Readers interested in the history of alchemy will be pleased to hear that Jenny Rampling’s long-awaited “The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300-1700” (University of Chicago Press) has now been published. Offering plenty of new original insights into the alchemical practices of figures such as John Dee (and fellow spirit conjuror, Edward Kelley), the book … Read more
In the decades around 1600, the astrologers Simon Forman and Richard Napier produced one of the largest surviving sets of medical records in history. With support from the Wellcome Trust, a team of scholars at the University of Cambridge (the Casebooks Project) has transformed this paper archive into a digital archive. Today, the Project’s director, … Read more
Folks: Times are tough, so I reluctantly decided to start selling bits from my library. The first item I just put up for auction on eBay is a pretty rare one: “On the so-called Divining Rod, or Virgula Divina”, by William Barrett (1897). Published as Part 32 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical … Read more
Thanks to those of you who participated in the poll on the future design of Forbidden Histories, which has closed yesterday. Participation was a little on the meagre side with only 88 votes, but the people have spoken and it seems we’re stuck with the current design (Option 1 in the poll) for the foreseeable … Read more
Introductory remarks According to a traditional standard narrative, the ‘decline of magic’ in western intellectual elites since the Enlightenment was the direct and inevitable consequence of advances in science and medicine, which rendered belief in ‘occult’ principles obsolete. Probably the best currently available survey of historical studies casting considerable doubt on this popular view is … Read more
Hearing that I can’t live without quality horror flicks probably won’t come as a shock to you. Imagine therefore my delight when the BBC approached me in November 2014 to discuss an opportunity to get involved in the making of a TV horror drama as a history advisor. Created by Life on Mars and Ashes … Read more
The investigation of ‘occult’ phenomena associated with spiritualism and mesmerism occupied the minds of representatives of modern psychology much more than this has been reflected in standard histories of modern psychology. From Gustav Theodor Fechner and William James to Théodore Flournoy and Hans Eysenck, many prominent psychologists were not only interested in the psychodynamics of … Read more
While modern popular science still often relies on traditional claims of the inherent incompatibility of science and ‘magic’, no location in Britain, and perhaps the whole Western hemisphere, is more apt to challenge popular standard notions of the alleged disenchantment of science than Cambridge.
If you grew up in a western industrialised society, you probably know that you really shouldn’t believe in the occurrence of events commonly referred to as ‘miraculous’ or ‘supernatural’ if you expect to be viewed as a ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ person. If there was something to that sort of thing, surely the greats of science … Read more