Bøger af W. H. Davenport Adams

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Exotic or esoteric religions and superstitions. Contents include: Buddhism; Magianism: The Parsees; Jewish superstitions; Brahmanism; Hindu mythology, and the Vishnu Purana; Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism; Malays, Slamatan Bromok, Dyaks, Papuan tribes, Ahetas; Samojedes, Mongols, Ostiaks, in Tibet; African superstitions; Zulu; Zabianism and serpent-worship; Polynesia; Fiji Islands; Maoris; North American Indians; Eskimos; A mediaeval superstition: the flagellants; Scottish superstitions: Halloween; Second sight, divination, universality of certain superstitions, fairies in Scotland.

The journalist and author W. H. Davenport Adams (1828-91) established a reputation for himself as a popular science writer, translator and lexicographer. He also wrote several children's books. In this 1889 work, Adams gives a general introduction to alchemy in Europe and traces the development of magic and alchemy in England from the fourteenth century onwards. Initially the disciplines were persecuted by the Church and met with 'the prejudice of the vulgar', languishing throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In Book 1 Adams portrays the English 'magicians' Roger Bacon, whom he considers to have been ahead of his contemporaries; John Dee and William Lilly, astrologists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, respectively; and the English Rosicrucians. Book 2 is a historical account of witchcraft in England and Scotland, from the middle ages to the witch trials of the seventeenth century, and includes a chapter on witchcraft in literature.