Early Modern Witchcraft Research Articles

‘Detestable Slaves of the Devil’: Religion as the ‘Third Pillar’ of the Civilizing Process

Utilising the early modern witchcraft prosecutions as historical evidence, this article proposes a reconfiguration of Norbert Elias’ theory of The Civilizing Process to include ‘religious de-centralisation’ as a necessary ‘third pillar’ within long-term European development. It is argued that, given the significance of the medieval church and the threat to monarchical power posed by that same institution, decentralising organised religion from the functioning of the state was required in order to allow state formation to proceed. This is evidenced by the early modern recategorization of ‘magic’ as witchcraft and the resulting extension of state jurisdiction into the prosecution of witches to the disadvantage of the church courts.

“Not a drop of tears, or any sweat from fear came from her”: Interrogating Mind, Body, and Emotions in Early Modern German Witch Trials

In early modern German witch trials, how defendants looked and moreover how they behaved on trial—physically and emotionally—was crucial to whether they were deemed innocent or guilty. This was particularly the case in trials of witchcraft, a crime that often left little tangible evidence in its wake. Indeed, notions of the body are integral to understanding early modern witchcraft beliefs, particularly at a time when the boundary between mind and body was viewed as porous and permeable. This was a time when emotions were seen to have physical consequences, and this belief played a key role in witchcraft cases. Through a close reading of a seventeenth-century trial of witchcraft from a history of emotions perspective, this article examines the ways in which the body, mind, and soul were interrogated in the heartland of early modern witch persecutions: the Holy Roman Empire.

Witches in Space: Introduction

The introduction to this Issues in Review entitled ‘Witches in Space’ sets out the critical history that forms the background work on the literary geographies of early modern witchcraft. The introduction first establishes the need for such work through an illustrative case study and then attends to the foundation of scholarship in the fields of literary and cultural geography as well as witchcraft studies on which this collection of essays builds.

Magic and Spells in <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> (1997-2003)

Magic and Spells in <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> (1997-2003)

Darkest forests and highest mountains: the witches’ sabbath and landscapes of fear in early modern demonologies

ABSTRACT Between the mid-fifteenth and late seventeenth centuries, Europe saw a flurry of demonological texts by theologians and jurists, outlining the beliefs, theology and prosecution methods for accused witches at the peak of the European witch craze. While these texts have been at the heart of many examinations of the history of early modern witchcraft for their presentation of magical belief, demonologies also provide vital windows into early modern concepts of space and landscape. By examining demonologies for their discussions of the sites of the witches’ sabbath, patterns emerge in the relationship between marginal spaces and fantasies of the sabbath. Spaces at the margins of the early modern world became the settings of imaginary gatherings of witches and demons, where the anxieties of the authors and the common people at the heart of their narratives could manifest and build upon one another across centuries.

Cunning Distortions: Folk Christianity and Witchcraft Allegations in Early Mormon History

Cunning Distortions: Folk Christianity and Witchcraft Allegations in Early Mormon History

The Undiscovered "Witches" of the Bible: On the Absence of Ezekiel 13:17–23 in the Early Modern Witchcraft Debate

In the Hebrew Bible we find a diatribe against false prophetesses in Ezekiel 13:17–23. The prophet's verbal attack on these women is preserved in a highly complex text, riddled with text-critical issues and hapax legomena. Ezekiel accuses them of entrapping souls and manipulating life and death. Many scholars have interpreted this obscure text as a reference to witchcraft; these women are understood by Ezekiel to be engaged in harmful magic. However, it has also been argued that the prophet is delivering a polemic against necromancy or certain midwifery rituals. Although the precise nature of the women's activities remains shrouded in mystery, their description contains elements that are reminiscent of the learned concept of witchcraft as it circulated throughout Europe in the early modern period. Nevertheless, despite the demonologies being full of scriptural references, Ezekiel 13:17–23 is noticeably absent. This article compares the depiction of these women and their activities with the portrayal of the witch and her maleficiumin the early modern witchcraft debate. It further explains why the demonologists overlooked this passage by examining its reception history from the period of the early church onward.

