• Reviews

    Book Review – Demons and Spirits of the Land: Ancestral Lore and Practices by Claude Lecouteux, Translated by Jon E. Graham

    Book Review Demons and Spirits of the Land Ancestral Lore and Practices by Claude Lecouteux Translated by Jon E. Graham 212 Pages     In Demons and Spirits of the Land: Ancestral Lore and Practices, Claude Lecouteux has written a fascinating and well-resourced exploration of pre-Christian Europe’s relationship with the spirits of the land. The writing is academic in nature, with many quotations from and cites to original sources deftly weaving centuries of cross-cultural traditions from Northern and Western European. Lecouteux describes the practices by which humans first respected the spirits of natural places, then colonized and “civilized” those places, changing their relationship with the local beings. With numerous references…