“From a historical point of view, astrology is a fascinating subject…it has traversed not only time but also many cultures with different philosophical and religious views. -Dr Luís Ribeiro Astrology remains one of humanity’s most enduring and enchanting interests. Like stars, coruscating in the darkness infinite, it has been a guide to all civilizations, casting…
“Dowsing rods and transmutative alchemy, mining tools and popular magic have all been analysed by modern historians. Mathematics, on the other hand, is surprisingly missing from historical accounts of mines, caves, and the underground world.” -from Underground Mathematics (2022) by Dr Thomas Morel In early March, a team from the ScanPyramids project confirmed the existence…
“It is…no wonder that sun, moon, and star-rises and -sets are the most widespread celestial phenomena encoded in alignments of structures.” – Dr Fabio Silva Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark is a film buff’s dream: full of clever dialogue, imaginative history, and eye-popping (sometimes literally) sequences–all brought to life by John Williams’s…
“A better understanding of the history of some of the mystical techniques found in Kabbalah will show that some of them stem from magical sources. Likewise, neglected texts found in manuscripts related to [Jewish] ‘saintly’ mystical figures…will reveal a much greater role played by magic in their activities than previously suspected.” -Moshe Idel Wizards, said…
“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the…
“Bellosguardo…it is a haunted, legendary spot; fate and witches sweep round its walls by night, while the cry of the civetta makes music for their aërial dance…” -Charles Godfrey Leland Nineteenth-century Florence was haunted, and its haunters–whether of blood or spirit–were the stuff of legend. In the 1850s and 60s, Baron Kirkup garnered a reputation…
“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….