About the Book

Lewis Spence's An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920) is the great one-volume reference of its subject: 'the occult sciences, occult personalities, psychic science, magic, demonology, spiritism and mysticism,' arranged A to Z.

Spence was a Scottish folklorist who took his subject seriously without believing all of it — his entries are learned, skeptical and wonderfully readable, covering everything from alchemists' laboratories to Victorian seance frauds.

A century later it remains a standard sourcebook for writers and the plainly curious.

This site reproduces the complete text of the original 1920 edition, digitized page by page from the original printing. The book is in the public domain.