This thesis is an intensive, multi-layered analysis of an unpublished, English language, handwritten, mid-20th century manuscript. Originally undated, untitled and unsigned, it has now been positively identified as “Text A”, a Wiccan proto-Book of Shadows compiled by Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884-1964) in the last half of the 1940’s. Different methodologies were applied to the document: transcription using Leiden conventions, handwriting analysis to identify the author, archival research to uncover photographs of the manuscript in use, historical and bibliographical research to situate the manuscript and its author, and finally, an in-depth and exhaustive source analysis to uncover literary and documentary influences on the text. Subsequently, the manuscript was identified as handwritten by Gerald Gardner, from 1940 to 1949, and contains almost no original material other than a handful of pages for a speech or oral presentation. The rest of the document is comprised of extracts from published sources available to Gardner. These include books on Free Masonry, Templars, British Folklore, Kabbalah, Magic – ancient and ceremonial, and books by Aleister Crowley. The document also includes ritual passages and ceremonies, most of which also appear in Gardner’s published novel, High Magic’s Aid. Two theme-lines, “Magic – ancient and ceremonial” and “the writings of Aleiser Crowley”, comprising almost 40% of the total page count, were chosen for thorough analysis. Based on the information revealed by the various methodologies applied to this document, one can assert that Gardner’s claims to have been initiated into an ancient indigenous tradition, Wicca, and to be making available its long secret rituals are not supported by this document.

This thesis comprises detailed readings of nine early-modern plays featuring female witches in an attempt to recover an understanding of how they were represented on the early-modern stage and what they meant to their first audiences. Drawing on twentieth-century theories of subjectivity, it offers an avenue for the explanation of moments of misogyny in the plays and identifies an unconscious communal anxiety which was revealed and perpetuated by the stage representation of the witch. Although we cannot fully recapture the experience of an audience of 400 years ago, this study attempts to do so in order to place the plays in the context of anxieties detectable in the period. By reading the plays in reference to theatrical conditions, this thesis identifies moments when the drama enlisted the subjectivity of the audience and the witch was constructed as uncanny. Such an approach contributes to the debate on the ages of actors performing certain female characters and suggests potential staging approaches for future performances.

This project shows how Jonson and Shakespeare represent dissatisfactions with filiation and paternity as discontents with other early modern discourses of cultural reproduction, and vice versa. Chapters on six plays analyze the father-child tie as it articulates sensitivities and hopes in remote arenas, from usury law to mourning rites, humanism to Judaism, witchcraft to visions of heaven. In every play, the father is disembodied. He is dead, invisible, physically separated from his child, or represented in consistently incorporeal terms. In its very formlessness, the vision of paternity as abstraction is what makes it such a flexible metaphor for Renaissance attitudes to so many different forms of cultural cohesion and replication. The Shakespeare plays treat the somatic gulf with ambivalence. For Shakespeare, who ultimately rejects a world beyond the impermanent material one, incorporeality is both the father's prestige and his punishment. But for Jonson, the desomatization more often indicates paternal privilege. Jonson wants filiation and fathering to counteract the progression of history, and since time destroys the concrete, abstraction and disembodiment are necessary for the process to work. His plays initially envision a paternally imagined rule of law achieving permanence for those under it. But Volpone undermines Every man in his humour's fantasy of law, and The staple of news dismantles it still more. Ultimately, in Staple's schematically represented father and son, a pair whose reunion allows them a courtroom triumph, Jonson resorts to an abstractly figured paternity itself to justify other abstractions, legal and literary. As with law in Jonson, so for religion and the supernatural in Shakespeare. Shakespeare's body of work eventually renounces the religious faith whose representation it interweaves with portraits of children and fathers. It does so first in Merchant's intimidating Judaism and hypocritical Christianity, then in Twelfth night's more subtly referenced Catholicism, mournful and aestheticized, and finally in The tempest's various abjurations. Monotheism vanishes altogether in the last play, replaced by a dead witch and multiple spirits and deities who do the bidding of a conjuror who plans to give them up. Both playwrights ultimately reduce their investment in other forms of cultural transmission in favor of more intimate parent-child structures, embodied or not. / text

De praktiker och föreställningar som hör samma med den magiska verkligheten under etiketten ”witchcraft” verkar öka i popularitet i dagens Afrika. Medan vissa postmoderna antropologer har tolkat fenomenet som en kritisk kommentar mot moderniseringsprocesser är det troligt att föreställningen om den magiska verkligheten kan göra anspråk på fler uttryck än så. Syftet med den här undersökningen är att analysera hur informanternas syn på andebesättelse i en Luo-dominerad kristen evangelisk församling i Kibera, kan tolkas utifrån vissa ekonomiska, sociala och kulturella processer. Jag undersöker hur andebesättelse kan förstås med hjälp av informanternas förhållande till och synen på hemmet, familjen, könsroller, staden, landsbygden, avundsjuka och framgång. I analysen tolkas informanternas föreställningar om andebesättelse utifrån rörelser mellan de kenyanska gränserna rikedom/fattigdom, stadsliv/landsbygd och offentligt/privat. Andebesättelse kan därefter förstås som en slags medlare mellan dessa gränser, där de som befinner sig mellan någon av dessa oppositioner tenderar att vara särskilt utsatta för andliga attacker. / The notion of witchcraft seems to grow in popularity in the contemporary Africa. While some postmodern anthropologists have interpreted the phenomenon as a critical commentary on the processes of modernization, it is likely to be able to claim more than that. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the notion of spirit possession by the informants in a Luo dominated evangelical church in Kibera, and how it may be interpreted through certain economic, social and cultural processes. This is made by investigating the views on the home, family, gender roles, urban, rural, jealousy and prosperity. The informant’s notion of spirit possession is interpreted in the analyse as movements across the Kenyan boundaries of rural/urban, public/private and rich/poor. Spirit possession is understood as a mediator between these boundaries, and those who is found to be in between some of these oppositions tend to be most vulnerable to spirit attacks.

