By bringing together in one place specific objects, materials, and features indicating ritual, religious, or magical belief used by people around the world and through time, this tool will assist archaeologists in identifying evidence of belief-related behaviors and broadening their understanding of how those behaviors may also be seen through less obvious evidential lines. Instruction and templates for recording, typologizing, classifying, and analyzing ritual or magico-religious material culture are also provided to guide researchers in the survey, collection, and cataloging processes. The bulleted formatting and topical range make this a highly accessible work, while providing an incredible wealth of information in a single volume.

WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE 2021 'Riveting, appalling, addictive' Megan Nolan England, 1643. Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the Civil War began, the women are left to their own devices and Rebecca West chafes against the drudgery of her days. But when Matthew Hopkins arrives, asking bladed questions and casting damning accusations, mistrust and unease seep into the lives of the women. Caught between betrayal and persecution, what must Rebecca West do to survive? 'Deft and witty... dazzling and precise' New Statesman

Shows students of the history of witchcraft and magic that the beliefs of the seventeenth century continued through the Enlightenment, despite the attempts by philosophers to dismiss magic and its practice, into the nineteenth century. The volume is divided into three sections highlighting different definitions of magic including the concern over the non-material world as found in popular and elite practices, its relationship with science and medicine, and other forms of divination available to the general population. Providing students with a broad view of how magic was engaged with in the eighteenth century to inform their own studies. Explores the relationship between magic, science and medicine providing students with a good understanding of how the emerging fields of science and medicine came into conflict with popular belief in and practice of magic. Allowing students to see why magic still resonated with the general public into the nineteenth century.

'Intriguing' – Sunday Times 'A rousing read' – Irish Times 'A bright light of Francophone feminism' – New York Times Renowned journalist Mona Chollet recasts the witch as a powerful role model: an emblem of strength, free to exist beyond the narrow limits society imposes on women. Taking three archetypes from historic witch hunts – independent women, women who avoid having children and women who embrace ageing – Chollet examines how women today have the same charges levelled against them. She calls for justice in healthcare, challenging the gender imbalance in science and questioning why female bodies must still controlled by men. Rich with popular culture, literary references and media insights, In Defence of Witches is a vital addition to the cultural conversation around women, witches and the misogyny that has shaped the world they live in. With a foreword by Carmen Maria Machado and translated from French by Sophie R. Lewis.

This book explores the relationships between ancient witchcraft and its modern incarnation, and by doing so fills an important gap in the historiography. It is often noted that stories of witchcraft circulated in Greek and Latin classical texts, and that treatises dealing with witch-beliefs referenced them. Still, the role of humanistic culture and classical revival in the developing of the witch-hunts has not yet been fully researched. Marina Montesano examines Greek and Latin literature, revealing how particular features of ancient striges were carried into the Late Middle Ages, through the Renaissance and into the fifteenth century, when early Italian trials recall the myth of the strix common in ancient Latin sources and in popular memory. The final chapter also serves as a conclusion, to show how in Renaissance Italy and beyond, classical accounts of witchcraft ceased to be just stories, as they had formerly been, and were instead used to attest to the reality of witches' powers.

Offering a new template for future exploration, Susan Greenwood examines and develops the notion that the experience of magic is a panhuman orientation of consciousness, a form of knowledge largely marginalized in Western societies. In this volume she aims to form a "bridge of communication" between indigenous magical or shamanic worldviews and rationalized Western cultures. She outlines an alternative mythological framework for the latter to help develop a magical perception, as well as giving practical case studies derived from her own research. The form of magic discussed here is not fantastic or virtual, but ecological and sensory. Magical knowledge infiltrates the body in its deepest levels of the subconscious, and unconscious, as well as conscious awareness; it is felt and understood through the connection with an inspirited world that includes the consciousness of other beings, including those of plant, animal and the physical environment. This is anthropology from the heart rather than the head, and it engages with the messy area of emotions, an embodiment of the senses, and struggles to find a common language of listening to one another across a void of differences. The aim is to provide a non-reductive structure for the creative interplay of both magical and analytical modes of thought. Passion is a motivator for change, and a change in attitude to magic as an integrative force of human understanding is the main thread of this work.

