A Razor for a Goat: Problems in the History of Witchcraft and Diabolism

Susan McKnight is an administrator of the Courts Technology Integrated Justice Project at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

A Razor for a Goat was originally written in 1962 and first published by
the University of Toronto Press in 1989. It has been reissued with a new
foreword by Richard Kieckhefer because of its pertinence in view of more
recent histories of witchcraft. It is believed that Rose wrote the book
to refute the theories of Margaret Alice Murray, an
Egyptologist/feminist who believed in the existence of an underground
pagan witch cult. Rose, an Anglican and former history professor at the
University of Toronto, does not believe in either the Devil or magical
powers.

In debunking many of the myths surrounding witchcraft, the author takes
on four schools of thought on the subject: the Bluff, which believes
that all stories about witches and their cult are nonsense; the Knowing,
which concentrates on the sensational stories of the cult (especially
black masses and sexual activity); the anti-Sadducee, which follows the
theories of Montague Summers, which characterize witches as allies of
Satan; and the Murrayite group, which believes in a pagan cult that
outdates Christianity. Although Rose gleefully pokes holes in all four
theories, he doesn’t dismiss any of them completely.

A Razor for a Goat is a fascinating book, written with a subtle sense
of humour and constant reminders that the author’s beliefs are simply
his own opinions. There are three appendixes. The first discusses the
Blokula Scare, the second explains the difference between the
Waldensians and Albigensians, and the third is a “Short Glossary of
Words Sometimes Treated as Technical Terms of Sorcery.”