Detestable and Wicked Arts: New England and Witchcraft in the Early Modern Atlantic World

In Detestable and Wicked Arts Paul B. Moyer examines early modern witchcraft accusations and trials in their Atlantic world contexts between 1640 and 1670. The book draws on a deep archive of primary sources, ranging from trial transcripts and letters to published work, and provides rich visual contextualization through the many maps, images, and charts. Moyer's analysis draws on and synthesizes a wide range of witchcraft scholarship from both sides of the Atlantic to show how understandings of witchcraft in New England were shaped within a Puritan Atlantic world that included England and Europe as well as parts of the Caribbean, including Bermuda. The seven chapters assess early modern witchcraft from the perspectives and roles of those involved. Chapter 1 provides evidence for the benefit of studying New England between 1630 and 1670 in a transatlantic context. The chapters that follow examine how different actors shaped New England witchcraft. Chapter...

‘To kill harmless cattle': Animal Victims and The Witch of Edmonton

The Witch of Edmonton (1621) is often viewed as a sceptical portrayal of witchcraft that offers a sympathetic view of the accused, but its accurate depiction of animal victims in events leading to accusations remains overlooked. This essay argues that witchcraft in early modern England was largely an animal crime. Following its source text, Henry Goodcole’s The Wonderfull Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer, A Witch (1621), and earlier prose accounts, The Witch of Edmonton illustrates the centrality of human-animal relations to the gendered dynamics and discourse of early modern witchcraft.

Familiar Pursuits: Women's Occult Influences and Shakespeare's Preternatural Bear inThe Winter's Tale

ABSTRACTThe object of the preposition in that most famous of Shakespearean stage directions, “Exit, pursued by a bear,” has been the subject of much critical inquiry. This essay suggests that The Winter's Tale's preoccupations with maternal influence and the occult encourage us to situate the bear at their intersection: the bear may be understood through its entanglements with the occult properties of women's bodies and the creaturely and gendered dynamics of early modern witchcraft. While other intellectual traditions and “old tales,” including classical myth and natural history, foreground the bear as a symbol of maternal nurturance and shaping influence, tethering the bear to its referents in witch texts sharpens its meaning as an emblem and embodiment of women's occult power and as a reminder of women's proximity to the animal realm. Through Shakespeare's bear, cultural anxieties that accompanied notions of witchcraft, motherhood, and women's somatic influences find creaturely expression.

