Magic, Horror, and the Supernatural: A Reading List
Some Suggested Titles from AAR's Reading Religion
Reading Religion is an openly accessible book review website published by the American Academy of Religion. The site provides up-to-date coverage of scholarly publishing in religious studies, reviewed by scholars with special interest and/or expertise in the relevant subfields. Reviews aim to be concise, comprehensive, and timely.
Below, the editors of Reading Religion have selected some books and reviews from the site and have shared some titles available to review. If you’re interested in reviewing books for Reading Religion, take a look at the guidelines. If there are any books missing from the Reading Religion site that you think should be there, email readingreligion@aarweb.org.
Reviews to Read
The Exeter Companion To Fairies, Nereids, Trolls And Other Social Supernatural Beings: European Traditions
Edited by Simon Young and Davide Ermacora
From the review:
“One of the great contributions of this edited volume is that it brings together material from many corners of the European continent, allowing it to be analyzed in a comparative perspective. This is a process that, because of linguistic competence, has rarely been achieved before.” – Ethan Doyle White
God's Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible
By Esther J. Hamori
From the review:
“Hamori looks into the abyss, but instead of slaying monsters (or becoming a monster herself, as Nietzsche warned), she thinks with them. She is a better guide for her readers than Virgil is for Dante because she can go the distance, biblically and theologically.” – Rita Lester
Troubled by Faith: Insanity and the Supernatural in the Age of the Asylum
By Owen Davies
From the review:
“[This book] makes significant contributions to our understanding of the complex interplay between psychiatry, supernatural beliefs, and societal changes in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Davies effectively challenges the notion of post-Enlightenment disenchantment by demonstrating the persistence of supernatural beliefs even as psychiatry attempted to pathologize them.” – Kelly Bratkowski
The Exorcist Effect: Horror, Religion, and Demonic Belief
By Joseph P. Laycock and Eric Harrelson
From the review:
“{This book} expertly encapsulates the stakes and implications of researching possession/exorcism phenomena in the United States. . . . [and] effectively connects the historical dots between popular horror films and political religious movements, leaving space for future studies to expand their findings within the new media ecology of today. “ – William Chavez
Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah
By Yuval Harari
From the review:
“[This] thoroughly researched book Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah treats its subject with an academic’s love of ideas. . . . [T]his is a tome that adds quite a lot to the recent interest in Jewish magic and will be an invaluable academic resource for those studying this field and adjacent fields.” – Laurie Fisher
Available for Review
The Theology of Horror: The Hidden Depths of Popular Films
By Ryan G. Duns, SJ
From the publisher:
“Horror films scare and entertain us, but there’s more to be found in their narratives than simple thrills. Within their shadows, an attentive viewer can glimpse unexpected flashes of orthodox Christian belief. In Theology of Horror, Ryan G. Duns, SJ, invites readers to undertake an unconventional pilgrimage in search of these buried theological insights.
Duns uses fifteen classic and contemporary horror films—including The Blair Witch Project, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Candyman, and The Purge—as doorways to deeper reflection. Each chapter focuses on a single film, teasing out its implicit philosophical and theological themes. As the reader journeys through the text, a surprisingly robust theological worldview begins to take shape as glimmers of divine light emerge from the darkness. Engaging and accessible, Theology of Horror proves that, rather than being the domain of nihilists or atheists, the horror film genre can be an opportunity for reflecting on “things visible and invisible,” as Christians profess in the Nicene Creed.”
The Witch Studies Reader
Edited by Soma Chaudhuri and Jane Ward
From the publisher:
“Stories about witches are by their nature stories about the most basic and profound of human experiences — healing, sex, violence, tragedies, aging, death, and encountering the mystery and magic of the unknown. It is no surprise, then, that witches loom large in our cultural imaginations. In academia, studies of witches rarely emerge from scholars who are themselves witches and/or embedded in communities of witchcraft practitioners.
