🔮 Grimoires & Western Magic
— Francis Barrett, The Magus (1801)
Contents
I · The Grimoire Tradition
The word grimoire derives from the Old French grammaire — a grammar, a book of fundamental rules. This is no accident. Grimoires are not mere spell-books; they are grammars of reality, systematic manuals for understanding the hidden architecture of creation and the operator's place within it. From the Solomonic texts of late antiquity through the medieval Clavicula manuscripts and the Renaissance flowering of ceremonial magic, the grimoire tradition constitutes Western civilization's most sustained attempt to map the relationship between human consciousness and the invisible world.
The core philosophical principle uniting all grimoires is the doctrine of the microcosm: that the human being, created in the image of God, contains within itself a reflection of the entire cosmos. Because the same divine patterns that structure the heavens also structure the human soul, the properly prepared operator can — through purification, knowledge, and will — establish communication with spiritual intelligences and command the forces that govern material reality.
The grimoire lineage flows from several streams: Solomonic magic (attributed to King Solomon's mastery over spirits), Hermetic philosophy (the Egyptian-Greek synthesis of the Corpus Hermeticum), Jewish Kabbalah (the Sephirotic system and angelic hierarchies), and Neoplatonic theurgy (Iamblichus's system of divine ascent through ritual). These traditions converged in the medieval and Renaissance periods, producing a sophisticated system of spiritual technology that was simultaneously condemned by the Church and secretly practiced by its clergy.
Every major grimoire shares a paradox: they claim ancient, often divine origin — Solomon, Enoch, Abraham, Hermes — while existing in manuscripts rarely older than the 13th century. This is not fraud but lineage-consciousness: the authors understood themselves as links in a chain of transmission stretching back to a primordial revelation. The same pattern appears in Kabbalah (attributed to Abraham or Moses), Hermetism (attributed to Thoth-Hermes), and Vedic tradition (the shruti — "what was heard" from the gods).
II · The Key of Solomon
The Clavicula Salomonis — the Key of Solomon — is the foundational text of the entire Western magical tradition. Though the oldest surviving manuscripts date to the late Renaissance, the text claims origin in Solomon's direct reception of divine wisdom. Translated and edited by S. L. MacGregor Mathers from multiple manuscripts in the British Museum (1888), it presents a complete system of ceremonial magic rooted in the belief that God granted humanity the power to communicate with — and command — angelic intelligences.
Solomon's Revelation
Solomon relates that the Angel Homadiel was sent to him by God, bearing the key to all wisdom. This is not knowledge acquired by study but revealed knowledge — a gift of grace contingent upon moral worthiness. Solomon transmits this wisdom to his son Roboam with the solemn charge:
The Guardian Genius
Central to the Key of Solomon is the doctrine that God has assigned to every human being a spirit or genius aligned with that person's elemental temperament. This guardian is not chosen but destined — sealed in the individual's nature from birth:
The system organizes spiritual entities according to planetary hours — each hour of day and night governed by a different planetary intelligence, each planet corresponding to specific operations, metals, colors, and perfumes. This is not arbitrary symbolism but a map of cosmic correspondences: the movements of the celestial bodies reflect patterns operative at every scale of reality.
The Sacred Warning
The text insists repeatedly that this knowledge is not morally neutral. It is power entrusted to humanity by God, and its misuse carries catastrophic consequences:
Yet the complementary truth is equally emphasized — that this power is humanity's birthright. God gave human beings the capacity for angelic communion precisely because they occupy a unique position in creation, partaking of both the divine and the terrestrial:
The Solomonic Principle
Humanity stands at the intersection of heaven and earth. By virtue of being created in the divine image, human beings possess an innate capacity for communion with spiritual intelligences — but this power is activated only through purity of intention and reverence for the sacred. Knowledge without virtue is not merely useless; it is dangerous.
III · The Sacred Magic of Abramelin
The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage is perhaps the most personally compelling text in the grimoire canon. Written as autobiography, it tells the story of Abraham the Jew (born 1362), who spent decades wandering Europe, Egypt, and the Levant in search of genuine magical knowledge, finding mostly charlatans and fragments — until he encountered the aged sage Abra-Melin in the Egyptian desert. The system Abraham received from this master would become the most influential framework for spiritual attainment in Western esotericism.
