Eros and Evil: The Sexual Psychopathology of Witchcraft

Eros and Evil is the first systematic modern study of the sexual behavior of witches (and of witch hunters) and, as such, is an important contribution to psychological literature. Emphasizing the period between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries (the witch era, when sexual licentiousness in fact and fantasy was rampant), R. E. L. Masters contends that intercourse with devils and demons was the central fact of witchcraft. His discussion ranges over such subjects as the anatomy of the devil, the sexual psychology of demons, and erotic cannibalism, and he shows how hysteria, mental disorders, and drugs may explain some of demonic sexuality's strangest aspects. Most significantly, Eros and Evil throws light on the origins and development of Western sexual (or antisexual) morals. No other work makes so clear the superstitious and often diseased foundation of the sexual code by which we are still attempting to live. This edition of Eros and Evil, first published in 1962, contains the complete text of Ludovico Maria Sinistrari's Demoniality, one of the great classics of demonology.… (more)