In January 2023, the University of Copenhagen launched the Dark Arts Research Group (DARG). Covering the period from 1750 to the present, the project will take an in-depth look at the global public’s “fascination with otherworldly entities and the macabre”. The DARG is specifically interested in exploring the varied ways horror, gothic, and other esoteric…
“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…
“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…
“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…
ODD TRUTHS: JANE LEAD, PROPHETESS OF A NEW AGE “She, I believe, carried to its practical extreme the Paracelsian doctrine concerning the magical power of faith…” -from Hours with the Mystics, vol. II, by Robert Vaughan (1856). In April of 1670, Jane Lead (or Leade) had a vision that would change her life forever. While walking in the…
“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…