The Black Arts

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32637, 19 June 1971, Page 10

The Black Arts

Death By Enchantment. By Julian Franklyn. Hamish Hamilton. 232 pp. and Index. Julian Franklyn sub-titles his book “An examination of Ancient and Modem Witchcraft” He explains that witchcraft as distinct from sorcery only became emphasised in Europe in the fourteenth century when the Church defined it as a heresy because it maintained all sorcerers had entered a contract with the Devil. The author therefore starts in that century and traces in Europe, England and America many of the more celebrated cases of witchcraft, such as the story of the Throckmorton children and the Salem trials. He described also many of the practices of witches for enchantment and the celebration of Black Mass, relating them to modem theories of hypnotism and insanity and drawing occasional parallels with the practices of the native peoples of Africa and Australia. Mr Franklyn emphasises his belief that witchcraft still flourishes with examples of what he sees as manifestations of demonism today. This should have been a fascinating volume but Mr Franklyn, perhaps because he strives so hard not to let “his emotions and beliefs take command,” shifts, ground bewilderingly at times. Moreover although he begins at approximately 1350 and ends with a dire warning to “this hedonistic age” of the 1970 s he jumps around disconcertingly among the centuries between these dates. It is a carefully researched but badly constructed book. Certain odd and fascinating snippets of information will be gathered but one waits in vain for any feeling of the “power of darkness” found for example in Hawthorne's short stories or in Miller’s “The Crucible.”