A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural

by Maurice Bessy, Margaret Crosland (translator), Alan Daventry (translator)

A collection of illustrations and photographs describing magic and supernatural occurrences throughout history

Genres: Nonfiction, Occult, Witchcraft, Magic, Art, Paranormal, Reference

317 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1961

Reviews

[Cecilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on the age and time and layout of this pictorial book about the obscure corners of the human mind, voodoo, black and white magic, withcraft - sabbaths and saturnalia - and of course witchhunts, journeys of death, "demons of all sorts", hatha yoga and ancient or weird murder rituals, it was a pretty damn fine book. Cool pictures. No dust jacket for this fella, might have had one once. The cover is the best, you love having a book that looks like that between your hands. Mine was slightly different from the picture above - mine was a big black book with a pentragram hiding a goat inside of it on the cover and dated 1963 in the colophon. Gloom and doom hovers. It is as the title gives away a book with 317 pictures with a short text to each picture. Go fecth it if you want a look into the fear and darkness of the 60's - quite cute, quite laughable if you have a cynical satiric mind. If you are just interested in some weird shit, weird pictures, go fecth it too, it's pretty cool dude.
The book is not as badass as it looks like and the tendency shows that the authors couldn't keep a straight face. 60's judgy on dark forces. Go read it you know you wanna if you're already here.

[Michael Roop · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a pretty cool book. It's really interesting, yet really outdated.....wait. Scratch that. The book starts out in prehistoric times and moves up to as modern history as the edition I have gets, which is 1966. The copy I have is old and worn out. Well loved. No dust jacket...if it's even supposed to have one. All of that adds to the gravity of the book. It's very pictoral history laden, with alot of detailed information in it about the various cultures and places where the images where taken from. This is a thinking mans book. A book for someone who really wants to learn the down and dirty details through the ages. I can't sing enough praises for this book. Right when you think you know alot about a certain topic a book from the past will come along and show you that you really don't know anything at all, punk kid.

[Dominique · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great formatting accompanied by great images. Sadly, the descriptions of said images and/or rituals are not very thorough and details identifying the actual prints are missing (so good luck finding them on google). The introduction also hints at pseudo-academia (the author describes what "the churchmen call 'God', philosophers 'laws', moralists 'precepts' and scientists 'nature'" as being identical not only among themselves but also to what occultists call "'intuition' or 'understanding'". As a person with a degree in philosophy I can tell you that this is, of course, absolute bullshit). In general, beautiful but uninformative. Useless as a reference text for a more serious study.

[Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have the 1970 edition of this book. I love it! Keeping in mind how old this book is and when it was originally published (1964), this book is a great addition to any magickal, historical, spiritual or paranormal collection! It's captivating!

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

the best book for getting a wide variety of images and different occult subjects. first saw this book at a friends house, then had to search for it online. after finding a great copy, lost it when a storage shed got repossessed. i have mourned over the loss of and cant wait to replace it.

[Mckinley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Black and white photos and illustrations. Brief overviews.