writing-witch-wars - Tumblr blog

[writing-witch-wars]

Review: Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas

There are books that make you feel like you've really accomplished something when you finish reading them, and Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England by Keith Thomas was one of them. If this wasn't the book that everyone references on the rise of rationalism and the decline of magical thinking in 17th century England, I might not have gotten through it, but I finally finished it this weekend after slogging through it for months, and I may have possibly kissed my Kindle in relief to be through it. 

As academic books go, this one is better than most. The language isn't obnoxiously dense. He doesn't use too much Latin, and he updates the spelling of most of his quotes. (Unlike Emma Wilby &$#@*$.) He does that tedious academic thing where he lists out every single example he can find of something supporting an idea, but, since he is writing about superstition and he has a wry sense of humor, many of the examples are amusing. I highlighted some of them on goodreads.

The problem with this book is that he feels the need to remind us every few pages of how absurd magic is and how mentally unbalanced people who believe in magic are. As a magickal practitioner, naturally, this was irritating, but I would have been able to deal with it if he had, at least, been willing to deal with the natural consequences of his ideas: What does it mean for a theory when the vast majority of the people being studied are, according to the scholar's definition, unhinged? What does it mean when there is a serious class divide--one frequently referenced in the work--between those who are unhinged (the working classes) and those who aren't (academics and nobles)? None of these questions are addressed. He picks at the edges of the question, but he falls back on laments that no one else has looked into them.

These objections aside, I can see why this book is considered to be such an important resource. Things changed enormously in English society between 1600 and 1800. At the beginning of the period, everyone believed that nothing happened without the Christian god's express permission and intervention. Whenever something went wrong, the obvious question was what the Christian god was saying by bringing this misfortune into the world. By the end of the period, the the universe was believed to be as impersonal as a clock, and the question became, "What could you have done to prevent this disaster from coming into the world?" 

In the middle was this really interesting fuzzy place where astrologers firmly believed that a rationalist explanation for astrology was coming any day now while the discovery of the regularity of comets and their position in space beyond the orbit of the moon smashed the classical model of the universe to bits. Magicians continued to practice traditional forms of magic while the systems of belief about the nature of reality shifted, turning meaningful ritual gestures into nonsense. 

Religion and the Decline of Magic traces the evolution of witches, cunning men, alchemy, and astrology through this period, explaining how each discipline and its associated community adapted or (more usually) didn't adapt to the changing world.

For anyone who is interested in the history of the rise of rationalism and the question of why magic became suddenly unfashionable in the 17th century after millennia of magical thinking in Europe, I would recommend this book along with The Reenchantment of the World by Morris Berman and Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry by Owen Barfield. Each book takes on the problem from a different angle, and each author has different personal beliefs about the magical worldview that was left behind. Together, they do a pretty good job of illuminating this historical period. 

[writing-witch-wars]

To appreciate the light in which the witch appeared to her neighbours it is necessary to recall the importance which the inhabitants of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England attached to social harmony, and the variety of means they employed to check all signs of dispute or nonconformity...Margery Stanton's requests were typical enough; what was distinctive about them was that they were consistently refused. The fact that she should be accused of witch-craft, by the very people who had failed to fulfil their accepted social obligations to her, illustrates the essential conflict between neighbourliness and individualism which generated the tensions from which the accusations of witchcraft were most likely to arise...The great bulk of witchcraft accusations thus reflected an unresolved conflict between the neighbourly conduct required by the ethical code of the old village community, and the increasingly individualistic forms of behaviour which accompanied the economic changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (1971) 

One of the reasons for the uptick in witch trials in the 16th and 17th centuries in England was that society was at a hinge moment in the question of how to help the poor. 

Until the early modern period, it was considered to be a horrible breach of the code of hospitality to deny anyone food who came to your door. By the 18th century, the poor were theoretically taken care of by the state, and it was actually illegal to give out food to people who came begging at the door. 

In the horrible middle period, people were starting to feel less responsible for their neighbors, but not enough that they didn’t feel guilty. Often witchcraft accusations followed after the accused witch asked for help and was denied. The person who denied the “witch” help then felt guilty and blamed any misfortune that came after on the poor person who probably left the hospitable house grumbling when they were turned away. 

