THE RISE AND FALL OF WITCHCRAFT SCIENCE

Tony McAleavey, The Last Witch Craze: John Aubrey, the Royal Society and the Witches, Amberley Publishing, 2022.

Navigating the foreign country that is the past can be tricky. The way our forebears thought is part-familiar, part-strange, and so often appears contradictory. In The Last Witch Craze, Tony McAleavey explores one such apparent anomaly: some of Britain’s most respected pioneering scientists, who were involved in the founding years of the Royal Society, were also ardent believers in the reality of witchcraft. 

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DARKNESS AND ENLIGHTENMENT

Lizanne Henderson. Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment, Scotland, 1670-1740. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan. (Paperback) 2020.

George Orwell once wrote that history, as he was taught it as a small boy, seemed to consist of rigidly separated eras. 'For instance, in 1499 you were still in the Middle Ages, with knights in plate armour riding at one another with long lances, and then suddenly the clock struck 1500, and you were in something called the Renaissance, and everyone wore ruffs and doublets and was busy robbing treasure ships on the Spanish Main.' 

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THE GHOSTS OF THE ZEITGEIST

Monica Black. A Demon Haunted Land: Witches, Wonder Doctors and Ghosts of the Past in Post-WWII Germany. Metropolitan Books, 2020.

Looking at Germany today it is almost impossible to imagine the wrecked and devastated nation described in this book. After the moral collapse of society in the Nazi years, the country was plunged into near-anarchy with the disappearance of all the arms of government, the destruction of the physical infrastructure, and the arrival of millions of homeless refugees.

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WITCHCRAFT-ON-SEA

Philip Heselton. In Search of the New Forest Coven. Fenix Flames, 2020. 

This book seeks to untangle the story behind Gerald Gardner’s initiation into a ‘witch cult’ in 1939, and to identify and explore the lives of the people in that cult, and the nature of the ‘cult’ itself. Although most people now accept that whatever the background to Gardner’s ‘coven’, it was not, as he claimed, “one of the ancient covens of the Witch Cult which still survive in England”. 

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CURSES ANCIENT AND MODERN

Thomas Waters. Cursed Britain, A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times. Yale University Press, 2019.

One thing that people find difficult to understand is randomness – blind chance. It is unsettling to imagine that at any moment, for no apparent reason  your entire life might chance drastically for the worse. A sudden illness, a serious accident, a random act of violence, losing a job, or a financial downturn could change your life irrevocably. And if two, three or more such blows happened at the same time it might be difficult to attribute it all to chance.
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NOT ALWAYS FAMILIAR…

Maja D’Aoust, Familiars in Witchcraft: Supernatural Guardians in the Magical Traditions of the World, Destiny Books. 2019.

I really wanted to like this book. I like the idea of the author of an occult work being an expert practitioner – Maja D’Aoust is known, apparently, as The Witch of the Dawn. This book is also peppered with her own often-Picasso-esque artworks, which while perhaps not appealing to all tastes, are certainly skilled and intriguing, helping to draw the reader into the subject at a deeper level. They’re a good idea and work more often than not.

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THE POETRY OF WITCHCRAFT

Nigel Pennick. Operative Witchcraft, Spellwork and Herbcraft in the British Isles. Destiny Books. 2019.

I’m not an expert on the sociology of witchcraft or folklore: still less a scholar qualified to examine how comprehensively this short book has traced the history of operative (hands-on) witchcraft in Great Britain from the late sixteenth century to the early twenty first century. 

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HOUSEHOLD INSURANCE

Brian Hoggard. Magical House Protection, the Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft. Berghahn, 2019.

I learnt a new word reading this book: apotropaic, which is defined as “having the ability to ward off evil”, from the Greek αποτρέπειν, to ward off; from απο- ‘away’ and τρέπειν ‘to turn’) This is the term used to describe objects, signs and other indicators that are left in houses, stables and other buildings to ward off malignant spells and curses that may be placed upon then by malevolent agencies.

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THE DEMONS NEXT DOOR

Michelle D. Brock, Richard Raiswell and David R. Winter (Editors) Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

This book is a serious piece of academic research consisting of twelve chapters, each by different authors on different but related topics covering the genre of demons. Each page is carefully annotated with numerous footnotes. Already put off? Don't be. The reader will be agreeably surprised by the sheer readability of these academic contributions, as well as often fascinated by the contents.

