Anthropological study of witchcraft and sorcery

The overwhelming majority of those accused of witchcraft during the early modern European witch-hunt were women. 80-percent of the accused were female with some regions seeing figures as high as 96 percent. The stereotype of the witch as a woman therefore has statistical merit, but this was not the case in all regions. The most remarkable contrary example was in Iceland where between the years 1625 and 1685 only ten of the recorded 120 witch-trials targeted a woman while only two, with one in debate, of the 22 known executions were of women. 1 With the witch-hunt coming to Iceland via Denmark where 90-percent of the accused witches were women, why Iceland was immune to the European witch-hunt's misogyny is a lingering question. 2 I argue that masculinity held its prominence in Icelandic magic and refuted continental influence for two reasons. The first is the entrenchment of masculinity in the Icelandic magical world view dating to the Viking Age and evidenced in the language, literature, and mythology of Old Norse culture. The second reason is the absence of a relationship between magic, sexuality, and the demonic.

Acusações de feitiçaria a crianças e adolescentes têm emergido em diversas partes da África, com destaque para a República Democrática do Congo. Em Angola este fenômeno é observado principalmente entre o grupo étnico Bakongo. Procura-se aqui apontar alguns fatores envolvidos na emergência deste fenômeno em Angola, considerando esta especificidade étnica. Outro objetivo é o de analisar como diferentes agentes em instituições do Estado angolano, igrejas e ONGs vêm construindo percepções, discursos e formas de intervenção sobre esta questão, considerando diferentes noções de alteridade, cultura, família, igreja e comunidade.

Projet de thèse :
CONSTRUIRE LA FIGURE DE LA SORCIÈRE EN FRANCE À LA FIN DU MOYEN ÂGE (XIVe-XVe siècles)
Justice, représentations, circulations des savoirs et des imaginaires

Par Maxime Gelly-Perbellini
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Bruxelles

Direction de thèse :
Alain Dierkens (ULB)
Marie Anne Polo de Beaulieu (EHESS / CNRS)
Alexis Wilkin (ULB)

La vie consacrée dont le projet est de suivre le Christ chaste, pauvre et obéissant, martyr de l'amour, dans une communauté fraternelle et apostolique en s'adaptant aux traditions et aux cultures de l'Afrique au sud du Sahara est aujourd'hui confrontée au phénomène social de la « sorcellerie2 ». Loin d'être une fabulation sans preuves objectives, les phénomènes de la sorcellerie maléfique en Afrique au sud du Sahara sont repérables dans les familles, dans le voisinage, dans les lieux de travail et dans les milieux politiques et économiques3. La sorcellerie met en oeuvre la vision cosmologique traditionnelle, la logique ésotérique et les pratiques rituelles d'une société secrète et initiatique « nocturne » parallèle à l'organisation sociale « diurne » utilisant les pouvoirs occultes et la magie pour nuire à distance les victimes de son action néfaste. Le fait redoutable de la sorcellerie en Afrique au sud du Sahara provoque la peur, l'angoisse, les méfiances et les blocages. Les méfaits de la sorcellerie en Afrique au sud du Sahara autorisent une riposte vigoureuse de la médecine traditionnelle et moderne. La thérapie chrétienne d'écoute bienveillante, de prières rituelles, de gestes d'imposition de mains et d'usage des sacramentaux et de pratiques d'exorcismes par l'invocation du nom de Jésus à l'aide de sa croix victorieuse peut réconforter les victimes de la sorcellerie. Dans le combat contre le fléau de la sorcellerie, les personnes consacrées ont un rôle spirituel à jouer pour délivrer les victimes de la souffrance qu'occasionnent les agressions sorcières en mettant à leur disposition la Parole de Dieu, la prière, les sacramentaux et la thérapie chrétienne. L'imaginaire social impute aux sorciers maléfiques l'anthropophagie symbolique, la capacité d'envoutement et la manipulation des forces occultes pour susciter dans l'environnement et dans le corps humain la présence d'objets répugnants et gênants causant des malaises physiques et psychiques entraînant une mort lente4. En jetant des sorts par des actes de paroles efficaces et en causant des malheurs à distance, la sorcellerie en Afrique au sud du Sahara incarne le mal de la négation de la fraternité à combattre avec fermeté. Pourquoi la sorcellerie est-elle un mal de la négation de la fraternité à combattre avec fermeté ? Les personnes consacrées ont-elles des moyens spirituels pour libérer les victimes de la sorcellerie en Afrique au sud du Sahara ? Que dit la révélation chrétienne sur la sorcellerie comme phénomène universel ? 1 Jean-Marie HYACINTHE QUENUM est Docteur en Théologie et Maître des novices Jésuites à BAFOUSSAM au Cameroun. 2 La sorcellerie est le système qui met en oeuvre le pouvoir de nuire à l'aide de moyens occultes qui échappent à la vérification empirique. 3 MEINRAD HEBGA, Sorcellerie, chimère dangereuse ? INADES et Présence africaine, 1982 4 MEINRAD HEBGA, « Le concept de métamorphoses d'hommes en animaux chez les BASA, DUALA, EWONDO, BANTUS du sud-Cameroun » thèse pour le doctorat, Université de Rennes, MIMÉO.