[writing-witch-wars]

If time is regarded as a unidirectional procession from A to B, as in medieval thought, then it should be possible to make deductions about what lies ahead by taking note of 'omens,' meaning various forms of fore-shadowing of the shape of things to come. However, the Anglo-Saxon view of time was less like a railway and more like a river--fast-flowing in parts but also given to swirling, eddying and reversing its direction, at least for a little while.

S. Pollington, The Elder Gods: The Otherworld of Early England

[writing-witch-wars]

What Magpie Research Looks Like

Sometimes, I get overwhelmed by how much there is to learn and how I'm going to turn it into a story. When that happens, I remind myself that a heavily researched historical novel is too big to tackle all at once. It's a process of tiny steps that add up to something big. Right now, my work is making that stack of cards bigger. Anything that makes that stack of cards a little bit taller is work worth doing. Witch Wars has taken a back seat lately to a couple of blog post series I've been inspired to write, but after a trip to the library on Friday, I'm back to working on it again. 

(Aside: One of the things I've learned as a writer over the years is that it's better to focus on the things I have energy for instead of forcing myself to do the things I think I should be doing. As long as I'm not pushing a deadline, it all seems to work out in the end, and I end up being much more productive. And happy.) 

I've shared some of the interesting things I've found in my research. Today, I thought I'd share how I go about doing that research. 

I've talked before about how truth is wiggly when you're writing a book about myth and folklore. People have believed a lot of crazy things, and there are a lot of open questions that I'll have to take a side on--never mind the fact that I'm writing a fantasy novel, which means I get an extra license to make things up. But I'm also writing this novel to understand where my people come from, so I want to understand, and I want to get it right. 

That means I have a ton of research to do. Because my history classes didn't teach anything about British history that didn't have to do with Shakespeare or the American colonies (despite taking four western civ classes), a lot of that research is just straight-up British history, but I also get to read books like Mysterious Britain, which is, basically, 160 pages of "rocks don't do this in nature." 

The hardest part about finding research material is getting the first few books. (Unless the subject is broad like British history. Then the challenge is knowing who to listen to.) Once I've gotten a book or two, finding more books to read is a matter of paying attention to the books that are referenced in the text and looking them up or checking the references in the back of the book.**

For the history of folk magic in Britain, my gateway source was A Deed Without a Name by Lee Morgan. His reference list was rather short, but it lead me to Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits by Emma Wilby, which has a bibliography that is nine pages long. 

As you can imagine, the list of books I'm reading, going to read, definitely going to read, and definitely going to read when I can cough up enough to import the book myself because my public library doesn't believe WorldCat actually does international ILL, has grown at an alarming rate. Right now, my witch-wars-research shelf on goodreads has 25 books in it, which is 15 books shy of what I needed to read to get my MFA, and I'm just getting started. I've heard it said that every historical fiction novel is an MA in disguise. I'm starting to understand what they're talking about. 

I've had novels die because of my inability to stay organized before,* so I went into this project determined to do it right. 

I am so very glad I did. 

This is the current stack of research notecards I've made. 

(What? Doesn't everyone keep a D12 on their desk?)

This does not include all of the notes I've made on Kindle and haven't copied down onto cards yet. When I finally get around to doing that, I estimate that this stack will double. 

Every time I find a fact or something that inspires me, no matter how unlikely it is I'll actually use it, it gets jotted down and put into this pile. Dreams, random thoughts, everything is fair game, and I keep everything. Right now, in my notes, my protagonist has two different genders and is going on at least two different quests. I'm fairly settled on the answers to those questions (I think), but I'm keeping the "wrong" cards around because I never know what I'll be able to use. Now is the time for gathering indiscriminately. Later, I will trim.

One of the things I learned writing my last novel is that I can never have too many ideas. In the beginning, when I don't know where I'm going, coming up with ideas is easy. It is so much harder to come up with new material when I think I'm 80% of the way through the book, and I discover it's barely a novelette. 

Once a week or so, I flip through this stack of notecards and think about the way the story is going. This is usually enough to inspire a few new cards. 

Sometimes, I get overwhelmed by how much there is to learn and how I'm going to turn it into a story. When that happens, I remind myself that a heavily researched historical novel is too big to tackle all at once. It's a process of tiny steps that add up to something big. Right now, my work is making that stack of cards bigger. Anything that makes that stack of cards a little bit taller is work worth doing. 

