When Rainer Decker was researching a sensational seventeenth-century German witchcraft trial, he discovered, much to his surprise, that in this case the papacy functioned as a force of skepticism and restraint. His curiosity piqued, he tried unsuccessfully to gain access to a secret Vatican archive housing the records of the Roman Inquisition that had been sealed to outsiders from its sixteenth-century beginnings. In 1996 Decker was one of the first of a small group of scholars allowed access. Originally published as Die Papste und die Hexen, Witchcraft and the Papacy is based on these newly available materials and traces the role of the papacy in witchcraft prosecutions from medieval times to the eighteenth century. Decker found that although the medieval church did lay the foundation for witch hunts of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, the post-medieval papacy, and the Roman and Spanish Inquisitions, played the same kind of skeptical, restraining role during the height of the witch-hunting frenzy in Germany and elsewhere in Europe as it had in the trial that was the initial focus of his research. Witchcraft and the Papacy overturns a large body of scholarship that confuses the medieval papacy with its markedly skeptical successors, and that mistakenly portrays the papacy as fanning rather than quelling the flames of the witchcraft mania sweeping northern Europe from the mid-sixteenth century onward.|Based on newly available materials, this traces the role of the papacy in witchcraft prosecutions from medieval times to the eighteenth century. Decker contends that the post-medieval papacy played a restraining role at the height of the witch-hunting frenzy

Edward Poeton's The Winnowing of White Witchcraft was written in the 1630s and has never been printed. Poeton, a physician, was one of few non-clergymen to write about magic during the early modern period, and the treatise offers new insights into the problem of popular errors concerning the nature of witchcraft. As well as advancing a number of standard and not-so-standard arguments for the sinfulness of white witches, the treatise offers fascinating insight into Poeton's practice as a physician and his own youthful dalliance with magic. It is thus a significant new source in the history of early modern medicine and witchcraft belief. This edition includes an introduction and explanatory notes. Edited with an introduction and notes by Simon F. Davies

Featuring more spells, group rituals, new stones, and much more, The Second Book of Crystal Spells provides many creative ways to advance your magical practice to the next level. Building on her first book of crystal spells, author Ember Grant presents a companion guide that explores new territories of magic. Learn how to use a variety of magical tools, including Himalayan salt lamps, hag stones, and natural wands; discover an array of tarot spells and rituals for sabbats and esbats. Enhance your knowledge of esoteric topics with tarot card and crystal combinations, elemental spells, and quartz point grids. With an easy-to-follow format and in-depth knowledge on an expansive array of crystals, this remarkable guide will make you a crystal magic expert.

Money, magic and the theatre were powerful forces in early modern England. Money was acquiring an independent, efficacious agency, as the growth of usury allowed financial signs to reproduce without human intervention. Magic was coming to seem Satanic, as the manipulation of magical signs to performative purposes was criminalized in the great 'witch craze.' And the commercial, public theatre was emerging - to great controversy - as the perfect medium to display, analyse and evaluate the newly autonomous power of representation in its financial, magical and aesthetic forms. Money and Magic in Early Modern Drama is especially timely in the current era of financial deregulation and derivatives, which are just as mysterious and occult in their operations as the germinal finance of 16th-century London. Chapters examine the convergence of money and magic in a wide range of early modern drama, from the anonymous Mankind through Christopher Marlowe to Ben Jonson, concentrating on such plays as The Alchemist, The New Inn and The Staple of News. Several focus on Shakespeare, whose analysis of the relations between finance, witchcraft and theatricality is particularly acute in Timon of Athens, The Comedy of Errors, Antony and Cleopatra and The Winter's Tale.