"Scottish Witchcraft is an introduction and guide to the magical folk traditions of the Highlands of Scotland. Author Barbara Meiklejohn-Free, a Scottish hereditary witch and the Highland Seer, takes the reader on a journey through the history of the craft and shares the ins and outs of incorporating these ancient magical traditions into one's own life. Discover the secrets to faerie magic, divination, and communicating with ancestors. Explore herbal and plant lore, Scottish folk traditions, and magic rituals for your specific needs"--
A fascinating examination into the belief and practice of magic by ordinary people in Scotland in the medieval and early modern period. The book explains not only what was done but, crucially, also why, with sections on healing rituals, use of wells
From the ancient misty Highlands of Scotland to modern-day America come the secrets of solitary Witchcraft practice. Scottish Witchcraft explores "PectiWita," or the craft of the Picts, the mysterious early Keltic people. The Scottish PectiWita tradition differs in many ways from the Wicca of England-there is little emphasis on the worship of the gods (though it is there), but more on the living & blending of magick into everyday life.Many people attracted to modern-day Wicca are unable to contact or join a coven. PectiWita is a path for the solitary Witch; & here, for the first time, are full details of this solitary branch of the Old Ways. Learn the history of the Picts, their origins & beliefs. Learn how to make simple tools & use them to work magic. Through step-by-step instructions you are brought into touch & then into complete harmony with all of nature. Explore their celebrations, talismans, song & dance, herbal lore, runes & glyphs, & recipes. Learn how to practice the religion in the city & with groups. Ray Buckland's contact with the late Aidan Breac, a descendent of th
"This complete self-study course in modern Wicca is a treasured classic - an essential and trusted guide that belongs in every witch's library."---Back cover
First published in 1977 and now reprinted in its original form, A Source-book of Scottish Witchcraft has been the most authoritative reference book on Scottish Witchcraft for almost thirty years. It has been invaluable to the specialist scholar and of interest to the general reader. It provides, but provides much more than, a series of lists of the 'names and addresses' of long-dead witches. However, although it is widely quoted and held in high esteem, few copies were ever printed and most are owned by libraries or similar institutions. Until now, it has been difficult to obtain and even more difficult to buy. In 1938, George F. Black, a Scotsman who was in charge of New York Public Library, published A Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland 1510-1727. This was a fairly comprehensive compilation of brief accounts of references, in printed sources, to Scottish witchcraft cases. The Source-book built upon this study but went beyond it by including, through an examination of actual ancient manuscripts, information on previously unpublished cases. It also presented the material in a more systematic way in relation, where known, to the names of the accused witches, their sex, their fate, the place of the case, its date and the type of court that dealt with it. Some such information is presented in the form of tables. Transcriptions of documents pertaining to witchcraft trials- such as examples of the evidence of supposed witnesses, and other salient legal documents - including, for instance, an ancient account of when and why the testimony of female witnesses might be legally acceptable in Scottish courts - are also presented.
Wiccan Author Erik Ravenswood's latest release explores the world of Wicca, Witchcraft and the Metaphysical. The Dictionary of Wicca, Witchcraft and Magick," presents an indispensable guide to entering the world of Magick and Metaphysical and explanations for daily use. Ravenswood's release is a one stop quick reference book and is a huge storehouse of information for anyone beginning or in need of information, about magick and spell-casting. Magick is within us all and finding your way to tune into it requires knowledge. This book offers the knowledge to understand the meanings behind and the terminology used. There is a little something for every Pagan, Wiccan, or Witch to use in daily or celebrations of life in "The Dictionary of Wicca, Witchcraft and Magick." Included are many different subject areas and full explanations of what they are and how they are used. They include: Wiccan, Witchcraft and Magickal Terms, A Divination Dictionary, The Symbolism of Crystals, The Symbolism of Birds and Animals, The Symbolism of Trees, Plants, and Herbs, The Symbolism of Incense and Essential Oils, The Symbolism of Colors, and The Symbolism of Gods and Angels.
Beyond the witch trials provides an important collection of essays on the nature of witchcraft and magic in European society during the Enlightenment. The book is innovative not only because it pushes forward the study of witchcraft into the eighteenth century, but because it provides the reader with a challenging variety of different approaches and sources of information. The essays, which cover England, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, Scotland, Finland and Sweden, examine the experience of and attitudes towards witchcraft from both above and below. While they demonstrate the continued widespread fear of witches amongst the masses, they also provide a corrective to the notion that intellectual society lost interest in the question of witchcraft. While witchcraft prosecutions were comparatively rare by the mid-eighteenth century, the intellectual debate did no disappear; it either became more private or refocused on such issues as possession. The contributors come from different academic disciplines, and by borrowing from literary theory, archaeology and folklore they move beyond the usual historical perspectives and sources. They emphasise the importance of studying such themes as the aftermath of witch trials, the continued role of cunning-folk in society, and the nature of the witchcraft discourse in different social contexts. This book will be essential reading for those interested in the decline of the European witch trials and the continued importance of witchcraft and magic during the Enlightenment. More generally it will appeal to those with a lively interest in the cultural history of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is the first of a two-volume set of books looking at the phenomenon of witchcraft, magic and the occult in Europe since the seventeenth century.
Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells. Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.
This volume provides a valuable introduction to the key concepts of witchcraft and demonology through a detailed study of one of the best known and most notorious episodes of Scottish history, the North Berwick witch hunt, in which King James was involved as alleged victim, interrogator, judge and demonologist. It provides hitherto unpublished and inaccessible material from the legal documentation of the trials in a way that makes the material fully comprehensible, as well as full texts of the pamphlet News from Scotland and James' Demonology, all in a readable, modernised, scholarly form. Full introductory sections and supporting notes provide information about the contexts needed to understand the texts: court politics, social history and culture, religious changes, law and the workings of the court, and the history of witchcraft prosecutions in Scotland before 1590. The book also brings to bear on this material current scholarship on the history of European witchcraft.
