ODD TRUTHS: A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY GHOSTHUNTER “This man [Alexander ab Alexandro] is familiar with everyone, and yet no one knows him.” -from Letter to Viglius Zuichemus by Desiderius Erasmus (1533). Born in Naples in 1461, Alexander ab Alexandro (also known as Alessandro Alessandri) spent the first part of his life as a practising lawyer. At some point however,…
“There were visions in the air, and dreams sitting on the staircases…” -from Memoirs (1893) by Charles Godfrey Leland “Kerner’s house is, perhaps, the most remarkable and peculiar in all Swabia…if we wish to receive or impart a right idea of Kerner, we must see him and describe him in his own house.” -from Justinus…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: DANIEL HARMS “They are either not mortal, or their date of life is indeterminately long; they are of a nature superior to man, and speak with contempt of human follies. By night they revel beneath the light of the moon and stars…” -from The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: GORDON WHITE “One of the roles of the Trickster is to introduce uncertainty and novelty into your existence.” -Gordon White Also known as “the dark prince of modern Chaos magic”, Gordon White is a writer and podcaster. His website Rune Soup is a juggernaut in the occult blogosphere, a collection of prodigious musings that…
“You will remember that Albertus Magnus…adds emphatically, that the process will instruct and avail only to the few— that a man must be born a magician!” -from The Haunters and the Haunted by Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1859). In 1870, Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton hosted a quirky American man of letters named Charles Godfrey Leland at his manor house in Knebworth, Hertfordshire. The two thinkers were…
ODD TRUTHS: ISLAMIC MAGIC IN MALTA Maltese folk magic has been studied in detail by scholars such as Francis Ciappara and Carmel Cassar. However, in 2014, a research team at the University of Exeter led by Professor Dionisius Agius, Dr Catherine Rider, and Dr Alex Mallett, recovered seventeenth-century court documents about an Egyptian slave who was accused of giving…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: DELPHINE LEBOURGEOIS Delphine Lebourgeois is a collagist and illustrator. A graduate of the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Central St Martins, Delphine has had her entrancing artwork featured in publications, such as The Guardian and The New Yorker. All in all, there is a current of effervescence and playfulness that runs…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: PHENDERSON DJÈLÍ CLARK Phenderson Djèlí Clark (aka “The Disgruntled Haradrim”) is a writer, historian, and lecturer. His short stories have appeared in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology, and Daily Science Fiction. In the spring of 2016, Phenderson’s first novella A Dead Djinn in Cairo was published by Tor Books. The story is a fantastical mystery…
“Painting was, from the very beginning, one of the most important instruments of conquest in the sphere of thinking, the mind.” – Guy Brett, “Being Drawn to an Image”, in Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1991). The airy cities of the Altiplano region in South America were once at the forefront of a major culture war. Strangely enough,…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: NISI SHAWL Nisi Shawl is a writer and anthologist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 2008, her short story collection Filter House won the prestigious James Tiptree Jr award. Nisi’s other stories and articles have appeared in places like Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Aeon Magazine and Tor.com. Her highly anticipated debut novel Everfair (which…