“In Trizac, in the wood of Marlhiou, where mounds of earth are found, rests Cottenghe, a Gaulish city of invisible treasures, left in the custody of serpents.” -Paul Sébillot Professional treasure-hunting has never been for the faint of heart. In Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt, those fortunate enough to own kutub al-mutālibīn (treasure-hunting manuals) needed to…
“I was at first very incredulous and never sought the spirits….I am still very suspicious, and seek only for facts and avoid opinions. If I have good witnesses I escape hallucination, and I look sharp and avoid imposture; with those precautions I pursue this new science.” – Baron Seymour Kirkup The “Night-side of Nature”–the occult…
“In order to survive this [being Black in America], you have to really dig down into yourself and recreate yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America.” -James Baldwin In September 1919 The Wild West Weekly, a periodical specialising in adventure narratives of contemporary life in the American West, picked up on…
Shambhala, Avalon, the Blessed Isles and the like have inspired humans for millennia, and yet–mystical insights aside–no physical traces of any of these locations have ever been found. Writers on dark tourism, however, like Peter Hohenhaus, have meticulously tracked down and descended into all kinds of hellscapes–places much more familiar and accessible to mere mortals….
“Who but a Rosicrucian could explain the Rosicrucian mysteries!” -from Zanoni (1842) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton Edward Bulwer-Lytton has oft been described as a crypto-Rosicrucian writer, and in his master work, Zanoni, he sketched a very distinct picture of the ideal magus. Zanoni–the novel’s eponymous mage–is a self-sacrificial, self-effacing Stoic with a knack for Batman-style theatrics…
“In writing the history of this Nubian tradition of worship in the Egyptian temples of Lower Nubia, I came to understand that Nubian pilgrimages to and activities at the sacred site of Philae were actually older than the extant temple of Isis that was built under Ptolemy II…” -Professor Solange Ashby Situated in modern-day Egypt…
“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…
“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…