My life's introduction to Cornelius Agrippa was not through reading his books, but through the article about him in Man, Myth and Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural. It includes the following little rumor about Mr. Agrippa: ...He went out one day, leaving the key of a secret room with his wife. She foolishly lent it to the lodger, a student, who went into the room and found a huge book of spells, which he began to read. After a while he looked up and found a demon standing in front of him, asking why it had been summoned. He gaped at it in horror and the demon strangled him. Agrippa returned and, fearing a charge of murder, made the demon restore the student to life for a few hours. The young man was seen walking in the street but when the demon's magic wore off, he collapsed. In that same article, his appearance in the German children's book Struwwelpeter is mentioned purely because they wanted to use the public domain illustration of him. Now, the fir...
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