In the Name of Satan: Magical Practice in the Late Danish Witchcraft Trials

‘And it was done in the name of Satan’. A variation of such an expression is reoccurring when it comes to magical practices being described through either trial records or folktales in the early modern kingdom of Denmark. The Devil was often referred to as either Fanden, Satan or Djævelen, spelled in a myriad of ways due to the lack of standardised spelling, but there were many other nicknames given to him, God’s greatest adversary. Yet, despite the fact that it was the diabolical pact with the Devil that constituted the crime of true witchcraft, the lay people seemed to have had less direct fear of naming the Devil in their magical practices (Haack 1940: 228). This tendency is seen throughout the period in which witch trials took place in Denmark (1540–1741), but what about the cases on the brink of the 1700s? When the number of witchcraft cases began to dwindle, an increasing number of the learned elite began to question how the Devil could in fact be physically present in the human world. Did Satan then still play an integral part in the magical practices of lay people? Was the diabolical considered dangerous?