<p>This dissertation challenges depictions of witchcraft as a sensational or disruptive phenomenon, presenting witch beliefs instead as organically woven into everyday community life, religious beliefs, and village culture. It argues that witch beliefs were adaptive, normal, and rational in regions that never suffered convulsive witch persecutions. Furthermore, this dissertation, the first to work systematically through Spanish secular court witch trials, upends scholars’ views about the dominance of the Spanish Inquisition in witchcraft prosecutions. Through a serial study of secular court records, this dissertation reveals that the local court of Navarra poached dozens of witch trials from the Spanish Inquisition, and independently prosecuted over one hundred accused witches over one hundred-and-fifty years. These overlooked local sources document witch beliefs in far greater detail than Inquisition records and allow the first reconstruction of village-level witch beliefs in Spain. Drawing from historical, anthropological, and literary methods, this dissertation employs a transdisciplinary approach to examine the reports from villagers, parish priests, and jurists, produced under the specific local and older accusatorial judicial procedure. Free of the Inquisitorial filter that has dominated previous studies of Spanish witchcraft, these sources reveal the way villagers—not Inquisitors—conceived of, created, feared, and survived in a world with witches and sorceresses.</p><p>Using these local sources, this dissertation illuminates the complex social webs of witchcraft accusations, the pathways of village gossip, and the inner logic of witch beliefs. It reveals the central role of Catholic performativity and the grave consequences of being marked as a mala cristiana, the importance of fama and kin ties, and reveals the rationality of the curious and pervasive presence of the common toad (Bufo bufo) in Navarra’s witch trials. By moving away from the prevalent focus given to the more spectacular witch panics and trials, this work demonstrates the value of local trial records. This dissertation argues that far from irrational or absurd, witchcraft beliefs in early modern Navarra were internally coherent and intellectually informed by an amalgamation of religious, social, and legal forces.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis topic "Witch cults and alternative treatment methods in equatorial Africa" deals with the problems of shamanism and treatment methods in Africa, mainly in the equatorial area. Introduces witchcraft and compares it to shamanism, healing and other methods of the African aboriginal tribes and specific healing methods which are practised by shamans, medicine men and healers. At the same time it compares these methods to the quality of the medical services which are available in the given area. Practical part shows research solutions analysing the relations of the citizens from an Ugandan village Nyakyera and surrounding areas to healthcare and their attitude towards the shaman healers.

The diploma thesis deals with witchcraft and other mystic phenomena in conception of Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard. It is focused especially on the notion of witchcraft in connection with magic, shamanism and oracles. It describes relation of all these phenomena towards religious belief and various attitudes towards them. It defines respective practices and explains differences between them. Last but not least, it introduces usual reactions to them. Via concrete situation it also shows interconnection of all described phenomena and presents them as a coherent and logical system.

This diploma thesis has two aims. The first one is exploration of "Grid/Group Theory" as it was presented by its author Mary Douglas in "Cultural Bias" (1978). According to this theory the thinking in the idiom of witchcraft is a product of an perception of specific social structure by an individual. The crux of this thesis should be comparation of social structure of few African societies with their cosmologies according to the empirical materials. It should proof the validation of the theory and also show some dificulties which the student must face during the application. The second aim is description of witchcraft and sorcery phenomenon and attempt to determine its essence or function for society.

William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is colored with religious overtones. His play incorporates elements of religious beliefs of Renaissance England. Aside from its historical basis, Shakespeare’s Macbeth alludes to stories from Scripture as well as Renaissance religious practices and beliefs, particularly regarding witchcraft, prophecy, and the dangers of sin. Through this myriad of sources, Shakespeare offers a vivid and grotesque depiction of a man demise due to his involvement with sin, offering a profound caution to his audience of the dangers of temptation and sin.

The Nigerian video film industry has emerged to become the first “popular” film industry in black Africa. Its means of production and consumption has redefined the parameters of African Cinema. The video films employ themes and images that captivate the audiences’ imagination and curiosity. Some of the most used themes in the Nigerian video films are those relating to the supernatural, magic and witchcraft. Whilst some scholars and filmmakers criticise the prevalence of themes of witchcraft, magic and the supernatural, it is these very themes that draw local audiences. This research project explores images and themes of witchcraft, magic and the supernatural in two genres of the video films; the evangelical or Christian genre, and the horror or voodoo genre, using the films End of the Wicked and Child of Promise as case studies of the two genres respectively.