Carole M. Cusack
is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, Australia. She teaches and researches primarily on new religious movements, contemporary religious trends, and methodology in the study of religion. She has published widely in scholarly journals and edited volumes. Her books include Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (2010), The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (2011) and (with Katharine Buljan), Anime, Religion and Spirituality: Profane and Sacred Worlds in Contemporary Japan (2015). She edits the journals Literature & Aesthetics and (with Rachelle Scott) Fieldwork in Religion.
Owen Davies
is Professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire. UK. He has published widely on the history of witchcraft, magic, ghosts, and popular medicine.
Ethan Doyle White
PhD is an independent scholar based in England. A historian and archaeologist, Doyle White’s research interests include religion in early medieval England, modern Paganism, and related forms of occultism. He is the author of Wicca: History, Belief, and Community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft (2016) and co-editor of Magic and Witchery in the Modern West (2019). Other published research projects have dealt with such topics as the Pagan use of archaeological monuments, the revived worship of the god Antinous, and the influence of occultism on the music of David Bowie.
Claire Fanger
is Associate Professor of Religion at Rice University in Texas. She studies Latin Christianity in the later Middle Ages with a research focus on individual and communal practices for the formation of knowledge, ranging from the knowledge developed within the university curriculum to varied disciplines of magical knowledge, to cultivated dreams and other practices leading to visionary knowledge of God. Her books include Rewriting Magic and, with Nicholas Watson, a Latin edition of John of Morigny’s Flowers of Heavenly Teaching. She is working on an English translation of this text also in collaboration with Watson.
(PhD Cambridge) is an Associate Professor of Humanities at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. A scholar of ancient esotericism, his research focuses on Hellenistic and Greco-Egyptian magic, alchemy, and related esoteric currents. On the alchemical side, he has a special interest in Zosimos of Panopolis and the complementarity of the esoteric and scientific dimensions of alchemy: see, most recently, “Distilling Nature’s Secrets: The Sacred Art of Alchemy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World (2018). His work on magic explores the Greco-Egyptian magical papyri and the professionalisation of magical practice in the Roman imperial period: see “Roman Antiquity,” in The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West (2015).
Christian Giudice
is an independent researcher, focusing, among other subjects, on Traditionalism, fin de siècle occultism in France and Italy, the development of post-Crowley Thelema, and the link between cinema and occultism. He holds a ba in Literae Humaniores from Oxford University, an ma in Western Esotericism from Exeter University, and a PhD in Religious Studies with a focus on Western Esotericism from Gothenburg University. He has recently co-edited a special issue of Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism dedicated to the figure of g.i. Gurdjieff with Professor Carole Cusack, and his most recent contribution is an article on Aleister Crowley and the British Decadents, in yet another a special issue of Aries dedicated to Crowley. His PhD dissertation, Occult Imperium: Arturo Reghini and the Anti-modern Revolution in xx Century Italy will be published in the Oxford Studies in Western Esotericism series by Oxford University Press in 2021.
Marco Frenschkowski
is Professor (chair) of New Testament Studies and Graeco-Roman religion at Leipzig University (Germany). He has published on early Christianity, religions in late antiquity (up to the beginnings of Islam), magic both in antiquity and in modern times, new religious movements, interreligious dialogue, library history, and also on imaginative fiction and the fantastic in the arts. He has been a regular contributor to the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, rgg, Enzyklopädie des Märchens and many other encyclopedias.
Aðalheiður Guðmundsdóttir
is a professor of medieval Icelandic literature at the Faculty of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Iceland. Her research
Dirk Johannsen
is Professor of Cultural History at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (ikos), University of Oslo. His research focuses on narrative cultures, literature and popular religion in the nineteenth century, cognitive approaches, and trolls. His recent publications include the co-edited Narrative Cultures and the Aesthetics of Religion (Brill 2020) and the co-edited Numen issue on Reframing Pilgrimage in Northern Europe (2020).
Ane Ohrvik
Ph.D is an Associate Professor in Cultural History at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her specialization is the history of knowledge in early modern Europe and contemporary pilgrimage in Northern Europe and include publications on topics relating to magic and witchcraft, history of medicine, rituals, book history, heritage, and folk religion. Her most recent publications include Medicine, Magic and Art in Early Modern Norway by Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, and Reframing Pilgrimage in Northern Europe (co-edited volume of Numen) from 2020. Her next book will be Witchcraft in Norway published by Routledge.
Bernd-Christian Otto
is Senior Research Fellow at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities at the University of Erlangen-Nuremburg. His research focuses on the history of magic, where he combines different methodologies such as conceptual history, discourse analysis, social theory, and ritual studies. His recent publications include the co-written monograph Magical Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe: The Clandestine Trade in Illegal Book Collections (Palgrave MacMillan 2017) and the co-edited anthology Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives (De Gruyter 2019).
Hugh B. Urban
is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at the Ohio State University in the United States. He is the author of numerous books,
Justin Woodman
is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College (University of London). His research has explored processes of secular re-enchantment and the interconnections between magic and modernity in relation to Chaos magic, and to the occultural dimensions of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction (namely the manner in which this has influenced some key aspects of popular culture, contemporary esotericism, paranormal beliefs, and modern conspiracy theories).
Kateryna Zorya
is a doctoral candidate in the study of religion at Södertorns högskola, Sweden. Her primary research field is in post-Soviet esoteric currents. She also works more broadly on post-Soviet history and the methodology for the study of religion, with an emphasis on the cognitive aspects of religion.