DescriptionMichael Howard‘s By Moonlight and Spirit-Flight was originally published as a monograph in 2013. This “flight” of the medieval witches was a rapturous transportation to the distant, ecstatic rite of the Sabbat. The elements of the Witches’ Sabbat are now known to contain far more than religious heresy and deranged projections of churchly inquisitors. Also included are localized folk-beliefs and remnants of pre-Christian religion. Such as the cult of the moon-goddess Diana. The witches’ flight itself also contained such historical rudiments. Notably the night-roving armies of the Wild Hunt, and the exteriorized or shape-shifted ‘spirit-double’.Examining 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.Cover by Benjamin Vierling.Three Hands Press ✢ 2019 Limited hardcover edition with copper-gilt brown cloth with dust jacket, limited to 500 hand-numbered copies.
