"A History of Magic and Witchcraft" by Frances Timbers

This history of Witchcraft from the middle ages until the present day is scholarly yet extremely readable. The author debunks many of the myths (eg the Spanish Inquisition used less torture and more common-sense in hunting witches than in several protestant countries; there is no independent evidence of witches attending a sabbat until the demonologists suggested it:“The addition of the sabbat to the concept of heretical witchcraft was mostly a top down phenomenon imposed by the dominant literate culture via inquisitors and judges.”; Ch 4) and uses original sources to describe a phenomenon which was fuelled both from the bottom-up (village communities needed healers/ midwives and 'cunning men') and from the top-down (theologians trying to make sense of the Problem of Evil). The result is a most illuminating end enjoyable read.

Selected quotes:

• “One culture’s religious practices can be another culture’s magic.” (Ch 1) 
• “Fear was a key emotion in the propagation of Christianity ... The fear of involvement with bad spirits helped to convert the masses to the new sect. At the same time, the burden of guilt could be lifted from any wrongdoing by blaming evil spirits.” (Ch 1)
• “Demonologists were anxious to prove the reality of witchcraft ... it was just a hop, skip, and a jump from discounting the power of Satan to discounting the power of God.” (Ch 3)
• "It was not possible for a human to metamorphose into another animal, because man was made in God’s image” (Ch 3)
• “The satyrs loved sex, wine, and frenzied dancing (who doesn’t?)” (Ch 4) 
• “Another account, recorded by a Byzantine historian in the sixth century, described a group of Frankish men who were called up in the night to go down to the sea and row special boats to the opposite shore. The boats appeared empty, but they sat low in the water as if they were full, implying that they were occupied by spirits.” (Ch 4) This particularly interested me because in Dante's Inferno, Charon realises that Dante is alive because the ferry is lower in the water than normal because spirits have no weight.
• "holy water was Devil’s urine (It seems that sometimes the demonologists forgot that the Devil did not have a physical body.)” (Ch 4)
• “Magicians were almost exclusively educated, elite men, including aristocrats, physicians, clerics, and lawyers. This is the same class of men who practised alchemy ... A magus needed to be able to read the Latin manuscripts that held the instructions and the long invocations. A knowledge of astrology was also useful, and theological training came in handy ... both of which were learned in the university setting.” (Ch 6)
• "Magic was also employed in treasure hunting, which was a very popular past time [sic] in early modern Europe. Without banks to deposit money into, people often buried their valuables." (Ch 6)

An illuminating and enjoyable read.

September 2022; 188 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God