Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits
Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic is a study of the beliefs regarding witchcraft and magic in Early Modern Britain written by the British historian
Building on the work of earlier historians such as Carlo Ginzburg, Éva Pócs and Gabór Klaniczay, all of whom argued that Early Modern beliefs about magic and witchcraft were influenced by a substratum of shamanistic beliefs found in pockets across Europe, in Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits, Wilby focuses in on Britain, using the recorded witch trial texts as evidence to back up this theory. The book is divided into three parts, each of which expand on a different area of Wilby's argument; the first details Wilby's argument that familiar spirits were a concept widely found among ordinary magical practitioners rather than being an invention of demonologists conducting witch trials. The second then proceeds to argue that these familiar spirits were not simply a part of popular folklore, but reflected the existence of a living visionary tradition, which was shamanistic and pre-Christian in origin. Finally, in the third part of the book, Wilby looks at the significance of this tradition for Britain's spiritual heritage.
Reviews of the book published in specialist academic journals were mixed, with some scholars supporting and others rejecting Wilby's theory, although all noted the importance of such a work for witchcraft studies. Wilby meanwhile would go on to expand her theory by focusing it in on the case of the accused witch Isobel Gowdie for her second book, The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (2010), also published by Sussex Academic Press.
Background
Historical research
Prior to Wilby's work, the English historian Owen Davies had researched the role of the cunning folk in Early Modern Britain, culminating in the publication of his 2003 book Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History.[1] Davies had rejected the idea that there had been any shamanistic traditions among the cunning folk of Britain, and furthermore argued that the Early Modern cunning tradition should not be seen as being a continuation of a pre-Christian practice, relating that "to emphasise their pagan roots is about as meaningful or meaningless as pointing out the pagan origins of early modern potting."[2]
"Historians such as Carlo Ginzburg, Gabór Klaniczay and Éva Pócs have argued that descriptions of sabbath experiences and familiar-encounters found in early modern European witch trials were expressions of popular experiential traditions rooted in pre-Christian shamanistic beliefs and practices. As a result of this work, most scholars now acknowledge that there was a genuinely folkloric component to European witch beliefs in this period, although opinions still differ as to its extent."
Emma Wilby, 2005.[3]
From the 1930s onward, various historians studying the witch trials on continental Europe had begun arguing that in some areas, the image of the witch had been influenced by underlying local folklore about visionary journeys.
Poc's book on Hungarian witchcraft and magic appeared in her native language in 1997, before being published in an English translation in 1999 as Between the Living and the Dead.
Wilby and her research
At the time of writing, Wilby had done some part-time teaching at
Synopsis
Wilby opens her book with a transcript from the trial of the cunning woman
Part One
The first part of Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits is devoted to a historical examination of the professional cunning folk and accused witches of Early Modern Britain, with a particular focus on the beliefs in familiar spirits that they held to; according to Wilby, this serves the purpose of "illustrat[ing] in some detail, the event-pattern, emotional dynamics, and social context of the alleged familiar-encounter, and secondly to illustrate how encounter-narratives were not merely élite fictions, that is, the result of learned prosecutors superimposing their demonological preconceptions onto cunning folk and witches, but were rooted in folk belief and came, in significant part, from the magical practitioners themselves."
For the sake of discussion, she simplifies the various contemporary terms for folk magic practitioners into two types:
Part Two
The second part of the book proceeds to lay out the case that the encounters with familiar spirits recorded by those investigating cunning folk and alleged witches did not simply reflect "accumulations of folk belief" but that instead they offer real "descriptions of visionary experiences - actual psychic events which occurred in historical time and geographical space" which "could be interpreted as evidence that popular shamanistic visionary traditions, of pre-Christian origin, survived in many parts of Britain during the early modern period."
