Communicating with the Spirits
(Demons, Spirits, Witches, Volume I)
The editors:
Éva Pócs is professor
at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, Hungary,
renowned scholar of historical anthropology, authority
on folk beliefs in East Central Europe. Author of Between
the Living and the Dead, published by CEU Press in 1998.
Gábor Klaniczay is professor at the Central
European University, and at Eötvös Loránd
University, Budapest. Taught and did research at the
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
and the Sorbonne in Paris, at the Wissenschaftskolleg
zu Berlin, the Getty Center for Arts and the Humanities,
Santa Monica etc.
Focuses on the problem of communication with the other
world: the phenomenon of spirit possession and its changing
historical interpretations, the imaginary schemes elaborated
for giving accounts of the journeys to the other world,
for communicating with the dead, and finally the historical
archetypes of this kind of religious manifestation—trance
prophecy, divination, and shamanism.
Recognized historians and ethnologists analyze the
relationship, coexistence and conflicts of popular belief
systems, Judeo-Christian mythology and demonology in
medieval and modern Europe. The essays address links
between rites and beliefs, folklore and literature;
the legacy of various pre-Christian mythologies; the
syncretic forms of ancient, medieval and modern belief-
and rite-systems; "pure" examples from religious-ethnological
research outside Europe to elucidate European problems.
"This volume offers essays dealing with demonic
possession, visionary experiences, trance states, and
shamanism... the volume effectively demonstrates the
range of work being undertaken that can usefully brought
together on topics of demonology, magic, superstition,
and witchcraft." - Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft
Contents
List of Illustrations; Introduction;
Part I Discernment of spirits and posession
Nancy Caciola, Breath, Heart, Guts: The Body and
Spirits in the Middle Ages; Renata Mikolajczyk,
Non sunt nisi phantasiae et imaginationes: a Medieval
Attempt at Explaining Demons; Moshe Sluhovsky,
Discerning Spirits in Early Modern Europe;
Sophie Houdard, Mystics or Visionaries? Discernment
of Spirits in the First Part of the Seventeenth Century
in France; Éva Pócs, Possession
Phenomena, Possession-systems. Some East-Central European
Examples; Part II Contacts with the Other
World Wolfgang Behringer, How Waldensians
Became Witches: Heretics and Their Journey to the Other
World; Tok Thompson, Hosting the Dead: Thanotopic
Aspects of the Irish Sidhe; Roberto Dapit, Visions
of the Other World as Narrated in Contemporary Belief
Legends from Resia Part III Divination, Shamanism
Christa Tuczay, Trance Prophets and Diviners
in the Middle Ages; Peter Buchholz, Shamanism
in Medieval Scandinavian Literature; Rune Blix
Hagen, The King, the Cat, and the Chaplain. King
Christian IV’s Encounter with the Sami Shamans
of Northern Norway and Northern Russia in 1599;
List of Contributors; Index
2005
302 pages
ISBN 978-963-7326-13-4 cloth $45.00 / €33.95 /
£30.00
Demons, Spirits, Witches
Volume I Communicating
with the Spirits 2005
Volume II Christian
Demonology and Popular Mythology 2006
Volume III Witchcraft
Mythologies and Persecutions 2008
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