Oath, Curse, and Blessing - Ernest Crawley

Author: Ernest Crawley
Publisher: Watts & Co.
Format: Hardcover with dust jacket
Edition: Thinker’s Library No. 40, first published in the Thinker’s Library, 1934
ISBN: No ISBN stated
Condition: Second-hand hardcover with dust jacket. The dust jacket shows age toning, shelf wear, small tears, creasing, edge wear and chipping, including loss to the top corner and spine area. Boards and pages show age toning, light foxing and general handling wear. Please see photos for the exact copy available.

Oath, Curse, and Blessing is a compact anthropological study of ritual speech, taboo, primitive rites, curses, blessings and the social origins of religious and magical custom. Ernest Crawley examines how oaths, spoken power, sacred formulas and acts of blessing or cursing appear across cultures and continue to shape later religious and social practice.

Published as No. 40 in the Thinker’s Library series, this 1934 edition will appeal to readers interested in folklore, anthropology, comparative religion, ritual magic, taboo, early twentieth-century rationalist publishing and the study of magical language.

About the Author:
Ernest Crawley was a British anthropologist and writer known for his work on religion, ritual, marriage, sex, taboo and the origins of social customs. His writing belongs to the early comparative anthropology tradition and remains of interest to readers studying the history of folklore, religion and ritual theory.