Two writers, eighty years apart, each printed the method and each refused to print the words.
What this is
Scot was no magician. He was a Kentish gentleman who wrote The Discoverie of Witchcraft to argue that witchcraft was fraud, and that the women being hanged for it were innocent of anything but poverty.
His method was to print the charms in full, so readers could see the wax and the thread and judge for themselves. It failed in its own century. It is the reason any of this survives.
He took this one from Johann Weyer's De Praestigiis Daemonum of 1563. Neither man was willing to print all of it.
What the text was understood to do
To injure or kill a named person by working upon an image made in their name.
A note before the text. What follows is a historical document and a reading of it. It is recorded, not recommended.
The text, the reading of it, and where to find it.
The passage as Reginald Scot printed it in 1584, quoted in full and unaltered; the same passage in modern English; how the working was put together and what each part of it was for; the commentary; and the book, chapter and page it stands on.
See the Inner CircleEverything above this line is yours to read. Already a member? Sign in.