Part Three
The third and final part of Wilby's study deals with what she describes as "the possible spiritual significance of these traditions,"
Wilby notes the various ways that scholars have "pathologized" these familiar encounters by describing them as fantasies and mental illnesses, not unlike the way scholars once analyzed shamanistic beliefs. Scholars now believe that shamans provide a benefit to their society, and even describe their experiences as mystical. Ken Wilber theorized that there are ten "levels of consciousness", of which the top four can be described as "transcendent". Roger Walsh built on this work by showing that shaman's visionary experiences fit into the eighth level, called the "subtle" level, also citing the work of Carl Jung that describes them as "real" experiences.[21] Learned magicians of the period who practiced "high magic" have been recognized as having mystical experiences, so Wilby provides some reasons that scholars may have treated common magic practitioners differently: these practitioners were illiterate and therefore never recorded their experiences, they were intimidated by crowded courtrooms during witch trials, they sometimes used methods of deception that our culture would term quackery, they didn't conform to today's preconceptions of mysticism that we inherited from Christianity, and there was a large gulf between the way they experienced the world versus scholars of today—the last point being elucidated by Ananda Coomaraswamy's claim that our society suffers from "imaginal illiteracy" which prevents our mind from forming images in the same was as illiterate peoples.[22]
Wilby draws parallels between the cunning folk and witches to
Arguments
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Familiar-spirits as folk tradition
The first part of Wilby's argument in Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits is that the accounts of encounters with familiar spirits and journeys to other worlds were not invented by those elite figures who oversaw the witch trials, but that they were actually provided by ordinary folk themselves.
Existence of a British visionary tradition
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Visionary tradition as pre-Christian survival
As a further extension of her argument, Wilby puts forward her case that this Early Modern visionary tradition is actually a survival from before the arrival of Christianity.
Reviews and reception
Academic reviews
"Emma Wilby's views challenge those of other current historians, notably Owen Davies, who sees cunning folk as far more pragmatic and down-to-earth, and Diane Purkiss, who interprets the encounters of witches with fairies as compensatory psychological fantasies. The debate between these and other scholars will be very instructive."
Folklorist Jacqueline Simpson, 2006.[25]
In her ordinary review of the book published in Folklore, the journal of the
"In its intellectual sophistication and ethical awareness it offers an excellent model of how the stories of witches and cunning people might best be approached. In this it follows in the footsteps of at least two of the author's major influences, Ronald Hutton and the late Gareth Roberts. Both of these scholars' works sensitively walk a line between the traditional (and flawed) concept of academic objectivity and the (laudably acknowledged) human subjectivity that inevitably will and certainly should connect the author with his or her theme."
Historian Marion Gibson, 2008.[26]
Writing in the journal Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, the historian Marion Gibson of the University of Exeter was more positive, calling Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits "bold, yet careful and intellectually rigorous", praising Wilby's inclusion of Bessie Dunlop's original trial records and ultimately relating that "This is by far the most persuasive account of such a [mystic] "tradition" that I have read. It avoids sloppy thinking and overstatement in a way that is rare and very creditable. It is exciting and fulfilling in its own right without needing to make unprovable claims. Optimistically and humanely, it makes its strong case for a British shamanic tradition. Whether readers agree with Wilby's conclusions or not, this is a very important book."[26]
Wider reception
In an article written for
Wilby's work also proved an influence on the historian Joyce Froome in her study of the Pendle witches, Wicked Enchantments (2010).
See also
- Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night
- Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age
References
Footnotes
- ^ Davies 2003.
- ^ Davies 2003. pp. 177–186.
- ^ Wilby 2003. p. 5.
- ^ a b c Hutton 2010. p. 250.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. viii–xv.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 6–7.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 3–7.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 8–25.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 26–45.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 46–58.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 59–76.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 77–91.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 92–111.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 112–120.
- ^ a b Wilby 2005. p. 7.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 123–127.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 128–145.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 146–159.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 165–168.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 168–184.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 185–198.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 199–217.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 218–242.
- ^ Wilby 2005. pp. 243–257.
- ^ a b Simpson 2006.
- ^ a b Gibson 2008.
Bibliography
- Academic sources
- ISBN 1-85285-297-6.
- Ginzburg, Carlo (1983). The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
- Ginzburg, Carlo (2004). Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- .
- Froome, Joyce (2010), A History of the Pendle Witches and Their Magic: Wicked Enchantments, Palatine Books, ISBN 978-1-874181-62-0
- Pócs, Éva (1999). Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age. Budapest: Central European Academic Press.
- Purkiss, Diane (2000). At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins and Other Troublesome Things. New York: New York University Press.
- ISBN 1-84519-078-5.
- Academic book reviews