Demons and Spirits

Catalogues of spirits, and the literature that feared or dismissed them.

3 traditions8 curated texts

The Testament of Solomon imagines a king who binds demons with a ring; the Goetia lists seventy-two spirits with their seals. Alongside these ritual texts sits a large critical literature, from Walter Scott to nineteenth-century physicians, that treated demonology as history, folklore or delusion.

Placing both kinds of text together shows how belief, practice and scepticism developed alongside each other.