Tim Addey is the co-founder and chair of The Prometheus Trust, a UK charity that supports scholarship in the Platonic tradition. Just like the ancient Academy, the group meets throughout the year and engages in discussions on and readings of Plato’s dialogues. Unlike other philosophical organisations, the objective of the trust is the promotion of Platonism as…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: MIKE JAY Mike Jay is a cultural historian who hounds the maddening stories of the people who ventured to bizarre borderlands of consciousness. Praised by the Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesmen, Mike has written about nineteenth-century drug culture, the Illuminati, and the earliest claims of machine-based brainwashing. Mike currently curates…
The Ship of Tolerance spans countries, religions, and race. First conceived over ten years ago, the project was created by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov as a collaborative artwork for children around the world. Both Kabakovs are artists and have had their works displayed at places such as the Pace Gallery, The Saatchi Gallery, The Serpentine…
Carl Sagan, eminent astronomer and populariser of science once said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” His words ring true in the atmospheric art of John Harris, whose illustrations have been featured in both science and science-fiction media for over thirty years. His book covers have given visual life…
Marie Brennan is a novelist, folklorist, and martial artist. The author of several works of fiction including the Doppelgänger duology, The Lady Trent series, and over forty short stories, Brennan has a writing style that evokes the reports of mythic lost worlds during The Age of Discovery. She’s been featured in Io9 and Tor, and her…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: ESSIE FOX Essie Fox is a British illustrator, speaker, and author of three riveting Victorian Gothic mystery novels: The Somnambulist, Elijah’s Mermaid, and The Goddess and the Thief. Her latest book, The Goddess and the Thief is scheduled to be re-released in paperback later this month and features a curious and enchanting plot which pays homage to nineteenth-century Spiritualism and the…
ODD TRUTHS: ROBBING THE SPIRITS OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY Not every magician was fortunate enough to get on the royal payroll in Stuart England. The unlucky ones often had to resort to subtle hustling to make a living; drifting from job to job, trading their magic for power and influence. A few of these spellcasters used the “Solomonic arts”…
It’s easy to get entranced by the masks of our September Fantast in Focus, Cyndy Salisbury, who in a way, sculpts the faces of gods and goddesses, using nothing but her imagination and a careful artistic technique. Her website, Art of The Mask is home to a pantheon of her creations. Cyndy is based in Bainbridge,…
Samuel Orange is an unique auteur and self-described alchemist with a deep and abiding interest in the unification and reciprocity of spirituality and art. His performance troupe, The Alchemic Order is behind The Picture of Dorian Gray, a theatrical reinterpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Victorian novel of the same name. The show, which takes place in a secret…
Last year, when I attended Punchdrunk Theatre’s The Drowned Man, I—like the other audience members—journeyed through the multi-level environs and voyeuristically watched the drama unfold with a mask reminiscent of Eyes Wide Shut. Victoria Snaith’s Father Dagon takes place in a much more intimate venue at the Rag Factory near Brick Lane and immediately drags…