Demonology and occult encyclopedism

Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy

1793 – 1881

Jacques Collin de Plancy was a French author and publisher whose Dictionnaire Infernal, first published in 1818 and expanded through six editions culminating in the lavishly illustrated 1863 edition, became the defining Western encyclopedia of demons, infernal hierarchies, spirits, and occult lore. A freethinker who later converted to Catholicism, he catalogued hundreds of demonic figures with the systematic rigor of an Enlightenment encyclopedist, and the 1863 edition's engravings of demon portraits became iconic reference images for later demonological and occult literature. The Dictionnaire remains an indispensable primary reference for the study of Western demonology and the visual imagination of the infernal.