• This volume provides a combination of the major schools of thought on the Salem witch trials and incorporates the current scholarship on the subject. Events are presented in a narrative format that delivers the drama of the trials and leaves instructors free to explore specific topics of their choosing in greater depth. An analysis of key issues is provided at the end of each chapter. • The third edition has been significantly updated to include an expanded section on the European origins of witch hunts and an update and expand epilogue which discusses the witch hunts – real and imagined, historical and cultural – since 1692. Allowing students new to the phenomenon of the witch-hunts and trials to better understand their origins and impact upon the national psyche. • The bibliography has been substantially updated, an extensive list of internet resources, sources of primary documents, documentaries, movies, artwork, and resources to assist lecturers with using this book in their classrooms and students to further their studies.

• This volume provides a combination of the major schools of thought on the Salem witch trials and incorporates the current scholarship on the subject. Events are presented in a narrative format that delivers the drama of the trials and leaves instructors free to explore specific topics of their choosing in greater depth. An analysis of key issues is provided at the end of each chapter. • The third edition has been significantly updated to include an expanded section on the European origins of witch hunts and an update and expand epilogue which discusses the witch hunts – real and imagined, historical and cultural – since 1692. Allowing students new to the phenomenon of the witch-hunts and trials to better understand their origins and impact upon the national psyche. • The bibliography has been substantially updated, an extensive list of internet resources, sources of primary documents, documentaries, movies, artwork, and resources to assist lecturers with using this book in their classrooms and students to further their studies.

Do you ever find that the earth stills and you suddenly feel acutely alive? Have you ever looked into an animal's eyes and felt the pull of a more primal world? Do you sometimes feel panic rise, or isolation sink upon you, or simply feel out of kilter with the modern world? 'Inside my cauldron is a thick fistful of paper, old diary entries, work "to do" lists, notes I wrote while I was in a bad place and feeling trapped in a life that was keeping my mind small and narrow; thoughts and feelings that are holding me back, keeping me tied to a time I want to let go of. These papers are flashes of lightning across a darkened room and I want them gone. As they curl and burn, twisting in their black spirals like the farewell flourish of a travelling cloak, a sense of calm sweeps through my chest and shoulders. I feel it so strongly, like a blast of ice to my system, shivering out the old thoughts. I'm burning a path for something new to come in.' One winter, Jennifer Lane reached breaking point in her fast-paced office life. In the year that followed her stress-related illness, she set out to rediscover the solace and purpose that witchcraft had given her as a teenager. The Wheel is an immersive, engaging read - exploring the life-long draw of witchcraft and our vulnerability to toxic working environments and digital demands. In her year-long journey Jennifer explores ancient festivals and rituals, and visits fellow pagans and wild landscapes, in search of wisdom and peace. For those who are sick at heart of noise, anger and disconnection, The Wheel is full of wise words, crackling rituals and natural beauty. This is a quest to discover how to live fully connected to the natural world while firmly in the twenty-first century.

This volume investigates the physical evidence for magic in medieval and modern Britain, including ritual mark, concealed objects, amulets, and magical equipment. The contributors are the current experts in each area of the subject, and show between them how ample the evidence is and how important it is for an understanding of history.

This is a work of fundamental importance for our understanding of the intellectual and cultural history of early modern Europe. Stuart Clark offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals based on their publications in the field of demonology, and shows how these beliefs fitted rationally with many other views current in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Professor Clark is the first to explore the appeal of demonology to early modern intellectuals by looking at the books they published on the subject during this period. After examining the linguistic foundations of their writings, the author shows how the writers' ideas about witchcraft (and about magic) complemented their other intellectual commitments-in particular, their conceptions of nature, history, religion, and politics. The result is much more than a history of demonology. It is a survey of wider intellectual and ideological purposes, and underlines just how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.

This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The supernatural consistently provided Scots with a way of understanding topics such as the natural environment, physical and emotional wellbeing, political events and visions of past and future. In exploring the early modern supernatural, the book has much to reveal about how men and women in this period thought about, debated and experienced the world around them. Comprising twelve chapters by an international range of scholars, The supernatural in early modern Scotland discusses both popular and elite understandings of the supernatural. -- .

Witch-Hunting in Scotland presents a fresh perspective on the trial and execution of the hundreds of women and men prosecuted for the crime of witchcraft, an offence that involved the alleged practice of maleficent magic and the worship of the devil, for inflicting harm on their neighbours and making pacts with the devil.