The Great Work
Mathers' introduction distills the entire Abramelin system into a single luminous sentence:
This is the Great Work — not the acquisition of powers, not the command of spirits, not the transmutation of metals, but the establishment of conscious, living contact with one's own Holy Guardian Angel. Everything else in the system — the command of demons, the production of material effects — is secondary and contingent upon this primary attainment.
The Middle Nature of Man
The Abramelin system rests on a radical anthropology: every human being exists as a middle nature between two opposing spiritual forces. Each person has both a Guardian Angel who seeks their elevation and a Malevolent Demon who seeks their destruction:
This is not dualism in the Manichaean sense — light and dark are not equal. The Guardian Angel is ontologically superior to the Malevolent Demon. Evil spirits are condemned to serve the Initiates of Light. But this hierarchy is only activated through the operator's own effort: six months of rigorous purification — prayer, fasting, moral examination, and progressive withdrawal from worldly entanglement.
Outer purification. Regular prayer at dawn and dusk. Moral reform — abstention from vice, dishonesty, and worldly excess. Begin the practice of self-examination.
Inner intensification. Increase prayer. Begin fasting. Reduce worldly contact. The oratory (prayer space) becomes the center of daily life. Confession and repentance.
The final approach. Maximum intensification of prayer and austerity. Complete withdrawal from distractions. Culminates in the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel and the binding of the demonic forces.
Unbelief: The Fatal Obstacle
Abraham identifies doubt — not sin, not ignorance, not external opposition — as the single greatest obstacle to any spiritual achievement. This insight transcends the grimoire tradition entirely. It appears in Christ's teaching ("According to your faith be it done unto you"), in the Upanishads ("You are what your deep, driving desire is"), and in the Buddhist understanding that mental states literally construct experienced reality. Belief is not passive acceptance; it is the engine of will.
Abramelin's principle that unbelief is the "greatest and most fatal" hindrance resonates across every tradition in this codex. Compare the Quran: "God does not change what is in a people until they change what is in themselves" (13:11). Compare the Hermetic axiom: "As above, so below" — the operator's inner state determines what can manifest. Compare the Yogic shraddha (faith) as the foundation of all practice. The grimoire tradition frames universally: the architecture of your belief is the architecture of your reality.
IV · The Lesser Key of Solomon (Goetia)
The Lemegeton, or Lesser Key of Solomon, is a composite grimoire whose most famous section — the Goetia — catalogues 72 demons allegedly bound by King Solomon. But the text's true significance lies not in its demonological catalogue but in two extraordinary documents: the Preliminary Invocation (also called the Bornless Ritual) and Aleister Crowley's "Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic", which together constitute one of the most remarkable bridges between ancient theurgy and modern psychology.
The Bornless Ritual
The Preliminary Invocation is the most powerful piece of liturgical poetry in the grimoire tradition — a direct address to the Absolute that demands identification with the Uncreated:
Thee that didst create the Earth and the Heavens.
Thee that didst create the Night and the Day.
Thee that didst create the Darkness and the Light.
Thou art Osorronophris: Whom no man hath seen at any time."
The invocation escalates through a series of divine identifications until the operator makes the supreme claim:
I am He! the Truth!
I am He! who hate that evil should be wrought in the World!
I am He! that lighteneth and thundereth!
The Heart Girt with a Serpent is My Name!"
This is not hubris but theurgic identification — the same principle found in the Hindu mahavakya "Aham Brahmasmi" (I am Brahman), in the Hermetic "I am the All," and in the Sufi fana (annihilation of the ego in God). The operator does not claim to be God as a personality but to participate in the divine nature that is the ground of all being — the "Bornless" or uncreated principle that precedes and exceeds all manifestation.
Crowley's Revolutionary Interpretation
In 1904, Aleister Crowley appended to the Goetia a brief essay that fundamentally reframes the entire grimoire tradition. His "Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic" offers a purely psychological reading that neither dismisses the tradition nor takes it at face value:
This is not reductive materialism. Crowley does not say the spirits are "merely" brain states — he says the brain is the medium through which these forces are accessed. The practical implications are revolutionary:
Most remarkably, Crowley reinterprets the grimoire's aggressive language — "to destroy our enemies," "to gain the love of women," "to discover treasure" — as psychological operations:
Crowley's Key: Demons as Psychology
The 72 spirits of the Goetia are 72 aspects of your own consciousness. Their seals are diagrams for activating specific mental faculties. Their names are mantras for regulating brain states. "To destroy enemies" is to dissolve the illusion of separation. "To gain love" is to awaken compassion. The entire apparatus of ceremonial magic is a technology of self-transformation disguised as a technology of external power.
