ODD TRUTHS: CAN THE STARS AFFECT HUMAN BEHAVIOUR? One of mankind’s oldest and most enduring ideas is the belief that planets and stars determine the destinies of individuals and societies. Ascertaining these secret causes was “the goal of the wise”, which is why the world’s earliest star-gazers were often mathematicians and philosophers. They mapped the courses…
ODD TRUTHS: THE ALCHEMICAL LIFE OF GLASSMAKER ANTONIO NERI Conciatore: The Life and Times of 17th-century glassmaker Antonio Neri chronicles Antonio Neri’s life as an apparent jack-of-all-trades in Baroque Florence. Neri worked as an alchemist, priest, and physician, but he struck gold with his seminal work, L’Arte Vetraria (The Art of Glass). In this treatise, he…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: DR YVONNE CHIREAU Professor Yvonne Chireau teaches religion at Swarthmore College. A scholar of African-American folk traditions and religions, Professor Chireau is also the author of Black Magic: African American Religion and Conjuring Tradition and Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism. Her research focuses on some of the most interesting but lesser-known narratives…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: DR HANNAH PRIEST Dr Hannah Priest is a historian and writer. A graduate of The University of Manchester, she specialises in everyone’s favourite monster: the werewolf. Like other characters in folk tales and Gothic fiction (such as vampires and witches), werewolves have a direct link to historical figures and events. Fascinatingly, Dr Priest’s book She…
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FANTAST IN FOCUS: HEATHER THEURER Heather Theurer’s art combines the best of high fantasy with mythic and religious symbolism. In her oil paintings, the heavenly clashes with the infernal, and dragons, devils, and angels have it out as they contest for the salvation of souls. Heather hails from the idyllic town of Paradise, Utah, and,…
FANTASTS IN FOCUS: ARCHITECTS OF AIR For the past two decades, Architects of Air have been constructing buildings from nothing but air, spirit, and light. Their luminaria have toured the world; forty-one countries to be exact. Known as “pneumatic sculptures”, the globular and polygonal miniature worlds are brought to life by their colourful interiors and…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: FERDINANDO BUSCEMA “Your focus determines your reality.” This advice, given to Anakin Skywalker by Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, perfectly sums up the interdependent relationship between perception and experience. The idea behind it is that a person’s subjective passions and opinions can easily alter his experience…
You don’t need to stow away on a flying galleon captained by pirates named Hook and Smee to visit these summer lands. Michiel Schrijver’s art is like an airship’s observatory room, providing crystal-clear panoramas of gleaming cities and archipelagoes. His worlds are completely imaginary, but their trace similarities to real destinations–like Venice, Santorini, and the…
ODD TRUTHS: ALEXANDER M. JACOB In 1891, Alexander M. Jacob made history when he sold the largest diamond the world had ever seen to the richest man on the Indian subcontinent, Osman Ali Khan, the Nizam of Hyderabad. After the sale, Jacob was accused of fraud and taken to court in Calcutta. The subsequent trials irreparably damaged his…