Bathhouse at Midnight An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia

From material Ryan (U. of London) collected for his doctoral dissertation at Oxford and a series of articles since then, he presents a general survey for English readers that incorporates both the written and oral traditions. He strives to avoid the extremes of seeing features either as particular to one culture or universal to all, and also the trap of being too descriptive and neglecting analysis. After outlining briefly the history of Russia, he looks at such topics as popular magic, wizards and witches, predictions from dreams and the human body, materia magica, geomancy, and Byzantine and post-Byzantine astrology.Ryan, W. F. is the author of 'Bathhouse at Midnight An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia' with ISBN 9780271019666 and ISBN 0271019662.