Author Description

For centuries, the words of the accused were treated as weapons. In the courts of Europe, curses were not only feared as supernatural acts but prosecuted as criminal deeds, spells recorded in ink by the very institutions that condemned them. The Book of Curses is a chilling journey through the preserved trial records of witchcraft and maleficium from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Every curse in these pages is documented from original archives, spoken in the heat of anger, whispered in secrecy, or forced under torture, and each carried the weight of life or death. From the frostbitten fields of rural France to the burning stakes of Bamberg and Würzburg, these historical testimonies reveal how language itself became a crime. Midwives, healers, nobles, and even children stood accused, their words etched into the court's memory as proof of pacts with the Devil. Judges, inquisitors, and scribes preserved the exact phrasing of curses, transforming superstition into evidence. This is not folklore. This is the forensic archive of Europe's most feared magic, recovered from legal records, inquisitorial proceedings, and centuries-old parchment. Each chapter unveils real curses alongside their cultural, legal, and theological contexts, bringing to light the voices silenced by fire, rope, and exile. If you think you know the history of witchcraft, prepare to hear it told by those who lived-and died-by their words.