Cunning-Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic [Paperback]

Emma Wilby (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2006 | ISBN-10: 1845190793 | ISBN-13: 978-1845190798

This book contains the first comprehensive examination of popular familiar belief in early modern Britain. It provides an in-depth analysis of the correlation between early modern British magic and tribal shamanism, examines the experiential dimension of popular magic and witchcraft in early modern Britain, and explores the links between British fairy beliefs and witch beliefs. In the hundreds of confessions relating to witchcraft and sorcery trials in early modern Britain there are detailed descriptions of intimate working relationships between popular magical practitioners and familiar spirits of either human or animal form. Until recently historians often dismissed these descriptions as elaborate fictions created by judicial interrogators eager to find evidence of stereotypical pacts with the Devil. Although this paradigm is now routinely questioned, and most historians acknowledge that there was a folkloric component to familiar lore in the period, these beliefs, and the experiences reportedly associated with them, remain substantially unexplored. This book examines the folkloric roots of familiar lore from historical, anthropological and comparative religious perspectives. It argues that beliefs about witches' familiars were rooted in beliefs surrounding the use of fairy familiars by beneficent magical practitioners or 'cunning folk', and corroborates this through a comparative analysis of familiar beliefs found in traditional Native American and Siberian shamanism. The author explores the experiential dimension of familiar lore by drawing parallels between early modern familiar encounters and visionary mysticism as it appears in both tribal shamanism and medieval European contemplative traditions. These perspectives challenge the reductionist view of popular magic in early modern Britain often presented by historians.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Magic and witchcraft have between them represented one of the most difficult and challenging subjects for modern historians. Emma Wilby's book is a remarkably interesting, timely and novel way of looking at them, and one of the most courageous yet attempted." -- Professor Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol. "Emma Wilby's conclusions and her explanation of how she drew them, laid down here in the commendable modern academic tendency towards plain English that has moved away from the previous generation's overly complex sentence structure, is worth its weight in gold." Ian Read in Runa Magazine, Issue 19, October 2006. "...one of the few books to treat in any detail, and perhaps the only one to treat at length, the topic of the witch's familiar ... these kinds of consideration are very fruitful for understanding much fortean material ... 8/10" -- Fortean Times, July 2006. "This is the definitive study of familiar lore, which should find a place on every Witch's bookshelf." -- Witchcraft and Wicca Magazine, Imbolc/Winter 2007. "...valuably sets the ground for further exploration of the role and character of folk magic within community and tradition and is to be recommeded for that." -- Northern Earth Issue 105. "...a powerful, grounding work for all modern magical practicioners of British magical tradition." -- Pagan Times Australia, Spring 2006. "...fascinating and well-researched. It is a genuine contribution to what is known about cunning folk and lays very solid foundations for future work on the subject. Buy it today!" -- White Dragon, Beltane 2006. "...riveting and downright encouraging review of the magical underpinning of mainstream culture." -- Sacred Hoop, Issue 51, 2006.

About the Author

Emma Wilby is an independent scholar and freelance journalist, with a graduate background in Humanities. The present book is the result of research interests developed while working for a masters degree in the History and Literature of Witchcraft at the University of Exeter.

Product Details

• Paperback: 317 pages
• Publisher: Sussex Academic Pr (April 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1845190793
• ISBN-13: 978-1845190798
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #930,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars fascinating analysis, August 13, 2006

By 

S. parker "Ian Corrigan" (Madison, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (Hardcover)

This book takes a look at aspects of early modern English witchcraft and cunning-folk practice that have seldom been examined in academic ways. The first section begins with a good summary of the nature of the popular culture of the day - illiterate or semiliterate, land-dependent, and steeped in what she identifies as an 'animistic' world view. Wilby provides an interesting perspective on just how uneducated in Christian orthodoxy the ordinary man-in-the-field was, and how close and real was the world of local spirits and ghosts. The book then offers a selection of descriptions of the spirit-allies of those identified as 'witches' or 'cunning folk' (and makes a clear distinction between the two classes). Wilby uses trial accounts and the descriptions of elite (i.e. literate) observers as her main sources for how English magic-users viewed their 'familiars' or 'spirit guides'. She makes a good case for which kinds of trial accounts make for good evidence, and her choices are entirely convincing.

The second section of the book provides a summary of traditional 'shamanism', especially as practiced in central Asia. The author focuses on the interactions of shamans with spirits, describing the encounter, initiation and ongoing work. This section has little that is new. Those familiar with world shamanic models will find it ordinary; those without that familiarity are given a good summary introduction.

