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  1. Home
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  3. The Devil's Dominion
  • Cited by 45
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2010
Print publication year:
1992
Online ISBN:
9780511528644
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511528644
Subjects:
History, Colonial American History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Information

Book description

The Devil's Dominion examines the use of folk magic by ordinary men and women in early New England. The book describes in vivid detail the magical techniques used by settlers and the assumptions which underlaid them. Godbeer argues that layfolk were generally far less consistent in their beliefs and actions than their ministers would have liked; even church members sometimes turned to magic. The Devil's Dominion reveals that the relationship between magical and religious belief was complex and ambivalent: some members of the community rejected magic altogether, but others did not. Godbeer argues that the controversy surrounding astrological prediction in early New England paralleled clerical condemnation of magical practice, and that the different perspectives on witchcraft engendered by magical tradition and Puritan doctrine often caused confusion and disagreement when New Englanders sought legal punishment of witches.

Reviews

‘Godbeer shows us that popular belief in magic underlay most accusations of witchcraft, even in the Salem epidemic, and he also shows that popular belief did not necessarily ascribe the efficacy of magic, and by consequence of witchcraft, to the devil.’

Edmund S. Morgan Source: The New York Review of Books

‘Godbeer gives a cogent analysis of the political and religious climate that led to the Salem outbreak, acknowledging other historians’ extensive work in this area while presenting his own argument in the context of surviving folk practices.’

Source: Tides

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