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A review by purplemuskogee
Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic by Tabitha Stanmore
informative
medium-paced
5.0
I have read a few books about witchcraft but this one deals with service magic as it was practiced in the Middle Ages - by regular people who were usually part of their community and sold their services to their neighbours.
The book is organised in different chapters and starts with Mabel Gray, who in 1637 travels across several London boroughs to seek help to find her list silver spoons. Magic then was "the fallback option when things went wrong - or even when life wasn't going as well as one might like". Tabitha Stanmore explains how to people at the time, magic was "a rational part of the supernatural universe in which they lived" - if angels and demons are real, magic could be real too. She gives many case studies of people using service magic, even the Church, and how magic was seen as more neutral than it became seen as in the 17 and 18 centuries.
It's a fascinating book showing how people at the time would ask for the help of their local magician when they wanted revenge, or a baby, or to improve their marriage, or to progress socially. It's well researched and also sympathetic to the ideas of the time and how they were part of a way of thinking that was accepting of magic - as a neutral vessel - and it's practitioners.
Free ARC sent by Netgalley.
The book is organised in different chapters and starts with Mabel Gray, who in 1637 travels across several London boroughs to seek help to find her list silver spoons. Magic then was "the fallback option when things went wrong - or even when life wasn't going as well as one might like". Tabitha Stanmore explains how to people at the time, magic was "a rational part of the supernatural universe in which they lived" - if angels and demons are real, magic could be real too. She gives many case studies of people using service magic, even the Church, and how magic was seen as more neutral than it became seen as in the 17 and 18 centuries.
It's a fascinating book showing how people at the time would ask for the help of their local magician when they wanted revenge, or a baby, or to improve their marriage, or to progress socially. It's well researched and also sympathetic to the ideas of the time and how they were part of a way of thinking that was accepting of magic - as a neutral vessel - and it's practitioners.
Free ARC sent by Netgalley.