Hey, I just wanted to ask you if you had any good reading recommendations for witchcraft/magic? You seem like the kind of person who would, and I'm just fascinated by the topics but overwhelmed by the lit. xx
Hello. So, brace yourself: this is going to be a very long post, though I hope it covers a good range of academic writing, fiction and other forms of literature, not to mention a wide variety of genres.
Owen Daviesâ Magic: A Very Short Introduction (x) is brief and broad but it points outward in many directions depending on your area of interest.
Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss, âThe Sorcerer and His Magicâ (x) and Tambiahâs âMagic, Science and Religion (x), both try to draw lines of division between different kinds of âtheoreticalâ or âidealâ belief & practice.
Alan Moore theorises about magic as language / linguistic art.
Histories of Magic & Witchcraft.
If youâre looking for historical inspiration or in-depth exploration of magical beliefs and folklore and practices and the shifting concept of magic in the cultural imagination, you could look at:-
Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (pdf): brilliant wide-ranging exploration of books of spells and how their writings interweave magic and religion, particularly extra-biblical magic (e.g. The American âhex murdersâ of the early twentieth century, citing malevolent use of the seventh book of mosses to murder unwanted spouses, or a cabal of sorcerers trying to assassinate Louis XIV).
Ogdenâs Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds (pdf) deals in ancient sorcerers (male and female), shamans and evocators, witches, ghosts and necromancy and the undead, binding spells and curses, erotic magic, kolossoi (Greek equivalent of voodoo dolls), &c.
Kieckheferâs Magic in the Middle Ages (pdf) and Forbidden Rites: a Necromancerâs Manual of The Fifteenth Century are both excellent.
Kors & Peters, Witchcraft in Europe 400-1700: the demonisation of folklore and the growing perception that sorcery & witchcraft were the single greatest threat to medieval Christian Europe.
Frances Yates on renaissance hermeticismâThe Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (pdf) is wonderful.
âWitchcraft and Magicâ, a video lecture about belief and superstition and persecution in Tudor & Stuart England; âScience, Magic, and Religionâ, a video lecture series.
Tangentially, Carlo Ginsburgâs The Night Battles is about a cult of Benandanti in 16th century Italy who claimed to do spiritual battle with witches at night and itâs completely fascinating.
Yvonne Chireauâs Black Magic:Â about the conjuring tradition amongst African Americans, the power & stigma attached to its practitioners, its fraught relation to Christian belief.
Ozark Magic and Folklore (pdf): an incredible document of disappearing beliefs in witchcraft and folk magic and monsters and charms and omens.
There are dozens of books on the Salem witch trials; the most evocative and detailed Iâve read are Frances Hillâs A Delusion of Satan and A Storm of Witchcraft.
Thereâs also the infamous fifteenth century text on witch-hunting, Malleus Maleficarum (the hammer of the witches), pivotal in shaping the modern image of witches and driving hysteria.
Cornell university has a digital witchcraft collection focused on witchcraft as a matter of theology & religious heresy, e.g. manuscripts and books on demonology, the inquisition, court records of witch-trials, depositions from suspected witches given after imprisonment & torture.
For gender and witchcraft, thereâs Diane Purkissâs The Witch in History (pdf), exploring the changing image of English witches between the Tudor/Stuart age and the twentieth century, and Breuerâs Crafting the Witch.
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