Weyer disagreed with certain contemporaries about the justification of
witch-hunting. Weyer believed that most, probably all, cases of alleged witchcraft resulted from delusions of the alleged witch, rather than actual, voluntary cooperation with spiritual evil. In brief, Weyer claimed that cases of alleged witchcraft were psychological rather than supernatural in origin. Weyer's reason for presenting this material was not to instruct his readers in diabolism, but rather to "expose to all men" the pretensions of those who claimed to be able to work magic, men who "are not embarrassed to boast that they are mages, and their oddness, deceptions, vanity, folly, fakery, madness, absence of mind, and obvious lies, to put their hallucinations into the bright light of day." Weyer's source claimed that
Hell arranged itself hierarchically in an infernal court which is divided into princes, ministries and ambassadors.
Reception and legacy De Praestigiis has been translated into English, French, and German; it was one of the principal sources of
Reginald Scot's sceptical account of witchcraft,
The Discoverie of Witchcraft. == See also ==