FRIDAY THE 13th AND ALL THAT

Stuart Vyse. Superstition, A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press 2019.

“Superstition . . . if it carries a single enduring connotation it is one of disapproval. From almost the very beginning, it was not a compliment to call someone superstitious.” So asserts Stuart Vyse in Chapter 1 of Superstition, a Very Short Introduction. Yet is it so negative to think that someone is being excessively superstitious? As I child I didn’t think so.
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THE SUPERNATURAL IN WARTIME

Leo Ruickbie. Angels in the Trenches: Spiritualism, Superstition and the Supernatural During the First World War. Robinson, 2018.

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Owen Davies. A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith During the First World War. Oxford, 2018.

These two books cover similar topics; the manner in which people used religious, supernatural and 'magical' themes in dealing with the personal and social traumas of the First World War. What I found interesting was the difference in treatment between the two volumes, some of which is hinted at in their subtitles.

Leo Ruickbie is the editor of the Society for Psychical Research's magazine Paranormal Review, and has access to the Society's library and records, as well as the records of The Ghost Club, in its various manifestations. Despite its title Angels only has a fairly brief description of the legendary 'Angels of Mons' and other supernatural visions at the Front. 

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BELIEF AND SUPERSTITION

Robin Melrose. Magic in Britain: A History of Medieval and Earlier Practices, McFarland, 2018.

This book begins with a description of the archaeological evidence for religious and ritual practices that can be found in Iron Age sites across Britain, largely evidence of funerary rites. 

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GOING DUTCH

Richard L. T. Orth. Folk Religion of the Pennsylvania Dutch: Witchcraft, Faith Healing and Related Practices. McFarland, 2018.

Books on witchcraft frequently refer in passing to the ‘Powwowing’ of the Pennsylvania Dutch, but the reader is seldom told anything about it. The present study is by a folklorist who was brought up in that culture, so he knows the subject from both inside and out.

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BIG IN JAPAN

Antony Cummins. The Dark Side of Japan: Ancient Black Magic, Folklore, Ritual. Amberley 2017.

The Land of the Rising Sun, with its great natural  beauty and sophisticated culture, has many shadows. While every culture, as a reflection of human nature has its dark side, Japan's is more complex and multi-layered than any other I know. It is full of surprises and enigmas that continue to unravel as you go deeper.
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GOOD LUCK AND TROUBLE

Stuart Vyse. Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. Oxford University Press, 2014.

This is a revised edition of a work originally published in 1997. Vyse begins by discussing Wade Boggs, a baseball player who set some records that have never been equalled. His “professional life was filled with superstition”. Believing that he hit better after eating chicken, he consumed it every day.
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THE MAGICAL IMAGINATION

Karl Bell. The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England 1780-1914. Cambridge University Press, 2012

Folklore, particularly supernatural lore, has tended to be associated with the countryside, and to be thought of in terms of peasant survivals, the domain of country yokels, disdained by street-wise city folks. In this book, Karl Bell, a lecturer at Portsmouth University, challenges that preconception.

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ANIMAL MAGIC

Paul A. Trout. Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination. Prometheus Books, 2011.

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Pat Shipman. The Animal Connection: A New Perspective on What Makes Us Human. W. W. Norton, 2011.

Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch ! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!

This verse from Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass summarise the thesis of Paul Trout’s book: the origins of language and religion in our ancestors’ fear and awe of terrible predators.

In his opening chapters Trout recounts the various giant predators our Palaeolithic ancestors had to content with from sabre toothed tigers, huge lizards, cave bears, giant bears and all sorts of other things that even the most fervent cryptozoologist would not wish to see surviving in remote places. 

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MONSTERS, INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL

W. Scott Poole. Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting. Baylor University Press, 2011.

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Brad Steiger. The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopaedia of Shape-Shifting Beings. Visible Ink (2nd Ed.) 2011.

'Monstrous' may be the gigantic, the different or the plain just strange, but whichever they represent the other, the things that are not like us. Historian W. Scott Poole traces the American obsession with the monsters and the monstrous other from colonial times to the contemporary obsession with zombies and vampires.
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SUPERSTITIONS OLD AND NEW

        

Euan Cameron. Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion 1250-1750. Oxford University Press, 2011.

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William J. Birnes and Joel Martin. The Haunting of Twentieth Century America: Tom Doherty Associates, 2011.

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Claude Lecouteux. Phantom Armies of the Night: The Wild Hunt and Ghostly Processions of the Undead. Inner Traditions, 2011.

Euan Cameron notes in his introduction that superstition is a tricky concept, but as the definitions in the online Oxford Dictionary ("unreasoning awe or fear of something unknown, mysterious or imaginary especially in connection with religion; religious belief or practice founded on ignorance; more particularly an irrational religious belief or practice, a tenet, scruple or practice founded on fear and ignorance") show it revolves around the ideas of false religious belief and practice.
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