Magic And Witchcraft: Now Available!

 

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This fine work is the culmination of a great deal of study by John Taylor in the middle of the 19th century. As with many works from the period, it both lambastes prior christian populations for their superstition while exonerating them partly on the basis that their interpretation of christian dogma was, first, misled by the authorities of their age and, second, that this was partly the fault of primordial pagan influence and the working of sorcery in late antiquity.

Its primary content is related to the burning times, both with regards to conceptions of Satan and of witches and witchcraft in general, but it also manages to provide a few older examples including the rites of the snake cults of the near east and the topic of the infamous shape-shifting Lamia. It blames King James and his "Daemonologie" and the Malleus Maleficarum for many tens of thousands of deaths.

77 pages.