Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits

Author: Emma Wilby
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Book Description
In the hundreds of confessions relating to witchcraft and sorcery trials from early modern Britain we frequently find detailed descriptions of intimate working relationships between popular magical practitioners and familiar spirits of either human or animal form. Until recently historians often dismissed these descriptions as elaborate fictions created by judicial interrogators eager to find evidence of stereotypical pacts with the Devil. Although this paradigm is now routinely questioned, and most historians acknowledge that there was a folkloric component to familiar lore in the period, these beliefs and the experiences reportedly associated with them, remain substantially unexamined. Cunning-Folk and Familiar Spirits examines the folkloric roots of familiar lore from historical, anthropological and comparative religious perspectives. It argues that beliefs about witches' familiars were rooted in beliefs surrounding the use of fairy familiars by beneficent magical practitioners or 'cunning folk', and corroborates this through a comparative analysis of familiar beliefs found in traditional native American and Siberian shamanism. The author explores the experiential dimension of familiar lore by drawing parallels between early modern familiar encounters and visionary mysticism as it appears in both tribal shamanism and medieval European contemplative traditions. These perspectives challenge the reductionist view of popular magic in early modern British often presented by historians.

The Visions of Isobel Gowdie

Author: Emma Wilby
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1837642079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 618

Book Description
The confessions of Isobel Gowdie are widely recognised as the most extraordinary on record in Britain. Using historical, psychological, comparative religious and anthropological perspectives, this book sets out to separate the voice of Isobel Gowdie from that of her interrogators.

Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History

Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 082644279X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

Book Description
Cunning-folk were local practitioners of magic, providing small-scale but valued service to the community. They were far more representative of magical practice than the arcane delvings of astrologers and necromancers. Mostly unsensational in their approach, cunning-folk helped people with everyday problems: how to find lost objects; how to escape from bad luck or a suspected spell; and how to attract a lover or keep the love of a husband or wife. While cunning-folk sometimes fell foul of the authorities, both church and state often turned a blind eye to their existence and practices, distinguishing what they did from the rare and sensational cases of malvolent witchcraft. In a world of uncertainty, before insurance and modern science, cunning-folk played an important role that has previously been ignored.

Folk Witchcraft

Author: Roger Horne
Publisher: Moon Over the Mountain Press
ISBN: 9781736762509
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
A revised and expanded edition of the first text in the Folk Witchcraft series. Complete with practical exercises, descriptions of craft theories and models, and a beginner's working grimoire, Folk Witchcraft provides the student witch with a concise, yet thorough introduction to the old craft that is firmly rooted in the past and adapted for the present. Experienced witches will deepen and enrich their practices by connecting more fully to traditional magics from hundreds of years in the past.With over 50 rituals, charms, and exercises, Folk Witchcraft offers a refreshingly simple approach to the craft that is non-dogmatic, flexible, and rewarding as a regular spiritual practice.

Cunning-folk

Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Local practitioners of magic, providing small-scale but valued services to the community, cunning-folk were far more representative of magical practice than the arcane delvings of astrologers and necromancers. Mostly unsensational in their approach, cunning-folk helped people with everyday problems: how to find lost objects; how to escape from bad luck or a suspected spell; and how to attract a lover or keep the love of a husband or wife. While cunning-folk sometimes fell foul of the authorities, both church and state often turned a blind eye to their existence and practices, distinguishing what they did from the rare and sensational cases of malevolent witchcraft. In a world of uncertainty, before insurance and modern science, cunning-folk played an important role that has previously been ignored.

Invoking the Akelarre

Author: Emma Wilby
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1782846220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 667

Book Description
With their dramatic descriptions of black masses and cannibalistic feasts, the records generated by the Basque witch-craze of 160914 provide us with arguably the most demonologically-stereotypical accounts of the witches sabbath or akelarre to have emerged from early modern Europe. While the trials have attracted scholarly attention, the most substantial monograph on the subject was written nearly forty years ago and most works have focused on the ways in which interrogators shaped the pattern of prosecutions and the testimonies of defendants. Invoking the Akelarre diverts from this norm by employing more recent historiographical paradigms to analyze the contributions of the accused. Through interdisciplinary analyses of both French- and Spanish-Basque records, it argues that suspects were not passive recipients of elite demonological stereotypes but animated these received templates with their own belief and experience, from the dark exoticism of magical conjuration, liturgical cursing and theatrical misrule to the sharp pragmatism of domestic medical practice and everyday religious observance. In highlighting the range of raw materials available to the suspects, the book helps us to understand how the fiction of the witches sabbath emerged to such prominence in contemporary mentalities, whilst also restoring some agency to the defendants and nuancing the historical thesis that stereotypical content points to interrogatorial opinion and folkloric content to the voices of the accused. In its local context, this study provides an intimate portrait of peasant communities as they flourished in the Basque region in this period and leaves us with the irony that Europes most sensationally-demonological accounts of the witches sabbath may have evolved out of a particularly ardent commitment, on the part of ordinary Basques, to the social and devotional structures of popular Catholicism.

The Cunning Man's Handbook

Author: Jim Baker
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781905297689
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 568

Book Description
"The desire to understand magic in any specific cultural context is an intellectual puzzle not only for scholars but believers." - Jim Baker

Southern Cunning

Author: Aaron Oberon
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 178904197X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Book Description
Southern Cunning is a journey through the folklore of the American South and a look at the power these stories hold for modern witches. Through the lens of folklore, animism, and bioregionalism the book shows how to bring rituals in folklore into the modern day and presents a uniquely American approach to witchcraft born out of the land and practical application.

Daughters of the Witching Hill

Author: Mary Sharratt
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547488483
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Book Description
From the author of The Dark Lady, a novel of England’s trial of the Pendle witches of 1612 and a family struggling to survive the hysteria. Bess Southerns, an impoverished widow living in Pendle Forest, is haunted by visions and gains a reputation as a cunning woman. Drawing on the Catholic folk magic of her youth, Bess heals the sick and foretells the future. As she ages, she instructs her granddaughter, Alizon, in her craft, as well as her best friend, who ultimately turns to dark magic. When a peddler suffers a stroke after exchanging harsh words with Alizon, a local magistrate, eager to make his name as a witch finder, plays neighbors and family members against one another until suspicion and paranoia reach frenzied heights. This e-book includes a sample chapter of Illuminations. “Daughters of the Witching Hill offers a fresh approach with witches who believe in their own power and yet, in many ways, are still innocent. Sharratt’s readers—like the magistrate who took the women’s confessions—are likely to be spellbound by their stories.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Full of the reality of the day, this story is stark and real, but Sharratt’s descriptions of landscape and the daily life of the poor at the time are rich enough to feed the senses. The author weaves this vast canvas of changing culture into the personal stories of these women, and in the process transports us to a distant land, a distant time—and deep into the story of people we sympathize with and care about.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

The Occult Laboratory

Author: Michael Hunter
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 0851158013
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
Magic, science and second sight in 17c Scottish Higlands, with new edition of Kirk's Secret Commonwealth.