The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil

The Science of Demons: Early Modern Authors Facing Witchcraft and the Devil

The Witchraft Reader ed. by Darren Oldridge

Reviewed by: The Witchraft Readered. by Darren Oldridge Michael Ostling witchcraft, Paganism, witch hunts, Satanic Panic, Satanic Ritual Abuse, spirits, popular culture, iconography, sabbat darren oldridge, ed. The Witchraft Reader, 3rdedition. New York: Routledge, 2020. Pp. xix + 470. When the first edition of Darren Oldridge's Witchcraft Readerappeared in 2002, it was almost the right book at exactly the right time (I'll get back to that "almost" below). Witches were everywhere in popular culture, from Willow and Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer(1997–2003) to Hermione Granger in the Harry Potterseries (1997–2007). Partly inspired by such pop-cultural depictions, various strands of modern Pagan Witchcraft enjoyed an upsurge in interest, especially among young people. 1In addition, the 1990s had seen an unprecedented flourishing of scholarship in witchcraft studies, culminating in the six volumes of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe(1999–2002). 2Concurrently, undergraduate courses on medieval and early modern witchcraft exploded in popularity. Instructors for such courses had some good source-books of primary documents at their disposal, 3but no convenient collection of the fast-changing and expanding secondary scholarship. Oldridge presumably intended The Witchcraft Readerto fill that need. That first addition fulfilled its role imperfectly. Carefully abridged selections traced our emerging understanding of early modern witchcraft since the 1970s (Norman Cohn on the derivation of witchcraft stereotypes from slanders directed at medieval heretics, Christina Larner's invaluable exploration of the question whether witch-hunting constituted woman-hunting, Carlo Ginzburg on folkloric motifs in the witches' sabbath, Stuart Clark on inversion, misrule, and the imagined witch). Oldridge also chose well among a rich selection of the best new scholarship (Éva Pócs on the sabbath as alternate world, Lyndal Roper on how to read the confessions of accused witches, Gary K. Waite on the complex overlap between witch trials and the persecution of religious dissidents during the Reformation, Louise Jackson on the imagined witch as inversionary wife and mother). Other selections were less advised: especially the final two chapters, which lent unearned (and indeed dangerous) credence to the claims of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) that motivated the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s and early 1990s. [End Page 128] The second edition of The Witchcraft Reader(2008) repaired most of the first edition's shortcomings. In place of the apologies for Satanic Panic, we get a short but powerful excerpt from Jean la Fontaine's ground-breaking demonstration that the allegations of SRA, not unlike allegations of witchcraft centuries earlier, destroyed innocent lives in the name of a false but terrifying threat of evil: in each case, the real evil is perpetrated by the accusers and by the legal system. This second edition also features several new entries of great use to the teacher of undergraduate courses on witchcraft: Jane P. Davidson on the myth of the persecuted female healer, Jacqueline Simpson on Margaret Murray's counterfactual reconstruction of the "old religion" of the witches, Diane Purkiss on modern Pagan (mis)use of the mythologized history described by Davidson and Simpson. But this second edition has its problems as well: with seven more chapters but forty fewerpages than the first edition, its abridgements of some articles are so severe as to teeter on the edge of incomprehensibility. Twenty years on, the fevered pace of witchcraft scholarship has slackened slightly, but this scholarship continues to produce new interpretations of great sophistication across an expanded temporal and spatial geography. Journals that had just begun or were in the planning stages when the first and second editions of The Witchcraft Readerfirst appeared— The Pomegranate(1997), Preternature(2012), and of course Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft(2006)—are now established and respectable. Ever-ramifying versions of Pagan Witchcraft remain popular, including new and troubling white nationalist versions. Buffyand Harry Potterhave been replaced with The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina(2018–present) and the Brooklyn Brujas(2018–2020). Powerful white men have tried to paint themselves as innocent victims by labelling investigations into their wrongdoing (the #MeToo movement, the Mueller Report) as "witch hunts," and undergraduate courses on witchcraft continue to fill. Darren Oldridge has brought out a third edition of The Witchcraft...

Witchcraft and Open Science

Can you combine the history of early modern witchcraft studies with open science? Sure! In this episode of Open Science Talk, historian Rune Blix Hagen explains how at the end of his career he digitalized his research data at the library for others to use. He is actually the first person from his institute to openly archive his research data. In this podcast episode, Hagen gives us some insight on how this work has been done, and also his experiences and expectations to publishing research data openly.
 The host of this episode is Erik Lieungh.
 This episode was first published 31 July 2019.

Dilemmas of Corpus Construction beyond Folklore Collections: Threat as a Speech Act in Early Modern Witchcraft Trials

AbstractDuring the corpus-building operation of the Digital Database of Hungarian Verbal Charms we tried to augment the available material by the inclusion of witness statements of witch trials conducted in early modern Bihar County and the town of Debrecen. My paper explores the kinds of dilemmas and issues we were faced with concentrating especially on generic questions of verbal charms. As regards the exploration of early modern written sources of vernacular language use the most relevant recent approaches came from historical speech act research. Therefore, in the context of the corpus building project I shall also discuss to which extends the results of historical pragmatics, historical speech act research can offer any help (and if so, what kind of help) in solving the generic problems and questions of verbal magic.1

Being Bewitched: A True Tale of Madness, Witchcraft, and Property Development Gone Wrong

