THIS unusual book is a labour of love. The author, for many years head of Old Master paintings at the London auctioneers Bonhams, has had a lifelong fascination with the history of his clan, the McKenzies, and particularly with prophecies of their demise associated with a shadowy figure, the Brahan Seer.

The Seer, reputedly born in Uig on the island of Lewis, is one of the best-known of those remembered in the folklore of the Scottish Highlands and Islands for having the gift of second sight. Andrew Mackenzie comes to the conclusion that the Seer is probably a conflation of three historical figures: Michael Scot, a 13th-century mathematician and scholar of alchemy and the occult who studied at Oxford and went on to teach in Paris; Coinneach Odhar, identified as “an enchanter” in a witchcraft trial in the 1570s, and whose death by burning in a barrel of tar is commemorated in a monument at Chanonry Point at the mouth of the Cromarty Firth; and Kenneth Mackenzie, 3rd Earl of Seaforth, who lived in the mid-17th century in Brahan Castle, near Dingwall.

Alongside his painstaking detective work to identify the Seer, the author offers many interesting reflections on the history and practice of prophecy and foretelling the future, which, as he observes, almost always relate to disasters and calamities. He concludes that “the common theme to most of these predictions reflects the way that people attempt to come to terms with major changes. . . prophecies give sanction and act as a panacea for otherwise inexplicable and traumatic changes.”

This book confirms what I found in my own research on the spiritual landscape of Argyll and the coffin roads of Scotland: that many clergy in the Highlands and Islands, and particularly Church of Scotland parish ministers, embraced and respected popular beliefs about second sight and other psychic and supernatural manifestations rather than condemn them as unchristian. This study will prove an interesting read for those interested in such phenomena. It also raises pertinent questions about modern conspiracy theories and their relationship to prophecies and premonitions.
 

The Revd Dr Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews.

Scotland’s Nostradamus: A Quest for the Brahan Seer
Andrew McKenzie
Unicorn Publishing £18.99
(978-1-916846-44-9)
Church Times Bookshop £17.09