“A single man sometimes frightened a whole population.” – Brigand Life in Italy, vol. 1 (1865) by Count Alberto Maffei di Boglio. The origins of Ciro Annicchiarico (“Don Ciro”) are obscure, but most authors agree that his criminal career started with a blood feud, possibly in the Mezzogiorno village of Francavilla. Don Ciro, then a priest…
Tag: occult
Theatre Review: Awake and Asleep
THEATRE REVIEW: AWAKE AND ASLEEP The Magic, Language, and Society initiative is a new collaboration between The University of Surrey and Treadwell’s Bookshop. In a bid to make certain esoteric aspects of the humanities more accessible to wider audiences, the programme will run events at Treadwell’s, a nucleus of London’s contemporary magical scene. The inaugural…
The Mermaids of Congo
Images of mermaids first appeared in European bestiaries in the early Middle Ages. At the time, firsthand encounters with the legendary creatures were rare. Nevertheless, mythographers and chroniclers, no doubt inspired by Greco-Roman art, described merfolk as capricious water spirits that were usually up to no good. Like aerial demons, they were capable of copulation,…
Paracelsus the Rebel
ODD TRUTHS: PARACELSUS THE REBEL The nineteenth-century occultist Eliphas Levi praised Paracelsus as a kind of crazy wisdom guru. He pictured the Swiss doctor and alchemist as a frequently drunk “maniac”, who had been more powerful than the most “celebrated magnetists”. Levi’s views were typical of the romanticism of his era, but similar sentiments were…
Fantast in Focus: Sasha Chaitow
FANTAST IN FOCUS: SASHA CHAITOW In a way, Sasha Chaitow is following in the footsteps of the earliest philosophers. Many of them spent their lives in the sun-kissed Greek islands as educators and advisers, developing their theories in the presence of cypress trees and Homer’s famous “wine-dark” sea. Sasha however, has developed a more cosmopolitan…
The Wizard of Pennsylvania
ODD TRUTHS: THE WIZARD OF PENNSYLVANIA In his poem The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) refers to a “weird” and wizard-like recluse who haunts the Wissahickon woodland: The inspiration for this romantic woodsman-magus was none other than Johannes Kelpius, a Transylvanian theologian and mystic who emigrated from Europe to Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1694 to establish a rural utopian community…
Fantasts in Focus: Andy Paciorek and the Folk Horror Revivalists
FANTASTS IN FOCUS: ANDY PACIOREK AND THE FOLK HORROR REVIVALISTS The Folk Horror Revival (FHR) project is taking the world by storm. In just a few years, the movement has spawned numerous works of art and literature and amassed a significant international following. Its 11,000-member (and counting) Facebook group is both an athenaeum and marketplace…
Two Mystics of American Jazz
ODD TRUTHS: TWO MYSTICS OF AMERICAN JAZZ In its early stages, jazz was publicly scapegoated as The Devil’s music. Much like the moral watchdogs who would later comment on the Satanic nature of soul and rock and roll, anti-jazz writers were concerned about the perceived social degrading of Western culture and channelled their prejudices into hateful polemics. This…
Can the Stars Affect Human Behaviour?
ODD TRUTHS: CAN THE STARS AFFECT HUMAN BEHAVIOUR? One of mankind’s oldest and most enduring ideas is the belief that planets and stars determine the destinies of individuals and societies. Ascertaining these secret causes was “the goal of the wise”, which is why the world’s earliest star-gazers were often mathematicians and philosophers. They mapped the courses…
Fantast in Focus: Mike Jay
FANTAST IN FOCUS: MIKE JAY Mike Jay is a cultural historian who hounds the maddening stories of the people who ventured to bizarre borderlands of consciousness. Praised by the Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesmen, Mike has written about nineteenth-century drug culture, the Illuminati, and the earliest claims of machine-based brainwashing. Mike currently curates…