{"id":2900,"date":"2011-07-16T13:19:28","date_gmt":"2011-07-16T19:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2900"},"modified":"2011-07-16T13:19:28","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T19:19:28","slug":"quick-review-spellbound-inside-west-africas-witch-camps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2900","title":{"rendered":"Quick Review: Spellbound: Inside West Africa’s Witch Camps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karen Palmer<\/a>, author of Spellbound: Inside West Africa’s Witch Camps, <\/em>is a veteran journalist, not a historian of witchcraft, so for me to read the book from the latter perspective is to do her a slight disservice. (As an inside, the subtitle might\u00a0 better read “Inside Ghana’s Witch Camps,” but maybe some editor thought that “West Africa’s” had more punch.)<\/p>\n

From her website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

With these words, Karen Palmer takes us inside one of West Africa’s witch camps, where hundreds of banished women struggle to survive under the watchful eye of a powerful wizard. Palmer arrived at the Gambaga witch camp [a sort of refugee camp for accused witches] with an outsider’s sense of outrage, believing it was little more than a dumping ground for difficult women. Soon, however, she encountered stories she could not explain: a women who confessed she’d attacked a girl given to her as a sacrifice; another one desperately trying to rid herself of the witchcraft that she believed helped her kill dozens of people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One troubling thing about studying the Renaissance and early modern witch trials (1500s-1700s) is that we never hear from the victims except through the filter of witch-trial testimony.<\/p>\n

Now if <\/em>you can assume that the phenomenon of witchcraft in northern Ghana is analogous to “our” witch trials\u2014and it certainly sounds that way to me\u2014then once again there are no clear answers about what is going on.<\/p>\n

There was Ayishetu, chased from her village by a violent mob, whose life was destroyed by the accusation that she practiced witchcraft, and Winangi, a tiny splinter of a woman who’d gne seeking witchcraft to protect herself and her children. She pleaded to her husband to move her to the camp when she felt she’d lost control of the dark gift. A smart businesswoman named Asara had ended up at the camp when a debtor accused her of causing a meningitis outbreak. Napoa, mannish and grumpy, readily identified herself as a witch and caused fear among the other women living at the camp (41).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The surrounding culture is mostly Islamic but with lots of magical practitioners. Muslim polygamy also contributes to the problem. How do you get rid of the oldest wife? Accuse her of being a witch!<\/p>\n

Another analogy with the European witch trials is this: The village shaman-herbalist is not<\/em> the witch but rather the person who accuses the witch. Or if someone has accused her (usually it is her), the shaman-herbalist conducts a ritual (e.g., watching the death throes of a chicken) to pronounce whether she truly is a witch or not.<\/p>\n

So I recommend Spellbound <\/em>both for a look at contemporary West African issues with witchcraft but also for thinking more about its history in Western culture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Karen Palmer, author of Spellbound: Inside West Africa’s Witch Camps, is a veteran journalist, not a historian of witchcraft, so for me to read the book from the latter perspective is to do her a slight disservice. (As an inside, the subtitle might\u00a0 better read “Inside Ghana’s Witch Camps,” but maybe some editor thought that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[121,29],"class_list":["post-2900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-africa","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-KM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11709,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11709","url_meta":{"origin":2900,"position":0},"title":"Witchcraft: You’re Not Making It Strange Enough","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The final article in the \"Paganism, art, and fashion\" issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies argues that books and television series based on historical witchcraft make it too safe and fail to portray \"the genuine strangeness of witches and magic users in all periods and cultures.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"history\"","block_context":{"text":"history","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=history"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/discovery2-300x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12603,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12603","url_meta":{"origin":2900,"position":1},"title":"Interview with Helen Berger, Leading Scholar of Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 19, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"At his blog, now called On New and Alternative Religions, Ethan Doyle While interviews Helen Berger, one of the leading American scholars of contemporary Paganism. Since completing her PhD research on the early modern witch trials in the 1980s, Berger has devoted her career to the sociological analysis of modern-day\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/helen-berger.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11816,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11816","url_meta":{"origin":2900,"position":2},"title":"Call for Papers: Pagans and Museums","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"NOTE UPDATED DEADLINES AT BOTTOM Museums and contemporary Paganism are inextricably linked. Gerald Gardner, founder of modern pagan witchcraft, first publicized Wicca in 1951 at Cecil Williamson\u2019s Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft at Castletown (later The Museum of Magic and Witchcraft) on the Isle of Man. Some of his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"museums\"","block_context":{"text":"museums","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=museums"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/ray-buckland-34-17-at-museum.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10019,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10019","url_meta":{"origin":2900,"position":3},"title":"Season of the Witch(crap), Part 2","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Season of the Witch(crap), Part 1\" here. Continuing . . . \u2022 One more \"high\" priestess joke, and you're out of here. From the Colorado Springs Independent, the weekly that gets all the cannabis advertising because the chain-owned daily paper won't touch it: \"Meet Colorado's High Priestess of Cannabis.\" Yes,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media1.fdncms.com\/csindy\/imager\/u\/blog\/14467973\/cannaculture.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media1.fdncms.com\/csindy\/imager\/u\/blog\/14467973\/cannaculture.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media1.fdncms.com\/csindy\/imager\/u\/blog\/14467973\/cannaculture.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8412,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8412","url_meta":{"origin":2900,"position":4},"title":"Some “Spare” Links and the “Witchcraft Aesthetic”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 The University of Heidelberg has scanned and put online a 1916 issue of Form, a small British art magazine containing numerous illustrations by Austin Osman Spare, noted English occultist and artist. Here is a sample. \u00b6 If I were visiting Milan, I would visit this Tarot painter's studio and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/form11.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6467,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6467","url_meta":{"origin":2900,"position":5},"title":"Response by Robert Mathiesen to “Investigating a Grandmother Story”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"This guest post by Prof. Mathiesen began as a comment to my earlier review ofThe Rede of the Wiccae, which he wrote with Theitic of the NECTW tradition. With his permission, I have moved his comments here. Thank you, Chas! That\u2019s a handsome and generous post. My view of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2900"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2904,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2900\/revisions\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}