The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe

Rating:
Summary: great read
Review: I fascinating study of premodern European folk traditions. The author avoids the all to common tendancy to fill his descriptions of folk practices with modern polemics. The author has no political ax to grind, other than reintroducing us to our ancestors. One comes away with a sense of how far we have come in the modern world, and also a sense of sadness at how much we have given up.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, Everlasting Magic!
Review: It is a complicated and unpredictable universe out there. Chance and chaos seem to rule much of everything, and even when we think we have control, we often fool ourselves into thinking we really have more than we do, or that we have any at all. The feeling of being in control, however illusory, is what has been harnessed by magical beliefs that have been found in all societies. In _The Magical Universe: Everyday Ritual and Magic in Pre-Modern Europe_ (Hambledon and London), Stephen Wilson, a British historian, has compiled a monumental collection of magical beliefs and practices that shows how they affected almost all aspects of society, including doctrinal religion. Every page is filled with odd practices that some community has at some time thought would decrease the chaos in the world.

Wilson has tried to lay out his encyclopedic work in logical fashion, with one chapter on livestock, another on conception and pregnancy, another on illness, and so on. Within each chapter, though, is a grab-bag of folk belief, with every page having its share of surprising beliefs. Take sex, for instance. Sex had plenty of its own associated magic, as can be imagined when people understood nothing about genetics and about the menstrual cycle. Impotence was often addressed by magic means because it was so frequently imposed on men by witches. The witches' main time of instilling such a curse was at the wedding itself, perhaps by secretly tying knots which symbolized sexual frustration. The prevention of such curses was commonsensical: the couples would deliberately avoid them by having sex before the wedding. In parts of France, if the impotence took hold, the couple would be put into a barn, striped naked, tied to a post and whipped. Having enjoyed this frolic, the "therapists" would untie them, given them food, and leave them to enjoy the night. Standing stones from prehistoric societies were found all over Europe, and were, by the descendants of those who had erected them, thought to be fertility aids. Women touched, bestrode, and rubbed on them, sometimes in groups as a pilgrimage. When such stones were incorporated into the architecture of churches, their function as fertility talismans continued, to the distress of some clergy. The cult of St. Leonard flourished in Limoges, and focused on a large bolt ("the bolt of St. Leonard") in the church door there. A woman would move the bolt in and out to banish sterility.

These descriptions show a theme that rises throughout this book. Wilson did not set out to write a comparative study of superstition and religion, but the two are interconnected in every chapter. While the organized church often tried to keep separate from magical practices, or to suppress them, the two spheres eased the same doubts and engendered the same feeling of control. Many priests frankly practiced magic and spells, and did ritual healings. The host was treated with utmost care, but it could be cheeked and furtively removed from the church for magic purposes, such as helping in battles or detecting an unfaithful spouse. It is no wonder that magic and religion were inextricably linked.

This impressive book is crammed with facts, many of them amusing. The author, however, has the view that such magical thinking is no longer part of our modern world, and this is simply not true. One can turn on Pray TV to see preachers casting out devils and doing healings. The head of the PTL club thinks he can divert hurricanes. We have Viagra now to help with erectile dysfunction, but the Web and newspapers are full of ads for herbal remedies for the problem. Thousands of people believe they are regularly abducted by flying saucers. We may no longer think that a baby's intelligence can be improved by application of blood or spittle, but we just know that Einstein had more brain cells in his mathematical area, and every now and then the newspapers have a story about the gene that carries genius. This book wonderfully illustrates the magical universe of the past, but we have not taken ourselves from it yet.