 |
 |
Dear all well coincidentally - here's a hot off the press new one in that subject area - and with luck the author herself should be on this list - mogg PS: spoke to Colin and he will indeed be writing up something on the 'Adam' case and 'muti' murders - but give it a week or two - he has also been asked back to Bath to give a further talk - this time on the ancestors - that's for april - 'Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic' by Emma Wilby. Nov 2005, Sussex Academic Press Many of the confessions recorded in witchcraft and sorcery trials in early modern Britain contain vivid descriptions of intimate working relationships between popular magical practitioners and familiar spirits in human or animal form. Until recently, historians frequently dismissed these descriptions as 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 unexplored. This book examines the folkloric roots of familiar lore in early modern Britain 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 then 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. The conclusions drawn challenge the reductionist view of popular magic in early modern Britain often presented by historians. "Magic and witchcraft have between them represented one of the most difficult and challenging subjects for modern historians. Emma Wilby's book is a remarkably interesting, timely and novel way of looking at them, and one of the most courageous yet attempted." Professor Ronald Hutton,University of Bristol. : ) .....................................: ) Mandrake.uk.net Publishers PO Box 250, Oxford, OX1 1AP +44 1865 243671 homepage: <http://www.mandrake.uk.net> Blogs = http://mogg-morgan.blogspot.com http://mandox.blogspot.com secure page for credit card <http://www.mandrake.uk.net/books.htm>