One Friday night in the city of Melbourne, aspiring concert pianist Ella Wentworth mesmerizes an audience of eight hundred people. Yet she's distraught; she missed a note, and her perfectionism consumes her. Moments later, her hair turns arctic white, and her world descends into Disneyesque hallucinations where everyday objects appear to sparkle, levitate, and...flash mob. Ella is referred to Dr Kendra Hamilton, who specializes in treatment for “post-traumatic stress in cases of trauma-induced spontaneous hair depigmentation.” But with Dr Hamilton's tennis player grip and capacity to draw bolts of energy from the sky, Ella believes there's more to this psychiatrist's credentials than MD. What does this mental health professional mean by “you're a witch?” Unfortunately, everyone but Ella is frothing about her rare magic skills, and soon she becomes the target of nefarious beings. And all this magical hoo-ha unfolds behind the backs of her husband and daughter. Max is Ella's sweetheart whom she would never (normally) lie to. But any day now, she'll confess she's a witch. Right? Right? The Magic Investigations Society Archive is a genre-bending cozy mystery series filled with paranormal fantasy adventure.

On Wednesday 14 February 1945, the body of Charles Walton was discovered on the lower slopes of Meon Hill near the sleepy Warwickshire village of Lower Quinton, his torso pinned to the ground by a pitchfork. Myths and rumours soon swirled about the crime. Accounts claim Walton, a retired labourer and a lifelong resident of Lower Quinton, was believed by many to be a clairvoyant who could talk to birds and exercise control over animals. It has even been reported that many villagers attributed Walton's death to ritual witchcraft. But what is fact and what is fiction? The most famous police officer in Britain, Chief Inspector Robert Fabian, was promptly dispatched by Scotland Yard to solve this increasingly peculiar and foreboding mystery. 'Fabian of the Yard' was not a man prone to superstition and had dealt with some of the most notorious killers of his time – but there was something strange about the Walton murder. Did the clues point to ritual witchcraft as the modus operandi, or was the black magic angle merely a ruse? With the villagers unable – or unwilling – to shed light on the matter, Fabian faced, for the only time in his glittering career, the daunting prospect of failure. The Case That Foiled Fabian lays out for the first time what actually happened and distills the truth from the many myths about this case that are today mistaken for facts.

This collection of pamphlets describes fifteen English witchcraft cases in detail, vividly recreating events to give the reader the illusion of actually being present at witchcraft accusations, trials and hangings. But how much are we victims of literary manipulation by these texts? The pamphlets are presented in annotated format, to allow the reader to decide. Some of the texts appear in print for the first time in three centuries, whilst others are newly edited to give a clearer picture of sources.

Witchcraft continues to play a role in the modern European imagination and in its cultures. This book brings together studies of its most important modern manifestations. The volume includes a major new history of the origins and development of English 'Wicca', an account of satanic abuse mythology in the Twentieth Century and a survey of the continued existence of traditional witchcraft.

The definitive compilation on witchcraft and witch hunting in the early modern era exploring significant people, places, beliefs, and events. Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition is the definitive reference on the age of witch hunting (approximately 1430–1750), its origins, expansion, and ultimate decline. Incorporating a wealth of recent scholarship in four richly illustrated, alphabetically organized volumes, it offers historians and general readers alike the opportunity to explore the realities behind the legends of witchcraft and witchcraft trials. Over 170 contributors from 28 nations provide vivid, documented descriptions and analyses of witchcraft trials and locations, folklore and beliefs, magical practices and deities, influential texts, and the full range of players in this extraordinary drama—witchcraft theorists and theologians; historians and authors; judges, clergy, and rulers; the accused; and their persecutors. Concentrating on Europe and the Americas in the early modern era, the work also covers relevant topics from the ancient Near East (including the Hebrew and Christian Bibles), classical antiquity, and the European Middle Ages.

An Exploration of the Traditional Witchcraft Coven, its Organization and Rituals, including Initiations, Rites of Passage, Magical and Social practices. The truth is, “Old” Gerald B. Gardner had little interest in how the Traditional Witchcraft Coven had been organized and structured. So apart from an example of how it should not be done, he passed on little information about how it was meant to be organized. That knowledge of how best to organize and structure a modern Coven has had to be reclaimed from the old records and by trial and error. So too the social Rites of Passage; those of birth, marriage and death that were all long since appropriated by the religious authorities have likewise needed to be restored. As too the traditional forms of Coven Magic and Healings, whilst still keeping Witchcraft ever the religion of Dance, Fun and Mirth. After all, who said that religion is not to be enjoyed? A Witches’ Canon, Part 1, provides a fact-based referenced guide for those wishing to further explore the Religion and Celebratory Rituals of Traditional Wicca. A Witches’ Canon, Part 2, has been written to provide a practical, referenced guide to the social aspects of Traditional Wicca; of Coven Organization, Initiations, Rites and Rituals. A Witches’ Canon, Part 3, is a fact-based referenced guide to the practice of Magical Witchcraft, both nice and naughty. If it isn’t fun, then it ain’t worth doing.

Why does an entire society believe that there are witches who must be burned? What roles did the emerging 'state', the professions of clerics and jurists, and the public involved play in each case? And how could this project be completed? From a sociological point of view, the findings of recent international research on witches provide a model of a more general, highly ambivalent, 'pastoral' attitude, according to which a shepherd has to care for the welfare of his flock as well as for its erring sheep. The first main part describes the clerical initial situation, which developed the 'Dominican' demonological model of witchcraft on the basis of the still dominant magico-religious mentality in the 15th century. A model, according to the second part of the book, which then in the course of the 16th century in Western Europe increasingly fell into the hands of the not so innocent jurists. From there it developed into a legal witch persecution that realized the early European witch model from the village witch to the mass persecutions to the late child witches. The third part describes how witch persecutions slowly became less important towards the end of the 17th century as a general witchcraft 'politics' game in the transition from a confessional state to a (court) 'civil service' state.