In search of the roots of our current ecological crisis, the writer Amitav Ghosh, in his most recent book The Nutmeg’s Curse, looks back to the suppression of witchcraft in 16th-century Europe. He views this as the moment human violence towards the natural world came to supersede an older wisdom, inherent in magical practices around the world, that “landscapes are neither inert not mute, but imbued with vitality”.
It’s a theme that plays out with dramatic effect in two major exhibitions currently running across south-west England – Earth Spells: Witches of the Anthropocene at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (Ramm) in Exeter and Super Natural at the Eden Project in Cornwall.
