Deadly Words
Witchcraft in the Bocage
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:4th Dec '80
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This book examines witchcraft beliefs and experiences in the Bocage in western France.
This book examines witchcraft in the Bocage, a rural area of western France. The ethnographer delves into what it means to be a witch and to be bewitched, or 'caught' in a series of misfortunes. Only a professional magician, an 'unwitcher', has any chance of breaking the witch's spell and the struggle is eventually fatal.This 1980 book examines witchcraft beliefs and experiences in the Bocage, a rural area of western France. It also introduced a powerful theoretical attitude towards the progress of the ethnographer's enquiries, suggesting that a full knowledge of witchcraft involves being 'caught up' in it oneself. In the Bocage, being bewitched is to be 'caught' in a sequence of misfortunes. According to those who are bewitched, the culprit is someone in the neighbourhood: the witch, who can cast a spell with a word, a touch or a look, and whose 'power' comes from a book of spells inherited from an ancestor. Only a professional magician, an 'unwitcher', has any chance of breaking the succession of misfortunes which befall those who have been bewitched. He undertakes a battle of magic with the suspected witch, a battle which is eventually fatal.
ISBN: 9780521297875
Dimensions: 230mm x 153mm x 17mm
Weight: 440g
284 pages