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The witchcraft confessions given by Isobel Gowdie in Auldearn, 1662, are widely celebrated as the most extraordinary on record in Britain and this book provides the first full-length examination of the confessions and the life and character of the woman behind them. Their descriptive power, vivid imagery, and contentious subject matter have attracted considerable interest on both academic and popular levels. The author’s discovery of the original trial records, deemed lost for nearly 200 years, provides a starting point for an interdisciplinary endeavor to separate Isobel’s voice from that of her interrogators, identify the beliefs and experiences that informed her testimony, and analyze why her confessions differ so markedly from those of other witchcraft suspects from the period. In the course of these enquiries, the author develops wider hypotheses relevant to the study of early modern witchcraft as a whole, with recent research into Amazonian “dark” shamanism, false-memory generation, and mutual-dream experience, along with literature on marriage-covenant mysticism and protection-charm traditions, all being brought to the investigation of early modern witch-records for the first time. Author Emma Wilby concludes that close analysis of Isobel’s confessions supports the still-controversial hypothesis that in 17th-century Scotland, as in other parts of Europe in this period, popular spirituality was shaped through a deep interaction between church teachings and shamanistic traditions of pre-Christian origin. She also extends this thesis beyond its normal association with beneficent magic and overtly folkloric themes to speculate that some of Europe’s more malevolent and demonological witch-narratives may also have emerged out of visionary rites underpinned by cogent shamanistic rationales.
- Sales Rank: #462498 in Books
- Published on: 2010-07-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.30" w x 6.50" l, 2.45 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 660 pages
Review
“Gowdie’s confessions offer probably the most challenging and mysterious material in British witch trials. Emma Wilby subjects them to a long and painstakingly minute analysis, which covers much folkloric material, but also involves a great deal of speculative interpretation. Her book will prove controversial, but is an important contribution to witchcraft studies.”� —Katharine Briggs Award Judges Report, 2010
“This is a remarkable book based on remarkable historical documentation . . . an important work and essential reading for all scholars of early modern witchcraft, and of the popular culture of that period more generally.”� —James Sharpe, American Historical Review
“An inspired and inspiring assessment of this famous witchcraft case. . . . Through Wilby’s carefully crafted system of speculation, built upon shards of evidence, the historical actors and their belief systems become clearly and convincingly entwined with our understanding of Isobel’s trial and the unique traits for which it is so famous. The result is a deeply complex understanding of the trial that is wholly attributable to Wilby’s admirably creative thinking and painstaking research.” �—Janay Nugent, Sixteenth Century Journal
“In this bold and imaginative book, Emma Wilby attempts to understand Isobel by taking us deeply into her culture and spiritual worldview. . . . With meticulous attention to detail, she reconstructs Isobel’s life as a poor, illiterate farmwife: her cultural horizons within the fermtoun, or small agro-pastoral community where she lived; her spiritual worldview, which combined Christianity with many aspects of folklore rooted in earlier cosmologies; and the likely sequence of events that led to her arrest and imprisonment. Wilby gives equally careful attention to the personalities and agendas of the men who questioned her, showing how a unique combination of personal, religious, and political ideologies came together in the small interrogation room, culminating in her remarkable performance. . . . No other author to date has come up with such a cohesive interpretation of Isobel’s confessions. In the end, this book does what good research should: provide us with provocative, original interpretations and raise questions for further exploration. Wilby’s book will be of great interest to folklorists, anthropologists, historians of witchcraft, and of course modern Pagan Witches.” �—Sabina Magliocco, California State University, Journal of Folklore Research
“[Wilby's research is] illuminating and thought-provoking, and will therefore be of immense value to those scholars who venture into the complex maze of witchcraft history. . . . Her book is immensely rewarding, whether one agrees with every point or not, and is to be recommended to anyone who wants to have a more intimate understanding of both this region of Scotland at a particular point in its history and the interaction between a highly self-aware Calvinism and older traditions of beneficent and malicious magic.” �—Peter Maxwell-Stuart, University of St Andrews, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft
“This is in my opinion the finest reconstruction of the thought-world of somebody accused in an early modern witch trial yet made, making sense of elements that most people would find wholly fantastic.” �—Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol, Pomegranate
About the Author
Emma Wilby is an honorary fellow in history at the University of Exeter and the author of Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits.
Most helpful customer reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Compelling, wide-ranging, impressive & readable scholarly study
By Green Stone
Emma Wilby's compelling and dense study of the Witchcraft confessions of Isobel Gowdie from 1662 in Scotland, "celebrated as the most extraordinary on record in Britain", is a thoroughly impressive analysis, which does not lack for humor, wit, and subtly intuitive nuances of observation and speculation, to propel one enthusiastically through its 546 pages of text. Then too, the reach of this book is far beyond Isobel herself, though she be its inspiration: reading this book will reveal intriguing details about the lives of practitioners of magic and folk traditions in early modern Europe.
WIlby's study is wide-ranging, making use of some of the most modern studies in the psychology of "recovery of false memories" in psychotherapy, as well as the inriguing existence of "dark" shamanism among the Yanomamo in the Amazon, the more modern mazzeri in Corsica, and elsewhere. She points out that scholars have tended to sentimentalize shamanism and have formerly ignored these "dark" aspects, yet such explorations assist in understanding such things as Isobel's speculated shamanistic rides on plant stalks to shoot at members of her community with "elf arrows," sometimes passionately exclaiming, as she flew, "horse and hattock in the divells name!"
