“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…
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…
“They say that there is a shrine also of the heroine Iphigenia…Hesiod, in his Catalogue of Women, says that Iphigenia did not die, but by the will of Artemis became Hecate.” -from Pausanias’s Description of Greece, vol. 1, trans. with a commentary by James George Frazer (1898). To the Ancient Greeks, heroes and heroines were exalted beings—a…
“This valorous woman, with sword in hand…commanded troops of soldiers like a captain…” -from Gynevera de le clare donne by Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, eds. C. Ricci and A. Bacchi della Lega (1888). “From her earliest years she hunted wild beasts, and almost like another Diana, she led many companions with her, running through the countryside and…
“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…
ODD TRUTHS: THE CAMISARDS, REBEL PROPHETS OF LANGUEDOC “…the sect of the Inspired became so numerous that the valleys swarmed with them, the mountains were covered with them, and the dioceses…were overspread with such a number of prophets, that in the Cevennes and the lower Languedoc only, they were computed at eight thousand souls.” -from…
ODD TRUTHS: JOHN EVANS, THE SINISTER ASTROLOGER OF FETTER-LANE “He was the most saturnine person my eyes ever beheld…” -from History of His Life and Times by William Lilly (1715) There is a guilty pleasure in picturing the early modern era as a time of taboo-defying dynamos and charismatics. Personalities like Giovanni Pico, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, and John Dee…
ODD TRUTHS: THOMAS TRYON, THE PYTHAGORAS OF LONDON “Cast thy Eyes round about thee, and enter into the inside of Things, and with a silent distinguishing Thought, and earnest sedate Meditation, and Contemplation, behold the wonderful Operations of the serene silent magick Powers of the Coelestials, and also of the Terrestials…” -from The Knowledge of a…