The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland (review)
P. G. Maxwell‐Stuart
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft June 1, 2011 DOI: 10.1353/mrw.2011.0012 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Shamanism |
| Key points | Argues that Isobel Gowdie's extraordinary witchcraft confessions should be interpreted through Scottish fairy belief, oral narrative traditions, and European visionary practices rather than dismissed as madness, while also examining the reliability of her confessions and the interrogators' questioning techniques. |
Abstract
Reviewed by: The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland P. G. Maxwell-Stuart Keywords Isobel Gowdie, witchcraft, Scotland, Calvinism, shamanism, magic Emma Wilby . The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2010. Pp. xi + 604. At first glance, Isobel Gowdie may not seem to have been at all unusual: a cottar's wife from Auldearn, a township lying between Inverness and Eglin in the north of Scotland. For the most part, her life was likely to have been humdrum, save for two external circumstances that will have deeply affected her and her family and neighbors. One was the turbulence of war, which, on and off during the 1640s, had disturbed the whole area in which she lived; the other was a strict introverted version of Calvinism, which dominated Moray and Nairnshire and informed the spiritual and psychological lives of those in authority. Congregations in the kirks of the region were perhaps not so sure of doctrine and the righteousness it was intended to promote. Ministers and lairds frequently complained about people's lackluster faith, and noted with irritation their attachment to magic, belief in fairies, and the remnants of Catholic practice, all of which they tended to lump together under the general category of "superstition." So when Isobel came before her local minister and ten other officials in April and May 1662 to be questioned about her alleged participation in and practice of witchcraft, her interrogators may have started by taking for granted that she was as weak in Calvinist devotion and as "superstitious" in much of her behavior as many or most of her neighbors. What they found to their astonishment and subsequent intrigued curiosity, however, was a highly articulate woman only too willing to give them detailed information about her occult life, and apparently not at all apologetic about it. Those details are often extraordinary—enough to have caused her to be dismissed as demented by earlier scholars—and it is one of Wilby's major tasks to banish such suggestions by studying Isobel in her several contexts. Thus, when Isobel talks of dining with the fairy king and queen, Wilby examines the Scottish traditions of fairy belief; and when Isobel describes how she once yoked a plough to frogs and then ploughed a field with them, Wilby discourses on Scottish oral performances of stories and legends, and [End Page 119] the imaginative skill required by the tellers to produce an accomplished piece of folk theater, based partly on common conventions and partly on the individual narrator's imaginative abilities. Isobel clearly had knowledge of charms and curses: these, too, are discussed both in context and in relation to the traditions of which they were a part. A particularly interesting excursus deals with the subtle body—that double that was able to travel, as the physical body could not, not only over long distances in seemingly impossibly short times, but also within those planes of existence entered by visionaries during trances or trance-like states. Here, as throughout the book, Wilby calls upon other European traditions to supplement Scottish material and offer explanations for some of Isobel's claims, as well as those of other Scottish witches. Scotland is thus not isolated within a narrow focus, but is expanded to embrace those parts of other traditions that are calculated to throw light on her own beliefs and practices. Wilby, however, does not neglect to pose obvious questions about the reliability of Isobel's confessions and the questioning techniques—categories of specific-closed, specific-open, general-open, for example—which her interrogators (along, of course, with interrogators of accused witches in general) may have used. These receive a thorough airing, with specific reference to Isobel's confessions, and Wilby's discussions show that, as one may expect, a variety of these techniques were used over the period of Isobel's confinements and examinations. All this is illuminating and thought-provoking, and will therefore be of immense value to those scholars who venture into the complex maze of witchcraft history. One particular avenue Wilby is willing to explore, however, is likely to cause...
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