Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction
Malcolm Gaskill
Language: English
Pages: 144
ISBN: 019923695X
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Witchcraft is a subject that fascinates us all. Indeed, from childhood most of us develop some mental image of a witch--usually an old woman, mysterious and malignant. But why do witches still feature so heavily in our cultures and consciousness? From Halloween superstitions to literary references such as Faust and, of course, Harry Potter, witches seem ever-present in our lives. In this Very Short Introduction, Malcolm Gaskill takes a long historical perspective, from the ancient world to contemporary paganism. This is a book about the strangeness of the past, and about contrasts and change; but it's also about affinity and continuity. He reveals that witchcraft is multi-faceted, that it has always meant different things to different people, and that in every age it has raised questions about the distinction between fantasy and reality, faith and proof. Delving into court records, telling anecdotes, and challenging myths, Gaskill re-examines received wisdom, especially concerning the European witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He also explores the modern memory and reinvention of witchcraft--as history, religion, fiction, and metaphor.
For more information visit our web site www.oup.co.uk/general/vsi/ This page intentionally left blank Malcolm Gaskill Witchcraft A Very Short Introduction 3 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico
as peasant congregations were concerned, the priesthood absorbed and replicated magical rituals. It was still magic, but now it was their magic. What was a blessing if not a charm bestowed in God’s 47 Truth Boyle was not alone in pursuing this agenda. His intellectual circle included Newton himself, whose theory of gravity was no more than an occult force exerted by one body upon another. Perhaps those Diana cults worshipping the moon hadn’t been far wrong. And Newton was explicitly interested
magistrate? This is where tests came in, methods of diagnosis and identification that typically were unofficial, collective, and legally dubious. In parts of Africa, the traditional procedure is to feed poison to domestic fowls to see how they react. In Europe, water in a pail was expected to shimmer when a witch walked past; a sieve suspended from shears would rotate when her name was spoken. Thatch from a suspect’s roof might be burned to smoke her out, and boiling a patient’s urine was meant to
necessary to appreciate what was going on. Voyeurs of suffering may not care; but it matters what torturers actually did, and thought they were doing, to understand why such practices were institutionalized. Today, although torture may be widespread, at least its secrecy indicates that it is politically taboo, a prima facie breach of human rights. One of the hardest things to explain to students is why the use of torture – ‘getting medieval’, to quote Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction – was once a
quarter of a century, there were three convictions (from over forty prosecutions), and all of those were subsequently reversed. Confessions were virtually unheard of. What happened at Salem, then, was extraordinary. The crisis began in February 1692 in the household of Samuel Parris, a minister in the small agricultural community of Salem Village. His daughter and niece were the initial victims, and Tituba was his 90 slave. Accusations spread swiftly through Essex County. Half the accused lived