English Catholics and the Supernatural, 1553-1829

Ashgate has published a volume in their series on Catholic Christendom, 1300-1700, titled English Catholics and the Supernatural, 1553-1829 by Francis Young. In his preface Young writes:

'In 2009, in the course of research for an article on Catholic exorcisms, I was struck by the absence of any literature on the relationship between Catholicism and belief in witchcraft. This was a surprising omission, since possession was so often blamed on 'bewitchment'. As there was no literature integrating the study of the Catholic community with the history of English witchcraft, I felt it necessary to write this book if Catholic exorcism was to be fully understood.'

According to the publishers: 'In spite of an upsurge in interest in the social history of the Catholic community and an ever-growing body of literature on early modern 'superstition' and popular religion, the English Catholic community's response to the invisible world of the preternatural and supernatural has remained largely neglected. Addressing this oversight, this book explores Catholic responses to the supernatural world, setting the English Catholic community in the contexts of the wider Counter-Reformation and the confessional culture of early modern England. In so doing, it fulfils the need for a study of how English Catholics related to manifestations of the devil (witchcraft and possession) and the dead (ghosts) in the context of Catholic attitudes to the supernatural world as a whole (including debates on miracles). The study further provides a comprehensive examination of the ways in which English Catholics deployed exorcism, the church's ultimate response to the devil.

Whilst some aspects of the Catholic response have been touched on in the course of broader studies, few scholars have gone beyond the evidence contained within anti-Catholic polemical literature to examine in detail what Catholics themselves said and thought. Given that Catholics were consistently portrayed as 'superstitious' in Protestant literature, the historian must attend to Catholic voices on the supernatural in order to avoid a disastrously unbalanced view of Catholic attitudes. This book provides the first analysis of the Catholic response to the supernatural and witchcraft and how it related to a characteristic Counter-Reformation preoccupation, the phenomenon of exorcism.'

The frightening borderlands of Enlightenment

The 'dynamic of historical change may have been less dialectical than is generally supposed,' is a quote from a book by David Lederer, that Peter J. Bräunlein uses in his introduction to his paper entitled The frightening borderlands of Enlightenment: The vampire problem (Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2012), p. 710-719). I would suppose that it is unsurprising to readers of this blog, that the vampire debate of the 18th century clearly is not another - to use Bräunlein's phrase - 'episode to the successful series 'Science Conquers Superstition'', or as Bräunlein writes in his conclusion:

'Within the discursive field of vampirism, various expert cultures were active. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the vampire debate does not lend itself to the construction of an opposition between science and religion. The existence of this dichotomy is widely assumed, but that is to read the present back into the past. Eighteenth-century physicians and theologians were both equally interested in the question of whether 'the relationship between the dead body and an illness of mind and body should be understood as a sympathetic, astral or diabolical effect' (Hamberger, 1992, p. 167). In the first half of the eighteenth century, we are not dealing with a single epistemic competition so much as a plurality of forms of knowledge, observing one another critically even as they communicated with one another.'

Personally, this is a major part of the fascination with the topic, so it is interesting to read Bräunlein's take on the complexity of issues at play. The paper is, to my knowledge, also one of the few texts in English that relates the eighteenth century development of the 'Vampyrus Serviensis' in relatively great detail, no doubt attracting some more interest to the subject. 'Vampires are good to think with,' as he says, and here is at least food for thought, as Bräunlein e.g. addresses questions regarding the attitudes under Ottoman rule towards vampires and the safe passage of deceased people from this world. Overall, however, he questions the widespread myths about Enligthenment, science and 'disenchantment', while also stressing that the complexity of the vampire in all his shapes and forms it takes deserves more analysis. Enlightenment does not necessarily lead to a disbelief in revenants: 'The idea that progress in knowledge will inevitably lead to factuality and truth is a dream of Enlightenment, and of some historians.'

I am, however, a little concerned to read that, 'In Viennese circles, it was even put about that a princess Eleonore von Schwarzenberg (1682-1741), was a practising vampire.' Only the well-known TV documentary is referred to as a source for this claim, so I have yet to see evidence that this princess was indeed believed to be 'a practising vampire,' whatever that should have been at the time. This, however, is just a detail that has no bearing on the premisses and conclusions of the paper.

Peter J. Bräunlein is Professor at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Göttingen.

Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe: A Reader

An interesting book to look forward to, although I am unsure when it will be published. Amazon says November this year, whereas the publishers say Halloween 2013!

Dr. Helen Parish, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Reading, who co-edited Religion and Superstition in Reformation Europe (Manchester Univ. Press, 2003), is preparing Superstition and Magic in Early Modern Europe: A Reader, including a section titled Ghosts and Apparitions:

'In recent decades research into witchcraft and magic has expanded alongside a deepening understanding of early modern popular culture and belief. The result is a much more nuanced appreciation of how such beliefs were woven into the fabric of society, and of the degree to which early modern religion, superstition and magic were intertwined. Recent research has facilitated a more detailed and comprehensive understanding of these themes, and this volume brings the key threads of each debate together in one volume, demonstrating the richness of the historiography, and the significance of superstition, magic, and popular belief to our understanding of early modern popular culture.


The selected texts reflect the diversity of both early modern popular culture, and modern scholarly investigations of it. Readers will be introduced to debates over the (co)existence of religious and magical belief, the nature and conceptual challenge of superstition, the redefinition of magic and miracle in the aftermath of the Reformation, the manifestation of diverse beliefs in the supernatural, and the ever expanding controversy over witchcraft in early modern Europe.'

The product of superstitious and false beliefs

What do we understand by superstition?

I suppose that we all have some kind of commonsensical idea of what ‘superstition’ means, when we use it on an everyday basis, but when you need to apply it to a specific historical context, you easily get into trouble. So when I took up the subject of vampires and posthumous magic some years ago, I quickly felt a pressing need to get some grasp of the term and its history. This, unfortunately, was not so easy, because the meaning of the term not only has changed over time and very much depends on a given context, but frequently there is ‘a certain elasticity about it’, as Keith Thomas pointed out in his Religion & The Decline of Magic (1971, p. 48-9). Similarly, in a more recent work, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, & Religion, 1250-1750 (2010), Euan Cameron calls superstition ‘an elusive and slippery term’ (p. 4) that is ‘a flexible designation, and can be aimed at a range of targets at different times and by different people.’ (p. 5)

'In the era of confessional orthodoxy from the late sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, the rhetoric that had traditionally condemned superstition and magic in the eyes of the devout became a crucial part of the intellectual armour used to prosecute sorcerers, magicians, and witches. Then, in the early Enlightenment, ‘superstition’ took centre stage in religious discussions to an even greater extent than before. ‘Superstition’ and ‘reason’ became the poles around which the religious and ethical theorists of the early Enlightenment debated the proper claims of religion on the human mind.' (p. 6)

Superstition and reason are also frequently seen as the poles in the vampire debate of the 1730’s. Stefan Hock did so in 1901, dividing the authors of vampire books into two groups: those explaining vampires in terms of demonic influences, and those seeking a rational and natural explanation. However, if you actually read the books and articles from the period, you find that the texts do not easily fit into such a simple scheme. Likewise, on a more general scale, Cameron stresses the complexity of the debates concerning superstition:

'The eighteenth century did not discard the heritage of previous centuries wholesale, whatever the statements of propagandists for the ‘Enlightenment’ might at times imply. Some ‘superstition-treatises’ emerged from the movement known as ‘baroque Catholicism’ that embodied a firm belief in the continuity of traditional metaphysics and traditional pastoral theology. In Protestant Europe, the seventeenth-century debate over the reality of spirits continued into the era of the Enlightenment with no clearly discernible winners or losers.’ (p. 286-7)

In a lengthy paper from 2010, “… da sie in den närrischen Wahn gestanden, daß es Vampyren gebe”. Dimensionen des Aberglaubenbegriffs und Strategien der Aberglaubenskritik in gelehrten Beiträgen zur Vampirdebatte der 1730er Jahre, Benjamin Durst notes that the view of a vampire debate between obscurantism and Enlightenment has survived well into our time and can be found even in modern works on the subject.

Durst points out that the dichotomy between mystical obscurantism and rational Enlightenment that many historians superimpose on the eighteenth century is rather a result of the Enlightenment process than a condition of the period itself. This dichotomy is a construct of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not of the eighteenth, so Durst sets out to critically scrutinize the vampire debate in terms of the knowledge and views of its own time. Limiting himself to what he calls the first phase of the vampire debate: the debate during the 1730’s between authors whose native tongue is German, Durst divides the debate into three groups according to the arguments employed: 1) theological, 2) sympathetic (Aristotelian or Paracelsian), and 3) medical.

