Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This book provides a selection of studies on witchcraft and demonology by those involved in an interdisciplinary research group begun in Hungary thirty years ago. They examine urban and rural witchcraft conflicts from early modern times to the present, from a region hitherto rarely taken into consideration in witchcraft research. Special attention is given to healers, midwives, and cunning folk, including archaic sorcerer figures such as the táltos; whose ambivalent role is analysed in social, legal, medical and religious contexts. This volume examines how waves of persecution emerged and declined, and how witchcraft was decriminalised. Fascinating case-studies on vindictive witch-hunters, quarrelling neighbours, rivalling midwives, cunning shepherds, weather magician impostors, and exorcist Franciscan friars provide a colourful picture of Hungarian and Transylvanian folk beliefs and mythologies, as well as insights into historical and contemporary issues.

Witchcraft --- Demonology --- Demonology, Christian --- Demons --- Evil spirits --- Spirits --- Spiritual warfare --- Black art (Witchcraft) --- Sorcery --- Occultism --- Wicca --- Europe-History-1492-. --- Europe, Central-History. --- Russia-History. --- Civilization-History. --- History of Early Modern Europe. --- History of Germany and Central Europe. --- History of Modern Europe. --- Russian, Soviet, and East European History. --- Cultural History. --- Europe—History—1492-. --- Europe, Central—History. --- Russia—History. --- Europe, Eastern—History. --- Civilization—History.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Eva Pocs, one of the most highly respected scholars of historical anthropology, has undertaken extensive research on the history of folk beliefs connected with communication and the supernatural sphere. In this book, she examines the relics of European shamanism in early modern sources, and the techniques and belief-systems of mediators found in the records of witchcraft trials from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. The book explores the various communication systems known to early modern Hungarians, describes the role of these systems in everyday village life, and shows how they were connected to contemporary European systems, as well as new types of mediators and systems which function right up to the twentieth century.Representing a major contribution to the most up-to-date international research, Eva Pocs draws on significant East European material and literature not previously co-ordinated with that from the West.

Witchcraft --- History. --- Europe --- History --- Anthropology, Cultural studies, Early modern Europe, Folklore, Witchcraft. --- SPIRITUALISTS --- WITCHCRAFT --- OCCULTISM --- BODY, MIND & SPIRIT --- Spiritualists --- Occultism --- Body, Mind & Spirit --- Body, mind & spirit

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This third, concluding volume of the series publishes 14 studies and the transcription of a round-table discussion on Carlo Ginzburg's Ecstasies. The themes of the previous two volumes, Communicating with the Spirits, and Christian Demonology and Popular Mythology, are further expanded here both as regards their interdisciplinary approach and the wide range of regional comparisons. While the emphasis of the second volume was on current popular belief and folklore as seen in the context of the historical sources on demonology, this volume approaches its subject from the point of view of historical anthropology. The greatest recent advances of witchcraft research occurred recently in two fields: (1) deciphering the variety of myths and the complexity of historical processes which lead to the formation of the witches' Sabbath, (2) the micro-historical analysis of the social, religious, legal and cultural milieu where witchcraft accusations and persecutions developed. These two themes are completed by some further insights into the folklore of the concerned regions which still carries the traces of the traumatic historical memories of witchcraft persecutions.

Esoteric sciences --- Christian dogmatics --- Witchcraft. --- Black art (Witchcraft) --- Sorcery --- Occultism --- Wicca --- Conference, Demonology, Folklore, Persecutions, Witchcraft.