Real Witches. Real Lives. Real Magic. Real History. Take a magical tour through the lives and times of 359 of the most important sorcerers and witches throughout history.For millennia there's been a fascination and a fear of people possibly wielding magical powers and a stigma surrounding practitioners of ancient rituals and practices. Yet, in the last 70 years, witchcraft, as well as Wicca, have gone from taboo beliefs pursued by a handful of eccentrics and misfits to major global, spiritual movements. Meet the troublemakers and rebels who pushed for change in The Witches Almanac: Sorcerers, Witches, and Magic from Ancient Rome to the Digital Age. You'll be introduced to the history, persecutions, conjurings, and magic of some of history's most consequential witches, sorcerers, wizards, and mavericks, including ... Circe, Medea, Hermes Trismegistus, the Chaldean Magi, and other Ancient Roman and Classical Greek witchesMerlin, Morgana le Fey, Nimue, the 10 Queens of Avalon, and sorcery and witchcraft in the Arthurian legendsSan Cipriano, the obscure 4th century bishop whose influence today still plays an important role in folk magic and Hoodoo practicesBaba Yaga, Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais, Alice Kyteller, Lord Soulis, Michael Scott, the Golem of Prague, and medieval witchcraftKing Henry VI, Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII, Catherine de Medici, John Dee, Queen Elizabeth, and witchcraft in the British royal courtIsobel Gowdie, illusive Scottish witch whose voluntary confessions provided the template for traditional witchcraft beliefsIsaac Newton, Friar Roger Bacon, Nicholas Flamel, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Robert Boyle, and other alchemistsThe Burning Times of the late 16th to early 18th centuriesThe Berwick witch trialThe Salem witch trialAleister Crowley, W. B. Yeats, MacGregor Mathers, Eliphas Levi, the Golden Dawn, Thelema and ritual magic, and the rise of esoteric movements of the 19th and early 20th centuriesJack Parsons, described as the "Jet-Propelled Antichrist" whose life of sex, rockets, and magic ended prematurely in a mysterious explosion