News

As we say farewell (or good riddance) to the 2010s and prepare to enter the twenties- which I hope will be filled with flappers and art deco- it is time to release the final work of the decade. I literally got the idea a couple days ago when the news broke about the usual miscreants of the furthest "left" whining about extremist hand signals among army navy cadets- a tale told...

This book is an excellent primer on the Salem Witch Trials- it contains mostly a slew of primary source documents; letters from the era, trial proceedings, and- at the end- the culminating document which ended the era for good, namely the recanting and apology of the jury involved for having condemned innocent people to death. While I have strong opinions on the subject of why the...

This little work is quite nice, and comprises two sections; a longer one that is a verbatim reprint of a 17th century witch trial, and second to that a short appendix with a few notations about the subject at large. I have decided to leave it in its original 19th century reprint form, with regards to the proceedings, which of course are in 17th century old English, archaic terms...

This small work is a compilation text and combines multiple sections each containing a primary source on various instances of persecution related to the witch trials. Burrs' work does not contain all of these pieces of lore verbatim- several of the longer sections are truncated and one omits passages from a lengthier manuscript. It is nonetheless of great use to those studying the...

I figured now was a great time to pitch a few of the edited works I've released since it seems we have entered another burning times in which allegation and presumption and emotion are superior to evidence, logic, reason, and enlightenment. While this is sad and means innocent people will suffer, it is hardly unprecedented even in modernity- remember that even extremely modern eras have been...

This interesting little volume is roughly similar in some ways to the Book of Forbidden Knowledge (which became and has remained one of my top selling titles.) It is a mix of different lore, delivered from a skeptical-but-not-atheistic position on subjects ranging from the divining rod (dowsing), to omens and apparitions, and the Salem Witch Trials- this last is covered in some...

This work is Rydberg's finest- an academic compilation of subjects ranging from a treatment of the burning times, and of religious philosophy (dualism, specifically) to short passages on some cryptids of note, to various meanderings through the high ritual magick and alchemy of the era spoken of. Clearly hostile to Catholic lore, Rydberg manages to choke back his disdain of that...

This fine work is the culmination of a great deal of study by John Taylor in the middle of the 19th century. As with many works from the period, it both lambastes prior christian populations for their superstition while exonerating them partly on the basis that their interpretation of christian dogma was, first, misled by the authorities of their age and, second, that this was...

And now at last we come to a great milestone in the catalog of works I have authored or edited; the 100th occult release (counting a half a dozen of my own works) and the first herbal/homeopathic work here, technically speaking; the very good "Witches Pharmacopoeia" by Robert Fletcher, who combines the Shakespearean with the burning times herbal and cauldron-stirring lore

This...

"Magic Plants" is not an herbal, strictly speaking, although it treats on the use of herbs in a sorcerous context in some primary sources it lists. Rather, it is a general treatise on the philosophy behind such use within the context of natural magic.

Translated from "De Vegetabilis Magicis" by Goldsmid in the mid 1800s, it is a dense little work, which, in its appendix, adds a...

This short tract is one of the more interesting looks at the Salem Witch Trials that I have seen. Not only does it openly defend Cotton Mather (usually saddled with a significant proportion of the blame for the witch hysteria there) but does so with enough persuasion that over a century after its authorship I found myself at least partly convinced that perhaps Mather really wasn't...

This is one of the best single works of witch-and-demon lore ever created; dating to the end of the Enlightenment it is partially historical, partially philosophical, and is perhaps the most important work from Walter Scott, who himself is one of the most important literary figures of his era. This work is a compilation of ten letters written by Scott on the subject, intricately...