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King James VI and I's Daemonologie argues that witchcraft is real, scripturally condemned, and justly punishable, refuting skeptics such as Reginald Scot and Johann Weyer. This deck covers the treatise's three-book dialogue structure, its demonological arguments, and its key scriptural proofs.
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Chapter 1 · Question
What two things does James say he intends to prove in the treatise?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
In the Preface, the author states his intention is to prove two things: first, that such devilish arts have existed and do exist; second, what exact trial and severe punishment they merit. He frames the work as answering doubters and opposing writers such as Scot and Wierus.
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In the Preface, the author states his intention is to prove two things: first, that such devilish arts have existed and do exist; second, what exact trial and severe punishment they merit. He frames the work as answering doubters and opposing writers such as Scot and Wierus.
Chapter 1
The author names Scot, an Englishman, who he says denies in public print that witchcraft can exist and maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying spirits; and Wierus, a German physician, who he claims writes a public apology for these craft-folk, thereby revealing himself as one of that profession.
Chapter 1
The author says he chose dialogue form to make the treatise more pleasant and easy, and divides it into three books: the first on magic in general and necromancy in particular, the second on sorcery and witchcraft, and the third a discourse on all kinds of spirits and spectres that appear and trouble persons, with a conclusion.
Chapter 1
The author argues that in all these actions the Devil, as God's instrument and second cause, intends ever to destroy the soul or body or both of those he is permitted to deal with; God, by contrast, ever draws glory from that evil, either by the wreck of the wicked in his justice or by the trial of the patient and amendment of the faithful.
Chapter 1
Epistemon argues the text shows Saul actually saw the apparition: once the unclean spirit was fully risen, the woman called Saul in, and Saul knew him to be Samuel—knowledge he could not have gained merely from hearing of an old man in a mantle, since many old men in Israel had died and mantles were common dress there.
Chapter 2
Epistemon denies the Devil has true prescience, which belongs only to God, or sees things in God as good angels do. He knows some future things either by worldly wisdom and long experience, judging likelihoods from past events and natural causes, or because God employs him in a turn, as in this case and in Micah's prophecy to Ahab.
Chapter 2
Epistemon cites several: God's law plainly prohibits witchcraft, and God's law does not speak in vain or punish shadows; Pharaoh's wise men imitated Moses' miracles; Samuel told Saul that disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft; Simon Magus practiced the craft; and the woman with the spirit of Python. He adds there are many more places too tedious to recite.
Chapter 2
Epistemon argues that though man was made in God's image, the fall lost it, and it is restored only in part by grace to the elect. The rest, falling away from God, are given over into the Devil's hands to bear his image, and once given over, the grossest impiety becomes most pleasant and delightful to them.
Chapter 2
Epistemon says the sin against the Holy Ghost has two branches: one is falling back from the whole service of God and refusing all his precepts; the other is doing this knowingly, against conscience and the testimony of the Holy Spirit, after once tasting the sweetness of God's mercies. All necromancers, enchanters, and witches fall under the first branch, but only those who err with such knowledge fall under the second.
Chapter 3
Epistemon says there are principally two sorts, to which all the parts of that unhappy art are reduced: the one is called Magie or Necromancie, and the other Sorcerie or Witch-craft. This distinction frames the rest of the discussion, where he goes on to explain the etymology of each term and the different means by which the Devil draws people into each of these two snares.
Chapter 3
Epistemon names three passions within ourselves: curiosity in great engines, thirst of revenge for deeply apprehended torts, or greedy appetite for gear caused through great poverty. Curiosity is the enticement only of Magicians or Necromancers, while the other two allure Sorcerers or Witches. The old crafty Serpent, being a spirit, easily spies our affections and conforms himself to them to deceive us to our wrack.
Chapter 3
The vulgar difference is that witches are only servants and slaves to the Devil, but necromancers are his masters and commanders. Epistemon says this is merry and in a manner true, but only secundum quid: necromancers have no power over him, only ex pacto, whereby he obliges himself in some trifles to them so that he may obtain their body and soul, which is the only thing he hunts for.
