Nota Bene: This review constitutes my own opinion based upon years of research, so it goes without saying that YMMV!

A (Preliminary) Review: Werewolves, Witches, and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief & Folklore in Early-Modern Europe, ed. by Kathryne A. Edwards. Sixteenth-Century Essays & Studies, Vol. 62. [Truman State University Press, 2002].

Copyright: Wade MacMorrighan, 2007

When I first became aware of this book, I grew increasingly concerned that it might bear an over-riding agenda, due to the glowing reviews bestowed upon it by numerous Catholic Journals excerpted upon the Truman State University web-site; a fear that is well-founded when considering the fact that it has been proven that the Catholic Church has had a hand in editing the Encyclopedia Britannica (among other reference works) in an effort to mitigate their general culpability during the Inquisition and (attempted) suppression of paganism, as well as any counter-Christian theses in print. For more on this, please consult the following resources by an important early twentieth-century atheist scholar, Joseph McCabe—("Lies & Fallacies of the Encyclopedia Britannica", by Joseph McCabe): www.reformation.org/lies-of-...ica.html; ("The Columbia Encyclopedia's Crimes Against the Truth"): www.infidels.org/library/h...rime.html; and ("Rome's Syllabus of Condemned Opinion): www.infidels.org/library/h...nions.html

Joseph McCabe, found that the Catholic Church was actively lobbying for, and succeeding in, changing encyclopedias to reduce any information controversial to the Catholic Church [eg. Dying-and-Rising deities]; in some cases with out-and-out censorship or even deceptive material; though, in most cases they employed a deceptive "softening" approach. It is believed that this mendacious "redaction" is still quite extensive in many reference works, today, and is continuing to go on unchecked, and unwatched!

