In The Norns in Old Norse Mythology (2011), Karen Bek-Pederson explores the Norns, or nornir to use the Old Norse plural, who are fascinating but widely misunderstood female supernatural figures. Bek-Pederson reveals that the typical conception of the Norns as the Old Norse equivalent of the Graeco-Roman Fates, three sisters who spin and weave the threads of fate, has no real basis in Old Norse primary sources. By closely examining Old Norse texts, which she notes are “gloriously inconsistent,” Bek-Pederson reveals the reality of the Norns in all their murky complexity (199)…

In Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History (2006), David Frankfurter sets out to explain why people throughout history have constructed beliefs about secret, evil groups that engage in remarkably similar, lurid acts of violence and depravity, often involving infant sacrifice, blood-drinking and cannibalism, and sexual perversity. While providing some insights into this bizarre and unsettling pattern, which has recently repeated itself with QAnon conspiracy theories, the book ultimately fails to provide a convincing over-arching explanation…

Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets (2013) by Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston provides a comprehensive analysis of a fascinating group of texts. If you’re interested in ancient religion, chances are you’ve come across a reference to the Orphic gold tablets, perhaps described as an enigmatic remnant of a mystery religion or even a lost precursor to Christian concepts of salvation. Graf and Johnston’s study removes the veil of mystery and considers these tablets in a serious, grounded manner, without the unwarranted grandiosity of claiming they are the key to ancient Greek religion or the origin point of Christianity…

Old Thiess, A Livonian Werewolf: A Classic Case in Comparative Perspective (2020) by Carlo Ginzburg and Bruce Lincoln is, as far as I can tell, the best English-language scholarly book about the fascinating figure of Old Thiess. Old Thiess was an octogenarian man who was put on trial in 17th century Livonia after proudly proclaiming himself a werewolf, a “hound of God” who harrowed hell and fought evil witches to return fertility to the land. But just because Old Thiess is the best English book on this obscure subject doesn’t mean it is always a satisfying read.

The Sacred Paw: The Bear in Nature, Myth, and Literature (1985) by Paul Shepard and Barry Sanders includes a lot of interesting details about bear ecology, folklore, and religion, but you have to slog through a nonsensical overarching argument in order to gather them. The central chapter of The Sacred Paw concerns ceremonies of the “slain bear,” a set of similar rituals enacted by hunting peoples across the northern circumpolar region…

Neal H. Walls’s The Goddess Anat in Ugaritic Myth (1992) provides a thorough and thoughtful, if not easy to read, analysis of the mythological character of the Ugaritic goddess Anat. Anat was a goddess in the pantheon of Ugarit, a Bronze Age city in what is now northern Syria, from which a corpus of cuneiform texts was discovered in 1928. Anat is an independent and headstrong young warrior woman who hacks men to pieces and wears their hands and heads…

Gregory Mobley’s The Return of the Chaos Monsters: And Other Backstories of the Bible (2012) packs an ambitious and interesting perspective on the Hebrew Bible into a slim volume. What the book calls “backstories” are overarching themes that inform the Biblical narrative, and according to Mobley, most have to do with how God and humans manage chaos in order to maintain a livable, orderly universe…

In Religion and Its Monsters (2002), Timothy K. Beal explores the relationship between horror and Judeo-Christian religion. The opening chapters seem to promise a discussion of theological horror. Beal fulfills this promise in his chilling examination of theological horror in the Book of Job. But for me, the book too soon strays from its most interesting themes…

Dionysos Slain (1979) by Marcel Detienne concerns the enigmatic Orphic myth in which Titans slaughter and consume the child god Dionysos. However, you have to power through the first half of the book before you actually get any discussion of this fascinating myth, although I found that the analysis of the myth and its role in a religious movement that challenged the Ancient Greek state system of sacrifice was worth the wait…

Despite the sweeping title, The Invention of Satanism (2016) provides a deep investigation into only a limited area of Satanism. The book by Asbjorn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis, and Jesper AA. Petersen touches briefly upon premodern and early modern beliefs about fallen angels, demons, and witchcraft, but moves rapidly into the 20th century…

The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist (2009) by Matt Baglio tracks an American Catholic priest, Father Gary Thomas, as he trains in Italy to become an exorcist. The book provides a fascinating look at modern exorcism in Italy and to a lesser extent America, but with a frustrating amount of inanity padding out the actual information…

In The Edge of Memory (2018), Patrick Nunn argues that humans have preserved within their oral traditions memories of past events that occurred more than 7,000 years ago. Despite the seeming outlandishness of the claim—how could humans pass down specific information accurately for hundreds of generations when most of us barely know who are great-grandparents even are?—there is a narrow area of his evidence that seems convincing…

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe by Hilda Ellis Davidson (1993) does contain a lot of interesting information, but it is not always packaged in an easy to follow way. Focusing largely on Scandinavian, Icelandic, and Celtic peoples, but also touching on the Germanic, Davidson surveys the archaeological, literary, and folkloric evidence…