“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…
“I had heard versions of merpeople stories—primarily those about mermaids—in many highland villages while doing research in the Andes…I didn’t yet understand how these stories tied into the larger sociopolitical context of Spanish rule.” -from “The Revolutionary Power of Andean Folk Tales” by Dr Di Hu Mermaids and sirens have long played a prominent role…
“Pentecostals everywhere train themselves to hear, to see, or to feel God’s presence in their daily lives. That kind of intimate relationship…is one of the defining aspects of evangelical religiosity.” – Dr Naomi Richman Jesus famously predicted that the apocalypse would be preceded by “wars and rumours of wars”, pestilence, earthquakes, mass persecutions, and the…
“My aim is to move beyond the perception that Lithuanian paganism is a matter of interest only to Lithuanians, and to show that this extraordinary pagan faith matters to the religious history of Europe as a whole.” – Dr Francis Young Every age has had its relic-hunters, those who, propelled forward into untracked territory by…