Their different points of view notwithstanding, all authors tend to agree that the Serbian vampire belief is superstitious. Frequently, they consider the superstitious Irrglaube and Altweibermärchen to be the surviving remains of pre-Christian, pagan beliefs. Harenberg in his Vernünftige und Christliche Gedancken über die Vampirs oder Bluhtsaugende Todten stresses the antiquity of the belief in harmful revenants, saying that it existed at the time of Moses and can be found in the works of Vergil and Homer. Michael Ranft writes of the poison of superstition from old times and thinks that it may still work in the hearts of Christians.

As the Serbians typically were Orthodox Christians, the authors participating in the debate, most of whom were Protestants, find that this Church plays a role in the vampire belief. Protestants were of the opinion that both the Catholic and Orthodox Church had introduced superstitiones superstructae, false and superstitious constructions on top of the pure Christian belief, in order to maintain and gain power and money. Polemical books about the Orthodox Church, such as Thomas Smith’s Epistola de Graecae Ecclesiae hodierno statu (1698) and Johann Michael Heineccii Eigentliche und wahrhafftige Abbildung der alten und neuen Griechischen Kirche (1711), were not only sources of contemporary views of this Church, but also contained information on the Greek popular beliefs in revenants like the Brucolaccas.

from Salomon Schweigger: Ein newe Reiss Beschreibung auss Teutschland nach Constantinopel (1639)

The participants in the debate were quick to equate the Serbian vampire belief with the Greek revenants, and generally link the Orthodox belief in the effects of excommunication with the Serbian vampire belief. They criticize the clergy for not eradicating the superstitious belief, but instead accepting or promoting it for their own purposes. Consequently Durst notes that the criticism of vampire superstitions turns into a critique of the Orthodox Church.

There were, of course, exceptions. Johann Conrad Dippel accepts the Orthodox belief in the preservation of holy people and of the excommunicated as the work of God, but refutes a connection between excommunication and vampire beliefs. The Catholic W.S.G.E. finds that the vampire belief is the product of the uneducated and superstitious Serbians’ reception of true Christian tenets. From a theological point of view, the more superstition and the less education there is in a place, the easier it is for the devil to carry out his schemes in that area.

The Serbians themselves are also the subject of various explanations. They are stereotypically considered barbarous and under the influence of opium which is thought to have influenced both the deaths of suspected vampires as well as the belief itself. Their moral deficits and lack of education make them susceptible to superstition or even demonic influence. Egidius Günther Hellmund in his book on divine judgment, Iudicia Dei Incognita, oder unerkannte Gerichte Gottes über Böße und Gute in der Welt (1737), goes so far as to consider the revenants as God’s punishment of a sinful and ungodly Serbian populace in need of repentance.

The authors, and not just those those writing from a medical perspective, find that there is a close connection between the superstitious belief and the disease that the supposed victims of vampires suffer from. In some cases an analogy between these is stated, blurring the division between disease and superstition.

The superstition leads to fear and fancy, perhaps even creating visions of nightly revenant visitations, making the villagers more prone to diseases. So itself a product of pagan doctrine, false religious beliefs and the inability of uneducated people to comprehend natural phenomena, the vampire belief is inseparable from the suffering – and ultimately the death - of the Serbian villagers.

Durst carefully describes the individual arguments behind these general views of the role of superstition in the Serbian vampire belief. He does, however, emphasize that more work on the subject will yield more facts and dimensions to our understanding of what superstition was according to the learned authors involved in the debate.

I plan to write about some other recent papers on the seventeenth and eighteenth century writings about vampires and related topics. For now, I will recommend a reading of Durst’s work which not only provides an interesting reading of the vampire debate, but also points to a handful of works that I don't recall seeing mentioned elsewhere.

Illustration in Leithäuser: Das neue Buch vom Aberglauben (1964)

This year's harvest

On the penultimate day of 2011 it is time to sit down with a glass of wine - in this case a Romanian Rosso di Vallachia - and list some of the books that the year brought.

