Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906603
Emma Wilby
Abstract:This article argues that the historiographic tendency to see the demoniac and the witch as distinct has led scholars to neglect the relationship between demonic possession and the early modern witches’ sabbath, particularly with regard to western Europe. It suggests that if the definition of demonic possession is expanded to incorporate external possession or “obsessio,” the phenomenon moves from a peripheral to central position in the European sabbath complex. This positionality is then further strengthened and nuanced by contextualizing demonic possession within the broader networks of belief concerning possession by folkloric and divine spirits that informed both popular magical practice and Christian devotion. The article argues that this augmented “spirit-possession lens” provides us with a new way of mapping the evolution and impact of the witches’ sabbath stereotype across medieval and early modern Europe. It invites us to re-examine received assumptions about the way that sabbath narratives were created and evaluated in the courtroom and brings a new emotional logic to the victimhood of the European witch.
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Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906608
Timothy R. Grieve-carlson
approach to the figure as perceived to be real, but Young makes much less use of similarly insightful work on the figure’s evolution and political impact by specialists in literature. William Blake is one of the few literary figures whom Young mentions, even though Blake’s political impact was negligible for his vision of a mystically transfigured Britain; neither Ben Jonson, who collaborated with stage impresario Inigo Jones, nor Tennyson are mentioned. A few more relevant studies such as Howard Dobin’s New Historicist Merlin’s Disciples: Prophecy, Poetry, and Power in Renaissance England (1990) deserve at least a place in the bibliography. While I would not wish a nonhistoricist disciplinary approach on Young’s book, I was left wishing for further reference to fiction and literary criticism. Despite these quibbles, the virtues of Young’s survey are many. Perhaps further research on the modern intertextuality of the esoteric and politics, or on the impact of occultism incorporated into British life through imperial and Commonwealth ties, will prompt Young’s next book: I look forward to it.
{"title":"Fictional Practice: Magic, Narration, and the Power of Imagination ed. Bernd-Christian Otto, Dirk Johannsen (review)","authors":"Timothy R. Grieve-carlson","doi":"10.1353/mrw.2023.a906608","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2023.a906608","url":null,"abstract":"approach to the figure as perceived to be real, but Young makes much less use of similarly insightful work on the figure’s evolution and political impact by specialists in literature. William Blake is one of the few literary figures whom Young mentions, even though Blake’s political impact was negligible for his vision of a mystically transfigured Britain; neither Ben Jonson, who collaborated with stage impresario Inigo Jones, nor Tennyson are mentioned. A few more relevant studies such as Howard Dobin’s New Historicist Merlin’s Disciples: Prophecy, Poetry, and Power in Renaissance England (1990) deserve at least a place in the bibliography. While I would not wish a nonhistoricist disciplinary approach on Young’s book, I was left wishing for further reference to fiction and literary criticism. Despite these quibbles, the virtues of Young’s survey are many. Perhaps further research on the modern intertextuality of the esoteric and politics, or on the impact of occultism incorporated into British life through imperial and Commonwealth ties, will prompt Young’s next book: I look forward to it.","PeriodicalId":41353,"journal":{"name":"Magic Ritual and Witchcraft","volume":"18 1","pages":"139 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47028719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906604
Marina Alexandrova
{"title":"The Occult Nineteenth Century: Roots, Developments, and Impact on the Modern World ed. by Lukas Pokorny, Franz Winter (review)","authors":"Marina Alexandrova","doi":"10.1353/mrw.2023.a906604","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2023.a906604","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41353,"journal":{"name":"Magic Ritual and Witchcraft","volume":"18 1","pages":"123 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42484954","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906606
Julie Fox-Horton
these people negotiated skepticism about their abilities within a larger cultural context in which they might become victims of witchcraft accusations. Readers interested in this journal’s even more capacious category of “ritual” will find almost all the articles useful to some degree, bringing mainly anthropological methodologies to bear on the issue of doubt surrounding both abstract religious beliefs and concrete ritualized practices. A chapter by Eszter Spät on “religious crossover” in presentday Iraq could well have significant “crossover” potential of its own for magical studies. Spät’s analysis focuses on a region of northern Iraq with a Muslim majority and Christian and Yezidi minorities. Officially, the groups reject one another’s doctrines, and the Yezidis have historically even been proclaimed to be devil worshippers by some Muslim authorities. Yet Spät finds a steady crossover of members from each group patronizing each other’s sacred sites, seeking services from each other’s ritual specialists, and employing each other’s empowered items (amulets, etc.). This is most evident in processes of ritual healing, in which a “try anything” approach often seems to prevail. Such dynamics are easily transposed to other contexts, both contemporary and historical, in which a variety of magical practices might be officially condemned, but still enjoy widespread popular patronage and support.
