Divination and Prophesy

Abstract

In this chapter we shall look at the occult processes by which early modern Europeans, and in particular early modern Württembergers, attempted to access information that was normally hidden to them: the identity of people who had bewitched or stolen things from them, the location of people and objects that had gone missing, their prospects for marriage, and the outlook for the future more generally. For the most part this information was sought deliberately, through various magical techniques known as divination, but sometimes it came through spontaneous prophesy. We will start by looking at the various ways in which people engaged in deliberate divination that are contained in Württemberg’s judicial archives, and conclude by examining the less frequent instances of spontaneous prophesy. The one gives insight into the mundane realities of popular magical activity; the other, a glimpse of the occasionally spectacular manifestations of and reactions to the revelation of extraordinary information to otherwise ordinary people.