Magic and Witchcraft

Lucifer pays his recruits in tin sixpences, pulls witches’ spits from beneath them, and gets soundly thrashed by honest people. George Moir’s tour of the infernal court begins as a joke—but doesn’t stay one.

Writing in the mid-19th century, Moir surveys the lore of magic and witchcraft through a German church-counsellor’s fantastical guide to hell, where demons bicker over rank and the devil makes a poor impression as monarch. The absurd portraits invite a laugh, until Moir traces the darker consequence: belief in witchcraft took hold of whole societies, sending the learned and the innocent to the stake and scaffold. How did wild stories of spirits become a delusion powerful enough to turn fear into persecution?

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