Shamanism in Europe

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The first historian to posit the existence of European shamanic ideas within popular beliefs of otherwise Christian Europeans was Carlo Ginzburg, who examined the Benandanti, an agrarian cult found in Friuli, Italy, whose members underwent shamanic trances in which they believed they battled witches in order to save their crops. [1] [2]

Historians following Ginzburg identified what they saw as shamanic elements in the accusations of the witch trials of the Early Modern period. These included Eva Pocs [3] and Emma Wilby. [4] [5] This group of authors proposes what is known as the "witch-cult hypothesis", arguing that there was a religious cult with continuity reaching into the pre-Christian period behind what became identified as "witchcraft" in the Early Modern period.

The idea of shamanism's existence in Ancient Greece was advanced by E. R. Dodds [6] and criticized by Michael J. Puett. [7]

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isobel Gowdie</span> Scottish woman who confessed to witchcraft at Auldearn near Nairn during 1662

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witches' Sabbath</span> Gathering of those believed to practice witchcraft

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Familiar</span> Spiritual entity in European folklore

In European folklore of the medieval and early modern periods, familiars were believed to be supernatural entities that would assist witches and cunning folk in their practice of magic. According to records of the time, those alleging to have had contact with familiar spirits reported that they could manifest as numerous forms, usually as an animal, but sometimes as a human or humanoid figure, and were described as "clearly defined, three-dimensional... forms, vivid with colour and animated with movement and sound", as opposed to descriptions of ghosts with their "smoky, undefined form[s]".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cunning folk in Britain</span> Practitioners of folk magic

The cunning folk in Britain were professional or semi-professional practitioners of magic in Britain, active from the medieval period through the early 20th century. As cunning folk, they practised folk magic – also known as "low magic" – although often combined with elements of "high" or ceremonial magic, which they learned through the study of grimoires. Primarily using spells and charms as a part of their profession, they were most commonly employed to use their magic to combat malevolent witchcraft, to locate criminals, missing persons or stolen property, for fortune telling, for healing, for treasure hunting and to influence people to fall in love. Belonging "to the world of popular belief and custom", the cunning folk's magic has been defined as being "concerned not with the mysteries of the universe and the empowerment of the magus [as ceremonial magic usually is], so much as with practical remedies for specific problems." However, other historians have noted that in some cases, there was apparently an "experimental or 'spiritual' dimension" to their magical practices, something which was possibly shamanic in nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlo Ginzburg</span> Italian historian and microhistorian

Carlo Ginzburg is an Italian historian and proponent of the field of microhistory. He is best known for Il formaggio e i vermi, which examined the beliefs of an Italian heretic, Menocchio, from Montereale Valcellina.

The benandanti were members of an agrarian visionary tradition in the Friuli district of Northeastern Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. The benandanti claimed to travel out of their bodies while asleep to struggle against malevolent witches in order to ensure good crops for the season to come. Between 1575 and 1675, in the midst of the Early Modern witch trials, a number of benandanti were accused of being heretics or witches under the Roman Inquisition.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Witch-cult hypothesis</span> Theory about motive for witchcraft trials

The witch-cult hypothesis is a discredited theory that states the witch trials of the Early Modern period were an attempt to suppress a pre-Christian, pagan religion that had survived the Christianisation of Europe. According to its proponents, the witch cult revolved around worshiping a Horned God of fertility, the underworld, the hunt and the hunted, whose Christian persecutors identified with the Devil, and whose followers participated in nocturnal rites at the witches' Sabbath.

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe is a 1921 anthropological book by Margaret Murray, published at the height of the success of Frazer's Golden Bough. Certain university circles subsequently celebrated Margaret Murray as the expert on western witchcraft, though her theories were widely discredited. Over the period 1929-1968, she wrote the "Witchcraft" article in successive editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Wilby</span> British historian and author

Emma Wilby is a British historian and author specialising in the magical beliefs of Early Modern Britain.

<i>Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits</i>

Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic is a study of the beliefs regarding witchcraft and magic in Early Modern Britain written by the British historian Emma Wilby. First published by Sussex Academic Press in 2003, the book presented Wilby's theory that the beliefs regarding familiar spirits found among magical practitioners – both benevolent cunning folk and malevolent witches – reflected evidence for a general folk belief in these beings, which stemmed from a pre-Christian visionary tradition.

<i>Between the Living and the Dead</i>

Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age is a study of the beliefs regarding witchcraft and magic in Early Modern Hungary written by the Hungarian historian Éva Pócs. The study was first published in Hungarian in 1997 as Élők és holtak, látók és boszorkányok by Akadémiai Kiadó. In 1999, it was later translated into English by Szilvia Rédey and Michael Webb and published by the Central European University Press.

<i>Shaman of Oberstdorf</i> Book on a 16th-century man accused of being a witch

Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night is a study of the arrest and trial of Chonrad Stoecklin (1549–1587), a German herdsman from the town of Oberstdorf who was accused and executed for the crime of witchcraft after experiencing a series of visions. Written by the German historian Wolfgang Behringer, himself a specialist in the Early Modern witch trials of Germany, Shaman of Oberstdorf was initially published in German as Chonrad Stoekhlin und die Nachtschar: Eine Geschichte aus der frühen Neuzeit by R. Piper GmbH & Co. in 1994. It was subsequently translated into English by H.C. Erik Midelfort and published in 1998 by the University of Virginia Press.

<i>The Night Battles</i>

The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries is a historical study of the benandanti folk custom of 16th and 17th century Friuli, Northeastern Italy. It was written by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, then of the University of Bologna, and first published by the company Giulio Einaudi in 1966 under the Italian title of I Benandanti: Stregoneria e culti agrari tra Cinquecento e Seicento. It was later translated into English by John and Anne Tedeschi and published by Routledge and Kegan Paul in 1983 with a new foreword written by the historian Eric Hobsbawm.

<i>Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches Sabbath</i> 1989 book by Carlo Ginzburg

Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath is a study of visionary traditions in Early Modern Europe written by the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg. First published by Giulio Einaudi in 1989 under the Italian title Storia notturna: Una decifrazione del Sabba, it was later translated into English by Raymond Rosenthal and published by Hutchinson Radius in 1990.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bute witches</span>

The Bute witches were six Scottish women accused of witchcraft and interrogated in the parish of Rothesay on Bute during the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–62. The Privy Council granted a Commission of Justiciary for a local trial to be held and four of the women – believed by historians to be Margaret McLevin, Margaret McWilliam, Janet Morrison and Isobell McNicoll – were executed in 1662; a fifth may have died while incarcerated. One woman, Jonet NcNicoll, escaped from prison before she could be executed but when she returned to the island in 1673 the sentence was implemented.

References

  1. Ginzburg, Carlo (1983). The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
  2. Ginzburg, Carlo (1991). Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. London: Penguin.
  3. Pocs, Eva (1999). Between the Living and the Dead. Budapest: Central European University Press.
  4. Wilby, Emma (2005). Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
  5. Wilby, Emma (2010). The Visions of Isabel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
  6. Eric R. Dodds (1951). The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1951.
  7. Michael J. Puett (2002). To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-divinization in Early China, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, pp. 83-86.