Lives of the Necromancers — A Closer Reading

Pride and Credulity as Twin Human Traits

Godwin’s preface establishes a psychological framework that governs the entire work. He asserts that pride is essential to human achievement: “It is pride that stimulates us to all our great undertakings.” Yet this same pride, he implies, makes people vulnerable to believing they possess—or others possess—supernatural powers. The contrast between man and animals, he writes, is that man “lives in the past and the future” and “images all that is not.” This imaginative capacity, while the source of poetry and science, also breeds necromancy. Godwin does not dismiss the magical beliefs he recounts as mere ignorance; instead, he treats them as byproducts of the same mental faculties that produce civilization. The reader is thus invited to see the sorcerers and their accusers not as alien figures but as exaggerated versions of ordinary human ambition and fear.

The Mechanics of Witchcraft in Narrative

The account of King Duff of Scotland illustrates how Godwin uses specific, almost clinical detail to convey the logic of witchcraft accusations. Duff falls ill with symptoms his physicians cannot explain: “his colour was fresh, and his eyes lively; and he had a moderate and healthful appetite,” yet he cannot sleep and wastes away. The discovery of a wax image being roasted over a fire provides a causal explanation that satisfies the court. Godwin reports the witches’ confession and execution without commentary, letting the narrative’s internal coherence—the melting wax, the king’s sweat, the broken image, the sudden recovery—stand as a case study in how a community makes sense of misfortune. He then undercuts this resolution by noting that Duff was later murdered by a trusted governor, suggesting that political violence, not magic, was the real threat. The juxtaposition is typical of Godwin’s method: he presents supernatural explanations and then quietly undermines them with natural ones.

Shakespeare’s Sources and Godwin’s Treatment

Godwin’s retelling of the Macbeth story draws directly from Holinshed’s Chronicles, the same source Shakespeare used. He quotes the witches’ greeting—“All hail, Macbeth, thane of Glamis… thane of Cawdor… that hereafter shall be king of Scotland”—and notes that Macbeth had recently inherited the thanedom of Glamis. But Godwin’s interest is not literary; he treats the episode as historical testimony. By including Banquo’s demand for a prophecy and the witches’ reply, he preserves the ambiguity of the original account. The excerpt breaks off before the murder of Duncan, leaving the reader to wonder how Godwin will handle the moral and psychological dimensions that Shakespeare dramatized. This section demonstrates Godwin’s reliance on chronicle sources and his tendency to let the raw material of belief systems speak for itself, without imposing modern skepticism or psychological interpretation.

The Structure of a Skeptical Encyclopedia

Godwin organizes his material chronologically, moving from ancient Persia and Greece through the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and into the early modern period. Each entry follows a similar pattern: a brief biography of the alleged magician, a summary of the powers attributed to them, and often a note on how the story was received or debunked. The effect is cumulative; by the time the reader reaches the Scottish witch trials, the repetition of motifs—wax images, demonic pacts, spectral evidence—becomes a pattern that underscores Godwin’s thesis about the uniformity of human credulity. He rarely pauses to argue; instead, the arrangement itself constitutes an argument. The book is less a history of magic than a history of belief in magic, and Godwin’s role is that of a curator who displays specimens of irrationality with a steady, uninflected hand.

Godwin’s Lives of the Necromancers rewards readers who attend to its structure as much as its content. The preface provides a key to the whole: watch for the interplay between pride and credulity, and notice how each story both satisfies and subverts the desire for supernatural explanation. Because the book is a compilation of excerpts from earlier historians, readers may wish to compare Godwin’s versions with their sources, particularly Holinshed and classical authors. The work is best approached not as a reference but as a sustained essay on human nature, disguised as a biographical dictionary.

I’ve spent years watching Lives of the Necromancers sit patiently on its shelf, its careful chapters on human credulity always reminding me of another quiet companion bound in different cloth. Both ask the same gentle question—not what we believe, but why belief itself shapes us so tenderly. Islam, Her Moral And Spiritual Value: A Rational And Pyschological Study — Key Ideas to Explore shares that wondering gaze, a rational hand reaching toward the heart’s old mysteries without ever forcing an answer. They are kindred spirits, speaking softly across the decades.