A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination, and Faith During the First World War

Davies (America Bewitched), a reader in social history at the University of Hertfordshire, shows how widespread and eclectic belief in the supernatural was during WWI. He has compiled an impressive catalogue of the numerous divination practices of the era, including palmistry, cartomancy, and astrology. Davies notes that Britain’s wartime populace consulted the “venerable” astrological almanacs such as Vox Stellarum to predict the outcome of the war. French newspapers printed fake prophecies to bolster hope that German troops advancing on Paris would be turned back. “Good news sold in wartime,” Davies writes, but the private discourse in fortune-tellers’ parlors was much less bullish and reflected a “perfect awareness of the horror of the trenches, the egregious loss of life, the trauma of gas attacks and shell shock.” Soldiers’ letters, memoirs, newspaper accounts, oral histories, and such relics as lucky postcards and the kreis glücksringe (lucky rings) that Austrian metalworkers created for soldiers going to the front provide compelling evidence that magical belief and mystical experience were prevalent during WWI. This is an unusual and detailed study of human nature and the supernatural. (Feb.)