First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book approaches witchcraft and demonology through literary records. The works discussed deal with the contemporary theories propounded by those who sought either to justify, or to refute persecution. Eight contributors of differing interests, a nd with different approaches to their subject, examine a selection of important, representative witchcraft texts - published in England, France, Germany, Italy and America - setting them within their intellectual context and analysing both their style and argument.

Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft is an exploration of witchcraft in the literature of Britain and America from the 16th and 17th centuries through to the present day. As well as the themes of history and literature (politics and war, genre and intertextuality), the book considers issues of national identity, gender and sexuality, race and empire, and more. The complex fascination with witchcraft through the ages is investigated, and the importance of witches in the real world and in fiction is analysed. The book begins with a chapter dedicated to the stories and records of witchcraft in the Renaissance and up until the English Civil War, such as the North Berwick witches and the work of the ‘Witch Finder Generall’ Matthew Hopkins. The significance of these accounts in shaping future literature is then presented through the examination of extracts from key texts, such as Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Middleton’s The Witch, among others. In the second half of the book, the focus shifts to a consideration of the Romantic rediscovery of Renaissance witchcraft in the eighteenth century, and its further reinvention and continued presence throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the establishment of witchcraft studies as a subject in its own right, the impact of the First World War and end of the British Empire on witchcraft fiction, the legacy of the North Berwick, Hopkins and Salem witch trials, and the position of witchcraft in culture, including filmic and televisual culture, today. Equipped with an extensive list of primary and secondary sources, Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft is essential reading for all students of witchcraft in modern British and American culture and early modern history and literature.

"LEST any reader should open this volume expecting to read an exhaustive treatise on witches and witchcraft, treated scientifically, historically, and so forth, let me disarm him before-hand by telling him that he will be disappointed. The witch occupies so large a place in the story of mankind that to include all the detail of her natural history within the limits of one volume would need the powers of a magician no less potent than was he who confined the Eastern Djinn in a bottle...."

The old craft of the witches was a close order. Its members were sworn to secrecy. Although some records were kept, very few of these still exist today. In early ecclesiastic and in mediaeval literature, however, references to witchcraft are numerous. This book endeavours to set out in an interesting manner the story of the craft from earliest times. The book's three hundred and twenty pages contain fourteen Comprehensive Chapters: Witchcraft: A Primitive Cult. Initiation and Ceremony. Spells, The Evil Eye, and Possession. Practical Witchcraft. Witchcraft on the Continent. Werewolves and Vampires. Blood and Fire in England. Demons and Mascots. Witch Hunting cameos. A Typical English Witch Trial. Witchcraft in America. Witchcraft Phantasmagoria. A Typical Witch Tract. The Last Phase. This book will prove a fascinating read for anyone interested in the occult arts, and will provide much information to historians of this hitherto arcane subject.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

"The Resurrection of the Meadow" is described by the author as "A Record of Thirteen Occult Formulas & Charms of Art with Purport & A Sealing Conjuration & their many useful Sorcerous Permutations, Writ & Gathered on Walpurgis Night 2010, For those Inquisitive Adepts who walk The despised path of True Sorcery, The long-dimmed radiance of the Ancient Gold of the Wise." Found within this full, self-contained working grimoire is a system of sorcery relying on the ancient spiritual aesthetic of the Faery-Faith and the Metaphysics of Elfhame- interaction with the Unseen world through the vehicle of the spirit-forms or the fetch-bodies of non-human persons that are merged with the land around us. Steeped in folklore and a much older form of deep ecology, it is a powerful work of Art for the discerning occultist. The grimoire contains, among other things, full instructions for sealing and protecting the "Meadow" or sanctified outdoors locations, the "Feery Feast," the manifesting of the powerful "Weird of the Cairn," the creation of sacred interaction-points with the "Convocation of the Meadow" or Land-spirits, various Crossings, arboreal workings for harvesting and gathering sorcerous components from tree and plant weirds, charms of increase and fertility, and the creation of the fearful "White Mommet" for works of sympathetic magic.