The scope of the vampire debate requires an investigation on its own, Martin Pott wrote in 1992 in his book on the early German Enlightenment's critique of superstion, Aufklärung und Aberglaube ('Die Breite der damaligen Diskussion würde eine eignene Untersuchung erfordern'), and although Klaus Hamberger's books in some respects provided that investigation, I think it is only in recent years that some researchers have tried to follow up on Pott's suggestion.

Fortunately, Pott's own book was reprinted by De Gruyter this year, and is now available as either a hardcover book (at the bottom in the photo) or a pdf file for € 89.95. A more detailed discussion of the meaning of the superstition and its role in the German intellectual climate in the late 17th and early 18th century you will probably not be able to find elsewhere. Only a few pages are devoted to the vampire debate, hence his comment on the scope of it, but parts of that investigation can be found in other books published this year.

This is certainly the case of Anja Lauper's Die "phantastische Seuche": Episoden des Vampirismus im 18. Jahrhundert, which analyses the discourse of the 18th century debate on vampires, but it can also be said of some papers in the collection from the conference in Vienna in 2009, Vampirismus und magia posthuma im Diskurs der Habsburgermonarchie edited by Christoph Augustynowicz and Ursula Reber, cf. the list of contents.

The Slavic and Greek roots of the vampire are particularly dealt with in both Daniela Soloviova-Horville's Les Vampires: Du folklore slave à la littérature occidentale and the recent Italian Prima di Dracula: Archeologia del vampiro by Tommaso Braccini.

But also some more general works on the topic are worth noting. I have chosen to include the Swedish book, Vampyrernas historia by Katarina Harrison Lindbergh, because it is a commendable example of a more modern and in some, although not all, aspects reasonably up to date study of the subject. I have mentioned it in a post on supposed evidence of revenants and vampires in archaeology, because she includes some considerations on this subject, but I should add that most of the book concerns the fictional vampire.

Finally, Vampyrologie für Bibliothekare: Eine kulturwissenschaftliche Lektüre des Vampirs, by Eric W. Steinhauer, is an enjoyable little book on vampires, books and libraries, acknowledging the vampire as both a historical and cultural phenomenon.

The sad thing about this list is that, unfortunately, apart from my own contribution to Vampirismus und magia posthuma im Diskurs der Habsburgermonarchie, none of these books are written in English. Maybe I have overlooked a book in English, but so far it is still necessary to acquire some skills in other languages, in particular German, to keep up with recent research.

Where English language research, however, is strong, is in the field of the fictional vampire, and some of us are probably curious to see the forthcoming book by Elizabeth Miller and Dacre Stoker: The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker which contains a recently found notebook written by Bram Stoker between 1871 and 1881. It  will no doubt give us some insights into the creative mind that created the vampiric count Dracula, but if you are interested in the historical background, you will profit from acquiring some of the aforementioned books in German, French and Italian.

Enchanted Europe

This recently published study looks like an interesting book: Enchanted Europe. Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250-1750 by Euan Cameron, member of the departments of Religion and History at Columbia University and author of The European Reformation. According to the publisher, Oxford University Press, this new book 'charts the rise and fall of superstition in European history - from magical healing, spells, and divination, to the widespread belief in fairies and demons', 'explores the debate over folklore from medieval times, through to the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Enlightenment', and 'sets shifting nature of 'superstition' in historical context - from threat to 'true religion' to 'harmless' ethnic heritage':

'Since the dawn of history people have used charms and spells to try to control their environment, and forms of divination to try to foresee the otherwise unpredictable chances of life. Many of these techniques were called "superstitious" by educated elites.

For centuries religious believers used "superstition" as a term of abuse to denounce another religion that they thought inferior, or to criticize their fellow-believers for practising their faith "wrongly." From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, scholars argued over what 'superstition' was, how to identify it, and how to persuade people to avoid it. Learned believers in demons and witchcraft, in their treatises and sermons, tried to make 'rational' sense of popular superstitions by blaming them on the deceptive tricks of seductive demons.

Every major movement in Christian thought, from rival schools of medieval theology through to the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, added new twists to the debates over superstition. Protestants saw Catholics as superstitious, and vice versa. Enlightened philosophers mocked traditional cults as superstitions. Eventually, the learned lost their worry about popular belief, and turned instead to chronicling and preserving 'superstitious' customs as folklore and ethnic heritage.

Enchanted Europe offers the first comprehensive, integrated account of western Europe's long, complex dialogue with its own folklore and popular beliefs. Drawing on many little-known and rarely used texts, Euan Cameron constructs a compelling narrative of the rise, diversification, and decline of popular 'superstition' in the European mind.'