Crowley's psychological interpretation of demons finds precise parallels elsewhere: in Buddhism, the kleshas (afflictive emotions — greed, hatred, delusion) are the "demons" that bind consciousness to suffering. In Jungian psychology, the "shadow" contains projected aspects of the self that appear as external enemies. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna's enemies on the battlefield at Kurukshetra are his own kinsmen — his own attachments. The grimoire tradition, properly understood, arrives at the same insight: your demons are your own.
V · The Magus (Francis Barrett, 1801)
Francis Barrett's The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer is the last great grimoire of the classical tradition and the first of the modern magical revival. Published in London in 1801, it is a compendium and synthesis of the entire Western magical tradition — drawing on Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, the Key of Solomon, and Kabbalistic sources — organized into a coherent three-tier system.
Natural Magic as Complete Knowledge
Barrett insists that magic is not supernatural but hypernatural — it works through Nature, not against her. The magician who understands the hidden sympathies and antipathies that connect all things can produce effects that appear miraculous to the ignorant but are perfectly lawful to those who comprehend the deeper order.
Heaven Within
This declaration — echoing Christ's "the kingdom of heaven is within you," the Hermetic "know thyself," and the Upanishadic "Tat tvam asi" — is Barrett's central thesis. The entire cosmos is inscribed in the human soul. External ritual is not an invocation of alien forces but a systematic method of activating what is already present within.
Stars and Sin
Barrett confronts the charge that astral magic implies determinism — that the stars cause sin. His answer is unequivocal:
The stars influence but do not compel. Evil originates in the human heart, not in celestial mechanics. The wise person can use stellar knowledge for self-mastery precisely because the same patterns operate within as without — but the will remains free.
The Three-Tier System
The study of occult properties in nature: sympathies, antipathies, signatures of plants, stones, and animals. The foundation — knowledge of the material world's hidden connections.
Planetary intelligences, number symbolism, the construction of talismans, astrological timing. The middle tier — harnessing celestial correspondences through constructed images.
The Sephirotic system, angelic hierarchies, divine names, full ceremonial invocations. The summit — direct communion with spiritual intelligences through Kabbalistic frameworks.
The True Magician
Barrett's declaration may shock those who assume magic and Christianity are irreconcilable. But his point is precise: the magician who genuinely understands the principles of creation — sympathy, correspondence, the unity of all things in the divine — is practicing the deepest possible theology. The "truest Christian" is not the one who follows rules but the one who understands the architecture of creation and acts in harmony with it.
VI · Aradia — Gospel of the Witches
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899), collected by Charles Godfrey Leland from a Tuscan informant called "Maddalena," is the most remarkable document of European folk religion to survive the era of persecution. Whether it represents an authentic pre-Christian survival, a medieval syncretic creation, or Leland's own romantic reconstruction (scholars debate all three), its mythology and ritual framework contain themes of extraordinary depth — a complete cosmogony, a theology of the divine feminine, and a social gospel of liberation for the oppressed.
Diana as Primordial Darkness
This is one of the most stunning creation myths in the Western canon. Diana — darkness, the primordial void — precedes all things. She contains everything within herself. Out of her own substance she generates her opposite: Lucifer, not the Christian devil but the Light-Bearer, her twin, her mirror, her beloved. Creation is the self-differentiation of an original unity into complementary polarities — darkness and light, female and male, mother and son.
The Paradox of Descent
When Diana seeks counsel from the primordial spirits — "the fathers of the Beginning, the mothers, the spirits who were before the first spirit" — they reveal the necessary law of spiritual evolution:
This cosmic paradox — that ascent requires descent, that divinity must pass through mortality, that exaltation comes through abasement — is one of the deepest patterns in world religion. It is the logic of Christ's incarnation, of the Bodhisattva's vow to remain in samsara, of the Kabbalistic tzimtzum in which the Infinite contracts to make room for the finite. Diana's voluntary "fall" into form is the precondition for her ultimate sovereignty.
