This article was co-researched and co-authored by digital library specialist Elizabeth Gettins, who also had the brilliant idea for the article.
You are reading: Real ancient spell books
an ancient tome that delves into the dark arts of witchcraft and magic…a book of doom…but it lives…in the library of congress.
you’re forgiven if you think we’re talking about h.p. lovecraft’s fictional book of magic, “necronomicon”, the basis for the plot of “the evil dead” movies, or something harry potter might have found in dark arts class at hogwarts.
but, as halloween darkness descends, we’re not kidding. A first edition of “The Discovery of Witchcraft,” Reginald Scott’s shocking 1584 book that outraged King James I, survives at his favorite National Library in the Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room. (The library has a copy of the original edition, as well as an edition from 1651.)
See Also: The best fiction of 2017 | Best books of the year | The Guardian
It is believed to be the first published book on witchcraft in English and extremely influential in the practice of stage magic. shakespeare probably researched it for the witch scene in “macbeth”. it was consulted and plagiarized by theater magicians for hundreds of years. today, you can read the dark secrets of him online. how could your evil little fingers resist? Scott promises to reveal “lewd dealings of witches and warlocks”! the “stinking practices of the Pythonists”! the “virtue and power of natural magic”!
also juggling.
is one of the seminal examples of a grimoire, a textbook on magic, innovative for its time and almost encyclopedic in its information. Scot’s research included consulting dozens of earlier thinkers on various subjects including the occult, science, and magic, including Agrippa von Nettesheim’s “de occulta philosophia” in 1531 and John Dee’s “monas hieroglyphica” in 1564. The result is a most impressive compendium.
But scot wasn’t lurking in a hooded cloak, looking for eyes of newts and toes of frogs to cast a spell on mortals. As a skeptic, he wrote to make it clear that “witches” were not evil, but rather resourceful and capable women who practiced the art of folk healing and sleight of hand. his seemingly miraculous feats were not bad by any means. he wrote, “to this day it is indifferent to say in English, ‘she is a witch’ or ‘she is a wise woman.'”
Born in 1538 in Kent under Henry VIII, Scotsman was a landowner. he was educated and a member of parliament. he admired, and it is possible that he joined the family of love, a small sect made up of elites who discarded the main Christian religions in favor of attaining spiritual enlightenment through love for all. By publishing “witchcraft”, he intended to expose it as superstition, hoping to improve England by passing on knowledge. Given that most of the people who were charged, and often hanged, were impoverished women on the fringes of society, he hoped to generate social empathy for them and other scapegoats.
He also hoped to dispel the common belief in magic tricks performed on stage to gaping audiences. To do this, he investigated and explained how magicians performed their illusions. beheadings? see the diagrams!
how do you look like “they stick an awl (needle) in your head” and survive? see page 280!
See Also: Frequently Asked Questions – The Tolkien Society
This noble effort, as the children say, went to the left.
The book was criticized by the religious faithful, according to “Reception to Reginald Scott’s Discovery of Witchcraft: Witchcraft, Magic and Radical Religion”, a study by s.f. Davies in The Journal of the History of Ideas, published 2013. The King of Scotland, James VI, was outraged. like many of his subjects, he was convinced that witches were working in conjunction with the devil. he thought a coven of witches was trying to kill him. He published “Daemonologie” in 1597, in part to refute Scott’s work. He also became King James I of England in 1603. There is a legend that he ordered all copies of the Book of Scot to be burned, but the historical record is silent on this. Still, it’s clear, James, I hated the book. at the time there was growing concern that the use of so-called magic by women was contrary to the goals of the state and church. Therefore, James sought to strike fear into female communities and spoke directly against witches and their perceived occultism.
“Almost every English writer who subsequently wrote on the subject of witchcraft mentioned Scott disparagingly,” Davies writes of the period. Scotsman died 1599; the book was not republished during his lifetime. There was an abridged Dutch translation published in 1609, Davies notes, but it wasn’t republished in England until 1651, nearly three-quarters of a century after its initial publication.
Still, the book survived, “it was mined as a source on witchcraft and folklore”, and its material on practical magic and sleight of hand “found a wide audience”, Davies writes. for scot’s original purposes, that was not good. Instead of discrediting stage magic for the masses as he hoped, “Discoverie” became a manual for magicians in Europe and America, well into the 17th and 18th centuries. Famous works such as “Hocus Pocus” and “The Oracle of the Juggler” were based heavily on “witchcraft”, thus spreading the very mysteries that Scot hoped to quell. davies: “[i]ve traveled in directions that scot himself could never have imagined.”
Today, 435 years after its publication, the book sits on the shelf, silent, patient, having done the job its author didn’t want it to do. it’s almost as if… the thing had a curse on it.
subscribe to the blog, it’s free! — and the largest library in world history will send engaging stories straight to your inbox.
See Also: 35 Sweet Picture Books About Friendships