MONTANER, Alberto, "Entre la brujería y la teúrgia: formas de la magia en el Siglo de Oro", unpublished slide presentation of a plenary lecture at the conference on «Esoterismo y Brujería en la Literatura del Siglo de Oro» held at the University of Burgos on May 5-7, 2015. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3611.7928

Avvertenza preliminare: la Mandragora autumalis è una solanacea dagli effetti estremamente pericolosi (vari effetti neurotossici, fino all'arresto cardiaco: si rimanda per info dettagliate su queste caratteristiche alle varie trattazioni sia divulgative che scientifiche di farmacologia e tossicologia,molte delle quali presenti anche in rete). Si sconsiglia perciò vivamente qualsiasi forma di sperimentazione suscitata da curiosità.

The construction of ‘sorcerers’ in the Formicarius, Malleus Malificarum, Die Emeis and other treatises presented a comparatively impoverished imagery, whereas imaging the male victims of feminine witchcraft, like the harridan-ridden Aristotle, the mortified Adam, or the stable groom victimized by hippomanes, came near to approaching the affective, abject power of feminized witch iconography—which is to say, the naked and eroticized feminine body.  More importantly, descriptions of male witches in the Malleus were based on specific, formulaic or ceremonial acts and not on grand theories of Natural Philosophy, which painted pictures of polluted physicality or sexually corrupted essential nature. Passages dealing with elite, masculine magic tended to present technical, imagistically boring reading compared to the richer, more dramatically detailed, sensationalistic sections on witches. They feature as less dramatic subjects for visual interpretation with far fewer classical antecedents and a far less universal symbol set. The closest exemplars of masculine iniquity, or ‘pollution,’ were to be found in the tropes surrounding ‘cuckolds,’ Jewish males, and addictive, ‘Faustian’ magicians – men who had lost control to the devil or his prime agent, Woman. And even these tropes relied, for their effect, upon the assignment of ‘effeminate’ attributes and the emotive language of contamination or pollution. Male witches deemed culpable for the usual, feminine stamp of maleficium were figured as woman-like in that they were constructed as ‘weak minded,’ or as ‘fools’ subject to demonic delusions and folly

Используя концепцию Джорджа Стокинга о презентизме и историцизме как двух методах изучения историографии, автор данной статьи ставит вопрос о том, ограничено ли было использование эвгемеристического метода в британской фольклористике только в викторианский период, как это традиционно считается в современной науке. Через анализ трудов Маргарет Мюррей, посвященных феномену ведьмовства, а также публикаций в журнале "Фольклор" (Folk-Lore) демонстрируется, что не только обсуждение эвгемеристической теории не завершилось с концом викторианской эпохи, но и сам эвгемеризм продолжал рассматриваться как вполне рабочий подход вплоть до 50-х годов XX в.