*I was almost done with the research for an alternate history novel in which Keats became a surgeon instead of a poet and ended up the ship's surgeon on the Beagle with Darwin. I put my research away to let the book brew for a few months, went back and found my research binder empty. Poof! Magic!

**One of the tricks I learned in grad school for quickly becoming an expert on a topic is to get as many books as you can on a subject from the library at a time. Then check the references. If a reference shows up repeatedly, it's a source you need to investigate. When you start getting bored because you're reading the same things over and over again, you're starting to become an expert on the topic and can switch to studying something else. 

[writing-witch-wars]

Interesting British History Factoids I’m Determined to Find a Use For

There was a movement of people called Levellers during the English Civil War who advocated for redistributing wealth. They were also deeply religious so that, for the ruling classes, religious fervor and wealth redistribution became synonymous. In order to prevent another movement like that from rising up, the ruling classes said, “The voice of the people should never again be confused for the voice of God.”

In 1647 three Anabaptists in Newbury tried unsuccessfully to ascend to Heaven. I found this little factoid in Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas. Unfortunately, he didn’t say anything about how they attempted to ascend to Heaven.

During the Roman occupation, shrines to Asclepius were set up to help people with “dream incubation” (i.e. the cultivation of healing dreams). When Christianity took over, the shrines were rededicated to Saint Martin of Tours.

During the English Civil War, many new sects sprang up claiming to be legitimate because they had magical powers. The Quakers were generally seen as being the best for miracles. Their leader, George Fox, was said to have telepathic powers and the ability to bring the rains. His enemies said he was a witch.

The Romans brought some Egyptian gods with them when they occupied England, which meant that Ammon, Isis, and Sarapis (Horus) may have been the oldest gods worshipped there.

There is a legend that says the Druids cursed Devon so that no mistletoe will grow there. There are reports of mistletoe cultivators to this day with farms on the Devon line who can grow mistletoe successfully outside of Devon but not inside.

Yes, there were people who were convinced that the year 1666 would be the end of the world. Apocalypse fever in general was en vogue during the 17th century.

In the folklore of Devon, it is considered unlucky to whistle underground because it awakens the evil spirits who live in caves.

A Devonshire folk spell: Make a pin cushion. Put it in your left stocking and hang the stocking from the foot of your bed. You will see your whole future in a dream.

[writing-witch-wars]

From Google Dictionary, first definition: “a brief or trivial item of news or information.”

Interesting British History Factoids I’m Determined to Find a Use For

There was a movement of people called Levellers during the English Civil War who advocated for redistributing wealth. They were also deeply religious so that, for the ruling classes, religious fervor and wealth redistribution became synonymous. In order to prevent another movement like that from rising up, the ruling classes said, “The voice of the people should never again be confused for the voice of God.”

In 1647 three Anabaptists in Newbury tried unsuccessfully to ascend to Heaven. I found this little factoid in Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas. Unfortunately, he didn’t say anything about how they attempted to ascend to Heaven.

During the Roman occupation, shrines to Asclepius were set up to help people with “dream incubation” (i.e. the cultivation of healing dreams). When Christianity took over, the shrines were rededicated to Saint Martin of Tours.

During the English Civil War, many new sects sprang up claiming to be legitimate because they had magical powers. The Quakers were generally seen as being the best for miracles. Their leader, George Fox, was said to have telepathic powers and the ability to bring the rains. His enemies said he was a witch.

The Romans brought some Egyptian gods with them when they occupied England, which meant that Ammon, Isis, and Sarapis (Horus) may have been the oldest gods worshipped there.

There is a legend that says the Druids cursed Devon so that no mistletoe will grow there. There are reports of mistletoe cultivators to this day with farms on the Devon line who can grow mistletoe successfully outside of Devon but not inside.

Yes, there were people who were convinced that the year 1666 would be the end of the world. Apocalypse fever in general was en vogue during the 17th century.

In the folklore of Devon, it is considered unlucky to whistle underground because it awakens the evil spirits who live in caves.

A Devonshire folk spell: Make a pin cushion. Put it in your left stocking and hang the stocking from the foot of your bed. You will see your whole future in a dream.

[writing-witch-wars]

Interesting British History Factoids I’m Determined to Find a Use For

There was a movement of people called Levellers during the English Civil War who advocated for redistributing wealth. They were also deeply religious so that, for the ruling classes, religious fervor and wealth redistribution became synonymous. In order to prevent another movement like that from rising up, the ruling classes said, "The voice of the people should never again be confused for the voice of God."

