This is that social practi ces can onl y be fully understood in the context of society as a whole

With both his to ria ns a detailed examinat io n o f pa rti c ul ar cases ends up reduci ng a llegedly strong causes to weak o r pa rtia l o nes, which o nly operate in a minority of insta nces.

Few topi cs remind us more vividly that the past is a foreign country, whose assumptions w ere o ften very different from our own.

One of the mos t tiresome fo rms of this, o fte n found in writings o n w itc hcraft, is to treat o ur a ncesto rs as if they w e re little bett er th an me nt a l defectives.

here has been a rash o f medi cal pseudo-expl anati ons, invoking syphilis, ergot ism and magic mushrooms.6 A feminist myth has come into existence, usuall y accompanied by wild inllati on of the numbers, in which women w ere the real target, parti cul arl y in their ro le as healcrs.7

M ost o f us, I assume, would agree that any seri ous interpretati on of European witchcraft must be multifactori al, relating it to a number of discrete, or at least separabl e, causes

crtainly there is not much hope that new evidence will transform the situati on in some dramati c fashi on.

It does seem at least possib le that th e strong ly e mp irical bi as of most h isto ri a ns has contributed to this s ituatio n, a nd th at the wood is at times being lost fo r th e tr ees

One of the reasons for studying witchcraft has been that it illuminates many other subjects, and can help us to reconstruct th e di stincti ve social and intell ectual character of a past age