Supernatural War Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War
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Owen Davies is Professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire. He has published widely on the history of witchcraft, magic, ghosts, and popular medicine, including Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (2009), Paganism: A Very Short Introduction (2011), Magic: A Very Short Introduction (2012), and America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft after Salem (2013), and was the editor for The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic (2017).Review from previous edition This is a rich and thought-provoking study of how the First World War ensured the widespread continuation of a popular belief in magic - even in the 'modernity' of the post-1914 age - and why this is important to our understanding of life during and after the conflict.
Catriona Pennell, BBC History Magazine
A marvellous book ... even readers who know Davies' impressive writing on witchcraft, cunning folk and ghosts will find a new glint of ambition here.
Simon Young, Times Higher Education
A Supernatural War provides a nuanced and learned exposition of its subject ... Such a broad approach suggests that this book will remain the definitive work for a long time to come.
Graham Seal, Literary Review
A fascinating account of how the first modern industrialised global war revitalised traditional superstitions, and infused supernatural power into all kinds of objects.
Nick Saunders, Military History Matters
Davies is one of the undisputed leaders in his field. A Supernatural War is impossible to describe without simply rattling off a list of highlights ... a fascinating deep dive that offers tantalising glimpses of a very different world.
All About History
A fascinating insight into supernatural beliefs and practices prevalent during the First World War.
Paradigm Explorer
Owen Davies will provide you with a comprehensive overview of wartime weirdness.
David Clarke, Fortean Times01/03/2019
A detailed and fascinating study.
David V Barrett, Catholic Herald
Riotous and engaging.
Tony Jasper, Methodist Recorder
Fascinating.
Leon Burakowski, Shrewsbury Chronicle
Owen Davies's book seems to me to be arranged in a [...] logical and reader-friendly manner, with individual chapters dealing with particular topics such as prophecies of the war, lucky charms and superstitions, and a review of how churches and religious figures regarded the stories that were emerging from the battlefields.
John Rimmer, Magonia Review
It is not often that you run across a piece of writing which is both unusual and packed with detail that even a military historian like myself has never encountered. Owen Davies' A Supernatural War does just that.
Sebastian Phillips, Concatenation
Owen Davies notes that great conflicts invariably generate an upsurge of belief in the mystical, visionary and occult. In A Supernatural War Davies surveys, in remarkable detail, the range of such beliefs, from cheap pamphlets prophesying the coming war to the legend of the medieval archers known as the Angels of Mons to the lucky charms worn by Italian soldiers.
Michael Dirda, Washington Post
This is another wonderful book from the leading expert in the history of magic between 1740 and 1940. Readers will never look at the First World War in the same way again.
Ronald Hutton, author of The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
Owen Davies' A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith during the First World War is a valuable contribution to the growing scholarship on religion, science, and magic that examines these discourses from the early modern period through the present day.
Patrick J. D'Silva, Reading Religion