{"title":"Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe, An Investigation by Ronald Hutton (review)","authors":"Julie Fox-Horton","doi":"10.1353/mrw.2023.a906606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2023.a906606","url":null,"abstract":"these people negotiated skepticism about their abilities within a larger cultural context in which they might become victims of witchcraft accusations. Readers interested in this journal’s even more capacious category of “ritual” will find almost all the articles useful to some degree, bringing mainly anthropological methodologies to bear on the issue of doubt surrounding both abstract religious beliefs and concrete ritualized practices. A chapter by Eszter Spät on “religious crossover” in presentday Iraq could well have significant “crossover” potential of its own for magical studies. Spät’s analysis focuses on a region of northern Iraq with a Muslim majority and Christian and Yezidi minorities. Officially, the groups reject one another’s doctrines, and the Yezidis have historically even been proclaimed to be devil worshippers by some Muslim authorities. Yet Spät finds a steady crossover of members from each group patronizing each other’s sacred sites, seeking services from each other’s ritual specialists, and employing each other’s empowered items (amulets, etc.). This is most evident in processes of ritual healing, in which a “try anything” approach often seems to prevail. Such dynamics are easily transposed to other contexts, both contemporary and historical, in which a variety of magical practices might be officially condemned, but still enjoy widespread popular patronage and support.","PeriodicalId":41353,"journal":{"name":"Magic Ritual and Witchcraft","volume":"18 1","pages":"131 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42824086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906607
Peter H. Goodrich
In Chapter 5, “The Cailleach,” Hutton investigates the persona also referred to as the Hag, or the Old Woman, indigenous to the Gaelic British Isles. This supernatural female entity is typically known for her vast size, old age, and association with topographical features, such as mountains and environmental features, such as harsh winters (143). This figure, according to Hutton, while stemming from localized popular culture, was not commonly known among the cultural elite until nineteenthand twentiethcentury folklorists began compiling and recording traditions and beliefs of the peoples in these areas between 1880–1930 (144). One of the common features of the Cailleach is the old age of the character—in one instance from Connemara she was thought to have survived for a millennium (144). Another commonality was her great size. She was often described as a sort of giantess, responsible for the shape of the topography of the landscape. Hutton suggests that the term Cailleach derives from the Christian tradition with the Irish word caille, meaning veil, stemming from the ecclesiastical Latin term pallium (149). Ultimately, it is the lack of a “unifying or incorporating figure behind” (154) the Calleach that leads Hutton to argue that “the entity seems only to have been perceived in the twentieth century” (155). In his conclusion Hutton offers a brief summation, stating that each of the female figures discussed are “countercultural” and they all “offer a direct challenge to current structures of academic debate” (196). This structure suggests that “Christian Europe, both in the Middle Ages and after, was capable of developing new superhuman figures which operated outside of Christian cosmology” (196). These figures, as Hutton eloquently demonstrates throughout his book, did not act in “direct opposition to Christianity,” and “were part of the thoughtworld of people who were otherwise orthodox Christians for their place and time” (196). For Hutton, this means we might need a “new labelling system for such entities, to fit an increasingly postChristian society in which more of their kind, such as the Green Man, are arising, and for which the old polarizing terminology of Christian and pagan is no longer suitable” (197).
