The History of Witchcraft

Description

The History of Witchcraft by Lois Martin

Delving into the past to examine the history of those who practiced crafts that we might associate with witchcraft and those who were accused of being witches. The exploration compares modern witchcraft with the ‘witches’ of the past.

Fortunately most modern witches do not face the persecution of the past with most understanding it is about being at one with nature. The misunderstandings of the past are examined and how associations with the devil drove to the mass persecution of mainly woman.

The book description says:

‘Witchcraft has recently been undergoing a huge popular revival, but does modern pagan witchcraft really bear any resemblance to its historical antecedents? The witch in history was a very different creature from her modern counterpart, and this book sets out to explore the historical background to the European witchcraft phenomenon. It examines in detail the growth of the ideological, cultural and legal concepts that eventually led to the carnage of the Witch Craze in the 16th and 17th centuries, which, it is estimated, may have claimed the lives of around 40,000 people. For both Medieval and Reformation scholars alike the Devil and all his works were a very real threat. Their conviction that witches were the servants of Satan led to the formation of perhaps one of the greatest conspiracy theories of all time: a belief that witches were working in league with the Devil in a diabolical plot against all Christendom. Witches were transformed from poor deluded old women who rode out at night with the pagan goddess Diana into devil-worshipping heretics who became the focus of a centuries-long, Europe-wide campaign determined to seek out and destroy this evil wherever it was to be found, regardless of whether any of its victims were actually guilty or not.’

ISBN: 978-0-85730-115-4

UK Edition Published December 2016