Pagan Traces in Medieval and Early Modern European Witch-Beliefs by Gelsomina Helen Castaldi - MA by research (2012) - thesis & appendix.pdf

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Pagan Traces in Medieval and Early
Modern European
Witch-beliefs
Gelsomina Helen Castaldi
MA by Research
University of York
Department of History
January 2012
2
Abstract
The aim of this research is to explore how pre-Christian beliefs, cults and popular
traditions may have indirectly survived in early modern and medieval European
witch-beliefs. It will be attempted to show how witch-beliefs and medieval/early
modern popular imagination may have reflected (through the filter of Christian
demonology
and
by unwittingly drawing upon folklore and mythology), extinguished
pre-Christian cults and beliefs. Whether and to what extent such cults may have
actually survived in Christianised Europe, however, is completely beyond my scope.
This research is solely concerned with the origins of popular belief and imagination.
Since valuable comparative studies of the subject are still relatively rare, it seems that
lack of cross-disciplinary communication may have led scholars to neglect the
examination of those aspects of evidence which do not appear to be directly linked
with the witch-hunt but might nonetheless be relevant to the still ungrasped aspects
of it. This has resulted in the fact that many areas connected with the origins of
witches’ confessions and witch-beliefs have remained unexplored. Here the attempt
is made to show how witch-beliefs appear to have been fed from local variations of
folklore and folk beliefs largely derived by the mixture of the two major influences
over the European cultural heritage, the Celtic and the Classical, the latter echoing
the Indian.
This is achieved through viable comparisons between Southern
European (mainly Roman and Greek) and Eastern (mainly Indian) religions and
mythologies, in turn echoed in medieval/early modern European beliefs. Such
comparisons also contribute in showing how much the strong symbolism present in
witch-beliefs appears to overlap with symbol-related aspects of sapiential traditions
such as Alchemy as well as of Shivaite and Dionysian cults.
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3
List of Contents
Acknowledgements
……………………………………………..............p.5
List of accompanying materials
………………………..................p.5
Author’s Declaration
…………………………………………..............p.5
Preface
……………..…………………………………………………..…p. 6
Aim
………………………………………………………………p. 6
Intellectual Approach …….………………….…p. 8
Comparative Approaches …………….……….p. 11
India and Europe…………………….………….p. 12
Gimbutas and “Her” Goddess…………….….p. 16
A Note on Conventions
…..……………………………….p. 18
Language..…………………………………………p.18
Referencing Style…………………………………p. 19
Chapter one
_
FAMILIAR SPIRITS
……………………….p. 20
Political and Social Climate
..…………………………..p. 20
Intuitive Differentiations
……………………….……….p. 25
Definitions
……………………….……………………………p. 29
“External” and “Internal” Familiars…………p. 33
The “External Familiar” and the Devil……….p. 36
“Projected Internal Familiar” …….…………..p. 38
A Common Feature…………….…….…………..p. 40
Shifting Perceptions of Animals and Nature
…….p. 43
Chapter two_SHAPE-SHIFTING
…………………………..p. 49
Resuscitation
as
Shape-shifting
………………………..p. 49
Cannibalistic “Evidence” ……………………….p. 49
The Cauldron………………………………..…….p. 53
Symbolism Behind Cauldrons’ tales…..………p. 57
Death as Shape-shifting
…………………………………..p. 61
The Striges………………………………..………..p.61
Bird Goddesses behind Striges? ……..…………p.65
Shape-shifting in Folklore and Myth
…………………p. 68
Shifting Connotations of Shape-shifting……….p. 70
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