Witchcraft class in Stirling

The class I'm taking in Stirling is not exactly what I had been anticipating, but I do think it's given me some ideas about where to go with my research. Plus, her syllabus has a huge bibliography that she actually went over with me, identifying books that she think could be particularly helpful for my project. She also compiled a source packet with copies of excerpts from a few different types of sources. It's not super expansive, but still useful.

She split the structure of the class into four sections, one for each week:
1. The meaning of witchcraft
2. Witches in the community
3. Witchcraft and popular culture (including fairy belief)
4. Witchcraft and gender

For each section, she does a lecture, answering questions outlined on the syllabus, then we have group presentations and discussions. The class was split up so that everyone does a group presentation, and there are one or two groups per week. The presentations are either on an article/book of secondary research, or on an extract from a primary resource. I did mine in the 3rd week on the Robert Kirk's 1691 "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies," which I talked about in the last post. It's a really interesting book, and just situation in general (Protestant minister describing the existence of fairies in Scotland). And remember, Scottish Protestantism was much more akin to hard-line Calvinism than any other type. He was ridiculed by most who read it, especially in London, and it added to the conception that people in the Highlands were primitive and superstitious. The publication was seen as a regression away from the increasingly scientific age that was developing and basic Protestant principles. From Kirk's perspective though, he was writing an essay that proved that fairies were real because he knew that if people questioned the existence of fairies, they would question the existence of witches, and demons, and eventually God himself. In his own logic, he was protecting the Christian faith and preventing the problem of atheism.

The class has given me a better understanding of how the witch phenomenon in Scotland was in part a product of merging traditional ("pagan") folklore with Christianity, and how the Reformation helped fuel the search. It's also helped me get rid of the pop culture pre-conceptions I've developed about witches and the witch hunts. They were not exceptionally different than most other people in their towns, and they had active roles within their communities, often sought out by their neighbors for help. There was this concept of "limited good," whereby people believed that there was only so much good fortune to go around, and that you had to maximize the amount you would get, even with the knowledge that it might be taking some away from other people. This maximization process is often where magic and rituals came into play, mostly carried out to protect against bad fortune.

Later I'll write about my chat with Dr. Miller about the direction of my project.