Thankfully, however, I can rest assured that my initial fears noted in this review were unwarranted. Whew… Below constitutes an appraisal of each subsequent chapter-length article and examination:
· "Introduction: Expanding the Analysis of Traditional Belief", by Prof. Kathryn A. Edwards: What a brilliant introduction! (If only certain en vogue scholars could write similar Introductions, and place academic methodological quantification into a proper perspective for their impressionable readership.) While the Ed. maintains that this book strives to be a work of general Historical-Anthropology (representing only one discipline, such as the work by Prof. Lederer), she acknowledges that many diverse disciplines were incorporated to give the reader a feel for the various applications often applied in historical quantification (such as the work by both Briggs and Midelfort). Be that as it may, she favors the burgeoning academic discipline (as applied to medieval witchcraft-belief) of Historical-Anthropology, and even rallies the following plea to general Historians writing on the topic, "...this collection strives to motivate other scholars and readers to reexamine the categories through which early-modern beliefs and perspectives are commonly approached." Let's hope that such scholars taking either a psycho-analytical or more prosaic approach will take her words to heart.
· "Dangerous Spirits: Shapeshifting, Apparitions, and Fantasy in Lorraine Witchcraft Trials", by Prof. Robbin Briggs: Lorraine denotes a specific region of north-eastern France whose capitols (modern and antiquated, respectively) are Metz and Nancy. It embraces a total of 5 counties, which in itself, is a tiny demographic for any singular study of a more broad socio-historical event that seeks to extrapolate a synthesis as this present author does; while he strangely seeks out differentiations between English and French witchcraft-belief when his primary thesis was an examination of the popular "beliefs" (ie. psychosis) of medieval Lorraine, France! Albeit, in this district there were nearly 400 men and women tried as witches between the specific years of 1580 and 1630. But, his over-riding agenda is also evident by the secondary-title of this article, whereby all seemingly fantastical beliefs that are recounted in trial testimony are relegated to the status of fantasies, or as being purely imaginary. However, he has adopted a psycho-analytical methodological application (like few of his scholastic coevals: Norman Cohn) with which to dismiss popular belief-systems as a figment of the Medieval imagination. Though, if one were to supplant his use of the terms "fantasy" and "imaginary" with "visionary-experience" one would glean the current popular-thesis being advanced by scholars and research-groups today (see: "Living with the Dead", below; Between The Living and the Dead, by Prof. Éva Pócs; Ecstacies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath and The Night Battles, both by Prof. Carlo Ginzburg; and Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies: Shapeshifters & Astral-Doubles in the Middle Ages, by Prof. Claude Lecouteux). Due to Prof. Brigg's preferred methodological-system, he is able to virtually eliminate the mere plausibility for pagan survivalism, whether in folk-belief or folk-traditions, despite evidence to the contrary in the existence of relatively "pagan" (or non-Christian) folk-spells for healing, as well as a common peasant belief-system centered upon shape-shifting, folk-deities, and soul-journeys, etc. (While many scholars tend to posit that an entire region or culture was Christian at the time the King or ruling elite had been “converted”, it has been otherwise proven that this is specious logic; such a thesis presumes that the mind of medieval peasantry constituted a chalk-board onto which the ruling elite could freely write, but such outstanding work as Prof. Ginzburg proves that authentic non-Christian [ie. pagan] belief-systems did survive throughout the early-modern era. For more on this see Ginzburg’s, The Night Battles.) Similarly to Briggs and other prosaic researchers, Norman Cohn makes a habit of dismissing perfectly accepted, and entirely uncoerced testimony from a variety of women who maintained that they underwent a visionary-experience and transvexed to the Sabbat; Cohn rejects this testimony, labeling them as senile old women (as if he has an insight into their mental-status and age that we cannot)! (For an over view on the problematic approach and research levied by contemporaneous British academe re: witchcraft-studies, please see the article, “Collars and Scholars”, available at: esoterica.bichaunt.org/) Sadly, this discriminatory tacit on behalf of Cohn (chiefly ageism, sexism and mendacity which he has also levied against Margaret Murray) has been maintained by British academia, in particular (Ronald Hutton and his obsolete vitriol The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy and The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft); while the late Prof. Cohn has roundly been questioned by only one scholar of note (immediately discounting, of course, contemporary Pagan researchers, and other freelance scholars): Prof. Carlo Ginzburg (himself a target of Cohn's attack and mendacity!). For further evidence detailing Cohn's heinously flawed "polemic" and unmitigated lies about Margaret Murray’s work, please consult the following sources: Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture, by Arthur Evans; Drawing Down the Moon, by Margot Adler; Wicca: The Old Religion in a New Millennium, by Vivienne Crowley; and an article by investigative freelance journalist, Janine Farrell-Robert in subsequent issues of The Cauldron during 2002, "The Great Debate: Margaret Murray and the Distinguished Professor Hutton" (available on-line, here): www.vaccines.plus.com/Murray%...sor.html As a result of this work vindicating Margaret Murray's sullied credibility, this hypothesis posited by contemporary scholars [eg. Ronald Hutton, et al.] for direct diffusion as the source for contemporary Witchcraft becomes more and more untenable as evidence for the New Forest Coven (albeit circumstantial) is made available (on this, see: Wiccan Roots and Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration, both by Philipe Hesselton). Even though Prof. Briggs favors a (problematic) psycho-analytical approach, that has had an enduring impact upon modern British academe, it is only one of many applications that scholars have employed, as will be seen in the next article... (For more information on his problematic research, and approach, please see this review by Harvard-educated freelance scholar, Max Dashú: www.suppressedhistories.net/secr...html)