The Witch Studies Reader brings together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners who examine witchcraft from a critical decolonial feminist perspective that decenters Europe and departs from exoticizing and pathologizing writing on witchcraft in the global South. The authors show how witches are keepers of suppressed knowledges, builders of new futures, exemplars of praxis, and theorists in their own right. Throughout, they account for the vastly different national, political-economic, and cultural contexts in which "the witch" is currently being claimed and repudiated. Offering a pathbreaking transnational feminist examination of witches and witchcraft that upends white supremacist, colonial, patriarchal knowledge regimes, this volume brings into being the interdisciplinary field of feminist witch studies.”
The Conjuring of America:
Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic
By Lindsey Stewart
From the publisher:
“Emerging first on plantations in the American South, enslaved conjure women used their magic to treat illnesses. These women combined their ancestral spiritual beliefs from West Africa with local herbal rituals and therapeutic remedies to create conjure, forging a secret well of health and power hidden to their oppressors and many of the modern-day staples we still enjoy.
In The Conjuring of America, Black feminist philosopher Lindsey Stewart exposes this vital contour of American history. In the face of slavery, Negro Mammies fashioned a legacy of magic that begat herbal experts, fearsome water bearers, and powerful mojos—roles and traditions that for centuries have been passed down to respond to Black struggles in real time. And when Jim Crow was born, Granny Midwives and textile weavers leveled their techniques to protect our civil and reproductive rights, while Candy Ladies fed a generation of freedom crusaders.
Sourcing firsthand accounts of the enslaved, dispatches from the lore of Oshun, and the wisdom of beloved Black women writers, Stewart proves indisputably that conjure informs our lives in ways remarkable and ordinary. Above all, The Conjuring of America is a love letter to the magic Black women used to sow messages of rebellion, freedom, and hope."
Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint
By R. Andrew Chesnut
From the publisher:
“This new third edition of Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint offers a fascinating portrayal of Santa Muerte, a skeleton saint whose cult has become the fastest growing new religious movement worldwide over the past two decades. Although condemned by mainstream churches, this folk saint's supernatural powers appeal to millions in Latin America, the U.S., and beyond. Devotees believe the Bony Lady (as she is affectionately called) to be the fastest and most effective miracle worker, and as such, her statuettes and paraphernalia now outsell those of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Saint Jude, two other giants of Mexican religiosity. In particular, Santa Muerte has become the patron saint of drug traffickers, playing an important role as protector of peddlers of fentanyl and marijuana; DEA agents and Mexican police often find her altars in the safe houses of drug smugglers. Yet, Saint Death plays other important roles: she is a supernatural healer, love doctor, money-maker, lawyer, and angel of death. She has become without doubt one of the most popular and powerful saints of both the Latin American and American religious landscapes.”
El Monte: Notes on the Religions, Magic, and Folklore of the Black and Creole People of Cuba
By Lydia Cabrera
From the publisher:
“First published in Cuba in 1954 and appearing here in English for the first time, Lydia Cabrera’s El Monte is a foundational and iconic study of Afro-Cuban religious and cultural traditions. Drawing on conversations with elderly Afro-Cuban priests who were one or two generations away from the transatlantic slave trade, Cabrera combines ethnography, history, folklore, literature, and botany to provide a panoramic account of the multifaceted influence of Afro-Atlantic cultures in Cuba. Cabrera details the natural and spiritual landscape of the Cuban monte (forest, wilderness) and discusses hundreds of herbs and the constellations of deities, sacred rites, and knowledge that envelop them. The result is a complex spiritual and medicinal architecture of Afro-Cuban cultures. This new edition of what is often referred to as “the Santería bible” includes a new foreword, introduction, and translator notes. As a seminal work in the study of the African diaspora that has profoundly impacted numerous fields, Cabrera’s magnum opus is essential for scholars, activists, and religious devotees of Afro-Cuban traditions alike.”
