Ronald Hutton

This must be the most scholarly study of the witchcraft phenomenon that I have read, and I have read quite a few books about the 16th-17th century witch trials in Europe. The author traces the origins of belief in the witch as not only a worker of malevolent magic, but, uniquely in Europe, a putative adherent of a Satanic religion that paralleled the official Christian church. He shows also how a belief in magic and even in witches did not necessarily lead automatically to witch hunting and mass executions: a number of societies balanced their anxieties about witches against beliefs about the evil eye and/or spirit beings, including fairies, which were blamed more for misfortune than witches. These therefore acted to displace the fear and hostility which in other places was directed against people believed to be witches.

The author also looks at witch beliefs in non European societies, and traces the various threads of scholarship which formerly regarded all such beliefs as survivors of paganism, a belief now largely discredited especially in relation to the works of Margaret Murray. He analyses the works of such writers as Carlo Ginzburg (which I have not yet read so will bear in mind the insights here when I do) and explores just how plausible it is that the magic workers Ginzburg wrote about were an offshoot of Shamanism. And Shamanism itself is analysed and explored, including its influence on other cultures where witch hunting did become active, including Norse culture in Scandinavia.

Where the book falls down slightly for me is that the style is very academic and dryly written. I also found the sentence structure rather convoluted in places which obscured the meaning. But given the depth of scholarship shown, I am rating it at 4 stars.… (more)