Jude Seal's Notebook

An Introductory Note - While this particular number of All About History's History Of series does give individual author citations for each section I have chosen not to refer to them in this review.  A fair percentage of the problems with each volume are not necessarily the responsibility of the writers, but of the editors and others within the publisher.   Before beginning this review or deconstruction of All About History’s special edition on the Occult there are couple of things which need establishing before we go any further on this crazy train ride.  The first is what is meant by the term ‘occult’.  We must first consider that to many the term occult is grounded in the historiographical divisions created during the Renaissance.  This divided the world into the Ancient world, the Medieval world (this is the poison spring which gives origin to the highly questionable concept of the ‘dark ages’), and the Modern world (divided by subsequent histori...

While perusing the magazine racks in my local branch of WHSmith’s, my eyes fell on one title and I let out an inward groan of academic despair. I have to admit I have something of a love hate relationship with popular history magazines. Some are reasonably good, others are terrible. Some are only interesting for the farcical nature of the ‘history’ contained within. The title which drew my attention however, was one which might be considered both ridiculous and at the same time both irresponsible and dangerous. The title, produced by the same imprint which publishes All About History (a title which itself frequently retreads inaccuracies from simplified school history texts), was “History of Witchcraft”. The subtitle makes the bold statement that it “Uncovers the truth behind the trials that tore Europe apart”. As anyone with even a casual scholarly interest in witchcraft or magic is no doubt aware this is a distinctly bold and factually inaccurate claim. Even with this beginning sta...