Traditional Magic Spells for Protection and Healing

I was expecting something else with this book since I began with the author's book, Witches, Werewolves, and Fairies, despite the Amazon description that explains the book. I didn't expect that it would be an actual encyclopedia of healing and protection spells across historical sources. It's still a wonderful book, but I was hoping to have a little more reading material past the first chapter, although you can of course just read it as is which is also just as enjoyable to view all the gathered spells. But even if you already own the source materials, this books is still very important for cross cultural comparisons and directly finding a specific spell for a specific cause. This book serves well as a reference guide because of all of the sources that went into it and through the way that it is organized.Book's Contents:IntroductionDiagnosesThe Illnesses of Humans and Their CureEvil SpellsDevils and DemonsFantastic Beings and SpiritsHealing of AnimalsProtectionsAppendicesNotesBibliographyIndexThe layout of the book features a spell title and number followed by the spell, with some images for select spells if needed, a brief summary to add context to the spell, and then source of the spell. I've never seen a bibliography as large as this book has, running from page 299 to page 318, often with 17 to 19 references per a page. The book itself isn't that large though. I don't like how narrow the top margin of the pages are and would've liked to have seen an extra centimeter of white space up here. The geographical area of the locations of sources includes what are modern day England, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and I did see one of Arabic origin, although most of the spells appear to be French, German, and Latin, followed by a fair amount of Nordic and Transylvanian. The temporal range starts as early as the first century and as late as the twentieth century, but it's more like the fourth century to the seventeenth century if removing a hypothetical standard deviation of outliers. Most of the spells tend to be sourced from the Middle Ages such as the fourteenth century. The source of the spells qualitatively speaking are mostly Judaeo-Christian grimoire-like content, followed by gypsy spells and Norse mythology magic. So the book gravitates towards Medieval central and northern Europe, and it's about half Christian and half pagan.The book is not as big as it sounds though and you'll quickly be wanting more spells and sources, but it's still very good and probably took a long time to compile such a book. The quality of the book is overall very well made, as it is a hardcover made by Inner Traditions, so this is pretty big name quality here. It is Claude Lecouteux after all. The book runs for $30 which seems like a fair price, but I grabbed this for $20. I'd rate it closer to a 4.5 than a 5 because I thought it could be formatted better and include some more material based on the book's description.

Great White Elephant gift 😂

Got what I was looking for.

This review originally appeared on The Magical Buffet website on 04/25/2018.I have a hard time writing reviews for Claude Lecouteux’s books. They’re all dense tomes of knowledge, meticulously researched, and loaded with excerpts and references from medieval texts. One doesn’t casually breeze through one of his books, you slowly follow the path that he lays out before you. And his latest “Traditional Magic Spells for Protection and Healing” is no exception.As usual Lecouteux turns his scholar’s eye towards highlighting the intersection of Christianity and Pagan beliefs, this time with medical practices tossed in. In medieval times health issues were a matter of body, the spiritual world, and spiritual concerns. Not only does Lecouteux outline means of diagnosis, but addresses the cures whether you’re being afflicted with an evil spell, or tormented by a demon. Incantations against wolf bite, using alum in water to help someone regain their speech, charms against demons, and obviously so much more!“Traditional Magic Spells for Protection and Healing” is a must for magic nerds like myself. Honestly, every Claude Lecouteux book is a must own.

A very interesting book about the different spells and prayers people used to say in all kinds of different situations. I bought this book in order to build up my own fantasy world. It was very helpful to get an insight into how and when people used "magic".

Excelente libro

good book but every other word you had to look up to see what it is. uses to many big words that can be said more simply

This is a fantastic book.