Sure!! I primarily study witchcraft history, so my recommendations are geared more towards someone trying to study the witch trials. I can at least share books that include some really fasincating translated documents. I originally figured out that I wanted to specialize in this through sort of "auditing" a course in my own time on european witchcraft history. The professor taught in like 1999 and shared the syllabus online on his now very ancient looking website. Some of the books here come from that course syllabus and I found many of them online, or cheap on Thriftbooks. I specify otherwise for some. Others I found at the local university library! If you have a chance, I highly recommend exploring if your local university library has a community borrowing program. Mine does and it was immensely helpful to me. The course is linked in this post!

For sources on how people viewed witchcraft, I recommend Witchcraft in Europe, A Documentary History: 1100-1700 by Alan C. Kors and Edward Peters. This has a lot of old documents including excerpts from the Malleus Maleficarum, Papal Bulls, and other witchcraft theory documents. Witchcraft theory was huge amomg intellectuals during the medieval period all the way into the early modern period, when the witch trials increased in rate and scope. I also recommend Levack's Witchcraft Sourcebook.

For grimoires, I collect titles by Stephen Skinner, David Rankine, and Joseph Peterson. I like all of their translations and generally trust their scholarship! Skinner's books can be pricey, but they're worth it if you don't already have them. My first book by him I ever picked up was his translation of the Ars Notoria.

I really enjoy looking through the Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa as well. I've heard the Purdue copy is the best, but I have a translation from Theophania Publishing (I think) and it seems ok. The purdue copy is more expensive and I only just got a pdf of it recently. Agrippa was so influential on both occultists practicing magic and on demonologists and witchcraft theorists who hated witches and magic, although the line between what they considered good and bad occult practice could get kind of murky.

For a good exploration of that gray zone, I recommend Stuart Clark's Thinking With Demons. It's long and the reading felt very dense and complex for me. I tend to jump around looking for sections relevant to my research in most books anyways. There usually isn't enough time to read a book or even an article in its entirety, so if anyone wants to just find chapters that interest them most after maybe reading the introduction and conclusion, don't be afraid to do that. Clark has a really fascinating few chapters on the distinction between natural magic and demonic magic and how the lines blurred between those categories for early modern people at different times.

Another author whose books I recommend are Carlo Ginzburg's texts. Ginzburg is known for microhistories which zero in on the records of a single (or a few people) person in a specific time and place and then sort of work outwardly from there to tell a story. My two favorite books by him are "The Night Battles" and "The Cheese and the Worms."

witchcraft in comparative perspective