Three Early Modern Magic Rituals to Spoil Witches

Authors

  • Frank Klaassen University of Saskatchewan

Keywords:

Magic, cunningfolk, witchcraft, ritual, e Mus 173, theft

Abstract

This edition of Oxford, Bodleian, e Mus. 173, ff. 37r-v presents three rituals from late sixteenth-century England designed to provide protection from witchcraft and to identify magical assailants. The roots of these texts and the practices they record lie in late medieval rituals to detect theft. They provide useful perspectives the practice of magic, on sixteenth-century conceptions of magic, and how magical practitioners perceived witches.

Downloads

Published

2010-01-29

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2011): Three Early Modern Magic Rituals to Spoil Witches

Section

Editions

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal. c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. d. Authors give permission to Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies (University of Saskatchewan) and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies to publish the work in a printed form.