Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History PDF Download

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191509248
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
What is a grimoire? The word has a familiar ring to many people, particularly as a consequence of such popular television dramas as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed. But few people are sure exactly what it means. Put simply, grimoires are books of spells that were first recorded in the Ancient Middle East and which have developed and spread across much of the Western Hemisphere and beyond over the ensuing millennia. At their most benign, they contain charms and remedies for natural and supernatural ailments and advice on contacting spirits to help find treasures and protect from evil. But at their most sinister they provide instructions on how to manipulate people for corrupt purposes and, worst of all, to call up and make a pact with the Devil. Both types have proven remarkably resilient and adaptable and retain much of their relevance and fascination to this day. But the grimoire represents much more than just magic. To understand the history of grimoires is to understand the spread of Christianity, the development of early science, the cultural influence of the print revolution, the growth of literacy, the impact of colonialism, and the expansion of western cultures across the oceans. As this book richly demonstrates, the history of grimoires illuminates many of the most important developments in European history over the last two thousand years.

Author: Charles River Editors
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781978291669
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description
*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary descriptions of various practices of magic *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "The Anglo-Saxon charms... are of outstanding importance because they provide more than vague references of exceptional and short texts. They cannot be said to reveal everything, for there are numerous points in which they lamentably fail us, but they are numerous enough and, taken as a body, complete enough to give more than a tantalising hint of a strange world. The veil of mystification enveloping magic appears to be thin and transparent here." - G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic (1948) Great Britain is an ancient land steeped in history and tradition. Its rolling countryside is dotted with prehistoric burial mounds and stone circles. Brooding castles hold tales of bloodshed and honor. Medieval churches have elaborate stained glass windows and gruesome carvings, reflecting a mixture of hope and darkness. Through all of this runs a deep current of the practice of magic. Court magicians thrilled royal patrons with tales of communing with the dead in moldering graveyards, alchemists labored in hidden laboratories tried to turn base metals into gold, and in the countryside, local "cunning folk" mixed herbs and made incantations. These practices stand in contrast to high magic, including such occult arts as astrology, divination, necromancy, and alchemy, which required literacy, an extensive and expansive personal library, and a fair amount of education. As such, some magicians became important figures in the royal court, such as the famous John Dee, who practiced alchemy and wrote a dictionary documenting the language of angels. Most commoners were not literate and couldn't afford education or books, and thus their magic consisted of separate traditions and techniques that only occasionally overlapped with high magic. Before the 20th century, with its radios, televisions, and international travel, all levels of British society were fascinated by magic and superstition. At the same time, a comprehensive look at British folk magic is simply impossible. Large volumes have been written about the local beliefs in regions and individual counties, and there has been considerable variation of practices over space and time, but much has been lost. Since folk magicians were for the most part illiterate and worked in a hostile cultural environment throughout much of their history, little was written down. That said, there is still a rich body of literature about British folk magic. While the practitioners of folk magic may have been poor, the tradition in which they worked certainly was not. Many of their spells had ancient roots and expressed a deep knowledge of the people and the land in which they lived. It was an enduring system of magic that survived religious persecution, the laughter of the educated classes, and the march of modernism (at least to some extent). Traces of these folk practices have survived up to the present time, making it unlikely that they will ever die out completely. British Folk Magic: The History of Magical Practices across Great Britain offers a sampling of Britain's folk magic, including the common cures and spells carried out by regular people. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about British folk magic like never before.

Author: Owen Davies
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719056567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Most studies of witchcraft and magic have been concerned with the era of the witch trials, a period that officially came to an end in Britain with the passing of the Witchcraft Act of 1736. But the majority of people continued to fear witches and put their faith in magic. Owen Davies here traces the history of witchcraft and magic from 1736 to 1951, when the passing of the Fraudulent Mediums Act finally erased the concept of witchcraft from the statute books. This original study examines the extent to which witchcraft, magic and fortune-telling continued to influence the thoughts and actions of the people of England and Wales in a period when the forces of "progress" are often thought to have vanquished such beliefs.

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

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

Author: David J. Collins, S. J.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316239497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This book presents twenty chapters by experts in their fields, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary overview of the theory and practice of magic in the West. Its chronological scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism. For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. Similarly, the volume highlights the transformative and challenging encounters of Europeans with non-Europeans, regarding the practice of magic in both early modern colonization and more recent decolonization.

Author: Keith Thomas
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141932406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 931

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Book Description
Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas's classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief.

Author: Davies Owen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317867556
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
In 1856 William Dove, a young tenant farmer, was tried and executed for the poisoning of his wife Harriet. The trial might have been a straightforward case of homicide, but because Dove became involved with Henry Harrison, a Leeds wizard, and demonstrated through his actions and words a strong belief in magic and the powers of the devil, considerable effort was made to establish whether these beliefs were symptomatic of insanity. It seems that Dove murdered his wife to hasten a prediction made by Harrison that he would remarry a more attractive and wealthy woman. Dove employed Harrison to perform various acts of magic, and also made his own written pact with the devil to improve his personal circumstances. The book will study Dove’s beliefs and Harrison’s activities within the rural and urban communities in which they lived, and examine how modern cultures attempted to explain this largely hidden mental world, which was so sensationally exposed. The Victorian period is often portrayed as an age of great social and educational progress. This book shows how beliefs dismissed by some Victorians as ‘medieval superstitions’ continued to influence the thoughts and actions of many people, viz most famously Conan `table tapper' Doyle.