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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Alternative belief systems > Occult studies > Witchcraft
This is the second, and extensively revised, edition of the first
full-scale scholarly study of what is arguably the only
fully-formed religion that England has ever given the world: that
of modern pagan witchcraft, which has now spread from English
shores across four continents. Ronald Hutton examines the nature of
that religion and its development, and offers a history of
attitudes to witchcraft, paganism and magic in British society
since 1800. Its pages reveal village cunning folk, Victorian ritual
magicians, classicists and archaeologists, leaders of woodcraft and
scouting movements, Freemasons, and members of rural secret
societies. We also find some of the leading figures of English
literature, from the Romantic poets to W. B. Yeats, D. H. Lawrence
and Robert Graves, as well as the main personalities who have
represented pagan witchcraft to the public world since 1950.
Thriller writers like Dennis Wheatley, and films and television
programmes, get similar coverage, as does tabloid journalism. The
material is by its very nature often sensational, and care is taken
throughout to distinguish fact from fantasy, in a manner not
hitherto applied to most of the stories involved. Consistently
densely researched, Triumph of the Moon presents an authoritative
insight into an aspect of modern cultural history which has
attracted sensational publicity but has hitherto been little
understood. This edition incorporates all of the new research
carried out into the subject by the author, and by others who have
often been inspired by this book, during the twenty years since it
was first published.
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Witchfinders
(Paperback)
Malcolm Gaskill
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By the spring of 1645, civil war had exacted a terrible toll upon
England. Disease was rife, apocalyptic omens appeared in the skies,
and idolators detected in every shire. In a remote corner of Essex,
two obscure gentlemen began interrogating women suspected of
witchcraft, triggering the most brutal witch-hunt in English
history. Witchfinders is a spellbinding study of how Matthew
Hopkins, 'the Witchfinder General', and John Stearne extended their
campaign across East Anglia, driven by godly zeal. Exploiting the
anxiety and lawlessness of the times, and cheered on by ordinary
folk, they extracted confessions of satanic pacts resulting in
scores of executions.
Defining 'magic' is a maddening task. Over the last century
numerous philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and theologians
have attempted to pin down its essential meaning, sometimes
analysing it in such complex and abstruse depth that it all but
loses its sense altogether. For this reason, many people often shy
away from providing a detailed definition, assuming it is generally
understood as the human control of supernatural forces. 'Magic'
continues to pervade the popular imagination and idiom. People feel
comfortable with its contemporary multiple meanings, unaware of the
controversy, conflict, and debate its definition has caused over
two and a half millennia. In common usage today 'magic' is uttered
in reference to the supernatural, superstition, illusion, trickery,
religious miracles, fantasies, and as a simple superlative. The
literary confection known as 'magical realism' has considerable
appeal and many modern scientists have ironically incorporated the
word into their vocabulary, with their 'magic acid', 'magic
bullets' and 'magic angles'. Since the so-called European
Enlightenment magic has often been seen as a marker of primitivism,
of a benighted earlier stage of human development. Yet across the
modern globalized world hundreds of millions continue to resort to
magic - and also to fear it. Magic provides explanations and
remedies for those living in extreme poverty and without access to
alternatives. In the industrial West, with its state welfare
systems, religious fundamentalists decry the continued moral threat
posed by magic. Under the guise of neo-Paganism, its practice has
become a religion in itself. Magic continues to be a truly global
issue. This Very Short Introduction does not attempt to provide a
concluding definition of magic: it is beyond simple definition.
Instead it explores the many ways in which magic, as an idea and a
practice, has been understood and employed over the millennia.
ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford
University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every
subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get
ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts,
analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make
interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
This excellent little book is a wonderful introduction to the story
of the trial of the witches of Pendle in 1612. In a very lively and
readable style, Christine Goodier provides a who's who of the
events, as well as an interesting angle on the trials themselves.
She emphasises that the accused were merely flesh and blood, not
demons, arguing that they were poor, uneducated people who were at
worst misguided. Her inevitable conclusion is that a terrible
injustice was done 400 years ago when they were famously convicted
of witchcraft and hanged.
In Obeah, Race and Racism, Eugenia O'Neal vividly discusses the
tradition of African magic and witchcraft, traces its voyage across
the Atlantic and its subsequent evolution on the plantations of the
New World, and provides a detailed map of how English writers,
poets and dramatists interpreted it for English audiences. The
triangular trade in guns and baubles, enslaved Africans and gold,
sugar and cotton was mirrored by a similar intellectual trade borne
in the reports, accounts and stories that fed the perceptions and
prejudices of everyone involved in the slave trade and no subject
was more fascinating and disconcerting to Europeans than the
religious beliefs of the people they had enslaved. Indeed, African
magic made its own triangular voyage; starting from Africa, Obeah
crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean, then journeyed back across
the ocean, in the form of traveller's narratives and plantation
reports, to Great Britain where it was incorporated into the plots
of scores of books and stories which went on to shape and form the
world view of explorers and colonial officials in Britain's
far-flung empire. O'Neal examines what British writers knew or
thought they knew about Obeah and discusses how their perceptions
of black people were shaped by their perceptions of Obeah.
Translated or interpreted by racist writers as a devil-worshipping
religion, Obeah came to symbolize the brutality, savagery and
superstition in which blacks were thought to be immured by their
very race. For many writers, black belief in Obeah proved black
inferiority and justified both slavery and white colonial
domination. The English reading public became generally convinced
that Obeah was evil and that blacks were, at worst, devil
worshippers or, at best, extremely stupid and credulous. And
because books and stories on Obeah continued to promulgate either
of the two prevailing perspectives, and sometimes both together
until at least the 1950s, theories of black inferiority continue to
hold sway in Great Britain today.
The history of witchcraft and sorcery has attracted a great deal of
interest and debate, but until now studies have been largely from
the Anglo-Saxon perspective. This book shows how that approach has
blurred our understanding and definition of the issues involved,
and sheds new light on the history of witchcraft in England. What
had thus far been seen as peculiar to England is here shown to be
characteristic of much of northern Europe. Taking into account
major new developments in the historiography of witchcraft--in
methodology, and in the chronological and geographical scope of the
studies--the authors explore the relationship between witchcraft,
law, and theology; the origins and nature of the witch's sabbath;
the sociology and criminology of witch-hunting; and the comparative
approach to European witchcraft. An impressive amount of archival
work by all of the contributors has produced an indispensable guide
to the study of witchcraft, of interest not only to historians, but
to anthropologists, criminologists, psychologists, and
sociologists.
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