Encyclopedia Of Witchcraft & Demonology

Rating:
Summary: dPhilc's Review
Review: A great text to get people more interest in this topic of occult research. Lots of aspects explained.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating and horrifying, mass delusion !
Review: A long time ago I (by accident) saw this book carried by Terry Gilliam in the 'Spanish Inquisition' sketch by Monty Python. You can spot it under his arm as he gets up from his seat in the bus at the end. Realizing that this has very little do to with the actual review of this book, it nonetheless will tell you that I recognized the cover of the book when walking around in an old bookstore in Boston, grabbed it, and within 2 minutes of reading and skimming I decided that it was worth the $18.00 it cost. It was probably one of the best bargains I ever found, and opened my eyes tremendously.

As the title implies we're talking about an encyclopedia, not a detailed and chronological book, but this did not hamper the book's ability to get inside my head, and touch it in a way that redefined the medieval picture I carried around with me. After spending a few hours going through the book, and picking out specific passages, I realized that I knew nothing about how people were treated not THAT long ago, when someone else accused them of witchcraft, and how hard (impossible) it was to prove ones innocence. A story in the encyclopedia tells of how a woman, owning a black cat was hanged, accused of witchcraft, for 'making' her neighbour's tea taste bad.

If you wish to have just some idea of how impossible it was to prove your innocence, once you were thought a witch, Luc Besson's 'Messenger: Joan of Arc', and the Blackadder episode 'Witchsmeller Pursouivant' will give you an idea of the hopelessness some of the accused must've felt.

The most horrible aspect of the book is the descriptions of how people were tortured back in those days. The only thing we can do is learn from books such as these to insure that such stupidity and ignorance won't be allowed to occur again. The book also has information on specific European and other countries, so you can locate your own country to see just how bad things were in Europe several hundred years ago. That these things are still happening in many other parts of the world, is something we should do something more about, since many of the uneducated countries still practice torture and inhuman deaths. Not that any death, ordered by other sentient beings, is human, in my opinion.

The people who refuse to open books such as these, because they, among many other things, tell of the instruction manuals inquisitors could consult when dealing with witches (the Malleus Maleficarum is one), must ask themselves if they are doing so, because they find such information irrelevant and frightening. Of course it's frightening, but hardly irrelevant. It's when you turn your back on these things, that they have a chance of happening. So educate yourself about how not to behave, when someone sitting close to you is stroking a bad cat and your tea suddenly tastes bad.

I'm not saying that we have to be paranoid at all, but a good portion of common sense, spiced with decency and awareness, will no doubt yield a mix that will prevent such terrible events from happening again.

And if you can't find this book at amazon.com, try older bookstores. Where I found mine in Boston, another copy was also present!

Rating:
Summary: A great reference library addition!
Review: I first stumbled onto this book when I needed reference material for a paper on witchcraft. I've gone back to re-reference this book too many times to count! It has information on almost every aspect of witchcraft and demonology; terrific for the beginner interested in this subject. You can feel the hopelessness of the accused; I felt very thankful to be living in this day and age. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: A great reference library addition!
Review: I first stumbled onto this book when I needed reference material for a paper on witchcraft. I've gone back to re-reference this book too many times to count! It has information on almost every aspect of witchcraft and demonology; terrific for the beginner interested in this subject. You can feel the hopelessness of the accused; I felt very thankful to be living in this day and age. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Voluminous But Dated Enclyclopedia of Horrors
Review: Rossell Hope Robbins massive 1959 work "Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology" has been reprinted many times but is currently out-of-print. It is indeed a fascinatingly horrible compenidum of information regarding witches, demons, devils, demonologists, inquisitors, judges, hysterias, torture, and murder. It has served for the past 40 odd years as one of the most read and referenced work on the history of witchcraft and demonology, especially by many popular witchcraft authors and historians who continue to use and cite the work today.

The trouble is that much of the scholarship contatined in this work is sadly outdated and lacks information on much of the recent work done in the field of witchcraft studies in the past 20 years. Also, Robbins' work suffers from the same problem that afflicted many other similar early witchcraft histories: bad translations and historical forgeries. It has been shown that many of the early translations of a number of Latin works on witchcraft (particularly those translated by the Rev. Montague Summers) are suspect. Also, several 19th century histories of the witchcraze and the Inquisition that have been used as source material by countless authors, including Robbins, have been proven to be forgeries, particularly the works relating the early 14th century Inquisitorial witch executions in France. Robbins' work has also been criticized by scholars for its lack of objectivity in its history. But this work still remains popular today and understandably so, as it contains many lurid and engaging articles on just about every aspect of the witch hunts from the 15th to the 18th century in Europe and North America. Despite many of its flaws, it is still a useful reference and for that reason it still gets 3 stars, plus I must admit, it maintains some of the mysterious aura surrounding the history of witches and demons that much recent scholarship has tried to dispel, and that makes it fascinating reading, if for the wrong reasons.

Rating:
Summary: A definite must for everyone interested in witchcraft.
Review: This book is perhaps the most important reference work in its field. If you have interest in the occult, witchcraft or details not much mentioned in standard history books, I urge you to buy this one. Although its author relies a bit too heavily on documents of the time, the information given in this book is valuable. Also, there is a passage about witchcraft in specific countries, so you might also find out something about your home country that no one bothered to tell you. Read this book, and I can almost guarantee that you'll see the last four centuries in quite a new light.

Rating:
Summary: Things we all need to consider.
Review: This is serious scholarship, not new-age fluff. It sparked my abiding interest in history nearly forty years ago and has held my attention ever since. Much of it is heartrending, but it sheds essential light on the human condition while reminding us that we have, indeed, made some progress during our time on Earth.