Owen Davies

Grimoires: A History of Magic Books

Grimoires:A History of Magic Books
TWPT Talks to Owen Davies
©2010TWPT

TWPT:  Tell me about your academic history and when it was that you first began your study of Witchcraft and Magic. 

OD:  After complete a joint degree in History and Archaeology at Cardiff University I had to decide which path to follow. Having read Keith Thomas’s Religion and the Decline of Magic before I went to University, I had already developed an interest in the history of English witch trials and the more I studied the history of popular culture and belief I was struck by how historians had ignored the continued importance of witchcraft and magic in English society beyond the era of the witch trials. There was a history of prosecution and persecution, and then there was another inter-related history of popular belief in magic. The latter tended to get subsumed within the former. So in the period after the 1736 Witchcraft Act, historians’ interest in both waned. 

TWPT:  Perhaps we should take a moment to define what your study and your writings entail in regards to Witchcraft and Magic. Are you more interested in the historical roots of these topics as opposed to the modern incarnations of Wicca and Witchcraft or are you taking the whole spectrum into account in your writings? And are your writings geographically limited to the UK or Europe or beyond? 

OD:  I am interested in all aspects of witchcraft and magic, past and present – but obviously my research concentrates on the historical aspects. Much of my work has focussed on Britain and France, but with my recent book Grimoires I have enjoyed tracing the global connections regarding literary magical traditions, and my future work will continue this broader geographical study of witchcraft and magic. 

TWPT:  Your interest in Witchcraft and Magic began with an interest in folklore and mythology as a child. What was it about those subjects that captivated you and led you eventually into your studies in Witchcraft and Magic? 

OD:  Like many children growing up in the 1970s and 1980s I loved reading fantasy novels. Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin obviously, but it was Alan Garner’s books that led me into exploring folklore. I was intrigued by the names and supernatural characters and references he wove into his stories, and enjoyed researching the folklore sources that had clearly influenced him.   

TWPT:  Do you find your interest in archaeology to go hand in hand with your other studies? In what way has it shed light on the development of Witchcraft and Magic? 

OD:  I still have a keen interest in archaeology, though I haven’t done any digging for years. Don’t miss the living in tents for weeks on end and scraping bedrock for days at a time. What fascinates me most about archaeology is the evidence it provides us for ritual and magical activity over the millennia and the fundamental patterns of belief and behaviour it reveals. I am currently awaiting the decision on a major grant project bid to create a Virtual Museum of magical objects from post-medieval Britain.

TWPT:  Tell me about how Witchcraft and Magic have evolved over the years and whether you see evidence that there were traditions or knowledge passed down across the centuries that might have survived into the 19th and 20th centuries. 

OD:  While I see no evidence for an explicit and continuing tradition of pre-Christian pagan religious belief and practice in Britain/Europe in the historic evidence of witchcraft, there are clearly aspects of the magical tradition that have affinities with and echoes of pre-Christian practices. This is evident in the corpus of healing charms, some of which have a pagan origin but were subsequently Christianised. Herbalism and astrology also have venerable and ongoing traditions.

TWPT:  What have you found most interesting about your research? Over the centuries how has Witchcraft and Magic influenced society around it for good or ill?

OD:  Difficult to point any one thing. The belief in witchcraft and the practice of magic have been a fundamental aspect of the human experience, as is evident in the historic and archaeological record. Magic cannot be disentangled from the development of religion and science, and there is clearly no ‘progress’ from one to the other. All three have always co-existed, and the vibrancy of modern pagan magic, and the representation of magic in our modern mass media, shows that it continues to influence both affluent western cultures as well as those poorer societies in which magic is an essential support against disease, poverty, and powerlessness.  

TWPT:  Your latest book is called Grimoires: A History of Magic Books.  What goals did you want to accomplish with this book when you started the project?

