Karşı-Reformasyon ve Avrupa din savaşları sırasında kabaca %80'ini kadınların[1][2] ve çoğunluğunu 40 yaşının üzerinde insanların[3][4][5][6] oluşturduğu yaklaşık 50.000 kişi[7][8]büyücülük suçlaması nedeniyle yargılandı ve kovuşturmalar 1580-1630 yılları arasında tepe noktasına ulaştı.
^"Menopausal and post-menopausal women were disproportionally represented amongst the victims of the witch craze--and their over-representation is the more striking when we recall how rare women over fifty must have been in the population as a whole." Lyndal Roper Witch Craze (2004)p. 160
^mostly in the Holy Roman Empire, the British Isles and France, and to some extent in the European colonies in North America; largely excluding the Iberian Peninsula and Italy; "Inquisition Spain and Portugal, obsessed with heresy, ignored the witch craze. In Italy, witch trials were comparatively rare and did not involve torture and executions." Anne L. Barstow, Witchcraze: a New History of the European Witch Hunts, HarperCollins, 1995.
Gibbons, Jenny (1998). "Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. 5.
Gouges, Linnea de (2018). Witch hunts and State Building in Early Modern Europe.
Heselton, Philip (2004). Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft. Somerset: Capall Bann.
Cadılık 26 Ocak 2021 tarihinde Wayback Machine sitesinde arşivlendi., Alison Rowlands, Lyndal Roper ve Malcolm Gaskill ile BBC Radio 4 tartışması (In Our Time, 21 Ekim 2004)