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Witchcraft

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Readers interested in The DaVinci Code and the landslide of conspiracy theories, secret histories and occultic exposes that will inevitably accompany it may want to discover this lost (and recently reprinted) classic. Williams published this the same year as The Descent of the Dove: A History of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and it would seem at first that these books cover two sides of the supernatural, but it's not quite that way.

Williams is unique, among other things, for his skepticism, as summed in the epigram, "Believe and doubt well." His take on witchcraft isn't based on believing or not believing in it but in looking at it in history and in relation to the rest of his ideas. To understand his approach, consider his credentials and the accidents of when he wrote. He was a member of A.E. Waite's Order of the Golden Dawn, a mystical society whose members included Evelyn Underhill, author of Mysticism, and poet W. B. Yeats, known for his poem, "The Second Coming." No doubt he derived much of the local color, as it were, and ideas for his novels from this involvement.

Aleister Crowley, the self-styled "Great Beast" tried to wrest control of the Golden Dawn. Whatever one thinks of "Mr. Crowley" as Ozzy Osbourne sang of him, he seems to be the model for a certain type of magician who appears in Williams' novels. Williams delves briefly into the events surrounding the dark history of the Malleus Mallificarum, the witch trials, the mysteries associated with the Knights Templar, the Illuminati and the "secret histories" which these days are so much in vogue in contemporary fiction.

As in The Descent of the Dove, he often suggests alternate explanations, one being that in eras when the established church seemed to be on the side of the oppressors, by whatever political machinations, people would naturally look for some other power to invoke or side with satan (which means "enemy") whom Milton depicted as warring in heaven 'gainst heaven's matchless king. If the Knights Templar took pot shots at crosses on church steeples, Williams suggests, it might be for no darker device than to improve their skill as archers.

As Williams himself writes, this is not the book for followers of Crowley; it doesn't tell how to conjure the Ape of Thoth or guide the reader through the Necromonicron (a sort of magic in which Williams probably did not believe). As an editor at Oxford University Press, Williams was one of the most widely-read men of his generation (and far more than most in ours). Unlike the recent revisionist "histories" and fictionalized reversions, Williams presents an brief overview of mostly unkown history and as with all his books, his ideas seem increasingly relevant.

This is a balanced and realistic history of witchcraft in western civilization. It shows how infectious is suspicion, the desire for power and envy that it can obliterate Christian principles from the practices of the church and lead to horrifying persecutions of suspected witches within Europe and the U.S. It also acknowledges that these same dark forces of envy, desires for power and vengeance have lead some to seek satisfaction through spiritual practices known through the ages as witchcraft. This book does not take sides for or against the institutional church, but is far more realistic and balanced. There are no easy formulae in this book, nor any niave summations of good versus evil in human institutions. It reminds us that evil forces are often most potent when people think their actions most justifiable and right.