The Witch
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25.Alexander D. King, ‘Soul-Suckers’, Anthropology of Consciousness, 10 (1999), 59–68. This study is of recent beliefs among the people concerned, but the author treats them as traditional.
26.The two classic studies of the Sakha’s traditional culture, Waclaw Sieroszewski, Yakuti, St Petersburg, 1896, and Waldemar Jochelson, The Yakut, New York, 1933, do not seem to mention this belief, but it is recorded in Russian legal records from the seventeenth century, studied in S. Tokarev, ‘Shamanstvo u Iakutov v 17 veke’, translated in Andrei A. Znamenski (ed.), Shamanism in Siberia, Dordrecht, 2003, 260–63. I am grateful to Professor Znamenski for the gift of this book.
27.Frederica de Laguna, ‘The Tlingit’, in William W. Fitzhugh and Aron Crowell (eds), Crossroads of Continents, Washington DC, 1988, 58–63; Merete D. Jakobsen, Shamanism, New York, 1999, 94–100; George Thornton Emmons, The Tlingit Indians, ed. Frederica de Laguna, Seattle, 1991, 398–410; Daniel Merkur, ‘Contrary to Nature’, in Tore Ahlbäck (ed.), Saami Religion, Abo, 1987, 279–93.
28.Piers Vitebsky, The Shaman, London, 1995, 25.
29.Ágnes Várkonyi, ‘Connections between the Cessation of Witch Trials and the Transformation of the Social Structure Related to Hygiene’, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 37 (1991–2), 427–31.
30.Laura Stark-Arola, Magic, Body and Social Order, Helsinki, 2006, 44–9.
31.Vilmos Dioszegi, Tracing Shamans in Siberia, Oosteehout, 1968, 61–5; Jeno Fazekas, ‘Hungarian Shamanism’, in Henry N. Michael (ed.), Studies in Siberian Shamanism, Toronto, 1963, 97–119; Mihály Hoppál, Shamans and Traditions, Budapest, 2007, 60–96: Tekla Dömötör, ‘The Cunning Folk in English and Hungarian Witch Trials’, in Venetia Newall (ed.), Folklore Studies in the Twentieth Century, Woodbridge, 1980, 183–7. Dioszegi found parallels between Hungarian and Siberian folk myth, which may be telling, but are not directly associated with the táltos.
32.V. M. Mikhailowskii, ‘Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 24 (1895), 151–7.
33.This reference was turned up by Clive Tolley, Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic, Helsinki, 2009, vol. 1, 81, who provides the text and a translation.
34.Historia Norwegiae, 4.13.23.
35.Vatnsdaela saga, c. 12.
36.Ynglinga saga c. 13; Ólafs saga helga, in Heimskringla, ed. Erling Monson, Cambridge, 1932, 222; Haralds saga ins hárfagra, c. 25; Thorsteins thattr boejarmagns, c. 14.
37.Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, ed. Donald Tyson, St Paul MN, 2000, 629.
38.Rune Hagen, ‘Lapland’, in Richard M. Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Santa Barbara, 2006, 125.
39.The original texts are quoted and analysed in Ahlbäck (ed.), Saami Religion; Carl-Martin Edsman, ‘A Manuscript Concerning Inquiries into Witchcraft in Swedish Lapland’, Arv, 39 (1983), 121–39; Juha Pentinkäinen, ‘The Saami Shaman’, in Hoppál (ed.), Shamanism in Eurasia, 125–48; Tore Ahlbäck and Jan Bergman (eds), The Saami Shaman Drum, Abo, 1987; Ake Hultkranz, ‘Aspects of Saami (Lapp) Shamanism’, in Mihály Hoppál and Juha Pentikäinen (eds), Northern Religions and Shamanism, Budapest, 1992, 138–45.
40.Prominent examples since 1990 have included Ake Hultkranz, Juha Pentinkäinen, Clive Tolley, Neil Price, John Lindow, Anna-Leena Siikala and Liv Helene Willumsen.
41.Rune Blix Hagen, ‘Sami Shamanism’, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 1 (2006), 227–33; and ‘Witchcraft and Ethnicity’, in Marko Nenonen and Raisa Maria Toivo (eds), Writing Witch-hunt Histories, Leiden, 2014, 141–66.
42.Furthermore, Hagen quotes the trial record on which he chiefly relies as stating that the noaidi concerned ‘shed tears and appeared to be in a state of utmost devotion’ while playing his drum before the court. This – an eyewitness account – does sound rather like an altered state of consciousness: ‘Sami Shamanism’, 229.
43.The early modern account which I have been able to read in its entirety myself, by Knud Leem and translated in John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World, London, 1808, vol. 1, 477–8, could be, in every detail, a report of a Siberian shamanic performance.