In 1647 three Anabaptists in Newbury tried unsuccessfully to ascend to Heaven. I found this little factoid in Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas. Unfortunately, he didn't say anything about how they attempted to ascend to Heaven.

During the Roman occupation, shrines to Asclepius were set up to help people with "dream incubation" (i.e. the cultivation of healing dreams). When Christianity took over, the shrines were rededicated to Saint Martin of Tours.

During the English Civil War, many new sects sprang up claiming to be legitimate because they had magical powers. The Quakers were generally seen as being the best for miracles. Their leader, George Fox, was said to have telepathic powers and the ability to bring the rains. His enemies said he was a witch.

The Romans brought some Egyptian gods with them when they occupied England, which meant that Ammon, Isis, and Sarapis (Horus) may have been the oldest gods worshipped there.

There is a legend that says the Druids cursed Devon so that no mistletoe will grow there. There are reports of mistletoe cultivators to this day with farms on the Devon line who can grow mistletoe successfully outside of Devon but not inside.

Yes, there were people who were convinced that the year 1666 would be the end of the world. Apocalypse fever in general was en vogue during the 17th century.

In the folklore of Devon, it is considered unlucky to whistle underground because it awakens the evil spirits who live in caves.

A Devonshire folk spell: Make a pin cushion. Put it in your left stocking and hang the stocking from the foot of your bed. You will see your whole future in a dream.

[writing-witch-wars]

Thinking About Gods in Historical Fantasy

I wrote in my last process post about how I'm taking a somewhat disinterested approach to historical accuracy in Witch Wars, but there are other questions that need to be answered. There’s the problem of gods, for example: What are gods? Who are they? What happened to them after their people were conquered or their religions fell out of favor? What the Hel do I do with the fact that there were two versions of Norse Paganism practiced on the island? Are Odin and Woden the same person, or are they two different people?

Neil Gaiman ties the existence of gods to memory and belief in American Gods. The more gods are remembered and venerated the stronger they are. If they are forgotten, they disappear. They appear in his  book as materially human without mystery or numinosity. It's a pretty American approach to religion, which is appropriate for a book called American Gods.

I enjoyed his approach, but it's not the direction I want to take with mine. In real life, I don’t believe that the gods depend on us for their existence any more than the crow cackling on the roof as I write this depends on my belief for its existence, but in the book I want to make things more complicated.

I'm interested in memory and the process of decay. I keep thinking back to my ancestor's tombstone, the way it had been worn down until it almost disappeared. What would a god be like who had been worn down in that way?

I keep envisioning a character encountering a god at a holy site, the ruins of a church covering the ruins of a Pagan shrine. The original shrine is almost entirely destroyed. There is no evidence of a name. All that is left of the god is the feeling of old sadness and resentment, maybe the flash of a vision or two.

What would it like to go into ancient woods at night that is haunted by Woden and the Wild Hunt? I want to write about a Man in Black who seems like just another character but whose identity and nature are unknown, hinting at the supernatural. What would it be like if old gods walked among the living while the memories of their old identities wander the countryside as ghosts?  

A numinous landscape where existence is a spectrum, identity is fuzzy, and memory and belief do and do not shape the spiritual world. This is what I hope to create.

[writing-witch-wars]

Magpie Research, The Book of English Magic, and the Question of Truth in Fiction

One of the great things about writing historical fantasy is that you can decide what to do with the truth. What do you do about gathering facts? How much research do you do? How deep do you dive verifying sources? Which sources do you listen to?

These are all questions I've been dealing with lately, and I think I'm leaning toward taking a devil-may-care attitude toward the facts, especially when the line between folklore and history becomes blurred. I love research, so the book may end up being accidentally more accurate than I intend, but this book is, thematically speaking, about the world of 17th century magic and spirituality as it exists in the minds of people who research it today and those who were living in the 17th century in the midst of the paradigm shift between the magical worldview of the ancient world and the mechanical worldview of the modern world. It's a lofty goal, but I hope that the book will be a dance between the early moderns as we see them and the early moderns as they saw themselves.

On the bright side, this means that the challenge of this book is not going to be found in worrying about accuracy, so I have been approaching research like a magpie. If it's interesting and somebody thought it was true, it goes into my box of interesting bits and bobs.  