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SUFFER NOT A WITCH

Willow Winsham. England’s Witchcraft Trials. Pen and Sword, 2018.

Willow Winsham’s earlier book, Accused: British Witches Throughout History, rather than attempting a general overview of witchcraft accusations, which might sacrifice detail and context, made a detailed examination of eleven cases, chosen to reveal the development of public attitudes to witchcraft over the centuries.
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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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EASTWARD HO!

Michael Howard. East Anglian Witches and Wizards. Three Hands Press, 2017.

East Anglia is a windswept, marshy land. Bordering on the North Sea, this flat, unprepossessing region, although on the edge of the populous and burgeoning London-Birmingham conurbation, has been the site of dramatic events that have helped shape the modern nation of Great Britain. 
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THE WITCH REPORT

Gordon Napier. Maleficium: Witchcraft and Witch Hunting in the West. Amberley, 2017.

"There is a modern saying that the greatest trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist. One might well wonder whether an equally great trick of his was to convince the authorities that a witch cult existed, causing churchmen and jurists to torture and kill fellow Christians whom they falsely suspected of satanic witchcraft." So says author Gordon Napier in his Preface, setting the tone nicely.

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FEEL THE FEAR

Ronald Hutton. The Witch: A History of Fear From Ancient Times to the Present. Yale University Press, 2017.

In this book the noted historian and folklorist Ronald Hutton examines the various themes and motifs which coalesced into the great European witchcraft fear of the early modern period and its expression in the United Kingdom especially. It is not an account of those trials themselves but of the beliefs that led up to them and the conflicting views of scholars over the last 200 years or so as to their origin and nature.
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ILLUSTRATING MAGIC

Owen Davies (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, Oxford University Press, 2017.

The back cover declares that this addition to the Oxford Illustrated History series tells ‘The 4000-year story of witchcraft and magic – from the ancient world to Harry Potter… and beyond’ – a bold promise to deliver in 300 pages.

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GIVING WITCHES A BAD NAME

Summer Strevens. The Yorkshire Witch: The Life and Trial of Mary Bateman. Pen and Sword History. 2017.

This is not a book for Wiccans, occultists or historians of the esoteric. Indeed, the ‘witch’ of the title should always be in quotes as it refers to one of the most barefaced charlatans of all time – actually considerably more than just a brazen hustler.
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PACKED WITH THE DEVIL

Susan Fair. American Witches: A Broomstick Tour Through Four Centuries, Skyhorse Publishing. 2016. 

First, I must declare something of a particular, personal interest in the whole Satan-y subject. A few years ago I was denounced on live (American) radio as an agent of the Devil – literally, apparently. To my Fundamentalist accuser, there was no doubt about it. I was one of his Satanic Majesty’s most brazen PRs. What had I done to deserve this?
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WITCHES ARE PEOPLE TOO

Willow Winsham. Accused: British Witches Throughout History. Pen and Sword, 2016.

This book presents an interesting approach to the history of witchcraft in Britain. The author avoids attempting to outline the whole subject from the earliest days, which risks superficiality in a work aimed at the general public, but also resists taking a detailed look at one particular aspect of the topic, which risks losing the general reader in endless detail.
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CHURCH, STATE, AND WITCHCRAFT

Alexandra Tātāran. Contemporary Life and Witchcraft: Magic, Divination and Religious Ritual in Europe. ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart. 2016.

Discussion of ‘contemporary witchcraft’ usual means Wicca or similar practices in Britain, Europe and North America, or older beliefs in South American, sub-Saharan Africa and traditional tribal societies. 

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THE POLITICAL WITCH

Peter Elmer. Witchcraft, Witch-hunting and Politics in Early Modern England. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Studies of witchcraft have tended to fall into two main camps. There are those that look at it in very broad-brush terms, involving cross-cultural studies or in terms of broad ideological discussions on, for example, misogyny or political persecution; and alternatively those who examine the accusations in terms of local village politics and neighbourly conflicts.
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