The film is in part a textural, creative reading of the Malleus Maleficarum, a German witch-hunters" guide from the 1400s by clergyman Heinrich Kramer that provided insight into how to deal with all manner of devilish concerns. The film"s opening chapter is a relatively straightforward lecture with historic slides and information, while the second chapter has a playful series of vignettes depicting some basic practices of witchcraft. By the later chapters, however, Christensen is dramatising a disturbing narrative in miniature, following Maria (Emmy Schønfeld) who is tortured into confessing a range of occult activities, including bearing the children of Satan, before being burnt at the stake. After this series of visceral images, the final chapters focus on the more modern psychological potential of the phenomena and look into the possibility that such violent inquisition itself was responsible for many of the confessions.