Three Early Modern Magic Rituals to Spoil Witches
By Frank Klaassen
Opuscula: Short Texts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vol.1:1 (2011)
Abstract: This edition of Oxford, Bodleian, e Mus. 173, ff. 37r-v presents three rituals from late sixteenth-century England designed to provide protection from witchcraft and to identify magical assailants. The roots of these texts and the practices they record lie in late medieval rituals to detect theft. They provide useful perspectives the practice of magic, on sixteenth-century conceptions of magic, and how magical practitioners perceived witches.
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