· "Living With the Dead: Ghosts in Early-Modern Bavaria", by Prof. David Lederer: By far my favorite article in the book, as it exemplifies the discipline of Historical-Anthropology at its best! Many Professors and academics have long-since believed that an Anthropological approach to the witch-hunts has been long overdue, such as Dr. J. H. Raichyk. Be that as it may, it is a discipline that is often maligned as irrelevant (at best!) throughout those "hallowed halls" of academia, despite the dozens of scholars who have been performing research on the topic since the very early 1990s (though, one will most likely not have heard about any of this, I'm afraid, if the only works one is familiar with have been written by Prof. Ronald Hutton of Bristoll Univ.; JB Russell; and most British and American scholars writing—and teaching!—on the subject). Rather, like most eminent European scholars, Prof. Lederer (who is Lecturer in History at the National University of Ireland) contends that there exists strong pagan themes coursing throughout the medieval witch-trials and popular-beliefs of the villagers. Instead of castigating the accounts of popular-beliefs as mere superstitions or invented hallucinations (as Cohn and Briggs have done) he defines them as visionary-experiences. Moreover, he raises Professors Carlo Ginzburg, Claude Lecouteux and Éva Pócs to standards of acclaim that they have simply not known throughout either Britain or America! As a result, he (along with the Ed.) synthesizes their material (in particular Ginzburg) and relates that they have "analyzed the circulation and production of traditional religion in early-modern Europe on an even broader communal scale, as a religion that reflects the continuation of pre-Christian, Indo-European shamanistic belief-systems and its principles." Sadly, Prof. Claude Lecouteux (of medieval civilization and lit. at the Sorbonne, Paris, France) laments that Carlo's material has not made the impact that it should have. But, how could it when certain scholars tend to disregard its importance; even Ronald Hutton is glibly dismissive if this material, but this almost certainly results as a knee-jerk reaction on Hutton's behalf, because Ginzburg blatantly acknowledges the methodological short-comings, and other problematic habitual behavior (such as relative quantification) employed by the most popular British Historians that have written on this subject. Even Éva Pócs has found unequivocal evidence for shamanic antecedents at the heart of medieval witchcraft-belief, such as "soul-trips" and "journeys"; Sabbats held atop an axis mundi (usually a hill or mountain); belief in mediators between the living and the dead; the concept of the European fate-goddess preserved as a spectral witch-figure, et al. However, Ronald Hutton balks at the usage of any scholastic research as counter-evidence to his own preferred thesis, unless he first pre-approves it (on this pedantry, see how he downplays the importance of Ginzburg’s material, as though it cannot speak for itself, in this article he wrote in response to one of Don Frew’s academic counter-thesis, “Paganism and Polemic: The Debate Over the Origins of Modern Pagan Witchcraft” in Folklore [April, 2000]: findarticles.com/p/article...62685559). So, as a result, he is forced to castigate both Pócs and Ginzburg (see Farrell-Roberts' discourse with Hutton for this citation) as "generalizing too much" and using the "understood" nomenclature of "shamanistic" or "shamanic" as a quantifiable-relative term. According to Hutton, any term with the root-word of "shaman-" can only be applied to Siberia and the areas of the Arctic north. Strictly-speaking, this is correct, albeit's a relatively superficial polemic worth quibbling about. This represents his sole reason for discounting this formidable research by the brunt of European academia (which almost seems racist, considering the fact that British academia has insularized itself both literally and figuratively from the larger academic world within Europe, Asia and India). However, upon even a cursory reading of Pócs' work, it must be asked if Hutton has even bothered to read her material himself (or if he was merely accepting what someone else told him, and passing it off as established fact, which he's previously done, as in a foot-note in his The Stations of the Sun [Oxford, 1996]). After all, she can hardly be accused of misusing the term "shamanism", nor of "generalizing too much", when her book (Between the Living and the Dead [Central European University Press, 1999]) sticks within the confines of eastern Europe (specifically Hungary) upon translating more than 2000 witch-trials in order to reach her thesis alongside an established research group; while it is within her Introduction that she clearly writes that the term "shamanism" bears a strict (Siberian) and a general denotation. Considering this corpus of European research on this topic, and his own book Shamanism and the Western Imagination, one wonders how Prof. Hutton can be so unyielding in his position! In his Shamanism he contends that one of the few popular shamanic-beliefs he will allow for (as authentic) is the multiplicity of the soul; this identical motif also finds itself within medieval witchcraft-belief, such as through Germany, as well as within the Sagas, as proven by Prof. Lecouteux (see his aforementioned book). So, it is apparent that his present reservation and polemic to the contrary is in itself, relatively untenable. However, one should bear in mind that European and British/American academia is vastly different from a theoretical vantage point. Sadly, by contrast, Hutton, in particular (though I could list others) does not fairly adjucate his sources nor the wider breadth of scholarship being performed, thus misrepresenting history. See the following article for more information about the politicization of early-modern witchcraft-research ("Another View of the Witch-Hunts [Response to Jenny Gibbons, Pomegranate, #5]"): www.suppressedhistories.net/secr....html
· "Reformed or Recycled? Possession and Exorcism in the Sacramental Life of Early-Modern France", by Prof. Sarah Ferber: Describes, in detail the folk-beliefs surrounding the Eucharist as an object not of reverence, but an innate charm of Ritual Magick; she also analyzes the ambiguous nature between the early-modern concept of death and possession throughout medieval France.
· "Revisiting El Encubierto: Navigating between Visions of Heaven and Hell on Earth", by Prof. Sara T. Nalle: Here the author stresses the folkloric antecedents of the Spanish messianic leader—during early-modern Millennialism—as an aspect of his followers' own folkloric identities, but his own claims were quite modest by comparison.
· "Worms and the Jews: Jews, Magic, and Community in Seventeenth-Century Worms", by Prof. Dean Phillip Bell: Here the author argues that Ritual Magick was an important aspect of Jewish life in medieval Worms, because it was a binomial differentiation between the Jews and the Christians. As a result, Magick is thus conceptualized as a communal event, and ideally possessed of communal "values".
· "Asmodea: A Nun-Witch in Eighteenth-Century Tuscany", by Prof. Anna Jacobson Schutte: The fascinating story of a Nun who claimed she was a witch!
· "When Witches Became False: Séducteurs and Crédules Confront the Paris Police at the beginning of the Eighteenth-Century", by Prof. Ulrike Krample: Notes the change of the Witch as sorceriers to that of a seducteur, and the allegedly credulous people who were thought to be ensnared by the concepts of having such "power". This, of course, was because—Ulrike argues—the "Initiate", if you will, now became part of a "gang", or a system of politically subversive social equality.
· "God Killed Saul: Heinrich Bullringer and Jacob Ruef on the Power of the Devil", by Prof. Bruce Gordon: Two German Ecclesiastes who believed that the Christian devil, during seventeenth-century Zurich might prove to be a better minister than they, and thus be a threat to their respective "flock".
· "Such an Impure, Cruel, and Savage Beast... Images of the Werewolf in Demonological Works", by Prof. Nicole Jacques-Lefèvre: Raises some important demonological questions re: the role of the Devil in early-modern Europe; for example, how can witches circumvent the will of God by using his "creation" to engage in acts of malifica—that is, to use herbs and other "props" in spells, being that these herbs, etc. were the "creation" of the Christian deity.
· "Charcot, Freud, and the Demons", by Prof. H. C. Erik Midelfort: Here the psycho-analytical method is again underscored, as the author attempts to codify early-modern witchcraft/village belief-systems with a contemporary analysis, rather than seeking out earlier beliefs as the logical root for their more plausible impetus. Midelfort also posses the question as to how witch-beliefs influenced the constructs of contemporary psycho-analysis.