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The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-hunting in the Western World

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Everyone knows about the witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Few people know as much about them as John Demos, a professor of history who has written academic texts on the theme and about early American history. Demos explains that after writing _Entertaining Satan_ in 1982, he thought he had said his last about the history of witchcraft. "Yet the talk-show invitations kept coming each year at Halloween; there was still the occasional witchcraft conference to attend; there were even middle-of-the-night phone calls from people who thought themselves possessed by the Devil." So when he was invited to write a synthesis of the subject, he had reasons to take on the project, although he had been used to writing about specific cases from centuries ago, and doing so for an academic audience. _The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western World_ (Viking) is the result, and while it inevitably covers the witch scare in New England, the longer view has to do with the larger pattern of blaming and scapegoating. People have done this for centuries, and although we might congratulate ourselves for graduating from the magical, supernatural thinking that brought forth the Salem trials, we are still demonizing. Demos's chapters are a set of historic essays on important themes, and his broad outlook on the subject is well-reasoned and fascinating.

Christianity developed a tolerance, even a complicity, to witch-magic. Sorcerers, usually women, might be despised or condemned, but they were also respected and consulted especially to work a bit of counter-magic against some curse large or small. Spells and charms were thought effective in battling against a mystifying world, and the church had similar remedies. Christians, for instance, used sacred relics to promote cures or they valued charms such as medallions made from paschal candles. By the end of the fourteenth century, the disarray from wars and plague, an increased emphasis on Satan as a foil to Christ, and inquisitorial investigations with the acceptance of torture to gain evidence all brought increased attention to witches. Demos devotes a chapter to the famous _Malleus Maleficarum_, first published in 1486, a guide to what witches do and how to catch them out. Pope Innocent VIII himself supported the book, which showed it was heresy not to believe in witches and their connection to the Devil, listed the leading forms of witchcraft and what witches did, and advised how to get evidence against them, including torturing them to get the truth. Demos summarizes the famous events at Salem, with a specific chapter on one of the chief participants, Cotton Mather. The Puritan minister was preoccupied with witches partly because they fitted into his vision of the imminent millennium and return of Christ, and he encouraged the Salem prosecutions. As society began to doubt the wisdom of the witch trials, so Mather lessened his emphasis on the scourge, but for him, to stop believing in witches would have been to stop believing in God, for the beliefs were closely linked. He even came to reconsider the trials years later, after they had hung their victims, and to regret what had happened and the errors that had been made. Unlike some others involved, however, he made no apology.

We don't persecute witches anymore like Mather wanted to, but in his final section, Demos shows that the persecution continues. It isn't for nothing that McCarthyism is called witch-hunting. The analogy was most sharply drawn in Arthur Miller's drama _The Crucible_ in 1952; Miller had researched the historic Salem trials before writing his play, which Demos commends for its accuracy in the depiction of the atmosphere of that time, and for enhancing the power of the term witch-hunting. Demos points out analogies (and differences) in the witch-hunting of other forms and other eras, like the anti-Masonry scares, the persecution of the Bavarian Illuminati, and others. A final chapter shows witch-hunting in a scary modern form, the child care sex-abuse crisis of only the past couple of decades. Accused of Satanism and crimes against children, operators of the Fells Acres Day School, for instance, were convicted and sentenced to up to forty years of prison, serving some years before the sentences were overturned. Demos cites day-care stories of rituals, a prosecutorial compulsion for punitive retribution, coercive or suggestive questioning of children, and a refusal to accept victims' denials as the same sort of processes involved at Salem. The ancient witch enemy is with us still.

I heard a radio interview with Yale historian & Prof. John Demos when this book first came out and bought it later that day. I was not disappointed. What literally blew me away was a significant piece of history I was unaware of, the chapter "Malleus Maleficarum," or "Hammer on Evildoers" [witches]. ( "Maleficarum" is the feminine version of "evil-doers" whereas "Maleficorum" is the masculine.)

