits, witches, incantations, prophecy, medicine, spells, and amulets, giving full descriptions, illustrations, and instructions for practice.

This is the case in Tartary, Africa, among the Eskimo, Lapps, or Red Indians, with all of whom the sorcerer, voodoo or medaolin, has the eye of the fascinator, glittering and cold as that of a serpent. So the gypsies, from the mere fact of being wanderers and out-of-doors livers in wild places, became wild-looking, and when asked if they did not associate with the devils who dwell in the desert places, admitted the soft impeachment, and being further questioned as to whether their friends the devils, fairies, elves, and goblins had not taught them how to tell the future, they pleaded guilty, and finding that it paid well, went to work in their small way to improve their science, and particularly their pecuniary resources. It was an easy calling; it required no property or properties, neither capital nor capitol, shiners nor shrines, wherein to work the oracle. And as I believe that a company of children left entirely to themselves would form and grow up with a language which in a very few years would be spoken fluently,1 so I am certain that the shades of night, and fear, pain, and lightning and mystery would produce in the same time conceptions of dreaded beings, resulting first in demonology and then in the fancied art of driving devils away. For out of my own childish experiences and memories I retain with absolute accuracy material enough to declare that without any aid from other people the youthful mind forms for itself strange and seemingly supernatural phenomena.

Its accuracy is disputed by some, while others consider it a vital resource for studying and understanding Italian witch folklore of the 19th century. What is certain is that this 1899 classic has become a foundational document of modern Wicca and neopaganism. Leland claimed his witch informant, a fortune-teller named Maddalena, supplied him with the secret writings that he translated and combined with his research on Italian pagan tradition to create a gospel of pagan belief and practice. Here, in the story of the goddess Aradia, who came to Earth to champion oppressed peasants in their fight against their feudal overlords and the Catholic Church, are the chants, prayers, spells, and rituals that have become the centerpieces of contemporary pagan faiths. American journalist and folklorist CHARLES GODFREY LELAND (1824-1903) was editor of Continental Monthly during the Civil War and coined the term emancipation as an alternative to abolition, but he is best remembered for his books on ethnography, folklore, and language, including The Gypsies (1882), The Hundred Riddles of the Fairy Bellaria (1892), and Unpublished Legends of Virgil (1899).

The text is a composite. Some of it is Leland's translation into English of an original Italian manuscript, the Vangelo (gospel). Leland reported receiving the manuscript from his primary informant on Italian witchcraft beliefs, a woman Leland referred to as Maddalena and whom he called his witch informant in Italy. The rest of the material comes from Leland's research on Italian folklore and traditions, including other related material from Maddalena. Leland had been informed of the Vangelo's existence in 1886, but it took Maddalena eleven years to provide him with a copy. After translating and editing the material, it took another two years for the book to be published. Its fifteen chapters portray the origins, beliefs, rituals and spells of an Italian pagan witchcraft tradition. The central figure of that religion is the goddess Aradia, who came to Earth to teach the practice of witchcraft to peasants in order for them to oppose their feudal oppressors and the Catholic Church.

Elementary Metal Work: A Practical Manual For Amateurs And For Use In Schools (1894) is a comprehensive guide to metalworking for beginners. Written by Charles Godfrey Leland, a renowned American author and folklorist, the book covers all aspects of metalworking, including tools, materials, techniques, and safety precautions. The book is intended for both amateurs and students in schools who are interested in learning the basics of metalworking. The book begins with an introduction to the tools and materials required for metalworking, such as hammers, anvils, files, and soldering irons. It then goes on to cover various metalworking techniques, including forging, soldering, and riveting. The book also includes detailed instructions on how to make a variety of metal objects, such as candlesticks, trays, and boxes.In addition to practical instruction, the book also includes historical and cultural context for metalworking. Leland discusses the history of metalworking, as well as its place in different cultures and societies. He also includes examples of metalworking from different parts of the world, such as Japan and India.Overall, Elementary Metal Work: A Practical Manual For Amateurs And For Use In Schools (1894) is a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning the basics of metalworking. Its clear and concise instructions, combined with its historical and cultural context, make it a fascinating and informative read for both beginners and experts alike.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.