The Witch-Cult In Western Europe. A Study In Anthropology Murray, Margaret Alice

First edition, 303[1] p, untrimmed, light foxing to endpapers and half-title, original green cloth, gilt lettering to spine, in bright near-fine condition, the cloth a little frayed to front edge. With lists of witches' names, plus a 5-page bibliography. Scarce in first edition. The Witch-Cult in Western Europe was the first book in which Margaret Murray developed her controversial literal interpretation of the Witch trial evidence. This work is of importance because it is a sourcebook of the Witch trials, with extensive quotes from the original documents, presented in the original Elizabethan English, French and German. The names of hundreds of accused witches are given in an appendix, a somber roll call of the 'burning times.' The main body of this work aims to show that the consistent narrative of the cult is evidence of a wide-spread, underground pagan religion existing in Europe up through the Renaissance. Murray, as if not having stirred things up enough, adds appendices with her controversial take on the Fairies, Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais, as well as one truly dangerous recipe. This book is one of those crucial works which every scholar of Neopaganism must come to terms with, one way or another. She was the first woman to be appointed as a lecturer of archaeology in the UK. Murray's theory, also known as the witch-cult hypothesis, suggests that the accusations made towards "witches" in Europe were in fact based on a real, though clandestine, pagan religion that worshiped a horned god. Certain university circles subsequently celebrated Margaret Murray as the expert on western witchcraft, though her theories were widely discredited.