I hate to say it, but I really thought that this book on the history of grimoires—books of magic spells—would be much more compelling, in a visceral sort of way. Like, say, finding a spell to make someone else do your blog posts for you. But it’s all pretty scholarly stuff about the Bible and the Renaissance and the role of print in “democratizing literary magic.” Though I did particularly like this paragraph on the transition from oral to written magic, and the strictures surrounding medieval uses of parchment:

Medieval grimoires sometimes specified that virgin or unborn parchment should be used for making copies and writing out amulets. The former was made from animals that had not yet reached sexual maturity, while unborn parchment was made from the amniotic sac of aborted animal foetuses. The reason for their use was to ensure the purity of the grimoire or charm; in effect it was an act of sympathetic magic that cleansed the written word from the impurity of thought or action of the magician. It was sometimes specified that the magician should personally induce the abortion or cut out the uterus from dead animals to ensure that no external agencies contaminated the process.

Making your writing materials from aborted animal foetuses: does this seem like a lost art, or what?

Then, someone gave me this new, complete translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, the medieval guidebook that taught (mostly men) how to hunt out (mostly female) witches, and subject them to various kinds of torture and punishment. I thought, “Great; I’ll find the part where it talks about grimoires and tie this all up in a neat little bundle,” but, for a book that was likely responsible for the death of tens of thousands (if not many more) throughout history, it is staggeringly boring, even in the sections which you’d think would be fascinating, like the ones on how sorceresses have sex with demons and purportedly remove men’s penises. So I never got to the section on grimoires, if there is one. For sheer absurdity, however, I can recommend this bit on how witches supposedly stopped up the milk of their enemies’ cows:

During the night-time at times that are more sacred (clearly on the instructions of the Devil to offend God’s majesty more greatly), some women take a position in any corner of their house, holding a pitcher between their thighs, and after sticking a knife or some tool into the wall or a pillar and positioning their hands for milking, they invoke their devil. Their devil always works with them for all purposes, and she explains that she is affecting to milk such-and-such a cow from such-and-such a house, this cow being one that is healthier and more plentiful and milk. Then the Devil immediately takes the milk from the teats of that cow and puts it in the place where the sorceress is sitting, as if it were flowing from the tool.