The Spinning Wheel of Destiny
Diana as the spinner of fate — turning the wheel that generates all human destinies — connects the Tuscan goddess with the Greek Moirai (the three Fates who spin, measure, and cut the thread of life), with the Norse Norns, and with the Hindu concept of maya as the cosmic weaving that produces the fabric of experienced reality. Lucifer turns the wheel — light provides the energy, darkness shapes the pattern.
Aradia: Messiah of the Oppressed
Diana sends her daughter Aradia to earth as a teacher and liberator — specifically for the poor, the slaves, the peasants crushed under feudal power:
Aradia is a messianic figure — but her gospel is revolutionary rather than eschatological. She comes not to promise heaven but to empower the oppressed with practical knowledge. The witchcraft she teaches is resistance: resistance to tyranny, to feudal exploitation, to the institutional religion that sanctified social hierarchy. The Sabbat — the monthly gathering of witches at the full moon — is both liturgy and conspiracy:
Leland identified this tradition as "la vecchia religione" — the Old Religion — a pre-Christian stratum of Italian folk practice preserving fragments of Roman, Etruscan, and even more ancient religious consciousness. Whatever its historical accuracy, the text's theological vision — of darkness as the generative ground, of light as its child and complement, of descent as the path to sovereignty — resonates with the deepest currents of the perennial philosophy.
VII · The Witch Trials — Historical Context
The texts in this section are not spiritual sources. They are documents of persecution — the institutional apparatus through which genuine folk traditions, herbal knowledge, and remnants of pre-Christian religion were systematically destroyed across three centuries. They are included here as critical historical context: to understand the grimoire tradition, one must understand the forces that sought to annihilate it.
Malleus Maleficarum (1487)
The Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of Witches"), written by Dominican inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, is the most infamous manual of persecution in European history. It provides theological justification for witch-hunting, detailed methods for identifying witches through interrogation and torture, and legal procedures for trial and execution. Its three-part structure — theological arguments for the reality of witchcraft, methods witches allegedly employed, and judicial procedures for prosecution — created a self-reinforcing system in which accusation was tantamount to conviction.
The Malleus reveals how the Church absorbed, inverted, and weaponized elements of the very traditions it sought to destroy. The wise woman's herbal knowledge became "poisoning"; ecstatic trance became "demonic possession"; the practice of hedge-magic became "pact with the Devil." The text is a mirror-image of the grimoire tradition — the same cosmology of spirits and powers, but wielded as an instrument of social control rather than individual liberation.
The Discovery of Witches (1612)
Thomas Potts' account of the Pendle witch trials in Lancashire offers a ground-level view of how witch persecution operated in practice. The Pendle trials demonstrate the social mechanics of accusation: poverty, isolation, local feuds, and the vulnerability of elderly women living on the margins of village society. What the authorities called "witchcraft" was often traditional healing, folk divination, and the social power of feared reputation.
Wonders of the Invisible World (1692)
Cotton Mather's account of the Salem witch trials represents the final flowering of organized witch persecution in the English-speaking world. Mather's text is simultaneously a work of genuine theological conviction and a document of collective psychosis — the belief that New England was under coordinated spiritual assault by the forces of Satan. The Salem trials demonstrated that even in the rationalist atmosphere of the late 17th century, the apparatus of persecution could be activated with devastating speed when social stress, theological anxiety, and institutional power converged.
The systematic destruction of folk wisdom traditions is not unique to Christian Europe. The burning of the Library of Alexandria, the Qin dynasty's burning of books and burying of scholars, the Islamic destruction of "idolatrous" texts, the Roman suppression of the Druids, the persecution of Gnostics, Cathars, and Sufis — all follow the same pattern: centralized institutional power seeks to eliminate decentralized spiritual knowledge. What is lost is not just texts but entire lineages of practice and understanding.
VIII · Folk Magic & the Old Religion
The grimoire tradition represents the "high" ceremonial current of Western magic — learned, literate, drawing on Latin, Hebrew, and Greek sources. But alongside it ran a "low" current of folk magic — the practical, oral, largely illiterate tradition of village cunning-folk, wise women, herbalists, and diviners. The historical surveys in our corpus document the continuity of these practices from pre-Christian times through the medieval period and beyond.