ABSTRACT
The Jacobean era's infamous witchcraft trials are recalled after reservoir repairs close to Pendle Hill reveal a buried cottage with bricked‐up cat. Interpretations of the building as the site of Malkin Tower, recorded in court records as the venue of a witches coven are critically evaluated in the light of archaeological and historical evidence.

KEYWORDS
WITCH, PENDLE WITCH TRIALS, PENDLE HILL, MALKIN TOWER, FOLK BELIEF, MAGIC, LANCASTER ASSIZES, WISE WOMEN, CUNNING FOLK, ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, SEVENTEENTHCENTURY, ALIZON DEVICE, SALEM WITCHES, THOMAS POTTS, LOWER BLACK MOSS, ELIZABETH SOUTHERNS, DEMDIKE, ELIZABETH DEVICE, JAMES DEVICE, ANNE WHITTLE, CHATTOX, ANNE REDFERNE, JANE BULCOCK, JOHN BULCOCK, ALICE NUTTER, KATHERINE HEWITT, ALICE GRAY, JENNET PRESTON, GUNPOWDER PLOT, CAT

Obeah, which colonial ordinances defined capaciously as “any assumption of supernatural power,” was a crime in Trinidad until 2000, and the letter of the law continues to make Obeah a punishable offense in most of the anglophone Caribbean. Scholars have noted that contemporary attitudes toward Obeah—a hard-to-define term—are largely negative, implying spiritual harm. My fieldwork in a region of Trinidad regarded as the island’s capital of Obeah, however, revealed polyvalent, context-contingent attitudes toward the term. Using ethnographic examples, I offer alternatives to scholarly approaches that have attempted to explain away Obeah’s harm as evidence of colonial false consciousness. Rather than simply holding negative attitudes, my interlocutors took shifting, even contradictory stances toward Obeah that depended on tactical contexts of power. By examining attempts to intervene in the justice system through spiritual force, I argue that Obeah is a justice-making technology and that, like all systems of law, the potential for harm is part of its power. In the final part of the paper, I turn toward Obeah’s contested relationships with hegemonic definitions of religion. Rather than conforming to a definition of religions as mutually exclusive confessional communities rooted in collective avowals of belief, Obeah models a counterdiscourse on social relations that I call “altered solidarities,” challenging the limits of regnant conceptions of religion as the basis for legal recognition in modern states.

In the wake of mass calamity, one can discern emergent specters of collective memory, trauma, and mourning over human death as well as the destruction of human dwellings. In the Philippines, a former Spanish and U.S. colony, recent history is resplendent with all manner of cataclysms-from natural disasters (earthquakes, typhoons) to mass destruction during war (Spanish-American War and World War II). This essay is concerned with the ways in which dreams and the dead are not just after-effects of events in linear-time nor exclusively human affects. Drawing on scholars of experimental ethnography and postcolonial film theory converging on Gilles Deleuze's "time-image", dreams authored by the dead here are engaged as agentive fabulators on decay, destruction, and loss-first on the local level of experiencing disaster but further connecting that more broadly to loss of heritage sites and the possible future prospect of serial calamity augured by neoliberal development and climate change in the Pacific. Tan-awa ang kapunawpunawan. Look at the horizon Bunok ba o delubyo ang nagpadulong Is that a cloudburst or a deluge coming O ang uhaw nga kaugan sa hulaw? Or the thirst that goes with the drought? Unsaon pagbasa ag panganod How do you read the clouds Kon ang daang kaalam wala na mag-uyon When ancient wisdom no longer holds, Sa Lakaw sa panahon? Is left behind as time unfolds? Naputos og dag-um ang kalibutan Darkness shrouds the world. Dan-agi ang among dalan Star of morning Ipalayo mi sa katalagman Light our path Take us away from our calamity-"Unsaon Pagbasa ang Panganod?/How do you Read the Clouds?" by Grace Monte de Ramos (2014) Everything that has been shattered under the conditions of modernity has been shattered by the dream and its transcription.

