Customer Reviews

Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Witches, Demons, Sorcerers and Their Present Day Counterparts

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This piece is very informative and gives a graphic representation through illustration & word into the world of Witches, Demons and Sorcerers and their Present Day Counterparts. Not intended for the "Fluffy Bunnies" or the "Charmed Wanna-bes".
Although not as complete as it could be, and biased somewhat as the sources it is drawn from are not all "Witch, Demonoligist, Sorcerer-& their viewpoint related", this is still hands down one I would recommend to any "must have" list.

I had the good fortune to take several courses with Professor Robbins in his later years at Albany State (The University at Albany) in Albany, NY. By that time (around 1982), he was more jovial than rigorous, and would do things like bring a jug of wine to class, and tell stories about chasing Sybil Leek (and her messy bird) out of one town or another. His work is scholarly and authoritative, but I thought I should post that witchy wannabes might like to know that he was hardly pro-witch. He was a scholar, and seemed mostly to disdain the supernatural. It would seem to me that a good companion to this volume, if one is interested in RHR's viewpoint, would be _Witchcraft: An Introduction to the Literature of Witchcraft_ (Paperback), although I don't know anything about the title except that it appears here on amazon as a Robbins search item. I do of course have an autographed copy of this book!

I recommend this book as a companion to the 1529 book The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Bonanza Books, 1959; Tyler, Philip.

It's the most profound book ,on the medieval Witchhunts of the Western world.It's generally agreed by all serious occultists,that the number of various victims stated,are rather conservative and misleading.I first read this rare book,in 1988,during high school.Years later,i got to see the the towns of Memmingen,Coburg,Waldsee and Bamberg.The Waldsee lake is quite scenic and you should step-off at the small train-station (just south-east) before the main smalltown train-station,for where the witches gathered. These hamlets were the typical Bayern-Tyrol villages ,where "Hexen-brennung" was the Christian norm,for four hundred years.The Swedish Mora witches,Cotton Mather the Witch-finder and the Witches of Chelmsford are good listed examples of the witch-hysteria ,that swept across Old World Europe and into the new colonies of New England. This book has not been equalled or surpassed ,by another ,in all my literary searches.Nigel Cawthorne seems to have re-introduced much of the known lore ,into his new book.-Caveat-Alot of Wiccans complain about the Robbins' book being inaccurate.This has been an on-going kettle of fish among pagan/christian scholars.I would completely recommend this well-illustrated proto-wiccan encyclopedia anyway.

This book, especially in Hardcover(black with gold lettering) has a very authentic feel to it. The pages are thick and rough, the type face and black woodcut style illustrations, not to mention the information provided give it more "wow" than you would expect from older books on Witchcraft. The original was printed in 1959; I checked it out from the library for years just to have it around until I located my own copy.
Trust the Enchantress on this one, a necessary for any Occult Library. As A reference book, this one is okay, but not to be taken as rote. So many more books copied this one and had more access to information worldwide, but for European/Early American Withcraft it is good information to know.