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Great Books on Possession, Exorcism and Witchcraft

Want to read more about demonic possession, exorcists, and witchcraft?

A selection of classics:

Levack_books_covers

Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun (1952).

The most readable account of the mass possession and exorcism of nuns at Loudun in the 1630s.

James Sharpe, The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Football, Witchcraft, Murder, and the King of England (1999).
An entertaining study of one of the most remarkable cases of possession and witchcraft in early seventeenth-century England.

Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England.
A study of witchcraft in New England that focuses on the relation between witchcraft and possession, especially at Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. 

Giovanni Levi, Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist (1988).
The story of an uneducated priest in northern Italy who performed hundred of exorcisms as a strategy to bolster his authority as a priest.

Matt Baglio, The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist (2009).
The true story of the training of an American priest as an exorcist at the Vatican in the late twentieth century. 

Related posts:

Great Books on Islam in American Politics & History Book cover of A History of Islam in America by Kambiz GhaneaBassiriA History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order by Kambiz GhaneaBassiri (2010) Mother is a Verb: An Unconventional History by Sarah Knott (2019) A Forest of Symbols: Art, Science, and Truth in the Long Nineteenth Century by Andrei Pop (2019)

Posted March 31, 2013 More 1400s to 1700s, 1900s, Europe, Periods, Regions, Religion, Reviews, Topics, Transnational, United States

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