Microsoft Word - contentsqsoft.doc


 140 

Michael D. Bailey. Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History 
from Antiquity to the Present (Classical Issues in History). New York: 
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007. Bibliography. Index. 
x+274. $75.00 (cloth). $24.95 (paper). ISBN-10: 0-7425-3386-7. ISBN-
10: 0-7425-3387-5. 

 
Magic intrigues and fascinates not only folklorists but scholars from 

other disciplines. As a broadly defined phenomenon, magic allows 
numerous approaches and various interpretations. In his new book, 
Michael D. Bailey presents a comprehensive historical overview of 
magic. Magic’s shifting definition is quite problematic, and Bailey looks 
at both magic and superstition as overlapping, but not identical, 
categories. He presents magic as an integral part of European history, a 
“serious subject for serious men,” (p. 1) rather than an exotic issue. This 
subject is covered through seven chapters and conveniently unfolded 
before the reader in chronological order.  

Although Bailey stresses the permanent fidelity of the laity to 
various magical practices, his main method is the analysis of the archival 
records, “of what authorities approved or condemned” (p. 74). Magic and 
superstition, therefore, appear in the book as they were seen or 
interpreted by the society’s elites; there are few subaltern voices 
presented. Due to this, the book is rather an investigation into the 
dynamics of the European power structure, i.e. how secular and religious 
authorities (those at the center of power) defined magic and treated 
magic practitioners (people they saw as being in the margins of power).  

Bailey traces these dynamics, from the ancient world up to the 
modern period. He defines familiar facts about magic clearly and 
challenges popular myths about their moral and legal condemnation. 
Thus, we learn that there was no major distinction between religious and 
magical practices in the pre-Christian times: concerns over magic started 
growing only after the establishment of Christendom, when “the apostles 
of Christ or other early Christians competed with practitioners of magic 
to win believers by demonstrating superiority of their power” (p. 48). 
Although magic was a threshold demarcating Christian and pagan worlds 
until the year 1000, Christianity was concerned mainly with expansion 
and converting pagans in the European territories. Magic was tolerated 
because it was seen as a remnant of pagan beliefs and practices, foolish 
but not threatening.  

Not until the High and Late Middle Ages - when Christianity 
defined the Satan figure - did the dramatic shift occur, and an idea of 

FOLKLORICA 2007, Vol. XII



 141 

magic as a learned diabolical craft emerged. Bailey reveals how natural 
and man-made disasters occurring in medieval Europe contributed to 
concerns about magic as a deliberate heretical deviance and thus to the 
zeal of the emergent Inquisition. Magic became a field of serious study, 
and various theorists of witchcraft attempted to explain how it 
functioned. Many rare pictures in Bailey’s book reveal the misogyny of 
those theorists. 

In the early modern period, witchcraft was feared and began to be 
seen as a group crime, not an individual occupation. Using available 
statistics, Bailey demonstrates that the intensity and spread of witch 
hunting varied across different regions of Europe. He confirms that the 
major period of witch hunting corresponded to the Reformation, but 
challenges the widespread myth about the nine million executions in 
Europe. According to Bailey, skepticism replaced the zeal of witch 
hunting, and this tendency was strengthened from the Renaissance to the 
Enlightenment when magic faded from the intellectual discourse of the 
period and stopped being perceived as real.  

Bailey presents in detail how magic was overtaken by occultism and 
natural philosophy thanks to the humanists who revived interest in 
ancient thought. Figures like Paracelsus, Nostradamus, Giordano Bruno, 
or Campanella held that magic was natural, not demonic, that it was 
experiential and rather experimental. Some of their explanations of 
nature and the spirit world challenged church doctrine. The magical 
practices of previous centuries were changed and adapted into Hermetic, 
Kabbalistic, astral, or alchemical magic, and thus continued to survive.  

Generally, Bailey stresses the continuity of European magical 
traditions. They survived the Scientific Revolution whose representatives 
like Copernicus, Kepler, Bacon, Newton, etc. regarded superstition as 
scientific error and magic as superstition. Later, Enlightenment thinkers 
fought to eradicate both superstitions and institutionalized religion.  

Despite all attempts, magic has not been replaced by technology, 
even in modern times. On the contrary, states Bailey, protest against the 
scientific view of the world has led to a new interest in magic. The occult 
revival in the nineteenth century engulfed first of all educated people. 
They became fascinated with esoteric systems of knowledge that various 
societies such as the Theosophical Society, or Golden Dawn, and various 
schools of magic provided. In the twentieth century, magical movements 
like Neopaganism and Wicca continued to flourish, and Bailey provides 
very interesting facts about “Europe’s first and only “pro-witch” 

FOLKLORICA 2007, Vol. XII



 142 

government, the Nazi regime” (p. 236). Ultimately, modern witchcraft 
shifted from Europe to the United States and became feminist in nature.  

Bailey’s style of writing is captivating and the results of his archival 
research are impressive, yet there are a few weak points in his book. The 
word “Europe” in the title is misleading for those who would like to 
know more about Eastern European magic: Bailey warns at the 
beginning that “Europe itself will be defined largely as Western 
Christendom, the boundaries of which fluctuated but generally centered 
on Western Europe” (p. 6). It is, however, not clear why Bailey chose 
religious criterion for division (Catholicism and Protestantism vs. 
Byzantine Orthodoxy) but then applied contemporary geographical 
division and excluded Poland and Hungary calling them Eastern Europe. 
A brief mentioning of the war “between Sweden and Russia” (p. 169) 
(where in fact Russia was a secondary participant) makes the picture of 
Polish witch hunting very difficult to grasp. Bailey then attempts, for the 
sake of comparison, to cast a brief light on Orthodox Muscovy of the 
seventeenth century (he calls it Russia) in one paragraph on pp. 169-170. 
It is not clear why the author chooses Russia, for it certainly was neither 
the only Orthodox state nor the first one to accept Orthodoxy on 
European territory. Unfortunately, Bailey provides no references for 
those interested in this particular matter. 

At the same time, Bailey seems to be fascinated with the magical 
tradition of the past so that he completely rejects politics and presents the 
magical worldview of the nineteenth-century peasants as the main reason 
for the birth of folklore as a discipline: “So strange and foreign did the 
great majority of Europe’s people now seem to the educated classes that 
intellectuals began to engage in ethnographic studies of various social 
groups, and especially of rural populations, within European lands” (p. 
215).  

As Bailey himself suggests, his study can become a basis for further 
research. His book would certainly be useful for a wide audience and for 
any folklorists dealing with the topic of magic and superstition in cultural 
context. 

 
Svitlana P. Kukharenko 
University of Alberta