The Book of Witches (Oliver Madox Hueffer)
Hueffer's survey traces the figure of the witch from classical antiquity — the pharmakis of Greek literature, Medea and Circe — through the medieval period. His central argument is that "witchcraft" was never a single phenomenon but a label applied by successive authorities to a shifting range of practices: herbal medicine, weather divination, midwifery, love charms, and the remnants of pagan ritual. The "witch" was defined not by what she did but by who had the power to name her.
Magic and Witchcraft (George Moir)
Moir's historical analysis reveals the deep connections between "legitimate" Renaissance magic — Ficino, Pico, Agrippa — and the folk practices condemned as witchcraft. Both drew on the same cosmological assumptions (sympathetic magic, stellar influence, the animation of nature by spiritual forces), but the learned magician operated under institutional protection while the village practitioner did not. The distinction between "magic" and "witchcraft" was ultimately a distinction of social class.
Witch, Warlock, and Magician (W. H. Adams)
Adams provides the most comprehensive historical survey, documenting practices from ancient Egypt and Chaldea through medieval and early modern Europe. His work emphasizes the continuity of magical practice across the supposed rupture of Christianization — the same charms, the same techniques, the same worldview persisting under thin Christian overlay. Holy water replaced lustral water; saints replaced protective spirits; the Mass itself, with its transubstantiation of bread and wine into flesh and blood, operated on the same logic as sympathetic magic.
The Unbroken Stream
Folk magic was never eliminated — only driven underground. The same practices that pre-Christian priests performed openly, medieval cunning-folk performed clandestinely, and modern practitioners revive consciously. The grimoire tradition and the folk tradition are two branches of a single tree: the ancient human conviction that consciousness participates in the structure of reality and can influence it through knowledge, will, and symbol.
IX · The Guardian Angel System
The most profound insight shared across the grimoire texts is the doctrine of the personal divine guide — a spiritual intelligence specifically assigned to each individual, accessible through purification and practice. This concept appears with remarkable consistency across traditions that had no direct contact with one another.
The HGA is the individual's personal link to the divine. Attaining "knowledge and conversation" with it is the Great Work — the supreme magical operation. All other powers flow from this primary contact.
The maggid is a celestial teacher or angelic voice that communicates divine wisdom to the prepared mystic. Rabbi Joseph Karo, author of the Shulchan Aruch, recorded extensive conversations with his maggid.
Socrates' daimonion — his inner divine voice that warned him against wrong action — is the classical Greek expression. The daimon is not a demon but a guardian spirit, one's "divine portion."
Each person's fitrah — innate nature oriented toward God — is complemented by both a guardian angel and a qareen (companion jinn). The Abramelin duality of angel and demon is precisely mirrored.
The ishta-devata — one's "chosen deity" — is the personal face of the Absolute through which the devotee achieves realization. Like the HGA, it is not external but the divine as it manifests through the individual's unique nature.
The fravashi is the pre-existent guardian spirit that accompanies each soul. It exists before birth and survives after death — the eternal prototype of which the earthly person is a temporal expression.
Six traditions — Abramelin, Kabbalistic, Greek, Islamic, Hindu, Zoroastrian — independently arrive at the same architecture: each person has a personal divine guide, accessible through purification, which represents the individual's specific link to the universal. This is not borrowed influence but convergent discovery — different traditions mapping the same territory of human spiritual experience and finding the same structure.