44.Laura Stark-Arola, Magic, Body and Social Order, Helsinki, 2006, passim; Anna-Leena Siikala, Mythic Images and Shamanism, Helsinki, 2002, passim.
45.Siikala, Mythic Images, 17.
46.Sophia Kingsmill and Jennifer Westwood, The Fabled Coast, London, 2012, 330–31.
47.Neil Price, The Viking Way, Uppsala, 2002; quotations on pp. 315, 328, 390. He outlines previous debates over the issue on pp. 76–8, 233–5, and provides an excellent account of Sámi shamanism on pp. 233–75. Subsequent to this, Peter Buchholtz has succinctly restated the case for clear shamanic traits in Old Norse literature: ‘Shamanism in Medieval Scandinavian Literature’, in Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs (eds), Communicating with the Spirits, Budapest, 2005, 234–45.
48.Clive Tolley, Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic, 2 vols, Helsinki, 2009: quotation on vol.1, p. 581 (with his emphasis). On pp. 3–4 of the same volume he sums up the historical debate over the issue (giving more weight than Price to the negative view), and in his second volume helpfully reprints most of the relevant medieval texts with translations.
49.Eiriks saga rauđa, c. 4. In his discussion of the text in The Viking Way, 119–22, 162–71, Neil Price criticizes me for calling Thorbjorg unique in medieval Norse literature (in Shamans, 140), while praising my book in general. He points out rightly that this literature has several other seeresses. I meant only that none of the others has all her attributes together, including the costume, and when that misunderstanding is removed, he and I are in general agreement.
50.Örvar-Odds saga, c. 3.
51.Friđthjofs saga fraekna, c. 5.
52.Gongu-Hrólfs saga, c. 3.
53.Hrólfs saga Kraka, cc. 3, 48.
54.Hrólfs saga Kraka, c. 48.
55.Ynglinga saga, c. 7. Katherine Morris, Sorceress or Witch? The Image of Gender in Medieval Iceland and Northern Europe, Lanham, MD, 1991, 97–117 has a discussion of shape-shifting among Norse deities in general; see also H. R. Ellis Davidson, ‘Shape-changing in the Old Norse Sagas’, in J. R. Porter and W.M.S. Russell (eds), Animals in Folklore, Cambridge, 1978, 126–42.
56.The Saga of Howard the Halt, ed. William Morris and Eikíkr Magnússon, London, 1891, 58–91.
57.Vatnsdaela saga, c. 29.
58.The sources are collected in Tolley, Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic, vol. 2, 133–6.
59.Laxdaela saga, c. 76.
60.Fóstbraeđra saga, c. 23.
61.Price, The Viking Way, 175–80, 325–7.
62.Norna-Gests Tháttr, c. 11; Orms tháttr Stórólfssonar, cc. 5–6.
63.Laxdaela saga, cc. 35–7; Gísla saga Súrssonar, c. 18. John McKinnell, Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend, Cambridge, 2005, 97, argues that the motif of the seiđr platform is ancient, because in the eighth-century Anglo-Saxon Life of Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (c. 13) a pagan magician is shown cursing a Christian party from a hill: but there is nothing in that text to suggest that mounting the hill is a magical act, as opposed to the gaining of a practical vantage point. The antiquity of the concept is therefore an open question.
64.Thiđreks saga, c. 352.
65.Kormáks saga, c. 22.
66.Völsunga saga, cc. 5, 7, 8.
67.Eyrbyggja saga, c. 20. More examples of shape-shifting in Icelandic literature may be found in Morris, Sorceress or Witch?, 93–128.
68.Bosi and Herraud, in Seven Viking Romances, ed. Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards, London, 1985, 204–8; Grettis saga, c. 79; Gísla saga Súrssonar, c. 18; Kormáks saga, c. 22; Fóstbraeđra saga, c. 9; Vatnsdaela saga, c. 19; Faereyinga saga, cc. 34, 37.
69.For which see Gísli Pálsson, ‘The Name of the Witch’, in Ross Samson (ed.), Social Approaches to Viking Studies, Glasgow, 1991, 157–68.
70.Such a suggestion has been made, and opposed, since the 1930s: see Price,
The Viking Way, 315–17 for a summary of that debate.
71.Tolley, Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic, 152–66. Morris, Sorceress or Witch?, 26–92, provides ample data for prophetic women in general, in medieval Scandinavian and German sources.
72.Tacitus, Histories, 4.65.
73.The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, ed. R. Quirk, London, 1957, 18.
74.Hávamál, line 155.
75.Tolley, Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic, 129–30.
76.Ketils saga haengs, c. 3.
77.Thorsteins thattr boejarmagns, c. 2.
78.Tolley collects the medieval legal references, in Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic, 133–4.
79.Eyrbyggja saga, c. 16.