I recently finished The Book of English Magic by Philip Carr-Gomm. Apparently, some of the research in the book is shoddy, but the stories are interesting, and if it's mainstream enough to be believed by the Chosen Chief of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, it's good enough to go in my book.

Here are some interesting tidbits I picked up along the way:

Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, most famous for the translation of the Psalms she worked on with her brother Sir Philip Sidney, was also a famous alchemist. I was concerned working in this period of history that it would be difficult to find historical women who were famous for things other than marrying, birthing, and witch trials, so I was absolutely delighted to find out that there is a woman who is famous for doing the kind of high magic that was (and, let's be honest, still is) seen as the domain of men.

There is a story that two friars (Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay) who blew themselves up in a botched alchemical experiment in Oxford during the Elizabethan Era. This was apparently turned into a play by Robert Greene.

Not much is known about the Anglo-Saxon period. Apparently, one of the largest contributing factors (other than the Anglo-Saxons mostly making things out of wood that long ago rotted away) was the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. All but a few Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were destroyed during that [fails to find sufficiently strong language for the horrifying destruction of history and culture during that time].

The birthplace of Mother Shipton, a renowned seer, was a cave that had (and still has. You can visit!) a "petrifying well." An object placed under the flowing water becomes petrified after a year.

William Lilly ("ENGLAND’S PROPHETICALL MERLINE") predicted in 1644 that a nobleman would be beheaded on January 30, 1949. That was the day Charles I was executed.

Labyrinths were once constructed by fishermen to trap sprites who stopped the wind from blowing.

[writing-witch-wars]

There is evidence for the worship of some of the Greco-Egyptian deities such as Ammon, Isis and Serapis in the British Isles.  When we consider that there is firm evidence to show that the original forms of many of the ancient Egyptian deities were being worshipped in Egypt before 3000 BCE, these gods represent the most ancient deities whose worship can be proven in the British Isles.

David Rankine, The Isles of the Many Gods: An A-Z of the Pagan Gods & Goddesses of Ancient Britain Worshipped During the First Millenium Through to the Middle Ages

[writing-witch-wars]

Prior to the Roman influence, the Celts did not have the same tendency to anthropomorphise their gods, and this is probably why the evidence for some of the deities is confined to Romano-Celtic dedicatory inscriptions.  Indeed, when the Celts overran the shrine at Delphi in 279 BCE, the Celtic leader Brennus laughed at the Greek anthropomorphic images of their gods.

David Rankine, The Isles of the Many Gods: An A-Z of the Pagan Gods & Goddesses of Ancient Britain Worshipped During the First Millenium Through to the Middle Ages

[writing-witch-wars]

The Weathered Tombstone that Inspired the Novel

One of the major inspirations for Witch Wars is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. As literature, they're definitely "in conversation with each other" as my MFA advisors would have said. He has said in interviews that his intent writing American Gods was to understand the United States as a new immigrant. My intention with Witch Wars is to go the other way. As an American, I want to understand my family's English past.

One of the English branches of my mother's family came to America in 1635 in the person of John Robinson, a 19 year-old tradesman from Bedfordshire. He was involved in a distant way in the Hutchinson trial and was part of a heretical, proto-feminist Puritan sect that was banished from Massachusetts twice. (Once after founding the town of Haverhill and again when Massachusetts claimed the area of New Hampshire where the community had fled.) Legend says he was the first European to explore the whole length of the Merrimack River, and he was the only civilian killed during King Philip's War.

I have been fascinated with this branch of my family for years. The last time I went to New England, I managed after a decade of digging to track down John Robinson's grave. I found it in a tiny copse between a highway and a new housing development in New Hampshire. All that was left of his tombstone was a lump of rock the size of a grapefruit. Standing there looking down at it, I understood in a way I never had before the layers of history that can build up in a place that has been settled and shaped by people for a long time. There was practically nothing left of him, but he was still there. I didn't consider myself to be a medium at the time, so I didn't seek him out, but the anger I felt at my presence at that cemetary was so loud, I ran back to the car after five minutes.

The 17th century feels like ancient history to me, but I have wondered since then what his childhood in England must have been like. What was it like to have millenia (not just centuries) of history shaping the land under your feet? What ghosts might he have met? And what did they think of the superstitious Stuart kings and their magic-hating Puritan enemies?

