They are, moreover, often difficult to read owing to technicalities of phrase and vocabulary. Related e. Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop. The History of Witchcraft and Demonology is a book on witchcraft and demonology by Montague Summers. Initiati sunt Beelphegor: set comederunt sacrificai mortuorum. Et effunderunt sanguinem innocentem. Et fornicati sunt in adinuentionibus suis.
The history of Witchcraft, a subject as old as the world and as wide as the world,—since I understand for the present purpose by Witchcraft, Sorcery, Black Magic, Necromancy, secret Divination, Satanism, and every kind of malign occult art,—at once confronts the writer with a most difficult problem. He is called upon to exercise a choice, and his dilemma is by no means made the easier owing to the fact he is acutely conscious that whichever way he may decide he is laying himself open to damaging and not impertinent criticism.
With a full sense of its drawbacks and danger I have selected the second method, since in dealing with a topic such as Witchcraft where there is no human hope of recording more than a tithe of the facts I believe it is better to give a documented account of certain aspects rather than to essay a somewhat huddled and confused conspectus of the whole, for such, indeed, even at best is itself bound to have no inconsiderable gaps and lacunae, however carefully we endeavour to make it complete.
I am conscious, then, that there is scarcely a paragraph in the present work which might not easily be. I can but offer my apologies to these students who come to this History to find details of Finnish magic and the sorceries of Lapland, who wish to inform themselves concerning Tohungaism among the Maoris, Hindu devilry and enchantments, the Bersekir of Iceland, Siberian Shamanism, the blind Pan Sus and Mutangs of Korea, the Chinese Wu-po, Serbian lycanthropy, negro Voodoism, the dark lore of old Scandinavia and Islam.
I trust my readers will believe that I regret as much as any the absence of these from my work, but after all in any human endeavour there are practical limitations of space. Many famous cases, the Lancashire witch- trials, the activities of Matthew Hopkins, Gilles de Rais, Gaufridi , Urbain Grandier, Cotton Mather and the Sale m sorceries, will then be dealt with and discussed in some detail.
