“For the Spiritualists [in Florence] are many, and we have a few but very good mediums, principal amongst them the psychograph, Signor Fanciullacci…” – from “A Letter from Florence: The Protestant Bishop of Mexico and Spiritualism” by Giovanni Damiani (1886) Much like Quattrocento and Cinquecento Florence, the Florence of the Victorian age was all aglow…
“We may smile at the mystifying style of James the First, but it veils a dark truth: ‘You must not dip too deep in what kings reserve among themselves, among the arcana imperii.’” – from Commentaries on the life and reign of Charles the First, King of England, vol. I, by Isaac D’israeli As with…
“The Spirit of the Dragon, say the Adepts, must be changed, ere we attain the Great Secret…” -from Meister Karl’s Sketch-Book by Charles Godfrey Leland (1855). Our world, once a realm of unexplored hinterlands, has accordingly had its fair share of dragon-hunters. Their craft, which has its origins in the Bronze Age, when the serpentine…
“…Velay had a temple dedicated to Apollo, which was famous for the oracles it rendered; it was near the frontier of Auvergne on the summit of a rock on which later was built the castle of Polignac.” -from Histoire de l’Eglise d’Auvergne, vol.I, by Lambert Elizabeth d’Aubert comte de Résie (1855). In remote times, the…
“The Arabic treasure books, in contrast, emerged in an Egyptian context…no corresponding texts exist in the European magical tradition…” -Dr Christopher Braun Recently, officials reported the discovery of an Egyptian archpriest’s four millennia-old tomb. Remarkably, the cleric’s final resting place in Saqqara, Egypt, was unusually well-preserved, with the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of…
“The occult sciences are part of Islamic intellectual history..they constituted a primary mode by which people thought about the hidden, the extraordinary, and their potential for partaking in the divine and wondrous.” -from “From Ġāyat al-ḥakīm to Šams al-maʿārif wa laṭāʾif al-ʿawārif: Ways of Knowing and Paths of Power” by Liana Saif In 2015, Dr…
“I have heard him [Napoleon] say, oftener than once…that four hostile newspapers were more to be feared than a hundred thousand troopers in battle array.” -from Evenings with Prince Evenings with Prince Cambacérès, Second Consul, Archchancellor of the Empire, Vol. 2, by Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon (1837) The very distant ancestors of today’s press, though constantly in…
“So we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything…meeting with such adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry times.” -from Memoirs, Vol. I, by Charles Godfrey Leland (1894) Wild as it may seem, Charles Godfrey Leland did not begin his career as a model student. His Princeton years—for the most part—were…
“Man is himself the creator of his heaven and hell, and there are no demons except our own follies.” -from Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi (1896) Some of the most persuasive revolutionaries in history have been renegade clerics. Moses, for example, was said to be “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians”….
“She is regarded as one of the prophetesses by several doctors of the Roman Church…” – from Dissertationes de sibyllis, earumque oraculis by Servaas Galle (1688). The infamous Eugenio Torralva captured the imagination of sixteenth-century Castile and astonished members of the royal house of Habsburg with his seemingly miraculous powers of premonition. He was not, however, the…