Specialists in Magic

Abstract

This chapter highlights three witchcraft trials in which the sources offer compelling evidence that the accused parties actually practiced some kind of magical work: healing and cursing; protecting crops by untying knots in grain; and identifying criminals through divination. These three instances of magical practitioners at work come from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, respectively: two are from the Ukrainian region, and one is from the Russian North. They were heard in a range of secular and religious courts and by representatives of local and central administrations. Across the three, similar issues surface. The authorities and the accused in their statements expressed concern about whether or not the practitioners accepted payment for the work and about how they learned or received their skills. In each case, there remains little question that the accused did practice some form of magic and did so with enough frequency and publicity to qualify as “professionals” (in a loose sense of the word), whether or not they identified themselves as witches. Whether they deserved the torture and harsh punishments they often received, at least into the mid-eighteenth century, is, of course, a very different kind of question.