“A sudden shift in our relationship with the dead, or in the geography of the afterlife, can have unthinkable consequences…” -Ivan Cenzi The University of Padua has long been associated with daring research. In the early modern era especially, the school was a bastion of learning that attracted experimental thinkers who passionately investigated and dissected…
“With several sub-departments and a distinct division of work, the Venetian secret service was different to other, more rudimentary espionage networks created by rulers (and their rivals) in other parts of Italy and early modern Europe.” -Dr Ioanna Iordanou Giacomo Casanova–as is well known–was fiercely independent, possessing an untempered passion for high adventure, self-promotion, and…
“De Morgan was a spiritualist, meaning she believed that after the death of an individual’s body, their soul or spirit continued to live and operate in the world, and that individuals beyond the grave could thus be contacted. Such…ideas dominate her mature oeuvre.” -Emma Merkling In an article published in the New York Tribune about…
“He lived with such intensity that people have stayed fascinated by him. They’ve told his story over and over again–for different reasons and in different ways.” -from Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and His Oration in Modern Memory (2019) by Professor Brian Copenhaver It would not be an exaggeration to call…
“If they find any to be timorous and fearful, they admit not such a man to the secrets of magick…But such as appear to be of bold and undaunted spirits, they take especial notice of them, and reserve them for serious employments.” -from the English translation of Johann Cambilhon’s De studiis Jesuitarum abstrusioribus (1608) Sometime…
“Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occultism was…heavily influenced by popular fiction, which often benefited from the generic fluidity that flourished at the chiasma of literary and Egyptological culture.” -Dr Eleanor Dobson For ages Egypt was regarded as a land of occult wisdom. In his Timaeus, Plato suggested that the Egyptians–the only people with knowledge of…
“Evliya Çelebi, the traveller who toured almost every region of the Ottoman Empire…records stories of spiritual armies made of dead martyrs’ souls, armies of plague made of jinn, sultans whose souls exit their bodies, vampires of the Caucasus who fight in the night skies, and Bulgarian witches who turn into hens.” -Dr Marinos Sariyannis For…
“We have in the Inquisition trials and elsewhere numerous testimonies of Africans and Europeans alike that describe how knives, swords, or even bullets from firearms have literally bounced off the skin of bolsa de mandinga wearers.” -Professor Cécile Fromont In 1730 an African slave and Vodun devotee named José Francisco Pereira was arrested in Lisbon…
“I do not profess myself to be any great Statesman, or exactly to know what ever is secretly transacted among us: But this I can say…I have for many years last past been as curious an observer of all the great transactions of Affairs in Church or State, and of the instruments and means by…
“Ultimately, the effects of Chernobyl will continue to be felt for countless generations to come–the scars of this disaster will persist for longer now than the sum of all our recorded history up until this point. The disaster itself will become a matter of myth, even before its effects stop being felt…” -Darmon Richter The…