{"title":"Magic in Merlin’s Realm: A History of Occult Politics in Britain by Francis Young (review)","authors":"Peter H. Goodrich","doi":"10.1353/mrw.2023.a906607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2023.a906607","url":null,"abstract":"In Chapter 5, “The Cailleach,” Hutton investigates the persona also referred to as the Hag, or the Old Woman, indigenous to the Gaelic British Isles. This supernatural female entity is typically known for her vast size, old age, and association with topographical features, such as mountains and environmental features, such as harsh winters (143). This figure, according to Hutton, while stemming from localized popular culture, was not commonly known among the cultural elite until nineteenthand twentiethcentury folklorists began compiling and recording traditions and beliefs of the peoples in these areas between 1880–1930 (144). One of the common features of the Cailleach is the old age of the character—in one instance from Connemara she was thought to have survived for a millennium (144). Another commonality was her great size. She was often described as a sort of giantess, responsible for the shape of the topography of the landscape. Hutton suggests that the term Cailleach derives from the Christian tradition with the Irish word caille, meaning veil, stemming from the ecclesiastical Latin term pallium (149). Ultimately, it is the lack of a “unifying or incorporating figure behind” (154) the Calleach that leads Hutton to argue that “the entity seems only to have been perceived in the twentieth century” (155). In his conclusion Hutton offers a brief summation, stating that each of the female figures discussed are “countercultural” and they all “offer a direct challenge to current structures of academic debate” (196). This structure suggests that “Christian Europe, both in the Middle Ages and after, was capable of developing new superhuman figures which operated outside of Christian cosmology” (196). These figures, as Hutton eloquently demonstrates throughout his book, did not act in “direct opposition to Christianity,” and “were part of the thoughtworld of people who were otherwise orthodox Christians for their place and time” (196). For Hutton, this means we might need a “new labelling system for such entities, to fit an increasingly postChristian society in which more of their kind, such as the Green Man, are arising, and for which the old polarizing terminology of Christian and pagan is no longer suitable” (197).","PeriodicalId":41353,"journal":{"name":"Magic Ritual and Witchcraft","volume":"18 1","pages":"135 - 139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43172043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906601
Timothy R. Grieve-carlson
Abstract:This essay explores W. E. B. Du Bois’s use of magical sources in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. I argue that Du Bois’s metaphor of the ‘Veil’ refers directly to Black magical traditions, or Conjure, alongside to the scriptural, literary, and philosophical allusions that Du Bois weaves throughout the metaphor of the Veil in Souls. Du Bois had the Conjurer in mind when he described the Black subject in America as a “seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world.” I argue that Du Bois turns to Conjure for the Conjurer’s unique position of ontological displacement, social precarity, and special insight. Like the Conjurer, Du Bois’s Veiled subject exists between two worlds.
{"title":"Du Bois Between Two Worlds: The Magical Sources of The Souls of Black Folk","authors":"Timothy R. Grieve-carlson","doi":"10.1353/mrw.2023.a906601","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2023.a906601","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay explores W. E. B. Du Bois’s use of magical sources in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. I argue that Du Bois’s metaphor of the ‘Veil’ refers directly to Black magical traditions, or Conjure, alongside to the scriptural, literary, and philosophical allusions that Du Bois weaves throughout the metaphor of the Veil in Souls. Du Bois had the Conjurer in mind when he described the Black subject in America as a “seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world.” I argue that Du Bois turns to Conjure for the Conjurer’s unique position of ontological displacement, social precarity, and special insight. Like the Conjurer, Du Bois’s Veiled subject exists between two worlds.","PeriodicalId":41353,"journal":{"name":"Magic Ritual and Witchcraft","volume":"18 1","pages":"32 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44676536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906600
Ceri Houlbrook, Julia Phillips
Abstract:In the Early Modern Period, witch-bottles were a magical-medical remedy for bewitchment, prescribed by cunning-folk. Filled with pins, nails, and the victim’s urine, the bottles were then heated or buried, counteracting the suspected curse. Today, witch-bottles have taken on new meanings and new physical specifications. It is no longer seventeenth-century cunning-folk instructing on how to make them, but contemporary Wiccans on social media. This paper traces the shift in the purpose and perceptions of the witch-bottle over time, its adaptation key to our understanding of the custom itself and of how people today engage with the practices of the past.
{"title":"“For All of Your Protection Needs”: Tracing the “Witch Bottle” from the Early Modern Period to TikTok","authors":"Ceri Houlbrook, Julia Phillips","doi":"10.1353/mrw.2023.a906600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2023.a906600","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the Early Modern Period, witch-bottles were a magical-medical remedy for bewitchment, prescribed by cunning-folk. Filled with pins, nails, and the victim’s urine, the bottles were then heated or buried, counteracting the suspected curse. Today, witch-bottles have taken on new meanings and new physical specifications. It is no longer seventeenth-century cunning-folk instructing on how to make them, but contemporary Wiccans on social media. This paper traces the shift in the purpose and perceptions of the witch-bottle over time, its adaptation key to our understanding of the custom itself and of how people today engage with the practices of the past.","PeriodicalId":41353,"journal":{"name":"Magic Ritual and Witchcraft","volume":"18 1","pages":"1 - 31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48460671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906605
Michael d. Bailey
{"title":"Faith, Doubt and Knowledge in Religious Thinking ed. by Éva Pócs, Bea Vidacs (review)","authors":"Michael d. Bailey","doi":"10.1353/mrw.2023.a906605","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2023.a906605","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41353,"journal":{"name":"Magic Ritual and Witchcraft","volume":"18 1","pages":"129 - 131"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45877496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2023.a906611
A. Zaytseva
{"title":"The Medieval Devil: A Reader ed. by Richard Raiswell, David R. Winter (review)","authors":"A. Zaytseva","doi":"10.1353/mrw.2023.a906611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2023.a906611","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41353,"journal":{"name":"Magic Ritual and Witchcraft","volume":"18 1","pages":"148 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48886059","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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