В книгу включены тексты, представляющие «отреченные», потаенные пласты русской рукописной традиции XVII—XVIII вв.: заговоры, извлеченные из ру-кописных сборников и следственных дел о колдовстве, травники и физиогно-мические трактаты, а также духовные песнопения хлыстов и другие уникаль-ные материалы. Большинство источников печатается впервые по рукописям, хранящимся в архивах Москвы, Санкт-Петербурга, Казани, Петрозаводска и других городов России и зарубежья.

MONTANER, Alberto, «La magia y sus formas en la literatura del Siglo de Oro», en Brujería, magia y otros prodigios en la Literatura española del Siglo de Oro, ed. María Luisa Lobato, Javier San José Lera y Germán Vega, Alicante, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 2016 [ISBN 978-84-16594-97-9], pp. 405-474; accesible en línea en <http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/nd/ark:/59851/bmctj0k4>.

Статья посвящена феномену чуда на Кубе. Прослеживая историко-культурные особенности развития Кубы, автор развивает идею о транскультурации чуда и анализирует, как афрогенные традиции, такие как сантерия, пало монте и другие, обогатились европейско-христианскими и индейскими элементами, приспособив их к своим космологиям и своим магическим практикам. Особое внимание уделяется роли духов-трикстеров, в особенности Эшу, а также колдовству, связанному с опасными, демоническими силами. Статья основана на полевых материалах, собранных автором на Кубе в 2013 и 2019 гг. с помощью неформальных интервью и включенного наблюдения.

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of a miracle in Cuba. The author traces the historical and cultural features of the development of Cuba and develops an idea of the transculturation of the miracle. He analyzes how Afro-genic traditions such as Santeria, Palo Monte and others were enriched with European-Christian and Indian elements, adapting them to their cosmologies and magical practices. Special attention is paid to the role of the trickster spirits, especially Eshu, as well as witchcraft with the help of dangerous, demonic forces. The article is based on the field material collected by the author in Cuba in 2013 and 2019 through informal interviews and participant observation.

This compelling volume explores how war magic and warrior religion unleash the power of the gods, demons, ghosts, and the dead. Documenting war magic and warrior religion as they are performed in diverse cultures and across historical time periods, this volume foregrounds embodiment, practice, and performance in anthropological approaches to magic, sorcery, shamanism, and religion. The authors go beyond what magic ‘represents’ to consider what magic does. From Chinese exorcists, Javanese spirit siblings, and black magic in Sumatra to Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, Chamorro spiritual re-enchantment, tantric Buddhist war magic, and Yanomami dark shamans, religion and magic are re-evaluated not just from the practitioner’s perspective but through the victim’s lived experience. These original investigations reveal a nuanced approach to understanding social action, innovation, and the revitalization of tradition in colonial and post-colonial societies undergoing rapid social transformation.

В сборнике публикуются фольклорные тексты о колдунах и представителях сельских жителей, которые пользуются магическим знанием (пастухи, плотники, охотники, повитухи и др.), а также собственно магические тексты.
Все они записаны в ходе многолетней работы фольклорной экспедиции Российского государственного гуманитарного университета (Москва) в различные районы Архангельской области.
Записи, представленные в книге, отражают живую традицию магических практик и поверий жителей Русского Севера. Тексты откомментированы и снабжены обширным справочным аппаратом. Издание предназначено специалистам в области фольклористики, этнографии, культурологии, студентам-филологам и всем интересующимся народной культурой.

