Magic: Transformation and Self-determination

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates the ways in which crossroads have long been revered as sites of magical interest and have hosted rituals important to the operation of everyday religion and superstition. It documents newly discovered early modern crossroads spells, and places them alongside a variety of crossroads rituals and practices that are described in contemporary and other historical texts. Focusing on the early modern as the era of greatest flourishing for accounts of these magical rites, it takes an isomorphic approach to exploring the unrelenting significance of the crossroads as a site of particular ritual potency.