"Malleus" is a treatise written by two Inquisitors of the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church, Kramer & Sprenger and endorsed in 1484 by the papal bull of Pope Innocent VIII. The first index was again produced in 1559 under Pope Paul IV. Women were said to have "insatiable carnal lust" and "sex with the Devil," were "prone to demonic temptations because of their many weaknesses," and "had the power to steal men's penises," "killed babies" and "ate human flesh." This widespread publication, the creation of which coincided with the Gutenberg Press, spread throughout Europe like a plague, creating mass hysteria, tortures, and executions that lasted for centuries.

Certainly Demos' book is an in-depth and all-inclusive account of witchcraft from the dark ages to the modern day; including the Salem witch trials, the Freemasons, and the McCarthy era.

"The enemy" is seen as the woman, usually old, widowed, or one who stands out from the social "norm" and causes discomfort. A witch-hunt, by Demos' definition, finds women who represent something unsettling to society and punishes or kills them to rid society of its ills.

Demos' broad outlook on the subject is fascinating. Highly recommended.

The term "witch hunt" is used metaphorically today to describe all sorts of attempts by communities to rid themselves of elements deemed "evil", whether those elements are communists, child abusers, or heretics. People do not like what they do not understand, and crises, be they epidemics, wars, terrorists, or waves of immigrants, they tend to band together to find someone to blame, along with a way to expel that threat. In The Enemy Within, respected historian John Demos shows, in the first part of the book, how and why early western societies persecuted and executed suspected witches, examining the sociological factors that led to the panic. In the second part, he deals with contemporary society, in which we view ourselves as scientifically informed and free of superstition, yet persist in the ancient drive to identify and purge the causes of our deepest anxieties. Hard times seem to revive our collective fears, and the challenge is to avoid lapsing into the old, destructive, reactionary patterns. Written for the general reader, The Enemy Within is a potent reminder to remember how near to the surface the patterns remain, and to strive to find intelligent solutions to the very real problems that we face today.

Easy-to-read survey by a scholar who has spent his career in deep research on the subject. He draws some parallels between ancient and modern witchhunting -- useful reminders that we are not so different from our ancestors in our fears and scape-goating. Excellent references for further reading.

The book deals primarily with the witchhunting in Europe during the middle ages and the equivalent in the American north-east. All in all an interesting book but at times a bit repetetive. Because of the title "2000 years of witch-hunting" I expected the book to cover more extensively also the ideological counterparts in contemporary society. Demos talks briefly about the "witch-hunt" against freemasons and other groups in the 18th and 19th century and also about the best-known example of our time: the "red scare". But all in all it feels tucked on. I wish he would have dealt with the contemporary "witch-hunts" more thoroughly.

Having spent most of my life in Massachusetts, I have always been fascinated by witch trials (Salem) and the psychology behind the persecution of witches. This book doesn't address actual witchcraft but instead delves into that very psychology. The author's research is meticulous, his writing clear and easy to follow. The book isn't dragged out and I found no part of it in the least bit boring. I would suggest this book to anyone with an interest in the history and psychology behind witch hunts.

I really enjoyed this book, however I realized that the paragraph (in the section about the Masons) written about Mormons was misleading and at times, untruthful. When I checked the back of the book to see which source John Demos had used as a reference, there was none listed. This causes me to question his other sources as well as the truthfulness of other parts of the book. The lack of sources for some of the information seems irresponsible. Other than that, I really liked the book, especially the section on Salem, and I would recommend it with some caution.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone seeking a broad introduction to or quick review of the topic of early modern witchcraft. The case studies are well crafted and interesting, but the survey chapters on the european witch hunt and Salem provide great overviews. The Salem overview also contains a very good distillation of the vast historical literature on the subject. Prof. Demos also provides good bibliographies to help readers find more detailed studies on specific topics.

In an unfortunate editorial decision, the book begins with an introductory "panorama," at once too long and too epigrammatic: a series of high-level observations too abstract to sink one's teeth into. I felt that things finally began to get interesting when the author focused on specific cases.

At times when reading this book, I felt as if I were back in college. The Enemy Within demands that kind of attention (and a certain quantity of black coffee as well). That said, however, I found myself making the effort. You might want to start on page 71.