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An Analysis Of Keith Thomass Religion And The Decline Of Magic
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Book Synopsis Religion and the Decline of Magic by : Keith Thomas
Download or read book Religion and the Decline of Magic written by Keith Thomas and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-01-30 with total page 931 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Witchcraft, astrology, divination and every kind of popular magic flourished in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the belief that a blessed amulet could prevent the assaults of the Devil to the use of the same charms to recover stolen goods. At the same time the Protestant Reformation attempted to take the magic out of religion, and scientists were developing new explanations of the universe. Keith Thomas's classic analysis of beliefs held on every level of English society begins with the collapse of the medieval Church and ends with the changing intellectual atmosphere around 1700, when science and rationalism began to challenge the older systems of belief.
Book Synopsis An Analysis of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic by : Simon Young
Download or read book An Analysis of Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic written by Simon Young and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keith Thomas's classic study of all forms of popular belief has been influential for so long now that it is difficult to remember how revolutionary it seemed when it first appeared. By publishing Religion and the Decline of Magic, Thomas became the first serious scholar to attempt to synthesize the full range of popular thought about the occult and the supernatural, studying its influence across Europe over several centuries. At root, his book can be seen as a superb exercise in problem-solving: one that actually established "magic" as a historical problem worthy of investigation. Thomas asked productive questions, not least challenging the prevailing assumption that folk belief was unworthy of serious scholarly attention, and his work usefully reframed the existing debate in much broader terms, allowing for more extensive exploration of correlations, not only between different sorts of popular belief, but also between popular belief and state religion. It was this that allowed Thomas to reach his famous conclusion that the advent of Protestantism – which drove out much of the "superstition" that characterised the Catholicism of the period – created a vacuum filled by other forms of belief; for example, Catholic priests had once blessed their crops, but Protestants refused to do so. That left farmers looking for other ways of ensuring a good harvest. It was this, Thomas argues, that explains the survival of what we now think of as "magic" at a time such beliefs might have been expected to decline – at least until science arose to offer alternative paradigms.
Book Synopsis The Decline of Magic by : Michael Hunter
Download or read book The Decline of Magic written by Michael Hunter and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history that overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain--named a Best Book of 2020 by the Financial Times In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science - and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.
Book Synopsis Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe by : Jonathan Barry
Download or read book Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe written by Jonathan Barry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-03-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important collection brings together both established figures and new researchers to offer fresh perspectives on the ever-controversial subject of the history of witchcraft. Using Keith Thomas's Religion and the Decline of Magic as a starting point, the contributors explore the changes of the last twenty-five years in the understanding of early modern witchcraft, and suggest new approaches, especially concerning the cultural dimensions of the subject. Witchcraft cases must be understood as power struggles, over gender and ideology as well as social relationships, with a crucial role played by alternative representations. Witchcraft was always a contested idea, never fully established in early modern culture but much harder to dislodge than has usually been assumed. The essays are European in scope, with examples from Germany, France, and the Spanish expansion into the New World, as well as a strong core of English material.
Book Synopsis Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe by : Mark A. Waddell
Download or read book Magic, Science, and Religion in Early Modern Europe written by Mark A. Waddell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the recovery of ancient ritual magic at the height of the Renaissance to the ignominious demise of alchemy at the dawn of the Enlightenment, Mark A. Waddell explores the rich and complex ways that premodern people made sense of their world. He describes a time when witches flew through the dark of night to feast on the flesh of unbaptized infants, magicians conversed with angels or struck pacts with demons, and astrologers cast the horoscopes of royalty. Ground-breaking discoveries changed the way that people understood the universe while, in laboratories and coffee houses, philosophers discussed how to reconcile the scientific method with the veneration of God. This engaging, illustrated new study introduces readers to the vibrant history behind the emergence of the modern world.
Book Synopsis The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by : Carol F. Karlsen
Download or read book The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England written by Carol F. Karlsen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1998-04-17 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A pioneer work in…the sexual structuring of society. This is not just another book about witchcraft." —Edmund S. Morgan, Yale University Confessing to "familiarity with the devils," Mary Johnson, a servant, was executed by Connecticut officials in 1648. A wealthy Boston widow, Ann Hibbens was hanged in 1656 for casting spells on her neighbors. The case of Ann Cole, who was "taken with very strange Fits," fueled an outbreak of witchcraft accusations in Hartford a generation before the notorious events at Salem. More than three hundred years later, the question "Why?" still haunts us. Why were these and other women likely witches—vulnerable to accusations of witchcraft and possession? Carol F. Karlsen reveals the social construction of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England and illuminates the larger contours of gender relations in that society.
