Persuasions Of Witch Craft Summary

Tanya Luhrmann, a senior researcher at Cambridge, addresses the neglected population of magician and witchcraft practitioners of contemporary London in her book, Persuasions of Witch’s Craft. Even thought there were couple of discrepancies in her book, Luhrmann provides valuable anthropological insight to different practices of witchcraft, explains why females are interested in magic, and analyzes what drives a well-educated and adjusted individual in London to join these practices?

Luhrmann’s began her research at the sixteenth annual Quest Conference (1) to discover why “well-educated, usually middle-class people…get involved in magic,” even though it is considered irrational by the surrounding culture (Luhrmann7). At the conference she developed contacts that eventually lead to her enrollment in the Glittering Sward, an ad hoc ritual magic group. Ad hoc is a type of magical group that is created by individuals or an individual who have no experience, but only knowledge accumulated from books about magical occult practice. Majority of ad hoc groups write “their own rituals, and [develop] their own structure of the practice” (Luhrmann70).
The biggest challenge most readers face is keeping track of the labels given by the speaker. There were situations where the writer would move from “different member, new member, second speaker…” and the reader would be lost to who the writer was referring to. Another example of lack of clarity in the book was when the author began discussing about the practitioner Peter. She starts off with the biological profile, then moves to personality, and drifts to the background of magicians. The reader is lost and confused to what happened to Peter (Luhrmann101). Luhrmann confuses reader with lack of clarity and by wander off subject, but it is minor compared to the amount of information provided in the