The rich historiography of witchcraft and magic persecutions offers a wide range of methodological approaches. Often, trial testimonies become sources for analyzing the peculiarities of popular religiosity, the attitudes of secular and spiritual authorities towards popular culture, and various gender issues, among other things. Since the history of the European “witch craze” has been analyzed in detail, it is hard to imagine new advances in the field. Nevertheless, Jacqueline Van Gent's book, based on more than eight hundred witchcraft cases of the Appellate Court of Göta, is a welcome addition to the literature. Van Gent turns to trial cases which took place after the “witch craze” epoch, in the Age of the Enlightenment. Witch persecutions of this period have always been on the periphery of historical studies. Van Gent argues that in Protestant Sweden of the Age of Reason magic and witchcraft were very much alive. As in adjoining countries, major changes in eighteenth-century Sweden occurred not in the nature of magic beliefs themselves, but rather in the accusatory system. In their desire to eliminate a variety of superstitions connected to magic that, ironically, did not focus on the demonic pact, Swedish authorities’ actions prompted a surprising increase in witchcraft trials. Accusations of non-harmful magic grew in number, while the number of cases of maleficium remained constant during the whole century. Almost the same situation occurred in eighteenth-century Orthodox Russia, where both secular and spiritual authorities invented a specious excuse for the continuation of persecutions of magical “superstitions” by declaring them criminal offences, namely swindle and fraud. By engaging in an ongoing campaign against “superstitious persons,” both spiritual and secular authorities in Sweden (or in Russia, or elsewhere) obtained long-term weighty justifications for intensifying their interference in the daily lives of their subjects.

Van Gent focuses, however, not merely on the nature of the prosecutions themselves and the mythology of witchcraft, but also on the significance of magical practices and beliefs in the social life of rural communities in Sweden. Throughout the book the author argues that in magical acts body fluids were perceived as “agents of social exchange between body and society” (p. 9), that magic “continued to provide people with the discourse and the ritual practice to express socially unacceptable emotions” and to “address social relationships which were perceived to violate the moral community” (193). Transcripts of the witchcraft prosecutions allow Van Gent to demonstrate how belief in the efficacy of magic spells and rituals affected interpersonal relations in a close peasant community, including notions about personhood and the body, and prompted individuals to “think that their emotions and desires were so powerful as to affect the bodies of others” (2).

In this anthropologically influenced history the discussion of self and body in Scandinavian magical practices is of special interest. What is the difference between the self as expressed in eighteenth-century magic and our modern understanding of personhood? How should we take into account notions of “self” and the “body” in future social studies? According to eighteenth-century thinking, in Van Gent's opinion, the spiritual and physical realms of the individual were interconnected and the self was fluid enough to transcend time and space. Finally, the self was “totally socio-centric” (it could manipulate others and be manipulated by people) and was “socially interpreted” not only by community members, but also by local judges. The body physical and the body social were also interconnected as community members employed magic practices involving bodily fluids to resolve social tensions and emotional pressure. Even Scandinavian healers’ cures very often functioned as metaphors for easing social tensions. Eighteenth-century Russian peasants used similar types of magic to make their landlords “kind,” to bewitch a cruel master, and to protect themselves from the economic expansion of aggressive neighbors.

As an attempt to explain the meanings of popular magic in the Age of Enlightenment, this book is not completely successful. One hopes that in the future the author will be able to demonstrate not only the social significance of magical practices but also their rich and complex cultural and spiritual contexts, especially with regard to how magical thinking shaped the popular religious practices of Protestant Sweden and influenced the spiritual sphere.