|
Post by dem bones on Jul 6, 2021 7:08:28 GMT
In my worthless opinion, his London: The Biography is a superb achievement. You are right. I also bought it, as a companion piece to Andrew Hussey's Paris - The Secret History. From memory, there's a sequence where Ackroyd writes about St George In The East Churchyard in Cable Street, how whenever you pass through there will always be someone sat on a bench drinking alcohol, like a sentinel. Having performed said duty on more occasions than is healthy, the entry gave me quite a start when I first read it. Was bitterly disappointed when, on cutting through the park on Saturday morning, there was no sentinel to be seen. Can only hope he or she were relieving themselves in bushes or something.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Jul 6, 2021 7:33:52 GMT
Just going through the motions. Like so? Exactly like that. Truth to tell, I thought of this ditty when I wrote this. This musical haunts me.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Jul 6, 2021 7:44:58 GMT
"Wide-ranging" barely does it justice; here's the blurb from the fly leaf - "The story of Grimoires - books of magic spells - takes us from ancient Egypt, through Kabbalah, medieval sorcery, Scandinavian witchcraft, 19th-century Egyptology, the roots of Mormonism, the post-war German occult boom, West African folk religion, a Chicago mail-order charlatan whose books are banned in Jamaica to this day, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Santa Muerte cult in Mexico's drug gangs. Grimoires are harmless, priceless, or deadly dangerous - depending on your viewpoint. To understand their history is to understand the spread of Christianity, the development of early science, the cultural influence of the print revolution, the growth of literacy, the impact of colonialism, and the expansion of western cultures across the oceans." Wide-ranging indeed. Isn't there a rule of thumb? If it is not written before the fall of Atlantis in blood on human skin, it is not the real thing. On a more serious note, I never thought of this, but the second quote has some merit. If you take the marvelous successful propaganda job of early Christianity converting Paganism into something evil with a capitel E out of the equation, Grimoires are absolutly pointless.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Jul 6, 2021 7:57:35 GMT
Having performed said duty on more occasions than is healthy, the entry gave me quite a start when I first read it. Was bitterly disappointed when, on cutting through the park on Saturday morning, there was no sentinel to be seen. Can only hope he or she were relieving themselves in bushes or something. He was just fucking with you. Sneaky ghosts.
|
|
|
Post by Dr Strange on Jul 6, 2021 8:46:26 GMT
Isn't there a rule of thumb? If it is not written before the fall of Atlantis in blood on human skin, it is not the real thing. Not mentioned in the blurb, but the final chapter covers grimoires in fiction and takes in Hodgson's Sigsand manuscript, Lovecraft's Necronomicon, Smith's Book of Eidon, Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Bloch's De Vermis Mysteriis, and Summers' Mysterium Arcanum - which I thought was a nice touch.
|
|
|
Post by Swan on Jul 6, 2021 10:12:08 GMT
Isn't there a rule of thumb? If it is not written before the fall of Atlantis in blood on human skin, it is not the real thing. Not mentioned in the blurb, but the final chapter covers grimoires in fiction and takes in Hodgson's Sigsand manuscript, Lovecraft's Necronomicon, Smith's Book of Eidon, Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Bloch's De Vermis Mysteriis, and Summers' Mysterium Arcanum - which I thought was a nice touch. Sorry not to reply earlier on this Dr Strange, must have left around the time you originally posted. One of the book sites I use has two Owen Davies titles, but not this. A People Bewitched: Witchcraft and Magic in Nineteenth Century Somerset. A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith during the First World War. Both look interesting.
|
|
|
Post by Swan on Jul 6, 2021 10:49:47 GMT
Not mentioned in the blurb, but the final chapter covers grimoires in fiction and takes in Hodgson's Sigsand manuscript, Lovecraft's Necronomicon, Smith's Book of Eidon, Howard's Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Bloch's De Vermis Mysteriis, and Summers' Mysterium Arcanum - which I thought was a nice touch. Sorry not to reply earlier on this Dr Strange, must have left around the time you originally posted. One of the book sites I use has two Owen Davies titles, but not this. A People Bewitched: Witchcraft and Magic in Nineteenth Century Somerset. A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith during the First World War. Both look interesting. Dr Strange the blurb says the second explores the psychology of the supernatural in wartime. We could ask the same about the psychology of the supernatural in Covid time.
|
|
|
Post by Dr Strange on Jul 6, 2021 11:36:57 GMT
One of the book sites I use has two Owen Davies titles, but not this. A People Bewitched: Witchcraft and Magic in Nineteenth Century Somerset. A Supernatural War: Magic, Divination and Faith during the First World War. Both look interesting. The only other book by him that I have is Witchcraft, Magic & Culture 1736-1951 (1999), which is based on his PhD thesis. His main area of interest seems to be folk magic and the "cunning-folk" traditions of the West Country, though he has written beyond that. I think A Supernatural War is his most recent book, and I have been considering getting it but will maybe wait for the paperback. He is very readable - he seems to get the mix of entertaining anecdote and academic analysis just about right.
|
|
|
Post by Dr Strange on Jul 6, 2021 11:45:51 GMT
Dr Strange the blurb says the second explores the psychology of the supernatural in wartime. We could ask the same about the psychology of the supernatural in Covid time. Yes, I am sure there is something in that. The need to feel some degree of control over events that are completely outside one's actual control does seem to be a factor. These days, conspiracy thinking seems to have largely replaced magical thinking as a response to stressors like these - though the two are obviously not mutually exclusive.
