This book examines the fairies, demons, and nature spirits haunting the margins of Christendom from late-antique Egypt to early modern Scotland to contemporary Amazonia. Contributions from anthropologists, folklorists, historians and religionists explore Christian strategies of encompassment and marginalization, and the ¿small gods¿ undisciplined tendency to evade such efforts at exorcism. Lurking in forest or fairy-mound, chuckling in dark corners of the home or of the demoniac¿s body, the small gods both define and disturb the borders of a religion that is endlessly syncretistic and in endless, active denial of its own syncretism. The book will be of interest to students of folklore, indigenous Christianity, the history of science, and comparative religion.

Considers the historical relationship between Christianity and 'small gods', including fairies, demons and nature spirits

1. Introduction: Where've all the Good People Gone?; Michael Ostling.- Part I: Demonization and its Discontents.- 2. The Threat of Headless Beings: Constructing the Demonic in Christian Egypt; David Frankfurter.- 3. Secrets of the Síd: The Supernatural in Medieval Irish Texts; Lisa Bitel.- 4. The Good, the Bad, and the Unholy: Ambivalent Angels in the Middle Ages; Coree Newman.- 5. Between Fallen Angels and Nature Spirits: Russian Demonology of the Early Modern Period; Dmitriy Antonov.- 6. Crisis at the Border: Amazonian Relations with Spirits and Others; Artionka Capiberibe.- Part II: Enlightenment and Its Ambiguities.- 7. Between Humans and Angels: Scientific Uses for Fairies in Early Modern Scotland; Julian Goodare.- 8. The Álfar, the Clerics, and the Enlightenment: Conceptions of the Supernatural in the Age of Reason in Iceland; Terry Gunnell.- 9. The Devil and the Spirit World In Nineteenth-Century Estonia: From Christianization to Folklorization; Ülo Valk.- 10. Dreaming of Snakes in Contemporary Zambia: Small Gods and the Secular; Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps.- Part III: Remnants, Relocations, and Re-Enchantments.- 11. Small Gods, Small Demons. Remnants of an Archaic fairy Cult in Central and South-Eastern Europe; Éva Pócs.- 12. Who Owns the World? Recognizing the Repressed Small Gods of Southeast Asia; Lorraine V. Aragon.- 13. Spirits, Christians and Capitalists in the Rainforests of Papua New Guinea; Michael Wood.- 14. "Reconnecting to Everything:" Fairies in Contemporary Paganism; Sabina Magliocco.- 15. Afterword; Ronald Hutton.