“Such things as we being bewitched doo imagine, have no truth at all either of action or essence, beside the bare imagination.”
Reginald Scot (1584). The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Book 13, Chapter 20
There was no protective glass to filter the ultraviolet. No brass chain to limit my travel. No cotton gloves to eliminate my fingerprints. And no minder to police my behaviour. A grubby white pillow sat incongruously on a black mahogany desk alongside a heavy, braided cord – a page-holder that snaked its way untidily across the tabletop. I reverentially set the book onto the pillow and turned its thick leather cover to expose a page yellowed, mottled and dirty, 400 years of scrutiny fused into the atoms of its paper, smears and stains that now told their own story.
At the top of the page, an illustrated human head symmetrically embellished with foliage and serpents gazed knowingly back at me, perhaps signifying the wisdom that was to follow. Elizabethan text aligned centrally on the page, each line shorter and in a smaller font than the proceeding line. Each paragraph a textual triangle colliding into a subsequent smaller triangle, an upside-down Christmas tree black against the yellow page. Handwritten notes inked in a faded, flowing script accompanied arcane pencil marks in the margins. A violent army of anachronisms assailed my comprehension, the esoteric language and antiquated font and unfamiliar letterforms all conspiring to inhibit straightforward reading. Instead, the text demanded multiple re-readings, referral to an Elizabethan dictionary, and frequent visits online to translate from Latin, Arabic, and Greek into English. Yet, these obstacles only amplified my excitement to be studying a first edition of this work. An authentic original. Not my delivered-next-day gimcrack reproduction.
It is my favourite book on deception. One that I return to regularly, each time unearthing new insights buried deep within its pages. Reginald Scot wrote it in 1584 to “undeceive” judges, witchfinders, and a fearful public, urging them to relinquish their beliefs in witchcraft. The book systematically lays out Scot’s case, studiously explaining why the execution of impoverished, uneducated, and socially isolated women (around 50,000 in Europe) for the supposed crime of witchcraft was ignorant, unjust, and ungodly.
In a new long-form essay here, I explain why I believe Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft is one of the most important books written on deception, and why it speaks so forcefully to many related issues today. I also describe why the first edition copy of The Discoverie of Witchcraft, held by the National Library of Scotland, is so unusual.