Cambridge University Press is making a new book free to download.

Imagining the Witches’ Sabbat: Visions of Darkness Since 1900 is a new work by Ethan Doyle White. He is author of several academic works on Wicca and Witchcraft and a member of the editorial board of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies.

Of all the dark visions to haunt the cultural imagination, few have proven so pervasive as the witches’ Sabbath or Sabbat – an idea born in the fifteenth century. The Sabbath, however, did not remain there, and this Element explores some of the ways in which the witches’ Sabbath has been reimagined since 1900. It considers how early twentieth-century scholars, most notably Margaret Murray and Montague Summers, took it as evidence of a real witches’ religion, and how later historians like Carlo Ginzburg drew upon it in their search for ancient shamanisms. It examines how occultists such as Gerald Gardner, Austin Osman Spare and Andrew Chumbley integrated sabbaths as key elements of their own new religions. Finally, it outlines the role of the Sabbath in literature, film and television, where it has continued to terrify and titillate.

This free download is availalble only through July 17, 2026. Print copies can be ordered too, of course.