Book Synopsis The Voices of Morebath by : Eamon Duffy
Download or read book The Voices of Morebath written by Eamon Duffy and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the fifty years between 1530 and 1580, England moved from being one of the most lavishly Catholic countries in Europe to being a Protestant nation, a land of whitewashed churches and antipapal preaching. What was the impact of this religious change in the countryside? And how did country people feel about the revolutionary upheavals that transformed their mental and material worlds under Henry VIII and his three children? In this book a reformation historian takes us inside the mind and heart of Morebath, a remote and tiny sheep farming village on the southern edge of Exmoor. The bulk of Morebath’s conventional archives have long since vanished. But from 1520 to 1574, through nearly all the drama of the English Reformation, Morebath’s only priest, Sir Christopher Trychay, kept the parish accounts on behalf of the churchwardens. Opinionated, eccentric, and talkative, Sir Christopher filled these vivid scripts for parish meetings with the names and doings of his parishioners. Through his eyes we catch a rare glimpse of the life and pre-Reformation piety of a sixteenth-century English village. The book also offers a unique window into a rural world in crisis as the Reformation progressed. Sir Christopher Trychay’s accounts provide direct evidence of the motives which drove the hitherto law-abiding West-Country communities to participate in the doomed Prayer-Book Rebellion of 1549 culminating in the siege of Exeter that ended in bloody defeat and a wave of executions. Its church bells confiscated and silenced, Morebath shared in the punishment imposed on all the towns and villages of Devon and Cornwall. Sir Christopher documents the changes in the community, reluctantly Protestant and increasingly preoccupied with the secular demands of the Elizabethan state, the equipping of armies, and the payment of taxes. Morebath’s priest, garrulous to the end of his days, describes a rural world irrevocably altered and enables us to hear the voices of his villagers after four hundred years of silence.
Book Synopsis The Transformations of Magic by : Frank Klaassen
Download or read book The Transformations of Magic written by Frank Klaassen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Explores two principal genres of illicit learned magic in late Medieval manuscripts: image magic, which could be interpreted and justified in scholastic terms, and ritual magic, which could not"--Provided by publisher.
Book Synopsis Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem by : Elaine G. Breslaw
Download or read book Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem written by Elaine G. Breslaw and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1997-08 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tituba, a young house servant from the West Indies, allegedly influenced and encouraged occult activities among teenage girls in 17th century Massachusetts, which led to the infamous witch hunts of Salem. This book offers "an imaginative reconstruction of what might have been Tituba's past".--TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. "A valuable probe of how myths can feed hysteria".--THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD. 15 photos.
Book Synopsis Religion and the Decline of Magic by : Simon Young
Download or read book Religion and the Decline of Magic written by Simon Young and published by Macat Library. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Few social historians had examined the popular religious beliefs of the 1500s at the time Thomas published Religion and the Decline of Magic in 1971. His analysis of how deeply held beliefs in witchcraft, spirits, and magic evolved during the Reformation remains one of the great works of post-war scholarship.
Download or read book Black Magic written by Yvonne P. Chireau and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-11-20 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Black Magic looks at the origins, meaning, and uses of Conjure—the African American tradition of healing and harming that evolved from African, European, and American elements—from the slavery period to well into the twentieth century. Illuminating a world that is dimly understood by both scholars and the general public, Yvonne P. Chireau describes Conjure and other related traditions, such as Hoodoo and Rootworking, in a beautifully written, richly detailed history that presents the voices and experiences of African Americans and shows how magic has informed their culture. Focusing on the relationship between Conjure and Christianity, Chireau shows how these seemingly contradictory traditions have worked together in a complex and complementary fashion to provide spiritual empowerment for African Americans, both slave and free, living in white America. As she explores the role of Conjure for African Americans and looks at the transformations of Conjure over time, Chireau also rewrites the dichotomy between magic and religion. With its groundbreaking analysis of an often misunderstood tradition, this book adds an important perspective to our understanding of the myriad dimensions of human spirituality.
Book Synopsis The Lancashire Witches by : Robert Poole
Download or read book The Lancashire Witches written by Robert Poole and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of England's biggest and best-known witch trial, which took place in 1612 when ten witches from the forest of Pendle were hanged at Lancaster. A little-known second trial occured in 1633-4, when up to nineteen witches were sentenced to death.
