Popular delusion history and crowd psychology

Charles Mackay

1814 – 1889

Charles Mackay was a Scottish journalist and editor whose Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) catalogued historical episodes of mass hysteria including alchemy, witchcraft, fortune-telling, the Crusades, and occult manias alongside financial bubbles and social panics. The book remains a canonical reference for understanding the sociology of occult belief and irrational collective behavior, documenting how magical and alchemical systems captured the imagination of entire societies. For historians of esotericism it provides essential contemporary documentation of popular occult enthusiasm and its social dynamics.

Victorian Anthropology / Comparative Ethnologyfolk divinationFolklore practicesFolk MagicEuropean folkloreRationalismComparative MythologyAmulets and charmssympathetic magicFolklore & Superstitionfolk belief documentation

Works in the Archive1 volume

Extraordinary Popular Delusions

Extraordinary Popular Delusions

1841

Intermediate

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