The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland - Softcover

Wilby, Emma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845191803 ISBN 13: 9781845191801

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2010

Synopsis

The witchcraft confessions given by Isobel Gowdie (in Auldearn, Scotland in 1662)are widely celebrated as the most extraordinary on record in Britain. Their descriptive power, vivid imagery, and contentious subject matter have attracted considerable interest on both academic and popular levels. This book,written by Emma Wilby, author of the critically acclaimed Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits, provides the first full-length examination of the confessions and the life and character of the woman behind them. 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, to identify the beliefs and experiences that informed her testimony, and to 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, bringing together for the first time recent research into Amazonian 'dark' shamanism, false-memory generation, and mutual-dream experience, along with literature on marriage-covenant mysticism and protection-charm traditions. 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.

About this title

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.

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 this edition

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1845191803
• ISBN 13: 9781845191801
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 604