Being Bewitched: A True Tale of Madness, Witchcraft, and Property Development Gone Wrong

Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England by Charlotte-Rose Millar

[Excerpt] This book examines sixty-six extant witchcraft pamphlets in order to re-examine the role of the devil in beliefs around early modern English witchcraft. In addition, Charlotte-Rose Millar’s monograph also emphasizes the relationship between witchcraft and emotion. Importantly, this book challenges previous understandings of English witchcraft as a ‘predominantly non-diabolical crime’ (pp. 2–3). It also investigates the collaborative nature of early modern witchcraft, which has, Millar claims, been overlooked in secondary literature that tends to represent witchcraft as a solitary or individual activity.

Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible by Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers

Reviewed by: Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible by Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers Oliver Gaycken Oliver Gaycken, Richard Baxstrom, Todd Meyers, witchcraft, science and magic, magic and cinema, early modern magic, early modern witchcraft, history of cinema richard baxstrom and todd meyers. Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Pp. x + 286. Realizing the Witch is an unusual, intriguing, and demanding book. It is made so in part by a heady interdisciplinary mix of, to use the authors' inventory, cinema studies, film theory, anthropology, intellectual history, and science studies (9). The authors see this array of approaches as necessary in order to engage with an unusual, intriguing, and demanding film. Benjamin Christensen's Häxan (1922) deserves, but has not—until the publication of this book—received a critical account equal to its ambitious peculiarity. The authors' rich account of Häxan's fields of reference involves delving deeply into the medieval sources to which Christensen had recourse, as well as surveying contemporary scholarship on European witchcraft. Baxtrom and Meyers are a social and a medical anthropologist respectively, and many of their striking and original insights about Häxan are indebted to considering the film in relation to anthropology. For instance, they provide a keen analysis of the film's negotiation of evidence. As they write, Häxan "stands as one of the most powerful, unsettling expressions of the aspiration to produce evidence of forces unseen" (19). In this sense, the film is in a similar position as the witch-hunters themselves, and the authors posit a "conceptual link" between sixteenth-century theologians and the nineteenth-century human sciences (18). So Malinoswky's definition of anthropology as inhabiting another's point of view proves capable of providing evidence of otherwise invisible forms of experience. Likewise, in psychiatry, Charcot's investigations of hysteria share "procedural elements" with those of the witch-hunters (28). Instead of a narrative where modernity dispels superstition, then, Häxan participates in (and not always willingly) a story of modern science as continuous with older epistemic regimes, a haunted objectivity. [End Page 419] The strong form of interdisciplinarity that Realizing advances is not without its perils, however, since multiple approaches multiply scholarly responsibilities. Here I should make clear that my own expertise is that of a cinema historian who has worked to integrate the history of science into my work, so I am familiar with both the intellectual dividends and debts that an investment in an interdisciplinary approach brings. One drawback to Realizing as seen from the perspective of cinema studies is its commitment to a strategy of close reading, which involves an almost shot-by-shot commentary on the film. The authors justify this decision by contending that it allows them "to think alongside Christensen" (9). In the best case, this form of analysis works for a DVD commentary track, but as a method for a monograph, it leads to extended passages of description that could have been eliminated with a different organizational scheme. Relatedly, a different structure could have amplified a particularly promising aspect of the book that this approach mutes, namely, the demonstration of how Häxan evinces what the authors claim is a Warburgian approach, a fascinating thesis that is more stated than proven. There are other moments in Realizing where a more detailed account of film style could have nuanced the book's argument. The close-up of Christensen at the beginning of the film, for instance, constitutes a familiar gesture in silent-era film and is thus not as unusual as the authors suggest. Indeed, a discussion of this shot informed by similar sequences could have led to an exploration of how it frames what cinema scholars would term Christensen's enunciative agency. This position (filmmaker-as-Devil) puts Christensen in league with other modern tricksters such as Louis Feuillade's Fantȏmas, and taking note of this confederacy could have nuanced the authors' claims for Häxan's being "a singular film" (4). Similarly, a better sense of the traditions of early nonfiction filmmaking likely would have tempered the estimation of the film's...

Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads by Williams, Sarah

Reviewed by: Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads by Williams, Sarah Judith Bonzol Williams, Sarah, Damnable Practises: Witches, Dangerous Women, and Music in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads, Farnham, Ashgate, 2015; hardback; pp. 240; 9 b/w illustrations, 3 music examples; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781472420824. Historians of gender and witchcraft have long recognized the importance of broadside ballads in disseminating and reinforcing ideas and stereotypes about witches and other so-called transgressive and disorderly women in early modern communities, but little detailed study has been done in this area, no doubt because of the elusive nature of broadside balladry and a deficiency of musicologists amongst early modern historians. As a musicologist of some note, Sarah Williams’s contribution to the field is therefore very welcome. In Damnable Practises, she builds upon the work of Amanda Winkler, Frances Dolan, Tessa Watt, Christopher Marsh, and others by applying her extensive knowledge of early modern English broadside ballads and music to demonstrate how witches, scolds, and husband murderers were represented and characterized in broadside ballads and their accompanying music. Williams is ultimately concerned with the shaping of musical and acoustic stereotypes of female transgression by the London publishers of broadside ballads in the seventeenth century. She provides an excellent overview of the development, printing, promoting, and performance of broadside ballads in early modern England, before focusing on broadside ballads produced in London that deal specifically with witchcraft and female transgression. As broadside ballads were widely circulated as text, and transmitted orally through street and theatre performances, they were indeed an important tool, reflecting and reinforcing female stereotypes, and shaping gender [End Page 194] hierarchies and moral values. Williams considers the ways in which the textual, musical, visual, and performative characteristics of these ballads influenced their reception by early modern audiences and contributed to perceptions of transgressive women in the early modern community. Every aspect of broadside balladry is considered, including the use of fonts in the text, the use and reuse of woodcut imagery to reinforce stereotypes, musical accompaniment and repetition of certain tunes, public display and performance, reception by audiences, and the intersection of broadside balladry and theatre. There are some problems with Williams’s discussion of the cultural and historical context of gender, witchcraft, and female disorder. It is, of course, difficult to come up with new material in this heavily explored area, but Williams’s treatment of witchcraft in early modern England is superficial. She draws selectively from secondary sources to demonstrate that pagan rituals and agrarian traditions, ingrained in the English consciousness, contributed to fear of and prejudice against loquacious women in early modern England. While there were certainly remnants of pagan practices and beliefs in early modern witchcraft, her emphasis on witch-cults is misleading, not least because evidence of their existence has been convincingly dismissed by historians. Furthermore, Williams’s statement that witchcraft prosecutions increased under James I is mistaken (p. 37), and she conflates the witch hunters of the disruptive Civil War period with King James and the Jacobean period. To advocate her position on gender bias, Williams also neglects to point out the discrepancies between the prevalent depictions of women burned at the stake for witchcraft and domestic crime in broadside ballads and the historical records. Women convicted of witchcraft in early modern England were not burned but hanged, and while it was stated in law that women found guilty of murdering their husbands should be burned at the stake, only a small minority of husband murderers were burned: the majority were hanged, and a small number were pardoned. This discrepancy warrants some discussion, as it surely reveals something significant about the stereotypical depictions of women in the ballads. While there is no doubt that witchcraft was a gendered crime, Williams’s argument for gender bias using spurious claims and inadequate discussion detracts from the overall value of her work, as does the misquote from John Boys in the heading for Chapter 4, ‘Auditories are like Fairies’ (p. 111), which mistakes ‘Faires’ for ‘Fairies’. Williams’s failure to create an accurate historical context for witchcraft beliefs does not detract from her detailed exploration of the...

