Witchcraft, Sorcery and Superstition PDF Download

Author: Jules Michelet
Publisher: Citadel Press
ISBN: 9780806516868
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Michelet's classic study of medieval hexes and spell-casting.

Author: Michael David Bailey
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742533875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The only comprehensive, single-volume survey of magic available, this compelling book traces the history of magic and superstition in Europe from antiquity to the present. Focusing mainly on the medieval and early modern era, Michael Bailey also explores the ancient Near East, classical Greece and Rome, and the spread of magical systems_particularly modern witchcraft or Wicca_from Europe to the United States. He explains how magic was understood, constructed, and frequently condemned and how magical beliefs and practices have changed over time yet also remain vital even today.

Author: John Callow
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350196142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
"Fascinating and vivid." New Statesman "Thoroughly researched." The Spectator "Intriguing." BBC History Magazine "Vividly told." BBC History Revealed "A timely warning against persecution." Morning Star "Astute and thoughtful." History Today "An important work." All About History "Well-researched." The Tablet On the morning of Thursday 29 June 1682, a magpie came rasping, rapping and tapping at the window of a prosperous Devon merchant. Frightened by its appearance, his servants and members of his family had, within a matter of hours, convinced themselves that the bird was an emissary of the devil sent by witches to destroy the fabric of their lives. As the result of these allegations, three women of Bideford came to be forever defined as witches. A Secretary of State brushed aside their case and condemned them to the gallows; to hang as the last group of women to be executed in England for the crime. Yet, the hatred of their neighbours endured. For Bideford, it was said, was a place of witches. Though 'pretty much worn away' the belief in witchcraft still lingered on for more than a century after their deaths. In turn, ignored, reviled, and extinguished but never more than half-forgotten, it seems that the memory of these three women - and of their deeds and sufferings, both real and imagined – was transformed from canker to regret, and from regret into celebration in our own age. Indeed, their example was cited during the final Parliamentary debates, in 1951, that saw the last of the witchcraft acts repealed, and their names were chanted, as both inspiration and incantation, by the women beyond the wire at Greenham Common. In this book, John Callow explores this remarkable reversal of fate, and the remarkable tale of the Bideford Witches.

Author: Jules Michelet
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780806500591
Category : Civilization, Medieval
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Malcolm Gaskill
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0593467108
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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A gripping story of a family tragedy brought about by witch-hunting in Puritan New England that combines history, anthropology, sociology, politics, theology and psychology. “The best and most enjoyable kind of history writing. Malcolm Gaskill goes to meet the past on its own terms and in its own place…Thought-provoking and absorbing." —Hilary Mantel, best-selling author of Wolf Hall In Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651, peculiar things begin to happen. Precious food spoils, livestock ails, property vanishes, and people suffer convulsions as if possessed by demons. A woman is seen wading through the swamp like a lost soul. Disturbing dreams and visions proliferate. Children sicken and die. As tensions rise, rumours spread of witches and heretics and the community becomes tangled in a web of distrust, resentment and denunciation. The finger of suspicion soon falls on a young couple with two small children: the prickly brickmaker, Hugh Parsons, and his troubled wife, Mary. Drawing on rich, previously unexplored source material, Malcolm Gaskill vividly evokes a strange past, one where lives were steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in omens, curses and enchantments. The Ruin of All Witches captures an entire society caught in agonized transition between superstition and enlightenment, tradition and innovation.

Author: Hans Broedel
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847795676
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The Malleus is an important text and is frequently quoted by authors across a wide range of scholarly disciplines. Yet it also presents serious difficulties: it is difficult to understand out of context, and is not generally representative of late medieval learned thinking. This, the first book-length study of the original text in English, provides students and scholars with an introduction to this controversial work and to the conceptual word of its authors. Like all witch-theorists, Institoris and Sprenger constructed their witch out of a constellation of pre-existing popular beliefs and learned traditions. Therefore, to understand the Malleus, one must also understand the contemporary and subsequent debates over the reality and nature of witches. This book argues that although the Malleus was a highly idiosyncratic text, its arguments were powerfully compelling and therefore remained influential long after alternatives were forgotten. Consequently, although focused on a single text, this study has important implications for fifteenth-century witchcraft theory. This is a fascinating work on the Malleus Maleficarum and will be essential to students and academics of late medieval and early modern history, religion and witchcraft studies.

Author: Michael D. Bailey
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801467306
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Superstitions are commonplace in the modern world. Mostly, however, they evoke innocuous images of people reading their horoscopes or avoiding black cats. Certain religious practices might also come to mind—praying to St. Christopher or lighting candles for the dead. Benign as they might seem today, such practices were not always perceived that way. In medieval Europe superstitions were considered serious offenses, violations of essential precepts of Christian doctrine or immutable natural laws. But how and why did this come to be? In Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies, Michael D. Bailey explores the thorny concept of superstition as it was understood and debated in the Middle Ages. Bailey begins by tracing Christian thinking about superstition from the patristic period through the early and high Middle Ages. He then turns to the later Middle Ages, a period that witnessed an outpouring of writings devoted to superstition—tracts and treatises with titles such as De superstitionibus and Contra vitia superstitionum. Most were written by theologians and other academics based in Europe’s universities and courts, men who were increasingly anxious about the proliferation of suspect beliefs and practices, from elite ritual magic to common healing charms, from astrological divination to the observance of signs and omens. As Bailey shows, however, authorities were far more sophisticated in their reasoning than one might suspect, using accusations of superstition in a calculated way to control the boundaries of legitimate religion and acceptable science. This in turn would lay the conceptual groundwork for future discussions of religion, science, and magic in the early modern world. Indeed, by revealing the extent to which early modern thinkers took up old questions about the operation of natural properties and forces using the vocabulary of science rather than of belief, Bailey exposes the powerful but in many ways false dichotomy between the "superstitious" Middle Ages and "rational" European modernity.

Author: Johnson Smith
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN: 9781690645894
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description
This book covers a number of different topics, including Black Magic, lucky numbers and insight into dreams. Instructions are provided on how to be a spirit medium and hypnotize, among other things. It's easy to read and is as informative as it is entertaining.

Author: A. Rowlands
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230248373
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Men – as accused witches, witch-hunters, werewolves and the demonically possessed – are the focus of analysis in this collection of essays by leading scholars of early modern European witchcraft. The gendering of witch persecution and witchcraft belief is explored through original case-studies from England, Scotland, Italy, Germany and France.

Author: Montague Summers
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1528799852
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
This fascinating volume delves into the history of witchcraft and demonology. Witchcraft and Black Magic gives an extensive history of what Montague Summers deems to be Satanic practises. First published in 1946, this handbook gathers vivid detail from a wealth of sources and references that enhance its overview of black magic. Montague Summers’ research explores numerous court records, personal accounts, and classic works of literature, as well as taking evidence from the Bible. A devout Catholic, Summers writes about witchcraft in great detail, examining historic events, such as the Salem witch trials, with a close eye. The chapters in this chilling volume include: - What is Witchcraft? How Does One Become a Witch? - The Familiar, in Human Shape and Animal - Witchcraft at Cambridge and Oxford - The Origins of Witchcraft - The Library of Witches - The Magus (1801) of Francis Barrett - Sympathetic Magic Complete with an introduction to the folklore and history of witchcraft, Read & Co. Books has republished this classic guide to black magic in a brand new edition. A must-read for conspiracy theorists and those with an interest in the historical background of witchcraft.