These are questions I hope to explore.

[writing-witch-wars]

The Gloominess of Early Modern Puritanism

“Protestants denied the claim of the medieval Church to be able to manipulate God's grace for earthly purposes. Instead of holding out the prospect of supernatural aid they preferred to remind the faithful that the hardships of this life would be made tolerable by the blessings of the next...”

“The twin themes of patience in adversity (‘sanctified affliction’) and the felicity of a pious mind dominate the religious literature of sixteenth-century England.”

“Indeed some suffering was almost essential as proof that God retained an interest in the person concerned.“

“...death by lightning was often taken as a direct act of God...”

-Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (1971)

[writing-witch-wars]

American Nations: A Research Gold Mine in an Unexpected Place

While I was in class-prep mode a few months ago, I was spending so much time with divination I started having dreams every night in which I was locked in a tiny room with a deck of Tarot cards and a never-ending line of students and clients. During that time, I was extremely jealous of any spare bits of free time. When I snatched a few moments to read before bed, I wanted something completely unrelated to my work. Because I'm a history geek, that book was American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard.

I expected that a book called American Nations would have absolutely nothing to tell me about life in England during the 17th century, but I was shocked to find out that this book actually taught me more about the English Civil Wars (and their consequences) than any of the sources I'd consulted before.

One of the central arguments of American Nations is that one of the sources of the tension between the different regions of the United States is due to residual conflict between the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons and the descendants of the Normans. When Cromwell gathered his army, he did so under the promise of undoing the Norman invasion six hundred years after the fact. The New England states and many states in the South were settled by people on different sides of this conflict, and those two regions of the country are still locking horns to this day.

As an American, a 600-year (now 1000-year) feud is hard for me to understand. I get it intellectually, but it's so contrary to my experience, I don't go looking for that sort of thing when I study history. It's one of the reasons I'm writing Witch Wars. I hope that if I can get the different stages of English history in one place and talking to each other, I'll be able to get my head around what it might be like to be born in a place with so much living history.

[writing-witch-wars]

Women's tongues often got them into trouble. Curses and threats uttered in the heat of anger at an injustice could backfire if the person they were aimed at suffered in some way afterwards.

Anna Cordey, “Reputation and Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth Century Dalkeith,” Scottish Witches and With-Hunters

[writing-witch-wars]

The association of a misfortune with witchcraft would tend to follow a quarrel where the suspected witch had been treated badly. The person who had abused the witch, violating the duties of good neighborhood, would feel a sense of guilt. This guilt, combined with fear if the woman (and it was usually a woman) already had a reputation for witchcraft and had cursed them, could lead to the desire to blame them for any misfortunes. The feeling of guilt was transferred and the victim-bully roles reversed. David Sabean saw this model at work in Germany and wrote about it in terms of power relations, with the weak being feared by the strong.

Anna Cordey, “Reputation and Witch-hunting in Seventeenth-Century Dalkeith,” Scottish Witches and Witch Hunters

[writing-witch-wars]

“What has not been recognized is that the witch hunt was one of the most important events in the development of capitalist society and the formation of the modern proletariat. For the unleashing of a campaign of terror against women, unmatched by any other persecution, weakened the resistance of the European peasantry to the assault launched against it by the gentry and the state, at a time when the peasant community was already disintegrating under the combined impact of land privatization, increased taxation, and the extension of state control over every aspect of social life.The witch hunt deepened the divisions between women and men, teaching men to fear the power of women, and destroyed a universe of practices, beliefs, and social subjects whose existence was incompatible with the capitalist work discipline, thus redefining the main elements of social reproduction. Contrary to the view propagated by the Enlightenment, the witch hunt was not the last spark of a dying feudal world. Witch-hunting reached its peak between 1580 and 1630, in a period, that is, when feudal relations were already giving way to the economic and political institutions typical of mercantile capitalism. It was in this long “Iron Century” that, almost by a tacit agreement, in countries often at war against each other, the stakes multiplied, and the state started denouncing the existence of witches and taking the initiative of the persecution. […] When this task was accomplished — when social discipline was restored, and the ruling class saw its hegemony consolidated — witch trials came to an end. The belief in witchcraft could even become an object of ridicule, decried as a superstition, and soon put out of memory. Just as the state had started the witch hunt, so too, one by one, various governments took the initiative in ending it.”