Chapter 3
Epistemon divides study of the heavenly creatures into two parts. Astronomia, "the law of the starres," concerns their ordinary courses and motions; it is a member of the Mathematicques and is lawful, necessary, and commendable. Astrologia, "the word and preaching of the starres," has two parts: judging weather, seasons, and sickness is not unlawful if moderately used, but foretelling fortunes, battles, and deaths is utterly unlawful.
Chapter 4
The second part of Astrologia: trusting stellar influences to foretell which commonwealths flourish or decay, who is fortunate or unfortunate, which side wins a battle or single combat, how and at what age men die, and which horse wins a race. Epistemon says this part leans on no ground of natural reason and is utterly unlawful for Christians to trust or practice.
Chapter 4
When Philomathes says many learned men disagree, Epistemon grants it but declines a long disputation. He answers with one word: Scripture, which he calls an infallible ground for all true Christians. In the prophet Jeremiah it is plainly forbidden to believe or hearken to those who prophesy and fore-speak by the course of the planets and stars.
Chapter 4
Epistemon says the conjured spirit appears only after many circumstances, long prayers, and murmuring. If the conjurers miss one jot of their rites, or if a foot slips over the circle in terror at the apparition, the spirit carries them off body and soul at once. The long labor, precise days and hours, terrifying apparitions, and present peril make them weary, so the devil draws them to a plain contract.
Chapter 4
Epistemon says the effect of the contract consists in two things: forms and effects. By forms he means the shape or fashion in which the Devil appears when called upon; by effects, the special sorts of services he binds himself to perform. Their quality is lesser or greater according to the skill and art of the Magician.
Chapter 5
The author argues God is a creator: what He makes appear in a miracle is so in effect, as Moses' rod became a natural serpent. The Devil, as God's ape, counterfeits this only to men's outward senses, as Pharaoh's magicians' wands appeared so but were devoured by the other.
Chapter 5
Epistemon says the Devil makes his scholars believe that at Lucifer's fall some spirits fell into air, some fire, some water, some land, and still remain in those elements, so that those in fire or air are truer than those in water or land. He calls this mere trifles forged by the author of all deceit.
Chapter 5
Epistemon says the Devil foretells great things to make his scholars creep into credit with princes, partly true and partly false. If all were false he would lose credit at all hands; so his answers are always doubtful, as his oracles were.
Chapter 5
Epistemon says the contract is either written with the magician's own blood, or, once agreed in terms with his schoolmaster, the devil touches him somewhere on his body, though perhaps no mark remains—as happens with all witches.
Chapter 6
Philomathes cites received custom—Christian princes who punish witches yet tolerate magicians and sometimes enjoy their practices—and the authority of Moses, said to be raised in all the Egyptians' sciences, so a godly man's profession could not be unlawful.
Chapter 6
Epistemon answers that Scripture means lawful sciences only, since unlawful ones are abusively called sciences; that knowing differs from practising; and that Moses fled Egypt at forty and spent forty more years in exile before the burning bush, becoming a changed, regenerate man—as Abraham and Paul were also changed after their calling.
Chapter 6
Epistemon says they merit the same as sorcerers and witches, and greater, since their error proceeds from greater knowledge and so draws nearer the sin against the Holy Ghost. He says the same of all who consult, enquire after, entertain, or oversee them, citing the miserable ends of many who seek their counsel.
Chapter 6
The author argues melancholy produces leanness, paleness, solitude, and at its height mere folly and mania. By contrast, many convicted or confessing witches are rich, worldly-wise, fat or corpulent, and given to pleasures, company, and merriment—directly contrary to melancholy's symptoms. He adds that witches are loath to confess without torture, while melancholics never spare to bewray themselves.
