Orality/Literacy

Abstract

This chapter studies magical texts. Written texts could cross the literate divide, but even so, charges of possessing magical writing were brought almost exclusively against men. Women do not seem to have participated in the written economy of witchcraft. They did, of course, join in an oral exchange in which men and women avidly contributed. Magical knowledge circulated in a variety of ways: as advice passed down the generations from parents or grandparents; as oral tradition learned from people adept in the art of healing, cursing, or prognostication; or, sometimes, through trial and error. Many of the men who were caught with written spells explained that they had copied them down from the oral dictation of a knowledgeable adept or sorcerer they met on the road. Court scribes also operated at the interface between orality and literacy when they reported the words of spells recited by illiterate witnesses. The chapter then focuses on the modes of literacy and orality that permitted and documented the animated exchange of magical expertise.