May be of interest.

Sabina Magliocco
Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University - Northridge
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Subject: [JFRR] Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction (Gaskill, Malcolm)

Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction. By Malcolm Gaskill. 2010.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. 144 pages. ISBN: 9780199236954 (soft
cover).

Reviewed by Melissa Harrington ([log in to unmask]).

[Word count: 1032 words]

Malcolm Gaskill has attempted the impossible in writing a short
introduction to the history of witchcraft, which encompasses social,
cultural, and political explanations for witchcraft beliefs and
crazes throughout the ages. He has succeeded magnificently. This
pocket-book eloquently and clearly introduces and summarizes the
theories and theorists of the historical study of witchcraft. His
account is concise enough to stand alone, but also a great
introduction to the work of other scholars in the field, with
excellent recommended reading.

The eight chapters are titled "Fear," "Heresy," "Malice," "Truth,"
"Justice," "Rage," "Fantasy," and "Culture." Gaskill considers
witchcraft as culturally durable, with a volatile ontological status
that reflects the timeless anxieties of ever-changing society. "Fear"
introduces the liminal ambiguity of the witch -- the monstrous
supernatural agent who is also human, and who has been with us
throughout history.

In "Heresy" authority and orthodoxy are discussed, particularly
looking at increased witchcraft persecutions as barometers of social
and political turmoil, from the Greek and Roman times until today.

"Malice" looks at the image of the witch as a cultural hybrid of
popular and scholarly tradition, and discusses case studies from
various witch trials. It examines the association of women with
witchcraft, in relation to female vulnerability, misogyny, Christian
demonization of pagan deities, and times of "gender crisis." It also
looks at beliefs of malefic magic, explaining the rationale of such
beliefs in terms of the eras and cultures in which they manifested,
weaving this with an account of how explanations have varied within
academic disciplines and research paradigms.

The fourth chapter, "Truth," describes the history of belief in
witchcraft, discussing how such belief can be visceral rather than
cerebral, and has been shaped by material conditions, social
relations, institutions, and ideologies. More case studies are used
to guide the reader through the witch trials of early modern Europe,
with reference to leading academic studies.

Gaskill is clearly immersed in, and enchanted by, his chosen field of
research. "Justice" begins with the description of how he sees the
dust-covered records of witch hunts turn into colorful accounts of
magic and life and death. His enthusiasm for the subject helps to
make what could be dull material as fascinating for the reader as it
is for him. However, he maintains his scholarly elucidation
throughout, considering how such records are decontextualized twice,
by early modern courts looking for evidence of demonic malice, and by
historians with research agendas. He discusses how legal and
historical truths about witchcraft are shaped by governors, those
governed, and those that report and study it. He looks at changing
laws on witchcraft through the ages, and socioeconomic links to
patterns in witch hunting, the methods of finding evidence, and
punishing those convicted. He challenges some of the popular myths
about the witch craze, and shows why the statistics of those
convicted are currently understood to be much lower than was once
thought.

Chapter 6, "Rage," depicts the worst excesses of the early modern
witch craze while contextualizing them politically, psychologically,
and sociologically in the light of recent scholarship. It is a
wide-ranging chapter that discusses theories of the Salem witch
craze, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, and contemporary African witch
beliefs. It ranges a little too widely when Gaskill mentions infant
mortality rates in early modern Europe driving parents' fears of
witchcraft blighting their children, then suggests this could relate
to the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s. What actually emerged, and is
well documented, as the driving force was not parental fear, but
deliberate and targeted fear mongering by fundamentalist
Christians.[1] Here Gaskill missed an opportunity to discuss a recent
Western twentieth-century witch hunt; but perhaps understandably as
his remarkable expertise is early modern European history, not the
socio-pathology of contemporary society.

Chapter 7, "Fantasy," looks at the reality problem: how historians
can take seriously what they reject ontologically, pointing out the
need for the subjective experience of witchcraft to be taken as
seriously as the objective views of a researcher. He discusses the
fragmentation of the grand narrative into postmodern discourse, and
how that led to a more sensitive analysis of witchcraft, including
psychoanalytical models. He states that even in the
post-Enlightenment world we in the West are enchanted by occultism
and magic, which fill a gap that secularization and industrialization
created, whilst much of the rest of the world was never disenchanted.

Finally, chapter 8, "Culture," brings us to the present day. Here
Gaskill discusses witches as an archetype with perpetual historic,
folkloric, and literary appeal, although usually relegated to be the
cultural property of children. He reminds us that witchcraft forever
remains an area of unstable terminology, myths, stereotypes and
clashing interpretations and ideologies, and ambiguity that defies
the human need to define good from bad. He leaves us with a reminder
that witches are being hunted in Africa today, and that it would not
be impossible for witch hunts to be resurrected in the West.

Gaskill has clearly referred to the growing field of Pagan studies
when discussing the rise of modern Pagan witchcraft and writes an
excellent summary of modern Wicca and some of its challenges; but
perhaps there could have been something more about the difference
between historical witch beliefs drawn from trial records, and the
thealogy of self-identifying Wiccans. He also accurately represents a
current paradigm of viewing Gerald Gardner as the self-proclaimed
father of modern Paganism when Gardner never claimed this, but
emphasized his initiation into the "Old Religion." Nor did Gardner
even use the word Pagan, always calling himself a witch.[2]
Nevertheless, in a book of such depth and breadth that sheds light on
the perennial relationship of society and witchcraft these are very
minor points. I thoroughly recommend it to scholars, practitioners,
and the curious; and again applaud Malcolm Gaskill for this work,
which is bound to become a classic text.

NOTES

[1] See Jean S. La Fontaine, "Satanism and Satanic Mythology," in The
Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic In Europe, Volume 6: The
Twentieth Century (London: The Athlone Press, 1999).

[2] See Philip Heselton, Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of
Inspiration: An Investigation into the Sources of Gardnerian
Witchcraft (Milverton: Cappell Bann, 2003).

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