Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 6 The Tentieth Century [Paperback]

The roots of European witchcraft and magic lie in Hebrew and other ancient Near Eastern cultures and in the Celtic, Nordic, and Germanic traditions of the Continent. For two millennia, European folklore and ritual have been imbued with the belief in the supernatural, yielding a rich trove of histories and images.

A series that combines traditional approaches of political, legal, and social historians with critical syntheses of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe provides a modern, scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present day. Each of the six volumes in the series contains the work of distinguished scholars chosen for their expertise in a particular era or region.

Witchcraft today continues to play a role in European societies and imaginations. This concluding volume includes a major new history of the origins and development of English Wicca and an account of the circumstances in which the term 'Satanist' has been used to label individuals or groups. The widespread prevalence of such phenomena proves the contemporary reality of beliefs in witchcraft and its threats.

Other volumes in the series Witchcraft and Magic in Europe:
Ancient Greece and Rome
The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Biblical and Pagan Societies
The Middle Ages
The Period of the Witch Trials

Modern Pagan Witchcraft
—Ronald Hutton
Satanism and Satanic Abuse Mythology
—Jean LaFontaine
The Witch, her Victim, the Unwitcher and the Researcher: The Continued Existence of Traditional Witchcraft
—Willem DeBlecourt

Although the volumes are intended mainly for scholars, there is much in them to interest the common reader. —New Yorker

Topics include modern pagan witchcraft, Satanism, and the continued existence of traditional witchcraft.