85 Books Like The Witchcraft Sourcebook

If you’ve ever been a fan of the James Bond books or movies, spy-thrillers, or anything involving MI6, this book is about where it all began: the golden age of English espionage. Filled with captivating plots and characters straight out of history, this book was the bedrock that I built my story upon. Please check it out. You will never look at English history the same way again.

It might surprise you to see a Christopher Marlowe biography over any book on William Shakespeare in this list, but Christopher Marlowe: Poet & Spy is seriously that good. It made me fall in love with the scoundrel now credited as co-author to Shakespeare’s three Henry VI plays and who likely had a hand in several more. However, this book is also a captivating glimpse into the real-life exploits and suspicious murder of one of the greatest writers in English history. This book should have been made into several films by now. There’s just so much to like about Marlowe, his vices, and his many secrets. Please get yourself a copy and enjoy the rascal.

Shakespeare the Man is not the best book out there on William Shakespeare. There are many others that are better researched and less opinionated. However, Rowse gave me the best impression of what Shakespeare has meant to centuries of dramatists and researchers. It was recommended to me by the late Dr. John M. Bell of NYU, who was the most knowledgeable man on Shakespeare I've ever known. I see why he recommended this. It's a short but thorough read, and very enjoyable. Just don't treat Rowse's every word as gospel. His book is about Shakespeare, the man and myth.

De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem ["On the Fabric of the Human Body in Seven Books"] will likely catch you by surprise since, unlike most books featured on this website, this one was printed back in 1543. Fortunately, this means that anyone with a working Internet connection and web browser can access this mystifying medical atlas from the sixteenth century. Annotated editions of On the Fabric of the Human Body are available online from numerous medical colleges, so please take the time to find and appreciate this masterpiece of anatomy and artistic imagination.

This was an obvious pick. As a Black girl who grew up loving zombies but could never find girls who looked like me slaying and slashing through hordes of monsters – this book cover had me at ‘hello’. Inside is all of the magic you could ever dream in color. And the title is explained in the introduction: Sycorax was the deceased African sorceress referenced in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Demons, vamps, witches (oh my!), and more compiled into more than 500 pages of both stories and poetry. I was floored to discover so many more Black women writers of dark and speculative fiction! I can’t pick a favorite but ‘Kim’ by Nicole Sconiers always comes to mind first when I talk about this collection.

The OG witches of modern fantasy literature. I’ve put down Wyrd Sisters because it’s the first of Pratchett’s Witches books to feature the trio of Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick, but I’d list the whole series if I could. If you haven’t read them, I envy you, because you get to experience this trio and their world for the first time. Granny Weatherwax is a good witch because she has to be, but if she were to go the other way there’s no doubt she would be the greatest evil witch the Discworld has ever known. She plays cards with Death, knows the power of stories, and, most importantly, understands that being Good and Right is not the same as being Nice. Pratchett’s Witches were formative reading for me, and paved the way for many beloved reads on our shelves today.

As advertised, a late case of witchcraft (although not as late as Salem thirty years later—further proof of American backwardness in Europeans’ eyes). A kind of seventeenth-century "Law and Order,” where we follow one case of alleged poisoning from the beginning to the end, from the different perspectives of practically everyone involved.  Another heart-wrenching family drama among people known to each other all their lives. I especially liked the nuanced treatment of the legal investigator and other specialists for the prosecution. Perhaps a bit too lengthy, but I found it easy to glide over a few specialized sections in favor of detailed dramatizations of several key confrontations. 

This book is like Marmite, you either love it or hate it but it represents a small but important time-capsule of traditional British Old Craft history that we have been lucky enough to preserve for the next generation of witches. This collection of true anecdotes mirrors the goings-on within an Old Craft coven and reveals the humour and sense of the ridiculous that is part and parcel of many traditional covens that I’ve come across.

This was the first book I ever read by HP Lovecraft and after reading it, I read everything else that I could find by such a talented writer. Lovecraft’s stories are dark, doom-ridden tales that are filled with cosmic horror, nightmarish landscapes, and indescribable monsters. But it’s not only the tales themselves that captivated me, it’s the style in which they were written. Lovecraft has such a beautiful literary style of writing that really made me feel what the characters felt and see what horrors they witnessed. His work definitely inspired me to pick up pen and paper and write stories of my own.

There’s no doubt about it: this is an incredible “forever book” for Witches of all ages. This compendium has guided every single one of my Witchy years from teenagehood onward, and I still discover something new with every read. Drawing on the Irish authors’ training in Alexandrian Wicca, which developed shortly after Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente developed the Wiccan religion itself, this book journeys across cultures, traditions, and magickal practices, both old and new.

Although the book is a product of the 70s, it was incredibly progressive back then and certainly continues to be. Also, keep in mind that the terms Wicca and Witchcraft, in a Western Pagan context, were synonymous at the time. I find this book’s information (and accompanying photographs throughout) both timeless and perpetually invaluable!