Witches

And

Sorcerers

By

Arkon Daraul

 

The Citadel Press

New York

1966

First U.S. Edition

This text presents a compendious work covering the history of witchcraft, magic, sorcery and alchemy, from the earliest mystics and magicians of the ancient world to the occultists of the modern era. Includes many illustrations

Synopses of Chapters

1. The Pythagoreans

The blending of Egyptian secrets and Hindu asceticism with Greek teaching; training and magic-making of the first “Lovers of Wisdom” - Pythagoras, Iamblichus, Cylon, Epimenides, Empedocles, Apollonius of Tyana and their mystic powers

2. The Crone of Thessaly

Different kinds of witches - The Crone as the classical witch - Poisonous plants, terrible invocations - She re-animates a corpse, then releases its spirit, never again to be susceptible to evocation

3. Sages and Sinners

Socrates and his Demon; unfailing intuition - Jerome Cardan, the involuntary magician: ecstasy, leaving the body, visions and hallucinations - The sage and poet always invested with magical powers, by personal or public belief

4. Popes and Prelates

How magical arts are transmitted - “State Magic” and the influence of the Moors upon the Dark Ages - Silvester II and the brazen head; Benedict IX enchants the matrons of Rome - The Archbishop of Melfi; John XX, Gregory VI - Gregory VI sentenced for necromancy - His magical book - Robert of Lincoln and his oracular head - The Dominican Albertus Magnus makes a “speaking man”; produces a miraculous garden - Roger Bacon the Franciscan raises the devil - Thomas Aquinas and the magical horse

5. Virgil of Naples

Virgil and the fly talisman; how he influenced travellers, making them sad or gay - Diverting volcanic fumes; miraculous healing baths; the perpetual fire - How Virgil obtained his occult wisdom at Toledo and deceived the devil - Spells, love charms, rejuvenation - How he saved Rome and why he built the city of Napes by magic arts

6. Lady Alice Kyteler

How the Church and Stated clashed over a witch-society - Dame Alice and the mysterious Robin, son of Art - Sacrifice to the demon - Dame Alice casts a spell to enrich her son - Escape to England

7. Witch-cult in Switzerland

The activities of the witches; how they raised winds, caused miscarriages with charmed lizards, worked as a society in opposition to Christianity - The ritual of the black chicken at the crossroads - Punishing a man by means of an image quenched in molten lead - How the demons attacked the Inquisitors

8. Gilles de Raiz

The luxury-loving sadist who murdered innumerable children to offer as magical sacrifices - Raising the devil in a wood, seeking buried treasure, experiments in alchemy - Barron the demon - The fall of the Marshal de Raiz

9. Cornelius Agrippa

The Belgian sorcerer who “turned iron into gold by his mere word”; the Catholic dreamer who supported Luther and hated the Dominicans - How he rescued a witch, practised medicine, alchemy and astrology - Agrippa conjures the shades of the dead, produces telepathic images, is reputed to have a black dog as a demon familiar - How his disciple unwittingly raised a number of devils, died as a result and was re-animated by the magician

10. The Treasure-Seekers

Moorish treasures guarded by demons - Wolsey, his magical ring and reputed dealings with spirits - Lord Curzon’s treasure-hunting monopoly - Sir William and Sir Robert raise a treasure-spirit in a glass - Magical books and instruments, the use of scryers - The Vicar of Lesingham binds a spirit to a book; the demons Malchus, Oberion and Incubus - The adventures of an ex-monk

11. The Doctor and the Spirit

Dr Tarralva and his familiar Zadkiel - Prophecies, magical transport astride a stick - Caught, sentenced and imprisoned, the magician is actually pardoned, a remarkable exception to the rule with heretics

12. Doctor Dee and Edward Kelly

The curious interest of a mathematician in the occult - His contacts and friendship with Elizabeth I - Trial and error with crystal gazing - Enter Talbot (Kelly) and the spirits oblige - Dee and Kelly become wandering adventurers and alchemists - Downfall of both

13. Cellini and the Spirits

How Benvenuto Cellini helped to raise a multitude of spirits in the Coliseum at Rome - The Spirits give a true prophecy - Dangers and terrors of demonic evocation

14. The Amazing Life of Faust

The genius who raised a demon of the Key of Solomon; Mephistopheles buys his soul, in return for miraculous powers - Faustian magic recalls hypnotically induced hallucinations - Exploits of Faust in illusions, magical transport, mass hypnosis - The devil claims his own

15. Mother Samwell: Witch

The mystery of the bewitchments at Huntingdon - How the fits were caused in the Throgmorton children - The bewitchment of Lady Cromwell - Mother Samwell confesses - The spirits and what they said

16. Hartley, the Kissing Magician

Children killed by magic; bewitchment of the Starkie infants - Hartley offers to cast out the demons, is himself attacked by them - Hypnotic and epidemic hysteria explanations - The wizard’s death does not stop the phenomena

17. The Sorcerers of Pyrenees

Witchcraft a well organised cult in the Labourd country - Witches in all ranks of society - The Commissioners investigate priests, sabbats, the Lande of the Goat - Meetings in churches and graveyards - Confessions and burnings - How a boy was recruited and escaped - The devil and local rituals; flying by magic and the witch sleep

18. The Spanish Inquisition

The revelations of two young cult members - Hunting down the society - Description of the ceremonies; indecencies, renouncing of religion - The Goat of the Sabbat; the Banquet, miraculous transformations, the Ointment - A witch flies in full view of witnesses - How members are recruited - Derivation of the Spanish cult from Moorish Two-Horned Cult, influenced by Jews, according to contemporary writer - The drugs and unguents