Scholar though she is, Wilby clearly takes delight, as any vital, robust and imaginative person among us will, in the passionate, imaginative, lusty, altogether charming spirit of Isobel, which innocently, ironically and perhaps tragicomically, shines through in testimonies given to persons who would use them to eventually put her to death. Wilby often reveals an open admiration for these aspects of Isobel, for instance by labelling a section of her book, "Isobel's Beautiful Curses." (pg 186)Those of us who will most enjoy this book, are those who, like one senses of Wilby, believe that Isobel Gowdie embodied qualities, folk expressions, magical practices, extraordinary imaginative capacities, or simple human passions, which are of great value, and which can and should and indeed will live on in whatever unique way these soulful things unveil themselves today in our midst. I am so grateful to Wilby for introducing Isobel to me!
Wilby has undertaken an impressively broad exploration of every aspect of Isobel's life and that of the lives of many persons associated with Isobel's confessions in her Witchcraft trial, including the notary, as well as investigations of Scottish bardic or oral tradition, Scottish fairy lore and the "demonology" and the marriage-with-Christ theologies of the covenanting Protestants in Scotland.
On the issue of malefic magic, again Wilby strides boldly ahead where other scholars fear to tread. She does not feel obliged, as we may surmise many have formerly done, to paint Isobel as a saint in order to defend her from the savage treatment and probable execution to which she was subjected, all for matters, events, beliefs, views and tales which barely left the confines of the interior of Isobel's own mind, in her rich and fertile, visionary and shamanistic realm of imagination.
Wilby reveals her own comfort with the whole range of human experience, reviling no shadow area of the psyche, and is able to put together a sophisticated, rich, broad and deep speculative interpretation of the meaning of Isobels' confessions. Thus, by the end of the tale, Isobel is portrayed as a 17th Century Scottish visionary or shaman, linked with other cultural forms of dark shamanism, as well as to the European folklore about the "Wild Hunt." With regard to ISobel's confessions of making a pact with the "divell" and having "carnall cowpulation and dealing" with this "meikle black roch man", Wilby nimbly and dextrously lays these witchcraft allegations against Isobel back at the feet of the Protestant churches from whence she came, pointing out how it was the church itself which created all notions of pacts with spirits, and marriage with the particular spirit of Jesus, the intimate consummation of which was supposed to be so full of such rich delights. "Ideas about the benefits to be gained through contracting with supernatural spirits were fundamental to Protestant theology." (pg 402) and "The private spiritual covenant was widespread among the pious Nairnshire convenanters." (pg 404)
Moreover, Wilby points out with sound common sense, if it was "the divell" who was the spirit associated by the Protestant ministers with such delights of the common man and woman's life as dancing, singing, music and celebrations, ale and jokes and sexual joy, as well as all the lively folk lore and magic practiced in every culture, while the Christian God was associated with only dry and dull pious things and the boring sermons in church, why in the world would the common people not begin to think that this "divell" the ministers spoke of, was really more their kind of person? THe Scots common folk, as Wilby points out, were an earthy and feisty sort, who though apparently socially pressured to go to church, would often behave rudely in church when bored, or interrupt the prating minister by objecting, "God hast not said all thou hast said."
Wilby doesn't cringe away from the idea that Isobel may indeed have practiced "malefic magic", and yet she points out that poor women like Isobel living in 17th century Scotland, vulnerable to injustices at the hands of their Lairds, and who "did not conform to covenanting mores", were people who "would have stood outside the law at the best of times, and any attempt to obtain legal redress would have been doomed to failure." (pg 183). She also points out that Scots were quite known for their revenge and cursing, "The best curses of all are to be found in the Highlands of Scotland." (184) "Flyting" and Public Cursing were common in the culture, particularly effective with one's hair shaken loose and knees bared. Given how profoundly any possibility for social justice was stacked against cottar's wives like Isobel Gowdie in Scotland in 1662, I hope we can see from the vantage point of (sort-of) democracy in 2011, that we should praise any such woman, then or now, who esteems herself highly enough to long for justice and seek it in her own magical manner.
One thing would help in reading this book: the addition of a glossary by which to translate some terms of old Scots language. Isobel's confessions are presented exactly as written in the old lanuage, and not all of these words are easily understood by a non-scholar or non-Briton such as myself, though many are subsequently translated elsewhere in the text.
A highly entertaining, fascinating book.
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
brilliant, thrilling scholarly text that dramatically advances Witchcraft Studies
By Randy P. Conner - David H. Sparks
I can't praise this book enough. I chose it as one of the texts for my upcoming "Wisewomen and Witches" graduate course before it was published, and am I glad I did! For those who appreciate Hutton's work, you'll find equally scholarly writing and referencing here. For those like myself who find Hutton's work extremely problematic, you'll find here an illuminating account of how non-Christian and hybrid beliefs did not die thanks to Christianity satisfying everyone--how ludicrous--but rather metamorphosed and innovated in conjunction with epoch and locality. Wilby, like Ginzburg, "Ecstasies," does not shy away from shamanistic links. Nor does she launch, as Hutton, Diane Purkiss, and Cynthia Eller do, misogynistic attacks on those like Margaret Murray, Jane Harrison, and Marija Gimbutas, whose insights, in spite of flaws, were brilliant. Wilby's book respects the past and yet offers a very postmodern, multidimensional view of her subject that others in her field would most assuredly not have been capable of achieving. BRAVO!!!
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
If you buy any book
By James
Once obtaining and reading this book, all others on witchcraft pale in comparison. This is a holy text as far as I'm concerned. It's very difficult to obtain, and I had to order directly from the publisher. Seek it out: you won't regret it.
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