Grimoires
Price:
$29.95 (02)Description
No books have been more feared than grimoires, and no books have been more valued and revered. In Grimoires: A History of Magic Books , Owen Davies illuminates the many fascinating forms these recondite books have taken and exactly what these books held.At their most benign, these repositories of forbidden knowledge revealed how to make powerful talismans and protective amulets, and provided charms and conjurations for healing illness, finding love, and warding off evil. But other books promised the power to control innocent victims, even to call up the devil. Davies traces the history of this remarkably resilient and adaptable genre, from the ancient Middle East to modern America, offering a new perspective on the fundamental developments of western civilization over the past two thousand years. Grimoires shows the influence magic and magical writing has had on the cultures of the world, richly demonstrating the role they have played in the spread of Christianity, the growth of literacy, and the influence of western traditions from colonial times to the present. Through his enlightening and extraordinary account, we see how these secret books link Chicago to ancient Egypt, Germany to Jamaica, and Norway to Bolivia, and grasp how the beliefs of Alpine farmers became part of the Rastafarian movement, how a Swede became the most powerful wizard in early America, and how a poor laborer from Ohio became a notorious villain in his own country and a mythical spirit in the Caribbean.
Despite religious condemnation and laws barring their use, the grimoire has survived to the present day, and not just in Harry Potter films and Broadway's Wicked . Here is a lively and informative history of a genre that holds a powerful fascination for countless readers of the occult.
Features
- The first ever history of magic books - or grimoires - from the ancient Middle East to Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Covers all types of grimoire - from harmless charms and remedies to sinister spells and pacts with the Devil
- The history of grimoires is more than just the history of magic - it illuminates many of the most important developments in European history, from the spread of Christianity to the settlement of the New World
Reviews
"Among the many pleasures of reading Davies' book is the simple, shiver-producing enjoyment of scanning the rich, ominous-sounding titles that he catalogs in the course of charting their historical development."--Nick Owchar, Los Angeles Times
"The history of superstition becomes, in this excellent and nuanced volume, a history of the uses of disdain...True bibliophiles will enjoy Davies' erudite tracing of the grimoires tradition through two millennia of faked dates, spurious authorship and pretended translations from the 'original' Latin or Hebrew or even Chaldaean. Other readers may skip ahead to Davies' fascinating account of the 'democratisation' of grimoires in the 19th and 20th centuries."--Michael Ostling, History Today
"An amazing achievement, not just for its depth of research but its breadth, from Massachusetts to Martinique to Mauritius. It must become the classic work on the subject."--Ronald Hutton, author of The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Pagan Witchcraft
"In Grimoires , British social historian Owen Davies examines magical texts from Babylonia through Buffy the Vampire Slayer , finding connections between conjuration, religion, science and politics...In a work of cogent synthesis, Davies shows that grimoires have played a role in everything from murder to imaginative fiction, anti-colonial movements to quack remedies."--David Luhrssen, Shepherd Express
"The extent of Davies' study is impressive, countering assumptions a curious reader might have taken for granted."--Newark Star-Ledger
"You will adore Owen Davies' Grimoires and hang on his every word as you journey with him through the long history of magical works as they evolved from clay tablets and scrolls, to hand written manuscripts, and eventually into printed books. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books is extremely valuable as an historical work covering the lesser known histories of the authors, publishers, and practitioners of magic who influenced the evolution of magic explaining the origins of all the differing types of magic practiced today."--Pagan Bookworm
About the Author(s)
Owen Davies is Reader in Social History at the University of Hertfordshire. He has written extensively on the history of popular magic, witchcraft, and ghosts.
