Michael Howard: BY MOONLIGHT AND SPIRIT FLIGHT
2nd 2019 72pp Three Hands Press hardback in dustwrapper. Illustrated. Copper-gilt brown cloth with design and titling foiled in gold. NEW.
Ltd. ed. 500 copies. As has been established by historians such as Dr. Carlo Ginzburg and Éva Pócs, the elements of the medieval Witches’ Sabbat contain relics of the ancient spirit cults and localized 'pagan' folk beliefs of Europe. Nocturnal spirit-flight, by which the participants of the Sabbat travelled to their revel, also contained such historical rudiments, notably the night-roving denizens of the Wild Hunt and the exteriorized or shape-shifted 'spirit-double'.
By Moonlight and Spirit-Flight, originally published as a monograph in 2013, examines such elements as the ancestral horde, the flight of the Furious Host, and the entheogenic Witches' 'Flying Ointment', each of which played a unique role in the 'flight' of the medieval witches. The mythos of the Sabbatic conclave, containing infernal and diabolical elements, is taken beyond its Christian pathology to connect it with actual practices in folk-magic.