ADVERTISEMENTS

In this context, "Advertisements" refers to a formal notice or "To the Reader" section, common in 17th-century legal and theological treatises.

No more can be learned or taught on this subject, unless one wishes to change Masters and abandon the Savior to cast and entangle oneself in those abominable curiosities and impostures of his enemy. It is a great grace that God has granted us—while being occupied with such a troublesome and extraordinary task, and never speaking of anything but the Devil while proceeding with their hearings—to chase away all evil ideas and impressions of Satan; to avoid all bad dreams that represent at night what one has seen or heard by day; and to see, touch, and handle these Witches before us, through those who conducted the search for the marks and characters that the Devil has very often imprinted in the most secret parts of their bodies, without defiling our spirit or our soul with any evil memory.

It has therefore been necessary to use repetitions in certain Discourses: such as when speaking of Transport The magical transportation of witches to the Sabbath, the Sabbath, Transformation, and Apparitions: it being unreasonable to forget in this second Volume the most formal examples of these four subjects, which are the most doubtful of all Sorcery. This is why I have given to the public another second book entirely different from the first, for fear that one might believe that this is only an appendix, or some small addition to my first Volume: these are two entirely different books.

And so that the Reader, who perhaps will have neither the leisure nor the patience to wish to read them both in their entirety, may better recognize their diversity: he will find here from the beginning, that in the first Treatise it is discussed whether all Sorcery is nothing but illusion and deception, or if there is indeed something real.

In the second, it speaks of Fascination The "Evil Eye" or the power to bewitch through a gaze, and principally that of the eyes, and how a Witch, casting