4 Ceremonial Magic – The Egyptian Legacy?
1.Robert Turner (ed.), Henry Cornelius Agrippa His Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, London, 1655, Sig A2.
2.George Gifford, A Dialogue concerning Witches and Witchcraft, London, 1593, 54.
3.Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, ed. Donald Tyson, St Paul, MN, 2000, li.
4.Johann Weyer, De Lamiis, c. 1.
5.Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 2nd edition, London, 1993, 102.
6.This self-image is expressed especially well in Frank Klaassen, ‘Learning and Masculinity in Manuscripts of Ritual Magic in the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance’, Sixteenth-century Journal, 38 (2007), 49–76; and Richard Kieckhefer, ‘The Holy and the Unholy: Sainthood, Witchcraft and Magic in Late Medieval Europe’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 24 (1994), 355–85.
7.For general surveys of this tradition, see Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 1989; and Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, Princeton, 1993.
8.The sources for the first statement would comprise most of those to be cited in Chapter Seven. The second one is readily supported, inter alia, by Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 102–43; J. R. Veenstra, Magic and Divination at the Courts of Burgundy and France, Leiden, 1998; and P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, The British Witch, Stroud, 2014, 1–114.
9.Jean Bodin, De la demonomanie des sorciers, Paris, 1580, Book 1, c. 1.
10.For a selection of such studies, see T. Fahd, ‘Retour à Ibn Wahshiyya’, Arabica, 16 (1963), 83–8; Jack Lindsay, The Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt, London, 1970; David Pingree, ‘Some of the Sources of the Ghāyat al-Hakim’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 43 (1980), 1–15; ‘Between the “Ghaya” and “Picatrix”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 44 (1981), 27–56; ‘The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe’, in La Diffusione delle Scienze Islamiche nel Medio Evo Europeo, Rome, 1987, 57–102; ‘Indian Planetary Images and the Tradition of Astral Magic’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 52 (1989), 1–13; and ‘Learned Magic in the Time of Frederick II’, Micrologus, 2 (1994), 39–56; Peter Kingsley, ‘From Pythagoras to the “Turba Philosophorum”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 57 (1994), 1–13; Charles Burnett, The Introduction of Arabic Learning into England, London, 1997; and ‘Late Antique and Medieval Latin Translations of Greek Texts on Astrology and Magic’, in Paul Magdalino and Maria Mauroudi (eds), The Occult Sciences in Byzantium, Geneva, 2006, 325–59; W. F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight, Stroud, 1999; and Charles Burnett and W. F. Ryan (eds), Magic and the Classical Tradition, London, 2006.
11.Richard Kieckhefer, Forbidden Rites, Stroud, 1997, 11.
12.Michael D. Bailey, ‘The Meanings of Magic’, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 1 (2006), 1–23; ‘The Age of the Magicians’, Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 3 (2008), 3–28; and Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present, Lanham, MD, 2007. Other good recent books which provide histories of Western magic, of different kinds from that attempted here, are Bernd-Christian Otto, Magie, Berlin, 2011 (I am very grateful to the author for the gift of this); Brian P. Copenhaver, Magic in Western Culture, Cambridge, 2015; and Steven P. Marrone, A History of Science, Magic and Belief from Medieval to Early Modern Europe, New York, 2015. The first is a survey of the main movements, works and characters in Europe from antiquity to the present. The second is really an intensive study of Renaissance magic, above all that of Marsilio Ficino, and the way in which it has been viewed by modern scholars. The third is a consideration of the relationship between learned attitudes to religion, science and magic between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries, with its heaviest emphasis on the high and late Middle Ages.
13.After I had written this, Jan Bremmer drew my attention to Bernd-Christian Otto’s fine article, ‘Historicising “Western Learned Magic”’, Aries, 16 (2016), 161–240, in which he maps out a prospectus for a history of ceremonial magic to which, I believe, my own work here has – in parallel – conformed.
14.For comments on this process, see Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘The Temple and the Magician’, in Jacob Jervell and Wayne A. Meeks (eds), God’s Christ and his People, Oslo, 1977, 233–48; Robert K. Ritner, ‘Egyptian Magical Practice under the Roman Empire’, Aufsteig und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, II.18.5 (1995), 3333–79; Richard Gordon, ‘Reporting the Marvellous: Private Divination in the Greek Magical Papyri’, in Peter Schäfer and Hans G. Kippenberg (eds), Envisioning Magic, Leiden, 1997, 65–92; David Frankfurter, ‘Ritual Expertise in Roman Egypt and the Problem of the Category “Magician”’, in ibid., 115–35; and Religion in Roman Egypt, Princeton, 1998, 198–233.