I found a review of the book which sums up her reading of it this way:

'The picture that emerges from his analysis is not as simple as one might believe. Although many think of the journey towards Enlightenment as one of, literally, ‘disenchantment’ – a slow erosion of faith in magic in favour of scientific rationalism - Cameron shows how clerics and religious thinkers on both sides of the Catholic/Protestant divide long maintained a belief in the supernatural. However, whereas clerics of all denominations were determined to divide the universe into sharply polarised realms of good or evil according to their own particular dogma, the lay population inhabited a far more morally ambivalent world based upon more practical needs. As Cameron explains, ‘ordinary poor people [...] feared the loss of health or property and sought whatever remedies might work’ – whether approved by ecclesiastical authority or derived from forbidden folk remedies and rituals.

Although this is hardly an anecdotal work, some interesting stories emerge along the way. In the earliest days of Christianity, St Augustine mounted a vigorous offensive against the fading Roman pantheon by literally ‘demonising’ the gods. The original meaning of the Greek word daimon (daemon), in terms of a tutelary spirit, was gradually overlaid with negative connotations, reaching its zenith in medieval hysteria relating to demonic possession. (Interestingly, the original definition of the word was only to be widely rediscovered and rehabilitated in our own age via the novels of Philip Pullman).

Perhaps the overall lesson of Cameron’s book is that any attempt to impose a rigid external order on human culture and imagination will have only limited success. As he points out in the final chapter, by the 18th century, Europe’s intellectuals had ‘lost their fear’ of witchcraft, demons and superstitions and therefore expended much less energy in keeping them at bay. In the centuries that followed, post-Enlightenment thinkers actually began to embrace what they had previously sought to explain away and acknowledged the power of superstitious belief as part of a rich cultural tapestry of ethnic heritage. He suggests that the Romantic era, renewed Victorian interest in spiritualism and occultism and more recent New Age thinking have much in common in this regard, aided and abetted by nation states’ lack of interest in enforcing religious discipline on their subjects, at least in the West.'

Wikisource

I have received this kind e-mail that I thought I might as well just publish here. I am sure some of you will be interested in the links courtesy of Cecil:

My name is Cecil and I'm an active contributor at German Wikisource, where we started our own collection of sources about Vampires a little more than one year ago (http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Vampire). Your blog is fascinating and in the last month it got my mayor source to expand our own page with more German public domain texts about the topic. Your blog helps me to find more texts previously unknown to me and also helps me understand the historical connections. I don't know how you do it, but thanks a lot. So I thought to tell you that at the beginning of this month, the ALEX-collection has finally published all the scans from the Theresianische Gesetzbuch (http://alex.onb.ac.at/gesetze_tgb_fs.htm). Among them also the one law which Maria Theresia did against superstition (http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Aberglauben_ist_abzustellen). So know everybody can read about it without needing to travel to Vienna or searching hard-to-get books which refer to it.

The silly season

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about a poll concerning the superstitions of modern day Danes. Now, a few days ago I concluded that 'the silly season' has begun, because another newspaper published yet another poll on the same subject. The above newspaper front page says: Is there anyone out there?, and claims that 1 out of 4 Danes believe in ghosts, and that no less than 1 out of 6 have had an experience with a ghost!

Well, personally I find the text below more interesting. It's a scan of a 1732 letter mentioning the Medvedja vampire case!

Modern day superstition

According to a poll published today in a Danish newspaper, 21 % of Danish women and 15 % of Danish men believe in ghosts and spirits. Only 36 % of Danish women say they don't believe in ghosts, because 43 % say they don't know! For Danish men the same figures are 54 % and 31 % respectively.

I find it hard to believe that Danes in general are very concerned with supernatural entities like ghosts, but on the other hand it seems that many Danes, although living in a highly secular society, do not rule out the potential existence of such phenomena!

Magic and Superstition in Europe

On a trip to London last weekend I picked up a book called Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present by Michael D. Bailey, assistant professor of history at Iowa State University.

