New York: Times Books / Random House, (1996) dj. Hardcover first edition - Aveni, a professor of astronomy and anthropology, approaches the subject as "an interested but skeptical inquirer, , His assumptions are scientific, rational, and secular as he charts the history of magical and supernatural beliefs and their pseudo-scientific manifestations, from early Greece and Rome through the Dark Ages of alchemy and witchcraft to the Age of Enlightenment and on to our New Age resurgence of belief in the spirit world." Notes, bibliography, index. xiii, 406 pp. ISBN: 0-812924150.