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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9450261" data-attributes="member: 8461">After six weeks, I've finished reading William Godwin's 1834 treatise <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Necromancers" target="_blank">The Lives of the Necromancers</a>, being a catalogue of eminent individuals who either personally claimed, or were reputed, to have magical powers.From the beginning, Godwin makes it clear that he not only doesn't believe in sorcery, witchcraft, or necromancy of any kind; rather, he regards it as a lamentable condition that people were so deluded for so long. It's in that spirit that the book is ordered chronologically (after some brief introductions to various magical practices and traditions, so that readers would know what's being discussed), going from Biblical figures to those from the late 17th century.I mention that because Godwin evinces less sympathy as the volume progresses. For ancient figures, his attitude is "they didn't know any better," whereas for more recent ones his attitude is "they were deluded," and the final section of the book is presented as "they were liars." Of course, this is contextual to the individuals in question; Godwin has more sympathy for people who's magical claims never hurt anyone than he does for the overzealous prosecutors of later centuries who put (often times many) people to death based on spurious accusations and "evidence" that doesn't deserve the name.Those condemnations aside, this work is quite notable for the various individuals and anecdotes that it discusses. While many of these figures are quite famous (e.g. Medea, Simon Magus, Merlin, etc.) there are quite a few others whom I'd never heard of before, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermotimus_of_Clazomenae" target="_blank">Hermotimus</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attus_Navius" target="_blank">Attus Navius</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDito" target="_blank">Žito</a>. There's also quite a few references to other people and places (fictional, mythological, and real) to be found throughout, both as their own entries and mentioned in others, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erichtho" target="_blank">Erichtho</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Worthies" target="_blank">Nine Worthies</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockula" target="_blank">Blockula</a>. And of course, Godwin makes sure to bring the receipts, citing numerous works from which he's getting his information; footnotes abound here!I will say that finishing this took me longer than I expected, considering that my copy is only slightly more than a hundred pages long. That was because I thought this would be roughly the size of a trade paperback, only to find that it was 11.75" x 8.25" with dense text in a small font and nary an illustration to break things up. If this had come in the size I'd expected it to, the page count would easily have been twice as long, perhaps longer. (I'll also add that, while just shy of two hundred years isn't enough time for the language to change appreciably, Godwin uses plenty of words that are no longer part of the contemporary vernacular, and I frequently found myself pausing to look something up.)Still, this was an impressive book overall, and one definitely worth reading. When no less a personage than Edgar Allen Poe gives it a glowing review, you know a book has to be good!</blockquote>

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