Agents of Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy and Denmark by Louise Nyholm Kallestrup

Reviewed by: Agents of Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy and Denmark by Louise Nyholm Kallestrup Gerhild Scholz Williams Gerhild Scholz Williams, Louise Nyholm Kallestrup, Gerhild Williams, Louise Kallestrup, witchcraft, early modern witchcraft, Italian witchcraft, Danish witchcraft louise nyholm kallestrup. Agents of Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy and Denmark. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2015. Pp. xv + 206. The book under review compares witchcraft prosecutions in a small town in Southern Italy (Orbetello) with those in Jutland, Denmark (Viborg) during the seventeenth century. The former prosecutions were handled by the Roman Inquisition, the latter by secular courts. This meant that the distance between the two locales was not only geographic but also confessional, demonstrating the differences between Catholic and Lutheran approaches to the witch phenomenon. Basing her detailed examination on numerous court records in both jurisdictions, Kallestrup shows that accusations of witchcraft do not only differ in substance, but also in severity of punishment. A semantic exploration of what exactly is meant by the witch, witchcraft, and the pact with the Devil in both locales signals the complexity of not only the concept but, more specifically, of how both cultures approached the reality of the phenomenon in their midst. It is clear that, in spite of the geographic distance, both communities formulated strict laws against witchcraft [End Page 414] and magic. As was the case across western Europe, all legal proceedings rested on the authority of the same well known and frequently cited demonological treatises, which were applied to the local specifics. The great strength of this study lies in its comprehensive examination and reconstruction of local court records and proceedings. As the stories of individual prosecutions unfold, the participation of the populace in the accusations, denunciations, eventual convictions, and even executions comes alive, based on the minute details unearthed by the author. Before the reader gets to those, the author surveys the legal tools on which each of the prosecuting authorities rested their judgments, and thus their definitions of what exactly the power of the witch was, what constituted witchcraft, and how its benevolent, healing version differed from its malevolent effects. It turns out that the understanding among the people who felt impacted by magical powers practiced by cunning-folk or witches diverged greatly, not only in the two geographic locations, but also among people in the same small communities. Investigating the differences between the Danish and Roman legal procedures, this study suggests that after the 1617 Witchcraft Regulations, the Law of Jutland tended to move away from burning and toward hanging, and also toward the exiling and confiscation of property. Members of the nobility were beheaded before being burned. Only one execution by beheading of a noblewoman was recorded in 1621. The Roman Inquisition seemed to have employed a greater variety of penalties. In Orbetello, the punishment of choice was apparently public whipping and exile. It is interesting that in the mid-seventeenth century, a time when navies around the Mediterranean were always in need of galley slaves, additional punishments included not only imprisonment and fines, but also galley duty. The difference in penalty between the Danish and the Inquisition suggests that the lightest sentence applied by (Protestant) Danish courts matched the harshest meted out by the Inquisition, which looked upon witchcraft as a sin that needed repentance and absolution, and not necessarily severe physical punishment. After a comparison of both legal systems, Kallestrup investigates local examples in both jurisdictions. It turns out that witches in Italy apparently practiced mostly love magic and magic directed at marital problems, impotence, and infertility. They differed from those in Denmark, who were primarily involved in crimes against property such as bewitchment of livestock, and influencing the impact of the weather on harvests, in addition to quarrels among villagers. To bring a suspected witch to trial in Orbetello, reliable witnesses had to initiate an investigation supported by trustworthy accusations and reliable [End Page 415] denunciations. In Jutland, testimony and formal accusations, if substantiated by witnesses, would lead to a trial. In both jurisdictions, each narrative included information about who participated in magic rituals, when, and where (benevolent or malevolent). Kallestrup presents an interesting Danish example of witchcraft that involved the "birth" of a...

