Edwin Meyer Loeb

“ Miss Kingsley writes that more deaths were caused by the persecution of witches in West Africa than by the entire slave trade. In this region, as elsewhere, most of the mortality, as well as plagues and blighted crops, were thought to be caused by witches. Hence, the accusation and the execution of witches were well-nigh simultaneous. It is hardly conceivable that Miss Murray would care to argue that certain West African Negroes belonged to a witch cult which was drawn up in opposition to the organized fetish religion of the locality. ”

“ The belief in witchcraft was not confined to the civilized people of mediaeval times, as the present writer would lead us to suppose. It is rather a superstition often found among primitive peoples and intimately bound up with the life of the savage. ”

“ Thus the Jews of Russia, as well as the so-called witches, have constantly been under the accusation of child-eating. Riding on broomsticks, the possession of familiar spirits, the power to blight crops and injure animals and people, the carnal intercourse with demons, are beliefs of varying antiquity. ”