The Visions of Isobel Gowdie

Emma Wilby examines Isobel Gowdie’s 1662 confessions at Auldearn, placing one of Scotland’s most vivid witchcraft testimonies within its legal, religious and folkloric setting. The study asks how much of the recorded material reflects Gowdie’s own beliefs and experiences, and how much was shaped by interrogation.

Drawing on historical, psychological, comparative religious and anthropological perspectives, Wilby considers fairy belief, harmful magic, imagined Devil-pacts, ecstatic ritual and coven narratives. She also investigates claims that the confessions preserve traces of visionary traditions associated with pre-Christian Scotland, while showing how Christian teaching and older beliefs could overlap in the early modern religious imagination.