In the final section of the book. Wilby makes the case that early-modern witches and cunning-folk had relationships with spiritual beings similar in many ways to those of traditional shamans. She takes some time to discuss how westerners so 'close' to us in temperment and culture could commonly experience the visionary events required for spirit-contact. She discusses (throughout the book) modern western objections to the stories, and how materialist historians have tried to describe the stories of the cunning folk as 'mutual constructions', fictions created by the interactions of elite witch-hunters with impoverished victims. In my own opinion, Wilby's theories of actual events of spirit contact (whether psychological or metaphysical) fit the evidence much more clearly than materialist skepticism.

Wilby is aware of both neoshamanic and neopagan practice in modern times. The book doesn't spend much time talking about them, but it is filled with a sensibility that takes spirit-contact by modern people (or early modern people...) seriously. Modern practitioners will find many suggestive notions, seeds on which our practice might be grown.

Ian Corrigan

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not your mother's familiar, August 13, 2006

By 

Harold A. Roth (Elmira, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cunning-Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (Paperback)

I finished this book a month ago, but I still find myself thinking over much of the information I got from it, and to me, that's the sign of a good book. Its take on the relationship between the witch and the familiar is unique, in my experience. For instance, Wilby shows that familiars were by no means "fetches" for witches and did not act as slaves or pets. They were equals in the relationship and could even act to the detriment of the witch. For me, the concept of moral ambiguity that Wilby posits for the familiar shows the familiar's depth and independence, its realness. It also fits with the position of the witch or cunning folk in their community - they were depended upon for medical help, communicating with the dead, or help in finding things, but they were also feared for the trouble they could cause to someone if they were antagonized.

The treatment of the fairy folk is also unusual. These are not Victorian Tinkerbells flitting around the garden like a bunch of beneficent mosquitoes. These are a powerful people with their own agenda, recognizable to those who've read British folklore or even stories by Arthur Machen. Wilby makes a pretty convincing argument that the fairies served the same purpose for early modern witches that guiding spirits have done for shamans in traditional societies. Like those spirits, fairy familiars helped witches acquire practical knowledge, like where a stolen cloak might be or how to cure (or hex) someone, and they were often friends and companions as well. Witches generally first encountered a familiar while being under extreme stress - broke, family members sick, overworked, hungry, fearing the worst - and Wilby compares this to the sort of deliberate preparation to encounter a guiding spirit that shamans in traditional societies engage in - fasting, depriving themselves of sleep, and creating other physical extremes. This interesting parallel fits with assertions made by Carlo Ginzburg in his work on the Sabbat, Night Journies. Wilby also argues that the concept of traveling to a sabbat is basically the interrogators' interpretation of the witch accompanying a fairy to fairyland, where for instance they might learn how to use plants or feast and dance with the fairy folk.

I was surprised by some of the information given in simple asides, such as that people at this time kept toads for pets or the average number of cats per household in Britain at this time was five. Something that really stuck with me, though, was how often witches described their familiar as being like an animal but not of any recognizable type, such as "something like a rabbit" which appeared in a witch's bed at night and asked him to love it. Even the pictures of them were somewhat disturbing. Other familiars appeared as humans but often wore old fashioned clothing.

This isn't the most engaging book ever written - the writing is just serviceable, and the book feels like it began life as a dissertation. But it does present what in my experience is a unique perspective on familiars. And the information here also goes far to bust up preconceived crusty notions about the good, wise hedgewitch who wouldn't hurt a fly, the Burning Times, Disneyworld-style fairies, and so forth. It presents a world much more complicated than that. The footnotes and bibliography also provide a number of directions for further reading about cunning folk in other countries as well as some interesting books on fairy folk in Britain.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Recommended reading, March 17, 2009

By 

Christopher R. Travers "Einhverfr" (Chelan, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits: Shamanistic Visionary Traditions in Early Modern British Witchcraft and Magic (Hardcover)

This book consists of two rough parts (formally three, but the second and the third are discussed together here).

The first portion of the book discusses the lore surrounding fairy folk, demons, etc. and their relationships with cunning folk and witches. This section is extremely well done and covers a wide range of sources. Where some sources disagree with the author's thesis, she explains why she disagrees with them and presents counter-evidence. We are thus left with a very interesting and well-supported picture of how spiritual figures are connected to the practice of traditional magic in the geographic areas the book covers.

The second portion of the book (parts 2 and 3) try to draw parallels between these practices and tribal shamanism surveyed by Mircea Eliade and others. The author's thesis here, that these are "shamanic survivals" in Europe which can be discovered through comparison to unrelated cultures rests on a foundation of sand and suffers from serious methodological problems. Among others it assumes a remarkable homogeneity of pre-Christian religion which is unsupported by evidence from other disciplines. This thesis centers around a broad definition of shamanism that is actually argued against by many of her sources, but the general idea has been picking up steam in recent years.

However, despite these serious objections, the parallels found are interesting because they suggest some universal elements of the human condition. For this reason although I think this portion is flawed, it is still worth reading and considering.

All in all, a recommended book.