Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft

About the Journal
A serious, rigorously peer-reviewed scholarly journal, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft draws from a broad spectrum of perspectives, methods, and disciplines, offering the widest possible geographical scope and chronological range, from prehistory to the modern era and from every inhabited continent.

The editors recognize that our journal’s title includes terms (“magic,” “witchcraft”) often used to marginalize the traditions and practices of Indigenous peoples, women, and the poor. We welcome contributions that critique or contextualize these terms and their use in scholarly and political discourse.

General Instructions
Please follow the guidelines given here when submitting or revising your article for publication. The editors reserve the right to make editorial revisions in articles and reviews.

Style and Language
Manuscripts for submission should be prepared according to The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition.

The primary language of all articles and reviews is English. Spelling, punctuation, use of decimals, and other conventions should follow American standards.

Originality
No part of the submitted manuscript can have appeared in print in another journal or elsewhere. If you have published a piece in another language and wish to submit an English translation to MRW you are responsible for taking care of all necessary permissions

Manuscript Length
Article manuscripts should run approximately 8,000 – 12,000 words, including notes. Notes should constitute no more than 20% of the total word-count. Both longer and shorter pieces are considered on their merits.

Contributions to special sections (Materia Magica, Discussion Forum on Vexed Issues, and Book Forum) generally run approximately 3,000 – 6,000 words, including notes. Both longer and shorter pieces may be solicited by the editor of a specific Forum or other special section.

Book Reviews should be approximately 800-1600 words. Much longer reviews, in the form of a review essay, will be treated as articles and go through the full process of peer review.

Formatting
The text, including quotations and notes, should be double-spaced and unjustified. Use a standard font, such as Times New Roman, and please keep formatting simple and minimal.

Notes should be numbered consecutively, double spaced, and placed as endnotes, though they will be published at the foot of each page. (See further instructions concerning citation style, below).

Illustrations
We encourage the use of illustrations and can accept 300 dpi TIF or JPG files. Line art should be supplied as 1200 dpi EPS files. Supply each illustration with a caption, accompanied by a source line and such acknowledgments as are required. Authors are expected to obtain permission to reproduce any copyrighted materials.

Submission: Cover Page, Abstract, Keywords
The author’s name and address (postal and email) should appear only on a cover page sent as a separate file: this cover page should also include the title of the submission. The title should also appear on the first page of the submitted text.

Authors are requested to supply an abstract between 150-200 words in the same file as the title page, along with a list of 10 to 20 keywords.

Citation
The examples below are intended to illustrate the main types of source cited, but do not cover every case. For detailed citation instructions, consult the Chicago Manual of Style.

Books
First citation:
James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, 3rd ed., 12 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1913–20), 1:220–22.
Helen Berger, ed., Witchcraft and Magic in Contemporary North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).
Fritz Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, trans. Franklin Philip (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 157.

Subsequent citation:
Frazer, Golden Bough, 1:220–22.
Berger, Witchcraft and Magic.
Graf, Magic in the Ancient World, 157.

Chapters or Sections of a Book
First citation:
David Frankfurter, “Dynamics of Ritual Expertise in Antiquity and Beyond: Towards a New Taxonomy of ‘Magicians,’” in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 141 (Leiden, Brill, 2002), 159–78.

Subsequent citation:
Frankfurter, “Dynamics of Ritual Expertise.”

Dissertations
First citation:
Tamar Herzig, “Holy Women, Male Promoters, and Savonarolan Piety in Northern Italy, c. 1485–1545” (Ph.D. diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005), 12–15.

Subsequent citation:
Herzig, “Holy Women,” 12–15.

Journal Articles
First citation:
William Paden, “Elements of a New Comparativism,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 8 (1996): 5–14.
John Coakley, “Gender and the Authority of the Friars: The Significance of Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans,” Church History 60, no. 4 (1991): 460.

Subsequent citation:
Paden, “Elements of a New Comparativism,” 5–14.
Coakley, “Gender and the Authority of the Friars,” 460.