The book offers a first comprehensive study of the anti-witchcraft phenomenon in Catalonia. The author presents a theoretical framework on the emergence of the European witch-craze during the Late Middle Ages, and then focuses on the Catalan territory to assess the intellectual foundations, the mechanics and the evolution of the witch-hunts triggered in the Principality during the 15th-17th centuries, especially in the mountain areas and the western districts. This volume is the result of an ambitious and transdisciplinary research project coordinated by Dr Pau Castell and funded by the Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya, the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs (IEI), the Institut per al Desenvolupament i Promoció de l’Alt Pirineu i Aran (IDAPA) and the Museum Consortium Xarxa de Museus de les Terres de Lleida i Aran (2015-2018; budjet: 85.000,00 €). The project focused on the collection of ethnografical data concerning anti-witchcraft beliefs in Catalan rural areas, a task carried out by a team of anthropologists and ethnographers coordinated by Dr Castell. The ethnographical data were then analyzed together with the historical sources from the same regions to unveil the surviving aspects and continuities of the phenomenon from a longue durée perspective. The final results are presented in the volume and have also become the basis for a museographic exhibition curated by Dr Castell, that has already been displayed in seven major Catalan museums.

MONTANER, Alberto, y TAUSIET, María, «“Ojos ayrados”: Poética y retórica de la brujería», en Señales, Portentos y Demonios: La magia en la literatura y la cultura españolas del Renacimiento, Salamanca, Sociedad de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas, 2014 [ISBN 978-84-941708-2-9], pp. 277-350.

Depuis des millénaires, les personnes à la chevelure rousse subissent toutes sortes de préjugés qui en ont fait des individus associés au mal, à Satan et même aux vampires à certaines époques. Mais qui sait que l’origine de la malédiction et des idées reçues qui, encore aujourd’hui, gâchent la vie de bon nombre d’entre eux, remonte à l’antique Égypte ?

Is there an epigraphic equivalent to the so-called curse-tablet? This paper aims to tease out the implications of a singular, durable residue of ancient magic and superstition (CIL 6.20905). Does the inscribed text confirm or contest the conventional schema for organizing curse formulae? Can it be used as evidence for certain conventional or non-normative types of belief-system, civic credulity, and ritual practice? What cultural ‘realities’ are revealed by the stories it tells, the social relations it describes, and the terrible fate it invokes? A complementary aim is to attempt a gendered analysis of this non-canonical epigraphic trace.

Les études relatives aux contextes congolais (Brazzaville et Kinshasa) mettent en évidence, pour les deux dernières décennies, l’intensification du recours à l’imaginaire sorcellaire comme causalité des malheurs, avec les pratiques accusatoires, de délivrance ou de protection qui l’accompagnent. Tout en prétendant lutter contre l’invasion des pratiques de sorcellerie et autres attaques occultes, les Églises pentecôtistes/charismatiques contribuent à renforcer cet imaginaire.
La publicité des séances de délivrance et la théâtralisation du combat anti-sorcier ne sont pas pour autant partagées par toutes les Églises. Dans les dénominations anciennes qui rassemblent toujours la population la plus nombreuse, on observe au contraire une tendance à occulter le phénomène, héritage d’un interdit formulé à l’époque missionnaire. La sorcellerie est niée ou qualifiée de superstition, quand bien même elle occupe dans l’agenda des fidèles et dans leurs représentations une place prépondérante. Ainsi, à côté de la rhétorique frontale « de combat » des Églises de Réveil, se développent d’autres postures discursives, oscillant de la dénégation pure et simple (conséquence de l’interdit missionnaire) à des modalités d’atténuation, évitement, euphémisation, etc.
Cette double scène caractérise le terrain ethnographique sur lequel j’ai travaillé durant une dizaine d’années au Congo Brazzaville : l'Église évangélique du Congo (EEC) forte d’environ 200 000 membres est une Église d’institution coloniale. Fondée par des missionnaires suédois en 1909, elle est la deuxième composante religieuse du pays derrière l’Église catholique.
La présente contribution rend compte de l’expérience d’un terrain où se manifeste un écart considérable entre d’une part, le discours institutionnel de  occultant ou caricaturant l’explication sorcellaire (kindoki) et d’autre part, l’omniprésence d’un imaginaire déterminant une grande partie des comportements observés. Elle s’intéresse au processus par lequel l’ethnologue enquêteur accède à cet univers sorcellaire occulté de prime abord : le statut et la fonction symbolique qu’il y occupe et la conjonction entre la constitution raisonnée d’un groupe d’interlocuteurs privilégiés d’une part, et les découvertes fortuites du terrain d’autre part. Les trois situations rencontrées au sein de l’Église témoignent chacune de la « violence invisible » et de la
prégnance de cet imaginaire de la sorcellerie : la propagation de la croyance dans les maris et femmes de nuit ; une épidémie sorcellaire au sein d’une paroisse urbaine de Brazzaville ; la gestion des causalités sorcellaires dans la pratique thérapeutique des bizinga.