Brian P. Levack draws on law, politics and religion to explain the intensity of Scottish witch-hunting. Topics discussed include:

• the distinctive features of the Scottish criminal justice system
• the use of torture to extract confessions
• the intersection of witch-hunting with local and national politics
• the relationship between state-building and witch-hunting and the role of James VI
• Scottish Calvinism and the determination of zealous Scottish clergy and magistrates to achieve a godly society.

This original survey combines broad interpretations of the rise and fall of Scottish witchcraft prosecutions with detailed case studies of specific witch-hunts. Witch-Hunting in Scotland makes fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in witchcraft or in the political, legal and religious history of the early modern period.

'A groundbreaking work . . . Federici has become a crucial figure for . . . a new generation of feminists' Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Room A cult classic since its publication in the early years of this century, Caliban and the Witch is Silvia Federici's history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages through the European witch-hunts, the rise of scientific rationalism and the colonisation of the Americas, it gives a panoramic account of the often horrific violence with which the unruly human material of pre-capitalist societies was transformed into a set of predictable and controllable mechanisms. It Is a study of indigenous traditions crushed, of the enclosure of women's reproductive powers within the nuclear family, and of how our modern world was forged in blood. 'Rewarding . . . allows us to better understand the intimate relationship between modern patriarchy, the rise of the nation state and the transition from feudalism to capitalism' Guardian

This is the first academic overview of witchcraft and popular magic in Ireland and spans the medieval to the modern period. Based on a wide range of un-used and under-used primary source material, and taking account of denominational difference between Catholic and Protestant, it provides a detailed account of witchcraft trials and accusation.

A collection of essays on Scottish witchcraft and witch-hunting, which covers the whole period of the Scottish witch-hunt, from the mid-sixteenth century to the early eighteenth. Includes studies of particular witchcraft panics such as a reassessment of the role of King James VI. Covers a wide range of topics concerned with Scottish witch-hunting and places it in the context of other topics such as gender relations, folklore, magic and healing, and moral regulation by the church and state. Provides a comparative dimension of witch-hunting beyond Scotland - one on the global context, and one comparing Scotland with England. It is a showcase for the latest thinking on the subject and will be of interest to all scholars studying witchcraft in early modern Europe, as well as the general reader wanting to move beyond shallow and sensational accounts of a subject of compelling in. -- .

This book addresses the problems of adolescent Satanism from a psychological viewpoint. It includes the developmental dynamics that underlie four different types of young people who become involved in Satanism and provides an analysis of risk factors. The author critically evaluates the philosophy of Satanism through a review of The Satanic Bible, and further appraises the causes of Satanism by examining the roles of power, ritual, and dualistic thinking in young people's lives. In addition, Moriarty evaluates how communication patterns and parenting styles impact on a young person's vulnerability to become involved in Satanism. This is also the first book to describe the relationship between Satanism and suicide. Finally, it closes with ten practical suggestions for parents and others that will lead to effective prevention.

Six major conclusions challenge a number of prevailing myths: --Satanic beliefs and philosophy should be made known to everyone, therefore destroying the claim to be occult, or hidden. --There is no single type of personality drawn to Satanism, as commonly suggested by law enforcement. Four types are identified by the author. --Satanism must be viewed as a developmental process to be properly understood. --People often contribute to an individual's vulnerability to Satanism by how they relate to children and adolescents. --There is a significant relationship between suicide and Satanism that needs to be addressed in dealing with young people. --Adolescent Satanism is a problem that is largely preventable if certain guidelines are followed. This volume is intended for a wide audience, including parents, teachers, clergy, counselors, and other mental health professionals, and is a valuable resource for law enforcement personnel.

This book provides a history of witchcraft in the territories that compose contemporary Romania, with a focus on the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The first part presents aspects of earthly justice, religious and secular, analysing the codes of law, trials and verdicts, and underlining the differences between Transylvania on one hand, and Moldavia and Wallachia on the other. The second part is concerned with divine justice, describing apocalyptic texts that talk about the pains of witches in hell, but also the ensembles of religious painting where, in vast compositions of the Last Judgment, various punishments for the sin of witchcraft are imagined.