“Thou Art Keeper of Man and Woman’s Bones” – Rituals of Necromancy in Early Modern England

Authors

  • Daniel Harms SUNY Cortland

Abstract

In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, high rates of mortality and churchyard burial placed the dead very close to the living both physically and emotionally. Experiments of necromancy, in which a magician sought to contact the dead by magical means, from the time have been little examined as historical documents. One such set of experiments is referred to here as the “Keeper of the Bones” ritual, in which a magician calls on a spirit to bring the ghost of a dead person in order to obtain desired information. We will examine these rituals and connect them with contemporary funerary rituals and practices, as well as beliefs in the nature of the soul and the role of the dead in early modern culture.

Author Biography

Daniel Harms, SUNY Cortland

Dan Harms is a librarian with interests in H. P. Lovecraft and magic in early modern Britain. He has chapters published in Knowing Demons, Knowing Spirits in the Early Modern Period (Palgrave Macmillan) and Magic in the Modern World (Penn State Press), as well as popular releases including editions of The Long-Lost Friend and the Book of Oberon (with James Clark and Joseph Peterson).

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Published

2023-09-27