Chapter 7
The devil targets those in poverty or burning for revenge, but only enters where ignorance with an evil life, or carelessness and contempt of God, has prepared a way. He feeds their humor and despair, appears alone by voice or as a man, promises remedy on condition of obedience, then has them renounce God and baptism and marks them, the sore healing by the next meeting.
Chapter 7
Sorcery is a Latin word taken from casting of the lot, so its user is called sortiarius à sorte. The name arose because their practices seemed to come of lot or chance, such as turning the riddle or knowing whether a diseased person would live or die. In general the name was given for using such charms and freites as the craft teaches.
Chapter 7
He says it scarcely merits an answer: if the devil were not bridled, as Scripture teaches, he could find ways enough without any human help to wrack all mankind, going about like a roaring lion. But his power's limits were set before the world's foundations, which he cannot transgress in the least jot. Daily experience of harms proves witches exist.
Chapter 7
Epistemon divides their actions into two parts: the actions of their own persons, and the actions proceeding from them toward others. He says this division, well understood, will resolve what is possible for them to do, since although all they confess is no lie on their part, in his opinion part of it is not as they take it to be.
Chapter 8
The author argues Magicians are allured by curiosity and chiefly seek to satisfy it and win popular honour and estimation. Witches, by contrast, are enticed either by desire of revenge or worldly riches, so their whole practices aim either to hurt men and their goods, satisfying cruel minds, or to wreck whomever God permits them power over, satisfying greedy desire.
Chapter 8
Epistemon says the Devil, as God's ape, counterfeits in his servants the service and adoration God prescribed. As God's servants convene publicly, so he makes his convene in great numbers, though not publicly. As none worship God without the mark of baptism, so none serves Satan without his mark. He teaches them mischief and takes account of their proceedings.
Chapter 8
Witches often confess the Devil's convening in the Church with them, his occupying the pulpit, and their form of adoration as kissing his hinder parts. Though it seems ridiculous, Epistemon says it may be true, citing that in Calicute he appeared in form of a Goat-buck and publicly received that unhonest homage from every one of the people.
Chapter 8
Epistemon names three: natural riding, going, or sailing when their Master summons them; being carried swiftly by the conducting spirit over earth or sea, which he thinks possible since the Devil imitates God as with Habakkuk; and the third way, transformation into a beast or fowl or ecstatic spirit-transport, which he considers delusion.
Chapter 9
He argues they can only be carried short bounds, matching the space in which they can retain their breath. A longer violent transport would extinguish their breath, just as a fall from a high rock forces breath from the body before reaching earth, while a small fall only endangers life.
Chapter 9
Philomathes argues that contracting a solid body into so little room is self-contradictory: to be made so little yet not diminished, drawn so tightly yet feeling no pain, is contrary to a natural body and resembles the Papists' transubstantiated god. He cites Peter's prison escape as God giving place to the door, not contracting a body.
Chapter 9
He argues the Devil, being a spirit, can rapture their thoughts and dull their senses so the body lies as dead while he presents dreamlike forms of persons and places. Fellow spirits can simultaneously deceive the people they claim to have met, and by God's permission strike someone at that hour, making all reports agree.
Chapter 9
He names three: first, the manner of their consulting thereupon; next, their part as instruments; and last, their master's part, who puts the same in execution. Their consultations are used oftest in the Churches where they convene for adoring, each proposing what wicked turn they would have done.
Chapter 10
The author argues the wax image has no virtue in itself; the Devil, as God's ape, uses it as an outward show. As the conjured slave melts the wax, the Devil subtly weakens and scatters the patient's spirits of life, causing sweating, failed digestion, and wasting until the person vanishes away as the picture does at the fire.
Chapter 10
He says they can raise storms and tempests in the air over sea or land, but not universally—only in a particular place and prescribed bounds as God permits. Such storms are discerned from natural tempests by their sudden violent raising and short duration. He grounds this in the Devil's affinity with the air and the scriptural title 'Prince of the air.'