OD:  Essentially to move the study of grimoires away from the preoccupation with their contents and explore their extraordinary influence as cultural artefacts - to show their importance as books: to examine the influence of books on magical traditions and the influence of magic on the history of the book and literacy.

TWPT:  How does this book relate to your other books and your field of study in general?

OD:  Grimoires: A History of Magic Books grew, in part, from my book on Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History, in which I had explored the ‘democratisation’ of literary magic from the sixteenth century onwards, through the growth of literacy, the influence of translated manuscripts and then print culture. This confirmed the complex relationship between literary and oral magical traditions, and the influence of one upon the other.

TWPT:  Why was there such a fear of grimoires throughout the ages? Was there any justification for this fear in what you have found out about what was in these arcane volumes?

OD:  Depended on the nature of people’s fear at different periods and at different social levels. Theologians feared the threat of the Devil and looked for signs of the Apocalypse. In the late medieval and early modern periods the perceived increases in witchcraft and magic were signs of an increasingly ominous satanic influence. The circulation and proliferation of books of magic were considered symptomatic. At a popular level, people valued grimoires for the charms and spells they provided for everyday concerns, but at the same time feared how the magic they contained could also be put to unscrupulous uses by those who possessed the literacy to employ them.

TWPT:  What is behind the interest in magic books that has survived into the 21st century?

OD:  The perennial desire to access secret, ancient knowledge that might unlock spiritual or physical powers for good or evil. Magic is deeply engrained into our cultural lives through the media and the search for personal spiritual development.    

TWPT:  What are seekers looking for in these volumes in a society that is worlds away from where all this began?

OD:  The perennial quest for fundamental answers, understanding, and control. An insight into the mental and spiritual world of our ancestors and what it might reveal for our present and future.

TWPT:  Has the resurgence of modern Wicca, Paganism and the occult kindled this interest in magical volumes from times past or is it just inherent in all of us?

OD:  Yes, it certainly has, but so has the media, which generally portrays magic and the ability to practice magic as a reality. More generally, I think there is a considerable disillusionment with the scientific certainties presented to us in contemporary society, and a willingness to consider that there is an invisible world, whether of gods, spirits, aliens or ESP – that human existence is not the be all and end all of experience.

TWPT:  Why has there been such organized and vehement opposition to these grimoires by established religions throughout the ages?

OD:  Simple: knowledge is power. Knowledge supposedly obtained from the Devil, whose knowledge of the mysteries of the world was second only to God in Christian theology, was a fundamental threat to the fabric of secular and religious authority. Magic of any sort was considered to be a blasphemous or heretical deviation. Leaving the Devil out of the equation, magic of any sort was still considered a blasphemous or heretical deviation and grimoires were physical symbols of the desire for magical knowledge.

TWPT:  With movies such as Harry Potter and many others as well as a plethora of TV shows do you see some acceptance in modern society for the concept of magic, Witchcraft and other occult subjects?

OD:  Absolutely. Television, cinema, and literature overwhelmingly represent magic and witchcraft as realities. They both shape and reflect modern society’s fascination with the possibility of magic – the ability to manipulate the people and world around us.

TWPT:  Do you see any similarities between our fascination with Witchcraft and Magic in this modern age and our ancestors from hundreds of years ago? Could you compare of few of these similarities.

OD:  For me astrology represents the most enduring and widely influential aspect of the magical tradition (some would obviously argue that it is a science and not magic – but it was nevertheless fundamental to every magical tradition). It holds out a means of guiding and shaping futurity – that of our love lives and personal relationships in particular, and that is a preoccupation that unites us with everyone past and present.

TWPT:  And finally do you expect to continue your studies and research into Wichcraft and Magic in the years to come? Are there enough unknowns to hold your attention in the coming years?

OD:  Yes, my future work will continue to explore the importance of magical belief and the fear of witchcraft in the ’enlightened age’ .There is much work to be done!

TWPT:  Thanks for your time Owen and we are looking forward to future volumes that you may offer up on this subject.