“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…
“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…
“Happy were the hours I spent in the society of Baron Kirkup…the manifestations he has witnessed are absolutely astounding.” -from Around the World Around the World: Or, Travels in Polynesia, China, India, Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and Other Heathen Countries (1875) by James Martin Peebles Long before the the rise of Theosophy, which took the world…
“They can assume all manner of shapes at their pleasure, appear in what likeness they will themselves…they are most swift in motion, can pass many miles in an instant…” -from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621) Almost four hundred years ago, a young Oxford graduate named Joseph Glanvill published The Vanity of Dogmatizing, a…
“They hang people for poisoning your body, but no law can touch them when they inject poison in your mind.” -from Witchcraft: its Power in the World Today by William Seabrook (1941). Sorcery, it’s been argued, is both a composite art and an acquired taste. In all ages, the prototypical sorcerer or witch has been…
“Remember the true story of the licentiate Torralva, whom the devils carried through the air, riding on a cane…” -from The life and exploits of the ingenious gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha, vol. II, by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Charles Jarvis (1749). According to tradition, the first person on the Iberian Peninsula to make…
“It is well known that until the nineteenth century, treasure seeking was steeped in magic.” -Professor Johannes Dillinger “A very deep meaning lies in that notion, that a man in search of buried treasure must work in utter silence ; must speak not a word, whatever appearance, either terrific or delightful, may present itself.” –from…
ODD TRUTHS: JOHN EVANS, THE SINISTER ASTROLOGER OF FETTER-LANE “He was the most saturnine person my eyes ever beheld…” -from History of His Life and Times by William Lilly (1715) There is a guilty pleasure in picturing the early modern era as a time of taboo-defying dynamos and charismatics. Personalities like Giovanni Pico, Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, and John Dee…
FANTAST IN FOCUS: GYRUS Gyrus is the editor and psychonaut behind Dreamflesh, a dynamic webzine that explores the overlapping and often hard to articulate layers of the human psyche. First conceived in the 2000s, Dreamflesh has been a boon to readers interested in consciousness, ecology, and politics for over a decade. The project has many offshoots,…