4 ms·

There's a lot of stuff in there too besides the illustrations --- interesting to read a little bit of it. I'm not any expert on this stuff --- are all the demon

• CWuestefeld 9y ago
  It makes me wonder if the author and artists actually believed they were documenting real-world phenomena. Did they treat this as fiction or non-fiction?
  • mirimir 9y ago
    It strikes me as daemon porn.
• toyg 9y ago
  Most of these "occult" books are traditionally a bit of both: an author might take a well-known name (e.g. Belfagor) from folk tradition, and then straight-up invent most of what he actually writes. Note that, at certain points in time, wealthy European rulers were very interested in this kind of material, as they sought to gain any advantage they could to stabilize their dominance in unruly times. People with narrative skills had huge incentives to manufacture material that such rulers could find plausible or intriguing, in order to obtain money and privileges. Hence most "occult" material is not coming from folk tradition. This also explains why the subculture often reveres "The Book" as a primary actor in the actual stories: the cursed book of evil spells, the lost tome with alchemist recipes, the damned catalogue of demons... it was an industry blowing its own horn, so to speak. Folk stories are much more likely to bestow supernatural qualities to simple everyday items.