Popular Witchcraft: Straight from the Witch’s Mouth (review)

Abstract

<p>This book, a revised second edition, appears under the imprimatur (one hopes not the nihil obstat) of the University of Wisconsin Press, which recently acquired the Popular Press line in which the book first appeared in 1972. The updating for the 2004 edition was surely not difficult. Since the book has no real structure or argument, snippets of new information, mainly references to Mel Gisbon’s film The Passion of the Christ or the Harry Potter books, could simply be tossed into the mix. None of the vast scholarship on witchcraft that has appeared in the last thirty years is taken into account, but then, the first edition did not reference any real scholarship either.</p>