I was planning on starting a new file on my computer with the title "Phrases That Sound One Way to Witches but Mean Something Else to Vampires.

I was planning on starting a new file on my computer with the title "Phrases That Sound One Way to Witches but Mean Something Else to Vampires.

Pamela Smith and Benjamin Schmidt have gathered together a wide-ranging and provocative set of original essays that successfully demonstrate how contingent the process of making knowledge was during a period of fundamental epistemological change. This is a finely crafted and conceptualized collection.

Just because something seems impossible doesn't make it untrue.

You persist in this romantic vision of what it is to be a vampire, but despite my best efforts to curb it I have a taste for blood.

Matthew kept hinting that his desire - for blood, chiefly- was so strong that it put everything else at risk. But vampires weren’t the only creatures who had to manage such strong impulses. Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action. Witchcraft was different- that took spells and rituals. But magic? A wish, a need, a hunger too strong to be denied- these could turn into deeds when they cross a witch’s mind.

I wanted to know how humans came up with a view of the world that had so little magic in it. I needed to understand how they convinced themselves that magic wasn’t important.