Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic

Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic Series Editors Jonathan Barry Department of History University of Exeter Exeter, UK Willem de Blécourt Meertens Institute Amsterdam The Netherlands Owen Davies School of Humanities University of Hertfordshire UK The history of European witchcraft and magic continues to fascinate and challenge students and scholars. There is certainly no shortage of books on the subject. Several general surveys of the witch trials and numerous regional and micro studies have been published for an English-speaking readership. While the quality of publications on witchcraft has been high, some regions and topics have received less attention over the years. The aim of this series is to help illuminate these lesser known or little studied aspects of the history of witchcraft and magic. It will also encourage the development of a broader corpus of work in other related areas of magic and the supernatural, such as angels, devils, spirits, ghosts, folk healing and divination. To help further our understanding and interest in this wider history of beliefs and practices, the series will include research that looks beyond the usual focus on Western Europe and that also explores their relevance and infuence from the medieval to the modern period. ‘A valuable series.’—Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14693 Michael Ostling Editor Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits ‘Small Gods’ at the Margins of Christendom Editor Michael Ostling Arizona State University Tempe, USA Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic ISBN 978-1-137-58519-6 ISBN 978-1-137-58520-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58520-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944566 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover credit: Temptation of Saint Anthony the Great, Herman van Swanevelt, 1643–1655. © Artokoloro Quint Lox Limited/Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom For Kosma, Abraham and Eliasz CONTENTS 1 Introduction: Where’ve All the Good People Gone? 1 Michael Ostling Part I Demonization and its Discontents 2 The Threat of Headless Beings: Constructing the Demonic in Christian Egypt 57 David Frankfurter 3 Secrets of the Síd: The Supernatural in Medieval Irish Texts 79 Lisa Bitel 4 The Good, the Bad and the Unholy: Ambivalent Angels in the Middle Ages 103 Coree Newman 5 Between Fallen Angels and Nature Spirits: Russian Demonology of the Early Modern Period 123 Dmitriy Antonov vii viii CONTENTS 6 Crisis at the Border: Amazonian Relations with Spirits and Others 145 Artionka Capiberibe Part II Enlightenment and its Ambiguities 7 Between Humans and Angels: Scientifc Uses for Fairies in Early Modern Scotland 169 Julian Goodare 8 The Álfar, the Clerics and the Enlightenment: Conceptions of the Supernatural in the Age of Reason in Iceland 191 Terry Gunnell 9 The Devil and the Spirit World in Nineteenth-Century Estonia: From Christianization to Folklorization 213 Ülo Valk 10 Dreaming of Snakes in Contemporary Zambia: Small Gods and the Secular 233 Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps Part III Remnants, Relocations, and Re-Enchantments 11 Small Gods, Small Demons: Remnants of an Archaic Fairy Cult in Central and South-Eastern Europe 255 Éva Pócs 12 Who Owns the World? Recognizing the Repressed Small Gods of Southeast Asia 277 Lorraine V. Aragon 13 Spirits, Christians and Capitalists in the Rainforests of Papua New Guinea 301 Michael Wood CONTENTS ix 14 “Reconnecting to Everything”: Fairies in Contemporary Paganism 325 Sabina Magliocco 15 Afterword 349 Ronald Hutton Index 357 EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS About the Editor Michael Ostling is an Honors Faculty Fellow at Arizona State University, and Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Queensland. He is the author of Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland (2011), and co-editor (with Laura Kounine) of Emotions in the History of Witchcraft (2016); he has also published on ethnobotany, apocalyp- ticism, and The Wizard of Oz. Ostling’s current work focuses on the pedagogical practice of twentieth-century Polish dissident Jacek Kuroń. Contributors Dmitriy Antonov is an Associate Professor at Russian State University for the Humanities, and a Senior Researcher in the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (Moscow). He is the author of four books on premodern Russian culture, the semiotics of iconography and visual demonology, and co-editor of the series In Umbra: Demonology as a Semiotic System (annually since 2012). He has also published on Russian vernacular belief narratives and the anthropology of art. Lorraine V. Aragon is Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and xi xii EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS recipient of a 2016–2017 Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). She is the author of Fields of the Lord: Animism, Christian Minorities, and State Development in Indonesia (2000) and co-author (with Paul M. Taylor) of Beyond the Java Sea: Art of Indonesia’s Outer Islands (1991). Aragon has published on ritual arts and postcolonial Christianity among Indonesian minorities. Her current research investigates the global expansion of intellectual and cultural property law over traditional arts in Southeast Asia. Lisa Bitel is Professor of History and Religion at the University of Southern California and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. She has been awarded ACLS, Guggenheim, and NEH fellowships. She has written books about Irish saints (Isle of the Saints, 1990), medieval Irish women (Land of Women, 1996), medieval European women (Women in Early Medieval Europe, 2002), two medieval female saints— one Irish, one not—(Landscape with Two Saints, 2009), and a modern visionary who sees the Virgin Mary in the Mojave Desert of California on the 13th of every month (Our Lady of the Rock, 2015). She has recently begun a new research project on the early medieval supernatural. Artionka Capiberibe earned her PhD in Social Anthropology at the Museu Nacional-UFRJ in 2009; she has also studied at the Centre d’Enseignement et Recherche en Ethnologie Amérindienne (Paris X–Nanterre). She has conducted feldwork among the Palikur, Amerindian people from the Amazonian region of the Brazil/French Guyana border. The main themes of her research are corporalities, cosmologies, social changes and religious conversions—the focus of her book Batismo de Fogo: Os Palikur e o Cristianismo (2007). Capiberibe has also published articles on Amazonian development issues. She is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Unicamp (State University of Campinas), Brazil. David Frankfurter is Professor of Religion at Boston University. A scholar of ancient Mediterranean religions with specialties in apocalyp- tic literature, magical texts, demonology, popular religion, and Egypt in the Roman and late antique periods, Frankfurter is the author of Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (1998); Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (2006); and the forthcoming Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds (2017), as well as articles in Journal of Early Christian Studies, EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS xiii Harvard Theological Review, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Numen, and others. Julian Goodare is a Reader in History at the University of Edinburgh. His latest book is The European Witch-Hunt (2016). He has edited three books on Scottish witchcraft, most recently Scottish Witches and Witch- Hunters (2013), and was Director of the online Survey of Scottish Witchcraft. He has also published on fairy belief, and on government, politics and fnance in early modern Scotland. Terry Gunnell is Professor of Folkloristics at the University of Iceland. He is author of The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia (1995), and editor of Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Countries (2007), Legends and Landscape (2008), and (with Annette Lassen) The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to “Vǫluspá” and Nordic Days of Judgement (2013). He has also published a wide range of articles on Old Nordic religion, folk legends, folk beliefs, masking traditions and performance. Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at Bristol University, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Learned Society of Wales, and the British Academy. He is author of 16 books and 82 peer-reviewed essays on a range of different topics in polit- ical, cultural and religious history.

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