Chapter 10
Epistemon says it depends on their state: if obstinate in denying, the Devil speaks with them when he finds time, filling them with vain hope of relief or deepening despair and persuading them to kill themselves, which they commonly do. If penitent and confessing, God does not permit him to trouble them further. He appears in diverse forms, more terrible to the grosser sort, less monstrous to the craftier.
Chapter 11
Epistemon says such tactile reports are rare among confessions, but the devil may make himself palpable either by assuming a dead body and using its ministry, or by deluding the sense of feeling as well as sight. He argues this is possible since human senses are weak and are often deluded even by ordinary sicknesses.
Chapter 12
Epistemon distinguishes two forms of Satan's visible converse. One—appearing to Christians, troubling them outwardly, or possessing them constrainedly—was hindered and made rarer by the spreading of the Evangel and the conquest of the white horse in Revelation 6. The other—appearances through unlawful arts—became commoner since, which he says experience confirms in this Isle.
Chapter 12
Epistemon argues that whoever denies the power of the devil would likewise deny the power of God if shame allowed. Since the devil is God's opposite, knowing God is aided by contrast—the creature's power to admire the Creator's, the one's falsity, injustice, and cruelty to consider the other's truth, justice, and mercy. He fears many Sadducees deny all spirits, and says God permits spirits to appear visibly to convict them.
Chapter 12
Epistemon divides them into four: spirits that trouble houses or solitary places; spirits that follow certain persons and trouble them at various hours; spirits that enter within people and possess them; and those vulgarly called the Fayrie. He warns that this division is only his phrase of speaking—in effect they are all one kind of spirit taking various shapes to abuse mankind.
Chapter 12
Epistemon says spirits choose their passage according to the form they take. If they have assumed a dead body, they can open any door or window without noise and enter. If they enter as a spirit only, any place where air can come in is large enough, since a spirit occupies no quantity.
Chapter 13
Epistemon argues the dead body's rest is not a local remaining in one place but resting from worldly travails until reunion with the soul at glory. The Devil using faithful bodies defiles them no more than hanging or shameful deaths do, since the soul is absent. He says the Devil may use the bodies of the faithful as well as the unfaithful.
Chapter 13
He cites the old opinion, called lykanthrōpoi by the Greeks, meaning men-wolves. He says if any such thing occurred, it proceeded from a natural superabundance of melancholy, which has made some think themselves pitchers or horses. It so corrupted imagination and memory that they thought themselves wolves and imitated their actions, like Nebuchadnezzar for seven years.
Chapter 13
Philomathes distinguishes spirits that trouble and torment the persons they haunt from spirits that are serviceable to them in all their necessities and warn them of sudden peril. He asks whether both kinds are wicked damned spirits, or whether the serviceable kind might be angels sent by God to assist those he favors, citing Scripture that God sends legions of angels to guard his elect.
Chapter 14
Epistemon attributes it to the ignorant Gentiles, who did not know God and imagined each man accompanied by two spirits, a genius bonus and genius malus (Greek eudaimon and kakodaimon). He says Christians know only God's good spirit persuades us to good, while corrupted flesh and Satan entice us to evil. The Devil maintained this error among ignorant Christians through spirits like the Brownie.
Chapter 14
Epistemon says Christians ought to know that since Christ's coming in the flesh and the establishing of his Church by the Apostles, all miracles, visions, prophecies, and appearances of angels or good spirits have ceased. They served only for the first sowing of faith and planting of the Church. Now that the Church is established, the Law and Prophets are thought sufficient, as Christ says in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.
Chapter 14
Epistemon says the Devil either steals the seed of a dead body or borrows a dead body to converse visibly, and in either case the seed seems intolerably cold, since it loses strength and heat in transit or takes on the dead body's qualities. He denies spirits have sexes, since nothing is divided in sexes except living bodies with natural seed, and spirits have none and cannot gender with one another.
Chapter 14
Epistemon explains that where the Devil finds the greatest ignorance and barbarity, he attacks most grossly. He compares this to his earlier reason for why there were more witches of the female kind than of the male kind, tying the frequency of witchcraft to the Devil's targeting of the least instructed places.
