On the Illusions of Demons

EPISTLE

...I thought that a knowledge and judgment of many things could be reached.

However, lest I be judged here to have rashly overstepped the limits of my ability and profession with a stubborn opinion, trusting too much in my own brain, I proposed these paradoxes original Greek: "παράδοξα"; ideas that run contrary to popular expectation or "common sense" of mine to many most learned men—including those from your Highness’s own household, theologians, legal experts, and most excellent colleagues—to be read and examined with this intention: that they might stand by their judgment if they rely on reason, fall if they are proven in error, or be changed if they need addition or correction. For indeed, nothing was ever begun and finished at the same time.

The Hammer of Witches.

Now truly, if anyone should object that the Hammer of Witches original: "Malleus Maleficarum," the 1486 treatise by Kramer and Sprenger that became the standard manual for witch-hunters has already completed this task, once he has read the absurd idiocies—often even impious—heaped up in that book by the theologians Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger, and compared their opinion with our writing (setting aside all emotion), he will surely understand that I uphold and defend a completely different, indeed contrary, view. For I have no desire to unweave Penelope’s web A classical reference to Penelope from the Odyssey, who unraveled her shroud every night; here it means Weyer does not wish to engage in redundant or futile labor or to do what has already been done. To be sure, Ulrich Molitor, advisor to King Sigismund of Bohemia, said a few things on this matter in his Dialogues on Witches and Pythonesses Lamijs & Pithonicis; "Lamiae" were mythical hags, while "Pythonesses" refers to those possessed by a divining spirit; Giovanni Francesco Pico also wrote something about witches strigibus; a term for night-flying witches or owls; likewise Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim, proposed five questions to Emperor Maximilian; and some have also touched upon this subject in our own language...