Search results

On 21st November, 1338, forty-three archers joined the Isle of Wight garrison. One of them was Robin Hood. Military Service & the Development of the Robin Hood Legend in the Fourteenth Century (Courtesy of De Re Militari) The article explores the possibilities; was it a clerk taking the...

The Wikipedia treatment of the story The classic tale of adherence to duty beyond the call - and of vengeance on an operatic scale. This is enough to lend it Fortean interest, but there is arguably more. By the early 18th century the Samural had become legend - that legend erupted into...

If we haven't already a thread on The Best & Truest Film Ever, we have now... OK, two observations - Withnail & I has to be the best film about friendship going, and there are few films that remain funny and moving after several hundred viewings. Kudos to Bruce Robinson, then. Second...

http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/32/327.html http://www.stanford.edu/group/shl/Eyes/machines/ ...Which is a rather nice essay on Kirchner and his contraptions. Robert Darnton noted the predilection for persecuting cats in 'The Great Cat Massacre' - cats had a bad press in early modern...

Wiki on the Vision of St Eustace Came across this quite by chance - Sir James Frazer would have fainted from the sudden blood rush, and Jesse Weston would certainly have experienced a hot flush.... St Eustace converted in the time of Trajan after witnessing the manifestation of Christ...

The following is taken from the Baron Marbot's Napoleonic memoir; it occured during the retreat from Moscow: The Memoirs of Baron de Marbot - vol. 2, chapter xxix Whatever happened out there in 1812, it was pretty spectacular; it is also intriguing to note that the chasseurs were able to...

The squabble of the age in journals nobody reads is being played out between the 'analytic' school of philosophy derived from Russell & co. and the Post Modern wedge taking their lead from Derrida, Foucoult and counterless other black polo-neck wearing Galoise smokers. It is a savage cat...

Polari revives at a Soho night club as a lingua franca between staff from different countries And a phrase book for the uninitiated Thing I like about this is that it is a return to the argot's roots as a trade patois - hopefully it will spread like wildfire :D

Sex & the Occult An interesting article on the sexual dynamics of mediumship and of the occult in general. The article is very much of its time, and so is antagonistic towards hippy culture - I get the impression some of its stories have been influenced by the tabloids of the day, but...

This article (Simon Schama) posted by Emps earlier today reminded me of an argument I read of years back when I was researching the Civil War era: had Lincoln lived, today's US would be a happier, better integrated place. The argument goes a bit like this: the Civil War having been won...

101's post last night about Jonathon Miller's new series mentioned in passing Freud's assertion that religious sentiment is a form of psychological disorder. This struck me as a strong topic - can religious experience, or the attraction some feel towards it, be dismissed as a form of neurosis...

Raymond Llull (or Lull, or Lully, or Lullius...) exerted an enormous influence upon the esoteric sciences of the Renaissance, and was responsible for an intriguing body of work that remains a challenge and something of an enigma to this day. http://lullianarts.net/cont.htm Is a gorgeous...

...throws up some distinct oddities.... (Warning : Some may find the following extract distressing) Famous courtesans and common harlots, all met in the public Baths which were already frequented in the Roman period by prostitutes of both sexes. Some of these baths were strictly for...

Yeah, ok, so I'm reading 'The Da Vinci Code'... But are Opus Dei such a big threat to all that is decent? Creepy, yes; but are they actually up to anything we ought to be worried about? Do we have any board members who have been involved? For a bit of orientation: ODAN which...

The Hardest Man in History - the Self Beheading Samurai Read of him a long while back - story goes, two feudal Japanese armies were facing off and exchanging insults, taunts and challenges. One samurai strides forward and decides to show the opposition the meaning of 'badboy' - takes himself...

What do you think about the case for survival after death? A good resource for general background can be found at The ISS Website which is chock full of interesting articles and amusing photos :) Me, I think the Cross Correspondances provide a lot of food for thought - enough to prevent me...

Working life at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in the 1890's must have been generally uneventful. An endless series of transit observations were done by duty observers at night, with a team of human 'computers' working through the day on data reduction and predictions. This routine existence...

Bit esoteric this, so I won't be offended if my first post kills the thread ;) Over 12th-13th April 1204 Constantinople was taken and sacked by a crusading army largely directed by Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice. This year is the 800th anniversary. It's a fascinating story, which can be...

Whacked-Out White Russians A few years ago I immersed myself in literature regarding the Russian Civil War, which was, apart from being a gut-wrenching tragedy of almost unimaginable proportions, arguably the world's first absurdist conflict. For some reason, the combatant forces, but...

Reading Kevin McClure's piece on the genesis and evolution of the 'Nazi UFO' myth has put me in mind of Umberto Eco's critique of the neo-esoteric in 'Foucault's Pendulum' - that the esoteric philosophies that have developed as counter-points to the philosophical and theological mainstream in...

So, was Julian the Apostate the last heroic gasp of Antique humanism, or was he the first intimation of Anti-Christ, curly horns and all? Philospher or talentless dilletante? Bowie or Bay City Rollers? Did he go down in a blaze of glory, or was he just a fool who walked in front of a javelin?

What was the name of the X-Files/ The Sweeney cross-over Grant Morrison introduced into 'The Invisibles'? Envisae John Thaw as Mulder, Dennis Waterman as Scully, and you get the idea...complete with 'Sweeney Todd- Flying Squad' title sequence & sheep-skin coats..:)

One of the very first fortean books I read was 'The Green Stone'...a rollicking tale of mystic gems in the landscape, envelope-openers snuck underneath bridges and psychic queerness. I found the whole business unusually evocative, and in due course my Gothik teeny self dived into 'The Black...

Is it just me, or is the instinctive map of Europe still following the borders of Charlemagne's empire? Consider the matter - Iberia is viewed as a little exotic & and the wrong kind of Catholic; the Baltic states hardly register, Poland is looked at askance, the Orthodox nations of Eastern...

I wish I could take credit for making this up, but it happens to be true... A few years ago, I spent some time as a volunteer with the TA. One night, on exercise somewhere in East Anglia, I was on sentry duty, flat on my stomach in a thicket within a wood with a Slovenian infantry sergeant...

'Lata'if' is the name given to the spiritual centres of the body in Sufi literature. The word carries connotations of beauty, refinement, and secrecy. Two systems seem to be extant. The first, exemplified in the work of Al-Jilani, envisages concentric hearts within hearts that open like a...

That tall tale thread put me in mind of something... I may have been responsible for a FOAF. It happened like this. One evening in Aberdeen I was getting pished with a friend of mine, Dave. Dave was, and probably still is, a devottee of Peter Cook. Even sounds like him. That evening, Dave...