Preview
Date
1965
Creation Date
2017-09-22
Description
236 p. : ill. ; 18 cm. Series: Pelican books, A745. Note: 3rd Pelican printing.
Digital Collection
Irene P. Ertman Science Fiction Book Collection
Object Type
Book
Identifier
ertman_046
Image Format
Physical Object
Repository
Special Collections, Leonard H. Axe Library
Publisher Digital
Penguin Books
Rights
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Transcript
published by Penguin Books
Witchcraft, for most of us, is associated with Sabbats, black cats, and blood pacts with the devil. Pennethorne Hughes, however, has deliberately excised the sensation and legend in this scholarly study of a serious subject.
Credence in the powers of witches he sees as the degeneration of very early religious beliefs and practices, which at their best expressed an essential human faith in the identification of man with nature, of the self with the cosmos.
His full treatment of the early records and medieval background of the witch-cult draws in notable figures who seem to have dwelt on the fringe of a magical world—King Arthur, Jeanne d’Arc, Gilles de Rais (the original Bluebeard), and even Robin Hood. His evidence tends to suggest that some, at any rate, of the powers of witches were not to be despised.
Witchcraft, with its extensive bibliography of occult books, has an interest for students of anthropology, psychology, and religion: for the ordinary reader it offers a reliable history of a subject of unfailing appeal.
The cover shows a detail of ‘The Last Judgement,’ attributed to Hieronymus Bosch, in the Groening museum, Bruges (Snark International)