X · Cross-Tradition Parallels
| Theme | Grimoire Tradition | Parallel Traditions |
|---|---|---|
| Microcosm / Macrocosm | Barrett: "We carry a heaven in ourselves"; Key of Solomon: man as participator of Divine and Terrestrial | Hermetism: "As above, so below"; Kabbalah: Adam Kadmon contains all Sephiroth; Hinduism: Atman-Brahman identity |
| Guardian Angel / Personal Guide | Abramelin: Holy Guardian Angel; Key of Solomon: guardian genius | Zoroastrian fravashi; Greek daimon; Islamic qareen/fitrah; Hindu ishta-devata; Kabbalistic maggid |
| Planetary / Celestial Magic | Key of Solomon: planetary hours; Barrett: celestial intelligences | Mesopotamian: seven planetary gods; Hindu: navagraha (nine planets); Kabbalistic: seven lower Sephiroth |
| Demons as Psychology | Crowley: "spirits of Goetia are portions of the human brain" | Buddhist kleshas (afflictive emotions); Jungian shadow; Sufi nafs (ego-states) |
| Divine Feminine | Aradia: Diana as primordial darkness containing all things | Egyptian Isis; Hindu Shakti; Kabbalistic Shekhinah; Gnostic Sophia |
| Persecution of Wisdom | Malleus Maleficarum; Pendle; Salem | Gnostic persecution; Library of Alexandria; Qin book-burnings; suppression of Druids |
| "The Bornless One" | Goetia: identification with the uncreated principle | Kabbalistic Ain Sof (Without End); Hindu Brahman (without attributes); Buddhist sunyata (emptiness); Taoist Wu |
| Purification System | Abramelin: 6 months' progressive purification | Kabbalistic: counting the Omer; Yogic: yama-niyama; Islamic: Ramadan + hajj; Christian: Lenten disciplines |
XI · Practical Grimoire Wisdom
The grimoire tradition, stripped of its historical apparatus and ceremonial complexity, yields eight principles of enduring practical value:
The Guardian Angel Operation
The supreme work is not acquiring powers but establishing conscious contact with your higher self — the intelligence that knows your deepest nature and purpose. Every spiritual tradition acknowledges this guide. Seek it through sincerity, purification, and persistent practice. All other attainments follow from this primary contact.
The Middle Nature
You stand between angel and demon — between your highest potential and your most destructive impulses. This is not a curse but a privilege: the freedom to choose. Neither force compels you. Your position between them is precisely what makes growth possible. "Man is a middle nature between Angels and Demons" — and the middle is where transformation occurs.
Belief as Foundation
"Of all hindrances to Magical action, the very greatest and most fatal is unbelief." This is not a call to blind faith but a recognition that conviction activates will, and will is the fundamental instrument of all achievement — magical, spiritual, or mundane. Doubt does not protect; it paralyzes. Commit fully, and correct course as you learn.
Crowley's Key
"The spirits of the Goetia are portions of the human brain." Your external enemies are projections of internal conflicts. Your "demons" are aspects of your own consciousness that you have not yet integrated. The work of "binding spirits" is the work of self-mastery. To destroy your enemies is to dissolve the illusion of separation, to excite compassion.
Diana's Paradox
"To rise she must fall." Every genuine ascent requires a prior descent — into the shadow, into the body, into the darkness of not-knowing. The goddess who would rule the heavens must first become mortal. The saint who would transcend the ego must first fully inhabit it. Do not fear the downward movement; it is the coiling of the spring.
The Wheel of Fate
"She spun the lives of all men; all things were spun from the wheel of Diana." You are not merely subject to fate — you participate in its spinning. The grimoire tradition's deepest promise is that consciousness is not passive before destiny but actively involved in shaping it. Learn the art of the wheel. Spin consciously.
The Bornless Invocation
"I am He! the Bornless Spirit!" Identify with the eternal, not the temporary. Your personality, your name, your circumstances — these are garments. The wearer is uncreated, unbounded, "having sight in the feet" — grounded in embodiment yet infinite in nature. Practice identifying with the Bornless One: that which was never born and cannot die.
The True Magician
"The true magician is the truest Christian, and nearest disciple of our blessed Lord." Barrett's point transcends Christianity: the true practitioner of any path is the one who comprehends the architecture of reality and acts in harmony with it. The "truest servant of truth" is the one who combines knowledge with compassion, power with humility, mastery with reverence.
XII · Key Quotations
Source Library
Grimoires
- Book of Abramelin — Abraham the Jew, trans. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1900)
- Key of Solomon — Clavicula Salomonis, trans. S. L. MacGregor Mathers (1888)
- Lesser Key of Solomon (Goetia) — trans. Mathers, ed. Crowley (1904)
- The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer — Francis Barrett (1801)
Witchcraft & Folk Magic
- Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches — Charles G. Leland (1899)
- Malleus Maleficarum — Kramer & Sprenger, trans. Summers (1487/1928)
- The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches (Pendle Trials) — Thomas Potts (1613)
- The Book of Witches — Oliver Madox Hueffer
- Magic and Witchcraft — George Moir
- Witch, Warlock, and Magician — W. H. Adams
- Wonders of the Invisible World (Salem Trials) — Cotton Mather (1693)