Some stories are considered make-believe while others are considered "real." The question that one must ask is, "What is real?". The conflicts that characters face in all tales are real enough. The choices they make and the outcomes that occur are certainly real. Choices are often contingent upon the current conflicts being faced, and that is undoubtedly real. Jack faced a giant who wanted to eat him while King Arthur faced Saxons who simply wanted to eat. Who is real and

In 1665 an anonymous treatise was added to a book skeptical of witchcraft. That book, "The Discoverie of Witchcraft", compiled by Reginald Scot and published in 1584, defended those accused of witchcraft. It also included so many examples of rituals and charms that it became popular with magical practitioners themselves. "The Magitians Discovered" Volume 2 consists of the anonymous material, along with sections from Scot's original "Discoverie" dealing with ritual magic. talismans. and amulets. This is supplemented by excerpts from two works believed to be written and translated by one of the authors of the anonymous material

The legendary Pluto had mysteriously fallen. The direct son of Pluto, Yan Ming, possessed the orthodox bloodline of Pluto, but was trapped in the Nine Hells Abyss by his younger brother. What they didn't know was that Xiao Zhu, who had the innate Netherworld Ghost Body, had the good fortune to obtain the Obsidian Stone, and Yan Ming, who was hiding in the Obsidian Stone, was her chosen one ...

With an introduction by award-winning novelist Barbara Kingsolver In the late nineteenth century, when the great powers in Europe were tearing Africa apart and seizing ownership of land for themselves, King Leopold of Belgium took hold of the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River. In his devastatingly barbarous colonization of this area, Leopold stole its rubber and ivory, pummelled its people and set up a ruthless regime that would reduce the population by half. . While he did all this, he carefully constructed an image of himself as a deeply feeling humanitarian. Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize in 1999, King Leopold’s Ghost is the true and haunting account of this man’s brutal regime and its lasting effect on a ruined nation. It is also the inspiring and deeply moving account of a handful of missionaries and other idealists who travelled to Africa and unwittingly found themselves in the middle of a gruesome holocaust. Instead of turning away, these brave few chose to stand up against Leopold. Adam Hochschild brings life to this largely untold story and, crucially, casts blame on those responsible for this atrocity.

Austronesia is the vast oceanic region which stretches from Madagascar to Taiwan to New Zealand. Encompassing both scattered archipelagos and major landmasses, Austronesia - derived from the Latin australis,'southern',and Greek nesos,'island' - is used primarily as a linguistic term, designating a family of languages spoken by peoples with a shared heritage. Julian Baldick, a celebrated historian of ancient religion, here argues that the diverse inhabitants of the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, New Guinea and Oceania show a common inheritance that extends beyond language. This commonality is found above all in mythology and ritual, which reach back to an ancient, prehistoric past. From around 1250 BCE the original proto-Oceanic speakers migrated eastwards from South-East Asia. Navigating by the sun, the stars, bird flight, the swells of the sea and cloud-swathed mountain islands, Austronesian voyagers used canoes and outriggers to settle on new territories. They developed a unified pattern of religion characterised by mortuary rites, headhunting and agrarian rituals of the annual calendar, culminating in a post-harvest festival often sexual in nature. This unique overview of Austronesian belief and tradition - the author's final book, and published posthumously - will be essential reading for students of religion, prehistory and anthropology.