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Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present. Edited by
David J. Collins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. xi + 798 pp.
£98 cloth.

Article  in  Church History · September 2017

DOI: 10.1017/S0009640717001329

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Magic and Witchcraft in the West: From Antiquity to the Present. Edited by David J.
Collins, SJ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. xi and 798 pp; 98
pounds sterling, cloth.

This substantial volume contains twenty chapters covering the period
from Ancient Egypt to the present, with a framing “Introduction” by the editor,
David J. Collins, SJ. He draws attention to the problematics of the subject area:
the difficulty in defining the “West” (as ancient Egypt and the ancient Near East,
as well as the colonial Dutch East Indies are included in the book); arguments
concerning periodization and continuities or discontinuities attendant upon such
temporal schemata; the existence of other works that traverse some of the same
territory, particularly Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark’s six-volume set from
1999-2002; and the general elusiveness of both magic and witchcraft as topics
for research. Part I, “Antiquity,” consists of Daniel Schwemer’s “The Ancient
Near East,” Friedhelm Hoffman’s “Ancient Egypt,” and Kimberly B. Stratton’s
“Early Greco-Roman Antiquity,” all highly competent essays illustrated with
appropriate images. Part II, “The Early Latin West,” commences with Kyle A.
Fraser’s “Roman Antiquity: The Imperial Period” and proceeds to Maijastina
Kahlos’ “The Early Church” and Yitzhak Hen’s “The Early Medieval West.” These
chapters are especially important, because they introduce the tensions between
Christianity and magical practice, while acknowledging that the division of the
two was far from clear. Kahlos, for example, discusses Christianity as magic and
Origen and Celsus’ debate on the power of names, and Hen introduces the vexed
status of pagan beliefs and practices during the conversion of the “barbarians”
(focusing on the tantalizing Carolingian Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum).

Part III, “Parallel Traditions,” illustrates some of the issues that arise due to the
need to organize material for publication. The rationale for this section seems to
be that the cultures discussed either are not Western and Christian, or have a
radically different attitude to magic, and so do not fit the unfolding historical
schema of the volume. The three chapters, Alicia Walker’s “Magic in Medieval
Byzantium,” Travis Zadeh’s “Magic, Marvel, and Miracle in Early Islamic Thought,”
and Gideon Bohak’s “Jewish Magic in the Middle Ages” are among the most
interesting and satisfying in the collection, with excellent illustrations of amulets,
images depicting magical practices, divination bowls, and various other material
culture items that render the somewhat cerebral discussions immediate and part
of a lived reality for people of those cultures and times. Bohak’s piece especially
delights, beginning as it does with the (enormously challenging yet historically
accurate) statement; “For students of medieval Christian magic, the most striking
feature of medieval Jewish magic is that within the Jewish community it was
never considered heretical or diabolical” (p. 268). The vigour of Maimonides’
incisive critique of magic notwithstanding, Jewish magic (including rituals from
the First and Second Temples, and mystical trends like kabbalah) flourished in
the medieval era; Bohak’s discussion of its intersections with both Christianity
and Islam is also valuable. Part IV, “Old Europe,” contains four essays covering
the period from the eleventh to the eighteenth centuries. Catherine Rider’s
“Common Magic” discusses charms and love magic, and interrogates what can be
known of the practices of ordinary people from witch trial documents and other
sources. Editor Collins’ “Learned Magic” and Michael D. Bailey’s “Diabolical Magic”
 cover intellectual traditions from the same period, including learned medieval
clerics and Renaissance Humanists, and Catholic and Protestant reactions. The
last chapter, Helen Parish’s “Magic and Priestcraft: Reformers and Reformation,”
rounds out this section with a study of anti-Catholic ideas in Protestant notions
of magic and witchcraft.

Part V, “Colonial Encounters,” moves from Europe and the literal “West’ to the
colonial domains of the New World, in which Europeans encountered peoples
with religious and magical traditions that expanded their worldview mentally as
much as the global voyages had expanded their geographical knowledge. Louise
M. Burkhart’s “Spain and Mexico” and Richard Godbeer’s “Folk Magic in British
North America” are both solid contributions, but treat only a miniscule amount
of the magical traditions of the Americas and surrounding areas, and Margaret J.
Wiener’s “Colonial Magic: The Dutch East Indies” steps outside of the “West” and
draws attention to the vast number of Asian and Pacific cultures with magical
and witchcraft traditions that are excluded (and if a “Western” connection is all
that’s required, leaving out the Philippines and Goa, Maori and Aboriginal magic
from New Zealand and Australia, and the French Polynesian colonies is not
explained or justified in any way). Part VI, “The Modern West,” contains Owen
Davies’ “Magic in Common and Legal Perspectives,” which considers the history
of legal prosecutions of practitioners of magic, divination, folk medicine and
other non-religious, non-rational crafts. The remaining three chapters are David
Allen Harvey’s “Elite Magic in the Nineteenth Century” (which treats Martinism,
Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and so
on), Raquel Romberg’s “Magic in the Postcolonial Americas” (which discusses the
various blendings of African religion with Catholicism, including Vodun, Santería
and Candomblé), and Sabina Magliocco’s “New Age and Neopagan Magic” (which
brings the story up to date with contemporary Europe and European derived
countries).

In a volume of this size there are inevitable omissions, and questions that arise
regarding the topics that certain authors have chosen to emphasize at the
expense of equally interesting material that points in different directions or
mixes up the overarching narrative. Notwithstanding, this volume is well-
constructed, thoughtful, and interesting, with contributing authors of high
scholarly standing. It is recommended to readers interested in magic and
witchcraft, and their close relatives religion and esotericism, across a broad
historical and geographical sweep.

Carole M. Cusack
University of Sydney, Australia

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