“I have heard him [Napoleon] say, oftener than once…that four hostile newspapers were more to be feared than a hundred thousand troopers in battle array.” -from Evenings with Prince Evenings with Prince Cambacérès, Second Consul, Archchancellor of the Empire, Vol. 2, by Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon (1837) The very distant ancestors of today’s press, though constantly in…
“So we went gaily from town to town, visiting everything…meeting with such adventures as befell all wandering students in those old-fashioned, merry times.” -from Memoirs, Vol. I, by Charles Godfrey Leland (1894) Wild as it may seem, Charles Godfrey Leland did not begin his career as a model student. His Princeton years—for the most part—were…
“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”….
“She is regarded as one of the prophetesses by several doctors of the Roman Church…” – from Dissertationes de sibyllis, earumque oraculis by Servaas Galle (1688). The infamous Eugenio Torralva captured the imagination of sixteenth-century Castile and astonished members of the royal house of Habsburg with his seemingly miraculous powers of premonition. He was not, however, the…
“The millennium is at once everywhere and nowhere in our culture…” -from “The Millenia-Old History of the Apocalypse” by Anthony Grafton (1999) According to the author or authors of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus, when asked to describe the signs of the Second Coming, cautioned his disciples against jumping to conclusions. There would be, he…
“She was the first woman in the history of crime in Russia to create a well-coordinated criminal group, which she ran for decades…” –from “Women in Organized Crime in Russia” by Yakov Gilinsky (2007) From 1880 to about 1905, newspapers around the world were abuzz with a sensational tale about the comeuppance of a Russian racketeer….
“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…
“A thousand fathoms down our home; Daughters we of the pathless deep, sprung from the ever dancing foam.” –from The Mermaids by Edith M. David (1873). Mermaids, it would seem, have been shoaling around the sunless depths of the human psyche since the time of the ancient Mesopotamians. From the very beginning, marine humanoids were associated…