15.The current standard translation is that of Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation including the Demotic Spells, Chicago, 1986. The papyri in Greek are usually abbreviated to PGM (Papyri Graecae Magicae), and those in Demotic to PDM (Papyri Demoticae Magicae). For commentaries, see Arthur Darby Nock, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, Oxford, 1972, 176–94; Hans Dieter Betz, ‘The Formation of Authoritative Tradition in the Greek Magical Papryi’, in Ben F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders (eds), Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, London, 1982, 161–70; and ‘Magic and Mystery in the Greek Magical Papyri’, in Christopher D. Faraone and Dirk Obbink (eds), Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, Oxford, 1991, 244–59; William M. Brashear, ‘The Greek Magical Papyri’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, II.18.5 (1995), 3380–84; Jonathan Z. Smith, ‘Trading Places’, in Marvin Meyer and Paul Mirecki (eds), Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, Leiden, 1995, 23–7; Leda Jean Ciriao, ‘Supernatural Assistants in the Greek Magical Papyri’, in ibid., 279–95; Fritz Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, Cambridge, MA, 1997, 97–116; Sarah Iles Johnston, ‘Sacrifice in the Greek Magical Papyri’, in Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer (eds), Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, Leiden, 2002, 344–58; Anna Scibilia, ‘Supernatural Assistance in the Greek Magical Papyri’, in Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (eds), The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Leuven, 2002, 71–86.
16.For example, PGM III.494–501; IV.930–1114; and XIa.1–40.
17.For example, PGM IV.850–929; V.1–53; VII.540–78; and XIV.1–92, 150–231.
18.PGM IV.850–929.
19.PGM IV.1265–74.
20.PGM III.494–501.
21.For example, PGM V.146–50.
22.PGM III.211–29; V.5; and XIII.335–9.
23.For example, PGM IV.475–7; and XII.92–4.
24.PGM 1.53, 127 and 191.
25.PGM LXX.5–16; and III.559–610.
26.PGM IV.164–221.
27.PGM IV.75–750.
28.The nature of the debate, and the main sources for it, up until the year 2003, are summed up and appraised in my Witches, Druids and King Arthur, London, 2003, 117–18.
29.Sarah Iles Johnston, Hekate Soteira, Atlanta, 1990, 2; Rowland Smith, Julian’s Gods, London, 1995, 93; Polymnia Athanassiadi, ‘The Chaldean Oracles’, in Polymnia Athanassiadi and Michael Frere (eds), Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Oxford, 1999, 153–5. The current standard edition is that of Edouard des Places, Oracles Chaldaiques, Paris, 1971, with an English trans
lation by Ruth Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles, Leiden, 1989. The numbering of the fragments here is that of des Places.
30.Fragments nos 2, 109, 132–3, 135 and 149–50.
31.Fragments nos 219, 221, and 223–5.
32.The best and most recent edition seems to be that by Henri Dominique Saffrey in Paris in 2012.
33.Iamblichus, On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Assyrians, 5.22–3; 96.13–97.8; 161.10–15; 197.12–199.5; 218.5–10; 227.1–230.16; 233.7–16; and 264.14–265.6. I have used the standard edition by Edouard des Places, published in Paris in 1966.
34.Eunapius, Lives of the Philosophers, sections 474–80.
35.Proclus, Of the Priestly Art according to the Greeks, trans. Brian Copenhaver in ‘Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance’, in Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus (eds), Hermeticism and the Renaissance, Washington, DC, 1988, 103–5.
36.This was argued by E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, 1951, 296; and Matthew Dickie, Magic and Magicians in the Ancient World, London, 2001, 317–18.
37.Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentaria, line 3.41.3, ed. E. Diehl, Leipzig, 1906.
38.Johnston, Hekate Soteira, 90; Stephen Ronan, ‘Hekate’s Iynx’, Alexandria, 1 (1991), 326. For a more extended discussion of theurgy, see my Witches, Druids and King Arthur, 117–28, which also provides an extensive bibliography. Notable publications since then have included Emma C. Clarke, Iamblichus’s ‘De Mysteriis’, Aldershot, 2001; and Ilinca Tanaseanu-Döbler, Theurgy in Late Antiquity, Göttingen, 2013.
39.M. A. Morgan (ed.), Sepher ha-Razim, Chico, CA, 1983. For its dating, see the introduction to this edition, and P. S. Alexander, ‘Incantations and Books of Magic’, in Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, ed. Geza Vermes, Edinburgh, 1986, vol. 3, 347–8; and ‘Sepher ha-Razim and the Problem of Black Magic in Early Judaism’, in Todd E. Klutz (ed.), Magic in the Biblical World, London, 2003, 184–90; Pablo A. Torijano, Solomon the Esoteric King, Leiden, 2002, 192–244; and Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic, Cambridge, 2008, 169–83. The reconstruction of the text was the achievement of Mordecai Margaliouth, who published the definitive Hebrew edition.