Night flights to lonely places, sexual relations with the devil, orgies and infanticide, desecration of the cross and the sacraments: for several centuries, between the 17th and 18th centuries, the image of the Sabbath emerged throughout Europe (and then in other continents, in countries colonized by Europeans), described by women and men accused of witchcraft before secular and ecclesiastical courts. Confessions were rarely spontaneous, more often than not extracted through torture and pressure from judges: but what lay behind the image of the Sabbath?

This book reconstructs a centuries-long trajectory in which the obsession with a conspiracy against society, attributed to gradually different groups (lepers, Jews, Muslims, heretics and witches), became intertwined with popular beliefs with a shamanic background. The investigation of the shamanic layer draws the reader into an immense Eurasian space, populated by men and women, myth and fairy tale characters.

An ambitious program but also a rigorous lesson in historiography.

«Ecstasies manages, with extraordinary candor, clarity, grace, and erudition, to steer between lurid sensationalism and dry-as-dust academic historiography and universalism. This is a big, bold, brilliant book». Wendy Doniger , New York Times Book Review

«Ecstasies is a work of uncompromising scholarship and erudition, but it is not intended for the scholar alone. It is also a rich tapestry of anecdote and incident, a chamber of horrors, curiosity shop, and medieval bestiary all in one». Guardian

«Ginzburg here partially rehabilitates an older point of view, that the witch-cult represented survival of ancient mysteries, the practice of shamanistic ceremonies forbidden by official Catholicism. Ecstasies offers the result of Ginzburg's researches, in chapters as replete with odd learning and lore as Robert Graves's White Goddess». Washington Post

«By any standards, Ecstasies is a bravura performance. It is difficult to think of any other cultural erudition, grasp of textual and visual detail, and high theoretical aim-not to mention literary skill». London Review of Books