Chapter 15
Epistemon names three symptoms, omitting the vain signs Papists attribute to possession. First, incredible strength exceeding six of the strongest, wildest untroubled men. Second, unnatural swelling and vehement agitation of breast and belly, with sinews so stiffly bent out the skin could not be pricked out as on another person. Third, speaking languages the patient never learned, in an uncouth hollow voice.
Chapter 15
Epistemon denies it is a spirit of the kind under discussion. He calls it a natural sickness the physicians named Incubus, ab incubando, because thick phlegm falling into the breast upon the heart during sleep intercludes the vital spirits and takes all power from the body, making the sleeper think some unnatural burden or spirit lies upon and holds them down.
Chapter 15
Epistemon argues the power comes not from the person's virtue but from Christ's commission, exercised through fasting, prayer, and calling on God's name. Judas had as great power in that commission as any apostle, and Christ teaches false prophets may cast out devils. So Papists may accomplish it if they use Christ's prescribed form, just as their baptism is not worse for their other errors.
Chapter 15
Epistemon says the fourth kind was called Diana and her wandering court by the Gentiles, and among the English was called the Phairie, or "our good neighbours." He describes it as one of the illusions most common in the time of Papistry, and compares the tales told of it to Virgil's Elysian Fields rather than anything Christians should believe.
Chapter 16
He says the devil may present hills, houses, glittering courts and trains to the witches' fantasy while their senses are dulled and their bodies senseless. Meanwhile he may convey a real stone into their hand, making them imagine they received it in that place. This parallels his earlier explanation of the imaginary ravishing of the spirit from the body.
Chapter 16
They may appear to both the innocent and to witches. To the innocent, either to frighten them or to seem better than unclean spirits; to witches, as a color of safety so ignorant magistrates will not punish them. Epistemon says the innocent troubled by them should be pitied, but witches who claim to prophesy by them should be punished as severely as any witches, and rather more for working dissemblingly.
Chapter 16
He attributes it to the devil's knavery: he deceives necromancers with innumerable feigned names, making Sathan, Beelzebub and Lucifer seem like three separate spirits. Epistemon notes Scripture gives the prince of the rebelling angels different names, and that Lucifer is taken allegorically from the day star because of his excellence in creation before his fall.
Chapter 16
Geillis Duncane, servant to deputy Bailiffe Dauid Seaton in Trenent, was secretly absent from her master's house every other night and suddenly performed miraculous cures. Her master grew suspicious she acted by unlawful means, examined her, then tortured her with the pilliwinks on her fingers and a rope wrenched about her head. She confessed nothing until a Devil's mark was found on her throat, after which she confessed to witchcraft.
Chapter 18
After confessing and being imprisoned, Geillis Duncane accused many people as notorious witches, including Agnis Sampson of Haddington (the eldest), Agnes Tompson of Edinburgh, Doctor Fian (John Cunningham, schoolmaster at Saltpans), George Motts' wife, Robert Griersonn, Iennit Bandilandis, the Porters wife of Seaton, and the Smith at Brigge Hallis, with innumerable others. Some were executed; the rest remained imprisoned awaiting the King's will.
Chapter 18
The chapter states that examination of witchcraft in Scotland had lately found the Devil generally marks witches with a privy mark, licking them with his tongue in some secret part before receiving them as servants, usually under hair. So long as the mark is unseen by searchers, the accused will never confess. Thus Agnis Sampson was shaved all over; once the mark was found on her privities, she immediately confessed whatever was demanded.
Chapter 18
Agnis Sampson, the eldest witch, was brought to Haliciud house before the King's Majesty and Scottish nobility and strictly examined. Neither the King's persuasions nor his counsel's could induce her to confess; she stood stiffly denying all charges. She was then sent to prison for the torture lately provided for witches in that country, where, after being shaved and having her head wrenched with a rope for almost an hour, she confessed once the mark was found.