19. Gaufridi and the Nuns

Sister Magdalen bewitched by Louis Gaufridi - How he took her into his power; received her into the cult - Confession of Gaufridi; raising the demon, the Pact - How he gained the power to make any woman love him - The rituals of the demon worshippers - Gaufridi burned alive

20. The Hags of Pendle Forest

The Coven of twenty and their hereditary craft - Recruitment by a demon (or a man) - How a magical dog lamed a peddler; the familiars of the witches - The role of hypnosis - Killing animals, using waxen images - Spells told by a nine-year-old member - How magic and religion became intermingled

21. Confessions of a Sorcerer

The monk of Stablo and his repentance - Recruitment into black magic - The sabbat, the demon turning into a monster - Incredulous investigation by the Church - The nine magical societies of the neighbourhood - The “grace” before the demoniac banquet - Ranks among the devil worshippers - Sentence upon del Vaux

22. The Possessed Nuns

Urbain Grandier and the plot against him - He is accused by the demons Astaroth, Asmodeus, and others - His interest in the inmates of the Loudon convent - The pious fraud of the possessions; Mother Superior bewitched - Dialogue with the demons; the Catholic-Protestant background - The exorcism; animal demons - The mysterious understanding of Grandier with his accusers - The demons possess the exorcists in their turn

23. Astrologer Royal

Forman, the magician who raised spirits and was a consultant - Evans carried to Battersea by devils - Seeking treasures in Westminster Abbey - Lilly advises Charles I; is charged with predicting the Plague and the Fire of London

24. The Wizard of the Tyrol

The mystery of the Lauterfresser - How he was enlisted by a female demon - The Torture and confession - The magical production of snow; turning over a wagon; the witch mark found - Belial gives him a magical book and takes some of his blood - Magical flying and insensibility - Making storms, raising winds, changing into a bear - The mandrake, names and classes of spirits, the attempted suicide and death

25. Isobel Gowdie and the Secret Cult

The secret movement and initiation of Isobel Gowdie - Did she make a voluntary confession? - Her renaming, the ceremony in the parish church - Spells to cause barrenness in land; fertility spells - Stealing crops by magic - Killing children by the use of a clay image - Actual spell-rhymes quoted by Gowdie

26. The Albanian Wizard

How a would-be magician sought the Art - His father’s advice - Travels in India, Persia and beyond - Karogoz reveals the secrets of his power as concentration and discipleship - Definition of a magician - Records of the Albanian’s doings; escape from a brigand, lifting a mountain-top - His training system for mystic power - Living a lifetime in a few seconds - His blending of the attitudes of the East and West

27. Exploits of the Witch-Finder General

Matthew Hopkins, self-appointed “witch finder” - Methods of inducing confessions - Exhaustion, pricking, ducking - The sadism of Hopkins - Witch confessions elicited: wax images, flying, imps, Satan, laming, money, fits - Death of an aged clergyman accused of witchcraft

28. The Devil and King James

The witches try to prevent the royal marriage - James interrogates them personally, writes a book - Dr. Fian the warlock who casts a love-spell - The Earl of Bothwell a black magic suspect; the making of the image to kill the king - Dr. Foreman hired by Lady Essex to procure love by magic - The Overbuy case and the fall of Lord Somerset

29. The Demon of Tedworth

How an itinerant drummer sent poltergeists to plague the Mompesson family

30. The Witches of Sweden

The ripe cult of Mohra and Elf dale - Children recruited in vast numbers; the witch-hysteria - Carried to the sabbat; raising the demon; cataleptic trance - The oddness of the confessions “agreeing in minutest detail” - Riding on sticks, the ointment, ceremonies, revels, obscenity, banquet, spells - The telepathic contact

31. Witches of America

Images and puppets; the question of insanity - The cult leader called “prince” - Fits in children, signing of the devil’s book - Supernatural phenomena; possibility of hypnotic rapport - Red Indian and African influences possible

32. The Witch of Walkern

Jane Wenham and the suggestibility of a primitive community - The Witch and the straw - How a maidservant was bewitched - The strange trial, the evidence and the witnesses - The Witch condemned but saved

33. The Count of Cagliostro

The riddle of his history - His own account of his travels and oriental training - Alchemy, magic, marriage - The elixir of Life; inner spiritual regeneration - How to renew oneself - Adventures in London; the strange affair of the lottery wins - The two necklaces which were decisive in Cagliostro’s life - His address to the Court

34. Francis Barrett

The importance of Barrett as a link between ancient and modern magic - His influence upon Levi, the Theosophists, and others - Spells, charms, Kabbalism, talismans, magnetism and ritual magic advocated and described in The Magus

35. Magicians Today

A present day magician and how he became one - The ceremony of “binding the spirits” - How a wizard may come to believe in the power of magic - The girl in the cinema; an occultist society and its experiments - Black magic, the great uncertainty - The case of Charles Walton; the new witch-cult; the “sacrifice of a baby”

Index

 

 

Book Format:

Octavo, 8.5" tall. Book is bound red cloth with gilt lettering to spine;

Pagination: 270pp;

Condition:

Very good + condition; Boards are in very good + condition with minor rubbing; corners chipped and rubbed; top and bottom of spine slightly frayed; small bookshop sticker to reverse side of front board; rear inner hinge starting but still holding well; interior is excellent with no underlining, marginalia or foxing; Binding is tight.

 

Price: US$70.00

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