Margaret Murrays enthralling study of witch beliefs and customs has become a timeless anthropological classic. Rejecting the consensus view that female witches were simply hysterical or subject to suggestion, she uses sound scholarship and comprehensive research to reveal that Devil-worship was in fact a bona fide pre-Christian religion, that was forced underground owing to ceaseless persecution by the Church authorities. All aspects of this Old Religion are covered, from admission ceremonies and the witch-mark, through divining, fertility rites and the Sabbat, to spells and sacrifices - including those of children and even of the god himself According to the The English Historical Review, the book is so comprehensive in scope, and so rich and varied in its treatment of the witch-cult ...it is not likely to be superseded. This the full, original version of Murrays masterpiece, complete with Notes, Bibliography and five Appendices, including a chemical analysis of flying ointments.