This introductory chapter surveys existing scholarship on the supernatural and clarifies the book’s field of enquiry. We use the term ‘supernatural’ to refer to events or beings that transcend the natural order. This includes orthodox elements of Protestantism, as explored in chapters on providence and the supernatural in sermons. Then there were beliefs that almost all educated folk would have rejected as superstitious, such as pagan gods or ghostly spirit-guides. In between these were borderline cases, including astrology and prophecy. The chapter discusses how early modern people formulated the boundaries between natural and supernatural. It also reflects on the problems historians encounter when setting out to write about early modern beliefs. Thereafter, the chapter outlines the book’s central themes. It explores how early modern Scots formed concepts of the supernatural, looking first at the influence of literary works, before considering the emotional and cognitive dimensions of reported supernatural encounters. It discusses areas of overlap and divergence between popular and elite ways of envisaging the supernatural world and highlights the importance of binary classifications such as orthodox/unorthodox, good/evil and superstitious/demonic. Lastly, it reflects on how understandings of the supernatural changed over the course of the early modern period, with particular reference to Max Weber’s controversial theory of disenchantment.

In early modern Scotland, several visionaries experienced vivid relationships with spirits. This paper analyses their experiences historically, with the aid of modern scholarship in medicine, psychology and social science. Most of the visionaries were women. Most of their spirit-guides were fairies or ghosts. There could be traumas in forming or maintaining the relationship, and visionaries often experienced spirit-guides as powerful, capricious and demanding. It is argued that some visionaries experienced psychotic conditions, including psychosomatic injuries, sleepwalking, mutism and catatonia. Further conditions related to visionary experience were not necessarily pathological, notably fantasy-proneness and hallucinations. Imaginary companions and parasocial relationships are discussed, as are normality, abnormality and coping strategies. There are concluding reflections on links between culture and biology.

In early modern Scotland, there is a good deal of evidence for visionaries who experienced relationships with spirits. The evidence comes mostly from witchcraft trials. However, although the interrogators assumed that they were dealing with a witch who had met the Devil, it is clear that this is not how the visionaries themselves had experienced their relationship before their arrest. These visionaries were ordinary people who had extraordinary experiences and who often gained special powers as a result. Most of the visionaries, though not all, were women. Most of the spirits were fairies or ghosts. Several visionaries had a ghost as a main spirit-guide, but the ghost associated with fairies and introduced the visionary to fairyland. The chapter reconstructs one visionary’s relationship in detail: that of Alison Pearson with the ghost William Simpson who accompanied her to fairyland but also protected her from the fairies’ capricious violence. The relationship between visionary and spirit-guide was unequal, expressed as ‘friendship’, but constructed like the relationship between client and patron. The visionaries experienced various emotions of their own, notably fear. Although spirit-guides could be helpful, they were also powerful, demanding and oppressive. Because the visionaries’ relationship with them was two-way, they also attributed emotions to their spirit-guides, notably sympathy (the spirit-guide often wanted to look after the visionary) but also anger. The conclusion discusses psychological and cultural dimensions of these imagined and fantasised relationships. The emotions of other-worldly beings are a deeply human subject.

Reviewed by: The Winnowing of White Witchcraft by Edward Poeton Julian Goodare Edward Poeton, Julian Goodare, Simon F. Davies, Renaissance, seventeenth century, medicine, demonology, white witchcraft, England edward poeton. The Winnowing of White Witchcraft. Ed. Simon F. Davies. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018. Pp. xxxvi + 92. This short treatise was written in the 1630s by Edward Poeton, a Sussex physician. It was probably intended for publication, but was never published at the time. The manuscript, in the British Library, has been discussed in scholarship before—Keith Thomas mentioned it in Religion and the Decline of Magic—but this is its first full appearance in print. It has been ably edited by Simon Davies. The Protestant genre of anti-superstition writings included a number of semi-popular works against beneficial magic. Magical practitioners in England were often called "cunning folk." More rarely we find terms like "good witches" (William Perkins) or, here, "white witches." The attack on magical practitioners was usually combined with an attack on actual witchcraft, or an attack on other sins, but in this treatise Poeton, unusually, concentrates solely on the popular healers. Or at least he purports to do so; in practice he sometimes strays from his professed target. The treatise takes the form of a dialogue with three characters: a divine called "Dr Dreadnought," a physician called "Phylomathes," and a villager called "Gregory Groshead." The separate voices of the two learned characters, as they try to persuade Gregory that beneficial "white witches" are really in league with the Devil, provide much of the interest. Gregory himself speaks in dialect, a remarkable literary feature of the treatise. The divine and physician are firm with him and often patronizing, but always patient and courteous. [End Page 474] While the learned speakers purport to address their speeches to Gregory, they often seem uninterested in his presence. They use pompous and obscure words like "dehorts" (counsels against) or "sublunary," and are addicted to alliteration. They fail to engage with some of Gregory's arguments, and sometimes drift away from the point. They bury him under long lists of biblical citations which, they assure him, prove that he is wrong—but the impartial reader today may well feel that many of these citations (helpfully catalogued in the index) are irrelevant. Poeton's main argument is driven by just two biblical passages: Deuteronomy 18:10–12 (the prohibition on divination, charming, and necromancy) and 2 Corinthians 11:14 (against false apostles, "for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light"). The Bible was inspirational to learned Protestants, but difficult to use as a pastoral manual. Davies observes in his introduction that Poeton, as a physician, was less adept at this pastoral task than George Gifford, one of the best-known English writers in the genre. Perhaps as a result of this ineptitude, Gregory proves hard to persuade. After a while, the divine and physician think that they have won him over, but he comes back with "Mee thinks still, that zuch vokes as doo no harme, shud not bee witches" (34). One can almost hear the learned speakers sighing as they realize that he has still not got the point. Gregory makes his own best point with the aid of his own rudimentary knowledge of the Bible: "If these good vokes wor witches, az you wood zeem to make um, than the wood nere [i.e. they would never] speak zo much agenst witches az the doo: noe nor the wood nere tell there vrends whoo hurt um: vor in zo dooing (in my zimple understanding) Zatans kingdome shud bee devided" (26, in which Gregory has in mind Mark 3:23–24). But of course the learned characters have an answer to this, or they say that they have. As is common in this genre, there are taxonomies of different types of magical practitioners and their practices (principally 29–33). As Davies points out, Poeton lifted part of this section from a general reference work, the Treasurie of Ancient and Modern Times (1613), rather than from specialist academic sources. Poeton's most distinctive contribution to the genre is a medical one. His medical character, Phylomathes, is qualified...

Media representations preserve many aspects of the early modern age, while discreetly abandoning others. Witches still fly, for example, but the purpose of their flight – to attend the sabbat – has largely vanished from the public imagination. In the industrial western world today, popular images of "witches" derive from the witches of early modern Europe. However, these images have been shaped to modern purposes, and we can hardly expect historical accuracy to be an overriding priority for modern storytellers, illustrators and film-makers. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the wicked queen was effectively a witch, complete with cloak and pointed hat. However, she developed her spells in a laboratory, evidently a nod to the prestige of modern science and technology. Magic has nevertheless returned by the back door – if indeed it ever left; but evil magic is rarely associated with witches.