Whether witches can change human beings into animals through sorcery is a question which has exercised the…
- Date of account
- Published 1915
- Source
- Human Animals
- Reference
- Human Animals · selected passage 94
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
Whether witches can change human beings into animals through sorcery is a question which has exercised the minds of hundreds of writers on demonology and witchcraft, amongst them, to mention a few at random, Bodin, Boguet, James I, Glanvill, Dr
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyWhether witches can change human beings into animals through sorcery is a question which has exercised the minds of hundreds of writers on demonology and witchcraft, amongst them, to mention a few at random, Bodin, Boguet, James I, Glanvill, Dr. Webster, Reginald Scott, his more famous namesake Sir Walter, and Charles Lamb. The last-named, in his essay on the subject, tells us that he was extremely inquisitive from his childhood about witches and witch-stories, and that it should cause no wonder if the wicked, having been symbolised by a goat, should come sometimes in that body and "assert his metaphor."[63]
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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