Riding the Nightmare: Women & Witchcraft, by Selma R. Williams

Riding the Nightmare: Women & Witchcraft, by Selma R. Williams. 1978 hardcover. 228 pages, very nice condition.

Demonstrates that the historical persecution of women as witches resulted from prevailing attitudes toward women and their sexual roles, religious misinterpretations, and male attempts to keep women from positions of power and wealth. Using legends, myths, folklore, history, politics, and common sense, Selma Williams show that from the late Middle Ages until the time of the Salem witch trials, men used the threat of witchcraft as a way of keeping women from power and from reaping the rewards of their own labors. When men were most fearful of the future, accusations of witchcraft against women were more likely to appear. A great feminist book on history and the occult.