“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….
Storytelling is one of our oldest and most enduring arts. It pervades all cultures and experiences, and it unites and marshals our deepest emotions. Storytellers, somewhat like the weather-making Tempestarii of legend, modulate the soul’s atmosphere; their words electrify and vivify, frighten and amaze. “Legend-makers” are, as J.R.R. Tolkien maintained, “blessed.” Their tales cast audiences…
“Who but a Rosicrucian could explain the Rosicrucian mysteries!” -from Zanoni (1842) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton Edward Bulwer-Lytton has oft been described as a crypto-Rosicrucian writer, and in his master work, Zanoni, he sketched a very distinct picture of the ideal magus. Zanoni–the novel’s eponymous mage–is a self-sacrificial, self-effacing Stoic with a knack for Batman-style theatrics…
“Throughout my childhood and adolescence I was an avid reader of folklore and mythology…it’s very apparent that this interest had a huge and long lasting impact on my life and the path it’s taken.” -Darragh Mason International travel these days seems like a thing of the past, a dream known only by faint remembrances or…
“In writing the history of this Nubian tradition of worship in the Egyptian temples of Lower Nubia, I came to understand that Nubian pilgrimages to and activities at the sacred site of Philae were actually older than the extant temple of Isis that was built under Ptolemy II…” -Professor Solange Ashby Situated in modern-day Egypt…