Lectures on Witchcraft: Now Available!

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This excellent volume is a mid 19th century look at the Salem Witch Trials which was initially several lectures which were transcribed. Upham lays out some of the trial transcripts and remarks on the causation of the witch panic, and the brutal methods by which persecution was enacted. At times, he waxes a bit (overly) optimistic about the advancement of civics, evidence, reason, and religious tolerance regarding this and similar issues of superstition and criminality.

147 pages.

Witchcraft, a Collection: Now Available!

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This volume is a compilation of seven important works within the general topic of the Witch Trials at Salem, the Burning Times, and on the general topic of superstition and persecution; a facet of uncivilized culture which still rages today, only in our "modern" era the witches tend to be political dissidents.

The works range from primary source material on the trials themselves, to accounts of different aspects and figures related to the same. I have added a suggested reading list to the end of the work and it contains an expansive foreword explaining each work and the topics' premise.

Included works:

Cotton Mather and Witchcraft
Magic and Witchcraft
The Witch Persecutions
A Tryal of Witches
Strange Phenomena of New England
A Brief History of Witchcraft
The Witches Pharmacopoeia

315 pages.

A Brief History of Witchcraft: Now Available!

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This little work is a strictly academic entry, compiling, mainly, primary source materials from the Northampton witch trials, including some of the most bizarre accusations which can be gleaned from the period involving familiar spirits and the supposed practices of witches. Five people were the main victims of this particular outbreak of hysteria- it should be noted that I have left the primary source snippets intact in their (very) Old English form. Some adjacent hysteria and accusations are touched upon as well.

37 pages.

The New Burning Times: Now Available!

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As we say farewell (or good riddance) to the 2010s and prepare to enter the twenties- which I hope will be filled with flappers and art deco- it is time to release the final work of the decade. I literally got the idea a couple days ago when the news broke about the usual miscreants of the furthest "left" whining about extremist hand signals among army navy cadets- a tale told over and over by the modern day zealot authoritarians which peskily bother everyone else because of their own opportunism, fear, and boredom. The 2010s are significantly similar to the witch trials- the ignorance, false appeals to authority, self evidence of the claims, and culpability of the public that stands by and does nothing as their fellow humans are intellectually abused- it's not with joy but with sardonic observation that I crafted this little booklet.

These days more and more material is rendered proprietary and temporal by convoluted and obviously ill-omened contracts and hardware in computer systems. A computer ten years ago was mainly designed for local storage, able to connect to a broader network. Now, a computer is designed for exterior storage with a few internalized apps to communicate with it. This inefficient concept only exists because tech firms and their cronies wish to "own" all material and snuff it out at a Stalinesque whim.

As always I am 100% opposed to all censorship and all ignorance- todays "activist" haranguing about "extremism" on the internet is no less stupid and evil than some man in a long wool cloak with a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum centuries ago. It's the same superstitious nonsense, the same abuse as before.

Strange Phenomena of New England: Now Available!

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This book is an excellent primer on the Salem Witch Trials- it contains mostly a slew of primary source documents; letters from the era, trial proceedings, and- at the end- the culminating document which ended the era for good, namely the recanting and apology of the jury involved for having condemned innocent people to death. While I have strong opinions on the subject of why the trials happened (my theory is a fusion of the ergot, property, and social panic theories and accepts none completely) I kept my own words to a minimum and relegated them to the foreword.

Some of the claims made especially during testimony are bizarre in the highest degree- flying objects strange creatures, demonic sexual intercourse, and what we would now deem both ghosts and psychic attack. Some of the stories told are chilling, especially when one considers that most of the accused were tortured and mistreated, even if only about a tenth of them ended up actually executed.

84 pages.

The Witch Persecutions: Now Available!

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This small work is a compilation text and combines multiple sections each containing a primary source on various instances of persecution related to the witch trials. Burrs' work does not contain all of these pieces of lore verbatim- several of the longer sections are truncated and one omits passages from a lengthier manuscript. It is nonetheless of great use to those studying the period of history in which burning witches was in vogue. Notable here is a smuggled letter from one condemned to his son in the Bamberg proceedings, telling that those who accused him and even the executioners were sympathetic and understood the trials to be nonsensical, but nobody spoke for fear of reprisal on themselves and their friends and families.

50 pages.

Several Works for the Modern Witch Trials

I figured now was a great time to pitch a few of the edited works I've released since it seems we have entered another burning times in which allegation and presumption and emotion are superior to evidence, logic, reason, and enlightenment. While this is sad and means innocent people will suffer, it is hardly unprecedented even in modernity- remember that even extremely modern eras have been pockmarked by moral panics which are based not on evidence but emotion. I'd almost be more worried if this era did not contain at least a minor moral panic regardless of the stupidity of each such moralistic period of hand wringing and disingenuous he-said-she-said nonsense.

First we have DEMONOLOGY by none other than King James. Other than the Malleus Maleficarum itself this is the premier text of all moral panics in the history of mankind and probably killed tens of thousands of people- more than almost any text other than those that are themselves canonical within religious paths themselves. This work contains a great deal of odd material especially related to James' own philosophy on witch hunts.

Second, we have Workmans' DEMONOMANIA which rationalizes the witch hunts of yesteryear in an early sense while slightly missing the mark in some aspects of science as now generally recognized.

Third and finally we have a work on COTTON MATHER and witchcraft, which technically apologizes for and defends the perpetrators of the Salem witch trials on several grounds. A short work, it is nonetheless well written.

As we wait for the Lesser Keys I figured that revisiting a few works on persecution made sense, given the political climate of today.