Book Synopsis Magic in the Modern World by : Edward Bever
Download or read book Magic in the Modern World written by Edward Bever and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays considers the place of magic in the modern world, first by exploring the ways in which modernity has been defined in explicit opposition to magic and superstition, and then by illuminating how modern proponents of magic have worked to legitimize their practices through an overt embrace of evolving forms such as esotericism and supernaturalism. Taking a two-track approach, this book explores the complex dynamics of the construction of the modern self and its relation to the modern preoccupation with magic. Essays examine how modern “rational” consciousness is generated and maintained and how proponents of both magical and scientific traditions rationalize evidence to fit accepted orthodoxy. This book also describes how people unsatisfied with the norms of modern subjectivity embrace various forms of magic—and the methods these modern practitioners use to legitimate magic in the modern world. A compelling assessment of magic from the early modern period to today, Magic in the Modern World shows how, despite the dominant culture’s emphatic denial of their validity, older forms of magic persist and develop while new forms of magic continue to emerge. In addition to the editors, contributors include Egil Asprem, Erik Davis, Megan Goodwin, Dan Harms, Adam Jortner, and Benedek Láng.
Download or read book Liquidated written by Karen Ho and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-13 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Financial collapses—whether of the junk bond market, the Internet bubble, or the highly leveraged housing market—are often explained as the inevitable result of market cycles: What goes up must come down. In Liquidated, Karen Ho punctures the aura of the abstract, all-powerful market to show how financial markets, and particularly booms and busts, are constructed. Through an in-depth investigation into the everyday experiences and ideologies of Wall Street investment bankers, Ho describes how a financially dominant but highly unstable market system is understood, justified, and produced through the restructuring of corporations and the larger economy. Ho, who worked at an investment bank herself, argues that bankers’ approaches to financial markets and corporate America are inseparable from the structures and strategies of their workplaces. Her ethnographic analysis of those workplaces is filled with the voices of stressed first-year associates, overworked and alienated analysts, undergraduates eager to be hired, and seasoned managing directors. Recruited from elite universities as “the best and the brightest,” investment bankers are socialized into a world of high risk and high reward. They are paid handsomely, with the understanding that they may be let go at any time. Their workplace culture and networks of privilege create the perception that job insecurity builds character, and employee liquidity results in smart, efficient business. Based on this culture of liquidity and compensation practices tied to profligate deal-making, Wall Street investment bankers reshape corporate America in their own image. Their mission is the creation of shareholder value, but Ho demonstrates that their practices and assumptions often produce crises instead. By connecting the values and actions of investment bankers to the construction of markets and the restructuring of U.S. corporations, Liquidated reveals the particular culture of Wall Street often obscured by triumphalist readings of capitalist globalization.
Book Synopsis Thinking with Demons by : Stuart Clark
Download or read book Thinking with Demons written by Stuart Clark and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major work offers a new interpretation of the witchcraft beliefs of European intellectuals between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, showing how these beliefs fitted rationally with other beliefs of the period and how far the nature of rationality is dependent on its historical context.
Book Synopsis The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West by : David J. Collins, S. J.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West written by David J. Collins, S. J. and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-02 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents twenty chapters by experts in their fields, providing a thorough and interdisciplinary overview of the theory and practice of magic in the West. Its chronological scope extends from the Ancient Near East to twenty-first-century North America; its objects of analysis range from Persian curse tablets to US neo-paganism. For comparative purposes, the volume includes chapters on developments in the Jewish and Muslim worlds, evaluated not simply for what they contributed at various points to European notions of magic, but also as models of alternative development in ancient Mediterranean legacy. Similarly, the volume highlights the transformative and challenging encounters of Europeans with non-Europeans, regarding the practice of magic in both early modern colonization and more recent decolonization.
Book Synopsis The Night Battles by : Carlo Ginzburg
Download or read book The Night Battles written by Carlo Ginzburg and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable tale of witchcraft, folk culture, and persuasion in early modern Europe. Based on research in the Inquisitorial archives of Northern Italy, The Night Battles recounts the story of a peasant fertility cult centered on the benandanti, literally, "good walkers." These men and women described fighting extraordinary ritual battles against witches and wizards in order to protect their harvests. While their bodies slept, the souls of the benandanti were able to fly into the night sky to engage in epic spiritual combat for the good of the village. Carlo Ginzburg looks at how the Inquisition's officers interpreted these tales to support their world view that the peasants were in fact practicing sorcery. The result of this cultural clash, which lasted for more than a century, was the slow metamorphosis of the benandanti into the Inquisition's mortal enemies—witches. Relying upon this exceptionally well-documented case study, Ginzburg argues that a similar transformation of attitudes—perceiving folk beliefs as diabolical witchcraft—took place all over Europe and spread to the New World. In his new preface, Ginzburg reflects on the interplay of chance and discovery, as well as on the relationship between anomalous cases and historical generalizations.