Chapter 18
She confessed she hung a black toad by the heels for three days, collected its venom in an oyster shell, and kept it covered until she could obtain a piece of foul linen belonging to the King, such as a shirt or handkerchief. She said if she had gotten any such worn cloth she would have bewitched him to death, causing pains like lying on sharp thorns and needle ends.
Chapter 19
When the King called her confessions extreme lies, she took him aside and declared the very words that passed between him and his Queen at Upslo in Norway on the first night of their marriage, with their answers to each other. The King wondered greatly, swore by the living God that all the devils in hell could not have discovered it, acknowledged her words most true, and gave more credit to the rest.
Chapter 19
Agnes Tompson confessed that the Devil, waiting at North Barrick Kirk in the likeness of a man, was displeased they tarried and enjoined them all a penance: each should kiss his buttocks as a sign of duty to him, which was put over the pulpit bar. After ungodly exhortations inveighing against the King of Scotland, he received their oaths of service and departed.
Chapter 19
After thrawing his head with a rope and fair persuasion both failed, Doctor Fian was put in the bootes. After three strokes he could not speak, so the other witches willed a search of his tongue, under which two pins were found thrust into the head. The witches said 'Now is the Charme stinted,' and he was released, brought before the King, and willingly set his hand to his confession.
Chapter 19
He said he was always present at the witches' general meetings and served as clerk to all those subject to the Devil's service who bore the name of witches. He took their oaths of true service to the Devil and wrote down whatever matters the Devil pleased to command him.
Chapter 20
He bewitched a gentleman out of envy, because the man loved a gentlewoman Fian himself desired. The sorcery made the gentleman fall into lunacy and madness once every twenty-four hours, lasting one whole hour. Brought before the King on 24 December, he suddenly shrieked, fell mad, bent and leapt so his head touched the ceiling, and had to be bound until the fit passed.
Chapter 20
He promised his scholar he would teach him without stripes if the boy got three hairs from his sister's privities, wrapped in conjured paper. The boy tried nightly, but the sister cried out to her mother, who suspected Fian, beat the boy, and learned the truth. Being a witch herself, the mother clipped three hairs from a never-calved heifer's udder, wrapped them in the paper, and gave them to the boy for his master.
Chapter 20
After feeling the pain of the boots, he confessed all the aforesaid as most true and subscribed the confessions with his own hand before the King, remaining on record in Scotland. He then renounced the Devil, vowed a Christian life, and reported that the Devil appeared in black with a white wand, demanded continued service, was refused, broke the wand, and said, 'That once ere thou die thou shall bee mine.' That night he stole the prison keys and fled to the Saltpans, was pursued by proclamation, retaken, and reexamined before the King.
Chapter 20
His nails on all his fingers were ripped and pulled off with an instrument called in Scottish a "Turkas," which in England is called a pair of pincers. Under every nail two needles were thrust in even up to the heads. Despite these torments, the Doctor never shrank and would not confess sooner for the tortures inflicted on him.
Chapter 21
He was conveyed to the torment of the boots, where he remained a long time and endured so many blows that his legs were crushed and beaten together as small as might be, with bones and flesh so bruised that blood and marrow spouted forth abundantly, making them unserviceable forever. He still would not confess, saying only that what he had said before was for fear of pain.
Chapter 21
He was arraigned, condemned, and adjudged by law to die, then to be burned according to the law of that land. He was put into a cart, first strangled, then immediately put into a great fire prepared for the purpose, and burned on the Castle hill of Edinburgh on a Saturday at the end of January last past, 1591.
Chapter 21
The author argues the King is the child and servant of God, the Lord's anointed, and a true Christian who trusts in God, while witches are servants of the devil and vessels of God's wrath. He argues the King carried a magnanimous and undaunted mind, fearing not who is against him so long as God is with him, and that God's providence preserved him on land as on the sea.
Chapter 21
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #25929 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-10-31. Cards reviewed 2026-10-31.
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