THE SHREVEPORT TIMES

Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.A.

25 October 1959

(page 4-F)

BOOKS.

Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Demonology

An Important Contribution to Literature.

The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, by Rossell Hope Robbins (Crown Publishers, Inc., 557 Pp. and Bibliography, $7.50).

A most outstanding contribution to the history of demonology and witchcraft—easily the most outstanding since publication of H. C. Lea’s “Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft” in the 1957 general edition—is this “Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology,” written by Rossell Hope Robbins and published by Crown Publishers, Inc.

Dr. Robbins, a well-known scholar and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, ranges wide in this massive volume, and there is little in the literature that escapes him. The book traces the history and legend of witchcraft and demonology from medieval times through the 18th Century. Included are articles about the witches’ sabbat and pact, night flight, metamorphosis, incubi and succubus, the witch trials, werewolves and vampires, devils, demonical possession and exorcism, poltergeists, the classical demonologists, the accusation and torture of witches, and a host of other relevant subjects.

The volume is especially valuable because of the inclusion of numerous rare documents and of hundreds of pictures, many of them reproduced for the first time in several centuries.

As with any volume of encyclopedic nature, it is possible to criticize the omissions. For example, the classifications of varieties of devils are, and the list of hierarchy of devils are, as the author admits, arbitrarily selected, and other, far more extensive groupings are absent from the book. Gaule’s listing of the forms of divination, reproduced in the Encyclopedia, is also far from complete.

One further complaint might be made about the absence in the volume of biographical data concerning such individuals as Eliphas Levi, Aleister Crowley, Montague Summers, Mathers [MacGregor Mathers], Huysmanns, and others, either referred to only in passing or neglected altogether. In all, it is a pity that Dr. Robbins did not choose to bring his encyclopedia up into the present century—for it is simply not true that witchcraft and demonology experienced their “last eruptions” in the 18th Century.

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