Fairies, Demons, and Nature Spirits

Considers the historical relationship between Christianity and 'small gods', including fairies, demons and nature spiritsBrings together scholarship from a wide range of of theoretical perspectives and disciplinary approaches Examines case studies spanning two thousand years, from Egypt to the Andes and Indonesia

Michael Ostling is Honors Faculty Fellow at Arizona State University, USA, and Honorary Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Queensland, Australia. Author of Between the Devil and the Host: Imagining Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland (2011), he writes on witchcraft, popular religion, history of emotions, theory in Religious Studies, and critical pedagogy.

1. Introduction: Where've all the Good People Gone?; Michael Ostling.- Part I: Demonization and its Discontents.- 2. The Threat of Headless Beings: Constructing the Demonic in Christian Egypt; David Frankfurter.- 3. Secrets of the Síd: The Supernatural in Medieval Irish Texts; Lisa Bitel.- 4. The Good, the Bad, and the Unholy: Ambivalent Angels in the Middle Ages; Coree Newman.- 5. Between Fallen Angels and Nature Spirits: Russian Demonology of the Early Modern Period; Dmitriy Antonov.- 6. Crisis at the Border: Amazonian Relations with Spirits and Others; Artionka Capiberibe.- Part II: Enlightenment and Its Ambiguities.- 7. Between Humans and Angels: Scientific Uses for Fairies in Early Modern Scotland; Julian Goodare.- 8. The Álfar, the Clerics, and the Enlightenment: Conceptions of the Supernatural in the Age of Reason in Iceland; Terry Gunnell.- 9. The Devil and the Spirit World In Nineteenth-Century Estonia: From Christianization to Folklorization; Ülo Valk.- 10. Dreaming of Snakes in Contemporary Zambia: Small Gods and the Secular; Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps.- Part III: Remnants, Relocations, and Re-Enchantments.- 11. Small Gods, Small Demons. Remnants of an Archaic fairy Cult in Central and South-Eastern Europe; Éva Pócs.- 12. Who Owns the World? Recognizing the Repressed Small Gods of Southeast Asia; Lorraine V. Aragon.- 13. Spirits, Christians and Capitalists in the Rainforests of Papua New Guinea; Michael Wood.- 14. "Reconnecting to Everything:" Fairies in Contemporary Paganism; Sabina Magliocco.- 15. Afterword; Ronald Hutton.