Communicating with the Spirits

Focuses on the problem of communication with the other world: the phenomenon of spirit possession and its changing historical interpretations, the imaginary schemes elaborated for giving accounts of the journeys to the other world, for communicating with the dead, and finally the historical archetypes of this kind of religious manifestation—trance prophecy, divination, and shamanism.Recognized historians and ethnologists analyze the relationship, coexistence and conflicts of popular belief systems, Judeo-Christian mythology and demonology in medieval and modern Europe. The essays address links between rites and beliefs, folklore and literature; the legacy of various pre-Christian mythologies; the syncretic forms of ancient, medieval and modern belief- and rite-systems; "pure" examples from religious-ethnological research outside Europe to elucidate European problems.

Frontmatter --; TABLE OF CONTENTS --; List of Illustrations --; Introduction --; Part I Discernment of Spirits and Possession --; Breath, Heart, Guts: The Body and Spirits in the Middle Ages --; Non sunt nisi phantasiae et imaginationes: a Medieval Attempt at Explaining Demons --; Discerning Spirits in Early Modern Europe --; Mystics or Visionaries? Discernment of Spirits in the First Part of the Seventeenth Century in France --; Possession Phenomena, Possession-systems. Some East-Central European Examples --; Part II Contacts with the Other World --; How Waldensians Became Witches: Heretics and Their Journey to the Other World --; Hosting the Dead: Thanotopic Aspects of the Irish Sidhe --; Visions of the Other World as Narrated in Contemporary Belief Legends from Resia --; Part III Divination, Shamanism --; Trance Prophets and Diviners in the Middle Ages --; Shamanism in Medieval Scandinavian Literature --; The King, the Cat, and the Chaplain. King Christian IV’s Encounter with the Sami Shamans of Northern Norway and Northern Russia in 1599 --; List of Contributors --; Index