“Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occultism was…heavily influenced by popular fiction, which often benefited from the generic fluidity that flourished at the chiasma of literary and Egyptological culture.” -Dr Eleanor Dobson For ages Egypt was regarded as a land of occult wisdom. In his Timaeus, Plato suggested that the Egyptians–the only people with knowledge of…
“Evliya Çelebi, the traveller who toured almost every region of the Ottoman Empire…records stories of spiritual armies made of dead martyrs’ souls, armies of plague made of jinn, sultans whose souls exit their bodies, vampires of the Caucasus who fight in the night skies, and Bulgarian witches who turn into hens.” -Dr Marinos Sariyannis For…
“We have in the Inquisition trials and elsewhere numerous testimonies of Africans and Europeans alike that describe how knives, swords, or even bullets from firearms have literally bounced off the skin of bolsa de mandinga wearers.” -Professor Cécile Fromont In 1730 an African slave and Vodun devotee named José Francisco Pereira was arrested in Lisbon…
“Ultimately, the effects of Chernobyl will continue to be felt for countless generations to come–the scars of this disaster will persist for longer now than the sum of all our recorded history up until this point. The disaster itself will become a matter of myth, even before its effects stop being felt…” -Darmon Richter The…
“Pentecostals everywhere train themselves to hear, to see, or to feel God’s presence in their daily lives. That kind of intimate relationship…is one of the defining aspects of evangelical religiosity.” – Dr Naomi Richman Jesus famously predicted that the apocalypse would be preceded by “wars and rumours of wars”, pestilence, earthquakes, mass persecutions, and the…
“The idea that drives the subgenre is the survival of ancient cults, usually in remote rural areas, a mere step away from our ‘civilised’ surroundings…in folk horror the past always returns to haunt us.” -from “Archaeology and Folk Horror in Hellebore” (2020) by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo In 2019, Maria J. Pérez Cuervo launched Hellebore,…
“You have witnessed something of which everyone talks without knowledge; you have been initiated into secrets no less terrible than the grotto of Trophonius; you have been present at the Sabbath.” -from Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual (1896) by Eliphas Levi The witches’ sabbath has long been a source of fascination and debate. Sphinx-like,…
Carl Sagan, eminent astronomer and populariser of science once said, “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.” His words ring true in the atmospheric art of John Harris, whose illustrations have been featured in both science and science-fiction media for over thirty years. His book covers have given visual life…
Marie Brennan is a novelist, folklorist, and martial artist. The author of several works of fiction including the Doppelgänger duology, The Lady Trent series, and over forty short stories, Brennan has a writing style that evokes the reports of mythic lost worlds during The Age of Discovery. She’s been featured in Io9 and Tor, and her…
Samuel Orange is an unique auteur and self-described alchemist with a deep and abiding interest in the unification and reciprocity of spirituality and art. His performance troupe, The Alchemic Order is behind The Picture of Dorian Gray, a theatrical reinterpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Victorian novel of the same name. The show, which takes place in a secret…