Este libro es sobre los aportes teóricos y metodológicos del antropólogo norteamericano Paul Stoller. Se hace un recuento de sus principales temas como lo son la antropología de los sentidos, la memoria, el embodiment y la fenomenología. A su vez, el libro narra la inmersión de Stoller en el mundo de la hechicería Songhay en Niger por más de 17 años y las consecuencias que tuvo esa experiencia a nivel académico y personal. Por último se describe la faceta del autor como novelista.

Eva LARA y Alberto MONTANER (coords.), Señales, Portentos y Demonios: La magia en la literatura y la cultura españolas del Renacimiento, Salamanca, Sociedad de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas, 2014, 950 pp., 232 ils.— ISBN 978-84-941708-2-9

Violent Becomings conceptualizes the Mozambican state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously emergent and violently challenged mode of ordering. In doing so, this book addresses the question of why colonial and postcolonial state formation has involved violent articulations with so-called ‘traditional’ forms of sociality. The scope and dynamic nature of such violent becomings is explored through an array of contexts that include colonial regimes of forced labor and pacification, liberation war struggles and civil war, the social engineering of the post-independence state, and the popular appropriation of sovereign violence in riots and lynchings.

Consideration is given to how elements of the occult: witchcraft, magic and sorcery may be identified in the archaeological record. Working definitions of occult terminology are established before proceeding to propose a new approach, which triangulates data from historic and folkloric sources with archaeological evidence, to establish contextual narratives that stand for the past. Excavation of an occult ritual site at Barway, Cambridgeshire is presented to demonstrate how the approach works in practice. Archaeological evidence, combined with local folklore and historic accounts of spells and sorcery, identify the site as the locus of occult activity performed by cunning folk, or ‘white’ witches, during the seventeenth-century.

KEYWORDS
OCCULT, CUNNING FOLK, WITCH, WITCHCRAFT, SPELL, MAGIC, SORCERY, FOLKLORE, EAST ANGLIA, ELY, SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY, GRIMOIRE, PENDLE WITCH TRIAL, MATTHEW HOPKINS, JOHN STEARNE.

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This thesis focuses on the institutional practices around witchcraft accusations in a region of central India.  The reluctance of anthropologists and historians to dwell on the social heterogeneity of witches, their accusers and magical attacks is highlighted.  Through the anthropology of violence, the witch accusation is understood as a ‘critical event’ - assembled at a certain moment in time through new symbols or newly arranged old symbols that crisscross with actors and their complex agency to create a unique configuration of events.  This thesis challenges conventional theory on witchcraft and explores a less secure framework of violence and disruption offering insights into the intimate space of personal fear, anxiety and victimisation.  The paradox of violent action in the witchcraft accusation is that as much as violence is a strategic tool aimed at bringing resolution and order, by its very nature it produces ruptures and disorder.  The language of tortured witches and their torturers is mutilated and their narratives break all rules of syntax in presentation.  The stoppages and ruptures incarnated in the trauma-trope direct new narrative procedures, objects and solutions.  In addition, this thesis challenges ideas of progress where modern medicine is positioned as the eventual replacement for existing modes of healing.  Indian villagers express scepticism in all forms of healing, suggesting that local people are ‘modern believers’.  In the same way that people discriminate between diagnoses, healers and their treatments when sick, this thesis suggests that they discriminate between evidence, levels of violence, decision makers and options of punishment/reconciliation when faced with witchcraft.  Scepticism is examined as a juncture by which it becomes possible to communicate across social contexts through various versions of modern dichotomies.