The Witches' Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic by Thomas Hatsis

Reviewed by: The Witches' Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic by Thomas Hatsis Michael Ostling KEYWORDS Michael Ostling, Thomas Hatsis, witchcraft, psychedelics, psychedlia, entheogens, drugs, medieval magic, medieval witchcraft, early modern witchcraft, potions, witch flight thomas hatsis. The Witches' Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic. Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2015. Pp. xvii + 286. Every few years, someone sets out to show that the alleged flight of accused witches can best be explained via an examination of the hallucinogenic properties of the supposed witches' ointment: witches, it is claimed, induced the experience of flight by vigorously rubbing into their skin the powerfully psychotropic extracts of henbane, mandrake, belladonna, and other herbs of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family.1 Thomas Hatsis's Witches' Ointment stands out from this perennial genre for its erudition and concern for historical context. Unlike such efforts as George N. Conklin's "Alkaloids and the Witches' Sabbat" (1958), V. B. Haarstad's "Witchcraft: A Pharmacological Analysis" (1964), Michael Harner's "Role of Hallucinogenic Plants in European Witchcraft" (1973), Hans Peter Duerr's Dreamtime (1985), Alexander Kuklin's How Do Witches Fly? (1999), or John M. Riddle's Goddesses, Elixirs, and Witches (2010), Hatsis is not content to recite the ointment recipes proposed by sixteenth-century physicians and natural magicians, elucidate the toxicology of hyoscyamine and other solanaceous alkaloids, and consider the [End Page 271] case proven. On the contrary, he draws on a wide range of primary sources in their original languages, contextualizing these through a strong grounding in the secondary literature. Nevertheless, The Witches' Ointment fails in its goal of providing "previously overlooked evidence indicating that the witches' ointment … had a foundation in real folk sorcery, i.e. intentional drug use" (4). Refreshingly, Hatsis rejects "reducing medieval and early modern period magic to drug use" (xvii). Instead he stakes out a middle position between lurid suggestions that witches smeared hallucinogenic ointments on brooms "inserted genitally or anally to effect the experience of flight" (4, cf. 159–60) and the dismissive "predispositions" of "modern-day skeptics" (6). Against these extreme positions, Hatsis asks for a dispassionate review of "the best evidence" (6). He hopes to demonstrate that witch flight represents a confluence of several streams, including folklore, elite magic, and antiheretical polemic, but also includes a tradition of "medical drugs" that were "used by some people as an element in psyche-magical rites" (167). To make this argument, Hatsis needs to do more than show that nightshades are hallucinogenic and were available in the early modern period. He needs to make a plausible case that nightshades were used intentionally for entheogenic experience, trance flight, or recreational drug trips by cunning-women, herbalists, heterodox subcultures, shamans, or indeed any candidate for witchcraft accusation. To his credit, Hatsis recognizes this problem: two chapters seek to connect the solanaceous soporifics known to surgeons and literate botanists with the love potions used by cunning-folk, and thus potentially, by accused witches. Chapter 4, "Roots of Bewitchment," discusses the surgeons' "soporific sponge," but Hatsis provides no evidence for his assertion that the sponge would be widely known among commonfolk healers (107). Chapter 5, "Veneficia," seems a promising place to show that cunning-folk used the nightshades to induce hallucination, trance, or the experience of madness. Instead it brings forward just a handful of trials in which botanicals figure in any way: the juice of a black berry ("likely nightshade berries") in 1611; bitter almonds ("probably nightshade berries") in 1651 (121). The remaining trial documents record unspecified herbs or powders, their solanaceous content simply assumed. Indeed, Hatsis's declared dispassion is quickly replaced with a tendency to bend any evidence, however slim or vague or problematic, toward supporting the thesis that witches (and their ancient medieval forebears) used psychoactive drugs on themselves and others. Chapter 3, "The Heretics' Potion," sets the pattern. By combining reports that second-century Marcosian Gnostics practiced ecstatic prophecy with heresiological slanders about the same [End Page 272] group's use of love potions, Hatsis can suggest that "Marcus and his group used psychoactive love-potions consensually for erotic entheogenic experience" (58). Or again, the "heavenly food" of the eleventh-century Orléans heretics was described in confessions...