I have not read the book yet, but in about 250 pages Bailey attempts to survey the history of concepts like magic, superstition and witchcraft, even including a few references to vampires like this one:

After 1736, officials in the English government and church were effectively enjoined against expresing any credence in the new superstitious belief in witchcraft. Needless to say, widespread belief in witchcraft and other forms of magic did not vanish in England in this year, nor in France in 1862, nor anywhere else in Europe as witch hunting came to an end. In some areas, other beliefs that might explain unexpected death or misfortune arose or took on renewed strength. For example, in the Hungarian region of Transylvania, belief in vampires may well have taken on new life even as central authorities became increasingly skeptical about witchcraft. Debates about vampires circulated around the Habsburg court in Vienna and may have influenced Maria Theresa's mid-eighteenth-century legislation effectively ending witch trials. Mostly, though, belief in witchcraft and magic simply endured, and continued to be expressed in local communities as it always had been. For despite all the sound and fury attached to the great witch hunts of Europe, witch hunts and witch trials were never the way most common people dealt with witchcraft. (p. 174)

The painting on the book cover is The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse (1886).

Superstition in (temporary?) decline

In recent years, a few scholars have investigated why the persecution of witches stopped and how the belief in witchcraft and magic evolved and declined. The popular, but naive, concept of how science and rationality enlightened the darkness and replaced superstition has given way to a more complex and in many ways much more fascinating history of e.g. the secularisation of West European societies. In my opinion this is valuable background information for understanding the context of the vampires and Magia Posthuma of the 17th and 18th centuries, so, consequently, I do try to look a bit at those studies.

One example is Owen Davies's Witchcraft, Magic and Culture 1736-1951 (Manchester Univ. Press, 1999) which traces the history of witchcraft and magic in England and Wales from 1736, when a Witchcraft statute was passed, to 1951 when the Fraudulent Mediums Act erased the concept of witchcraft from the statute books. As it says on the back of the book, 'The reader will discover the extent to which witchcraft, magic and fortunetelling influenced the thoughts and actions of the people of England and Wales in a period when the forces of 'progress' are often thought to have vanquished such beliefs.'

Certainly, the existence of witchcraft was not doubted by many educated people. Davies quotes an episode, when the famous Dr. Johnson answered an advocate called Mr. Crosbie, who had claimed 'it not credible, that witches should have effected what they are said in stories to have done':

'Sir, you have all mankind, rude and civilised, agreeing in the belief of the agency of preternatural powers. You must take evidence: you must consider, that wise and great men have condemned witches to die.' - Crosbie: 'But an act of parliament put an end to witchcraft.' - Johnson: 'No, sir! witchcraft had ceased; and therefore an act of parliament was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased, we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many things.'

Davies does, however, try to answer the question 'why', and e.g. writes:

'One would have thought that the decline in witchcraft-accusations was indicative of the declining belief in witchcraft, but this was clearly not the case. People who believed in witches did not know themselves why there were no longer any left. What this suggests is that it was the decline of witchcraft-accusations which resulted in the declining belief in witchcraft, rather than the other way round. This precludes the notion of a reasoned popular denial of witchcraft, a conscious rejection of a long-held framework of supernatural causation, explanation and cultural referents. It cannot be denied that many working-class people, educated, informed and experienced, did consciously reject the existence of witchcraft and magic: we know as much from their autobiographies. For the mass of people, though, witchcraft simply became an irrelevance which no longer played a part in their daily lives and in their interaction with other people. Once out of sight, the witch was very much out of mind.' (p. 292)

This understanding of the decline of witchcraft and magic leads Davies to speculate on our own time and our future:

'In the 1980s and 1990s we have heard how an American president patronised an astrologer, how British jurists consulted a ouija-board to ascertain a defendant's guilt, how a multinational mineral extraction company employed a spoon-bender to find hidden mineral reserves, and of leading quantum theorists and astrophysicists expressing a devout belief in Christianity. We must seriously consider if we really are any more rational than the witch-believers of the past. Instead of thinking of the modern period as an age in which the mass of the population has advanced from a state of supernatural credulity to one of scientific rationality, we must look at it as a period in which expressions of 'irrational' belief have continued by a process of translation.' (p. 295)

And he adds:

'Furthermore, it is not impossible that at some point in the future, profound economic and environmental upheavals will once more create the social and cultural conditions in which once widespread beliefs and practices concerning witchcraft and magic may return. The mumping witch may come knocking once more.' (p. 295)

I suppose that, perhaps, the author would say the same for that special kind of 'magic', the Magia Posthuma?