The Malleus maleficarum certainly influenced the early modern perceptions of witchcraft and satanism, which in turn influenced the pop culture perception. I think authors like Dennis Wheatley were incluenced by Montague Summers, whose thinking is reflected in novels like The devil rides out, which I recently found reprinted, and reread to see if the impression it made on me now was different from when I read it as a school boy. I found I was less disappointed with it than I was with Huxley’s Brave new world after a similar interval, and found it surprisingly good, apart from the Deus ex machina waking up and finding that part of it was all a dream.

What concerns me more, however, is that is seems that just as the attitude to witchcraft changed in Europe on the cusp of modernity, resulting in the Great Witch Hunt, something similar seems to be happening in Africa with modernisation.

I recently blogged about it at Witchcraft — African and European, and would appreciate your comments on that aspect of it, if you have any.