“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…
“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…
“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”….
“They can assume all manner of shapes at their pleasure, appear in what likeness they will themselves…they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant…” -from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621) Almost four hundred years ago, a young Oxford graduate named Joseph Glanvill published The Vanity of Dogmatizing, a…
“To reveal and discover conspiracies, and to govern the greater things of life; as to blast or succeed the enterprises of princes and people; to tell and foretell the success of such and such undertakings; and even to influence the undertakers…” -from A Compleat System of Magick: or, The History of the Black Art by Daniel Defoe…
“They hang people for poisoning your body, but no law can touch them when they inject poison in your mind.” -from Witchcraft: its Power in the World Today by William Seabrook (1941). Sorcery, it’s been argued, is both a composite art and an acquired taste. In all ages, the prototypical sorcerer or witch has been…
WEATHER-MAGIC IN THE WEST INDIES “The soul of some people is such that they can stop the rain and command the winds and the storms.” –from De magia by Giordano Bruno (written circa 1588). “But the men marvelled, saying, ‘What manner of man is this that even the winds and sea obey him!’” -Matthew 8:27. From the earliest…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: DARRAGH MASON “O’er space immense of seas and lands to go Will be your fate, and realms unknown explore Far as the confines of Earth’s utmost shore.” -from Jersusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso, trans. by J.H. Hunt (1822). Darragh Mason is a photographer, writer, and occultist. His wanderlust has driven him to some…
“Remember the true story of the licentiate Torralva, whom the devils carried through the air, riding on a cane…” -from The life and exploits of the ingenious gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, vol. II, by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Charles Jarvis (1749). According to tradition, the first person on the Iberian Peninsula to make…
“It is well known that until the nineteenth century, treasure seeking was steeped in magic.” -Professor Johannes Dillinger “A very deep meaning lies in that notion, that a man in search of buried treasure must work in utter silence ; must speak not a word, whatever appearance, either terrific or delightful, may present itself.” –from…