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Jul 6, 2021 13:31:01 GMT
Malinowski back in the 1920s in his classic work on the Trobriand Islanders identified magical practices as significant in life situations where risk and danger are at a premium. As you probably know, Dr Strange, the study of magic as a subject of inquiry has ballooned way beyond cottage industry status in academia over the last quarter century.
Among practicing occultists (ahem), grimoire usually means a particular class of magical writings. The earliest one usually focused upon is the enigmatically titled Picatrix--it figured significantly in Elizabeth Hand's recent novel The Book of Lamps and Banners (which I found disappointing, though I did read all of it). Picatrix, like Lovecraft's fabled Necronomicon, was translated and redacted from an Arabic original. I have a magazine in my personal library with an article where the author compares different translations of one of the Picatrix incense recipes (for an incense consecrated to Venus--I think the planetary spirit rather than the Goddess was specified, but of course the two blur together). There were some surprising differences in the different translations (the languages included Latin and German, and she also looked at the original Arabic).
These books are usually founded on the Christian reworking of Hermetic and Jewish magical practices which survived the period of the later Roman Empire. The later grimoires, such as Agrippa's work (the Agrippa accreted quite a lot of folklore around it--stories such as it would suddenly appear in one's bedroom, it would come back if you tried to throw it away, it would drive you mad if you read it, etc.) are heavily Christian but do include some folk magic traditions that do sometimes have a Pagan element to them.
The folklore around the Agrippa was undoubtedly in the background when Lovecraft imagined the existence of the Necronomicon. And eventually it led to those Ring movies and all the knock-offs from those. (I think Chambers' King in Yellow also was an influence on Lovecraft, but I'll stop here.)
H.
|
|
|
Post by Dr Strange on Jul 6, 2021 15:21:25 GMT
Davies has a few interesting things to say about possible influences on The Necronomicon, but I think the most interesting point he makes is that Lovecraft wanted it to be linked to the arabic world because of his early love of The Thousand and One Nights and (later) William Beckford's Vathek, and seemed to be completely unaware or uninterested in what was happening much closer to home at the time - when The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses were (according to Davies) very popular "amongst America's working classes", and there were numerous stories about homegrown hoodoo and hexes appearing in American newspapers.
|
|
|
Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Jul 6, 2021 15:35:14 GMT
Davies has a few interesting things to say about possible influences on The Necronomicon, but I think the most interesting point he makes is that Lovecraft wanted it to be linked to the arabic world because of his early love of The Thousand and One Nights and (later) William Beckford's Vathek, and seemed to be completely unaware or uninterested in what was happening much closer to home at the time - when The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses were (according to Owens) very popular "amongst America's working classes", and there were numerous stories about homegrown hoodoo and hexes appearing in American newspapers. I have a book about Beckford's Fonthill Abbey. It had an immense central tower that was prone to collapse. Beckford employed a dwarf to open the door, to make the place seem even more huge than it was.
|
|
|
Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Jul 6, 2021 15:42:36 GMT
Davies has a few interesting things to say about possible influences on The Necronomicon, but I think the most interesting point he makes is that Lovecraft wanted it to be linked to the arabic world because of his early love of The Thousand and One Nights and (later) William Beckford's Vathek, and seemed to be completely unaware or uninterested in what was happening much closer to home at the time - when The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses were (according to Owens) very popular "amongst America's working classes", and there were numerous stories about homegrown hoodoo and hexes appearing in American newspapers. I have a book about Beckford's Fonthill Abbey. It had an immense central tower that was prone to collapse. Beckford employed a dwarf to open the door, to make the place seem even more huge than it was. Beckford was a great collector who bankrupted himself. He got away from the Abbey just in time, as the great tower collapsed a final time after he sold it. Only a very tiny section of the building now remains. I think he moved to Bath and built a smaller tower there.
|
|
|
Post by helrunar on Jul 6, 2021 16:29:05 GMT
I believe it was Beckford of whom Stevie Smith wrote "A delightful author, but not one whom one would like to follow one home." In her Novel on Yellow Paper which really should be better known--offbeat and intriguing, but not what I would call Vault material.
H.
|
|
|
Post by cauldronbrewer on Jul 6, 2021 21:22:57 GMT
Exactly like that. Truth to tell, I thought of this ditty when I wrote this. This musical haunts me. I just went back and rewatched it. One of my all-time favorite episodes of television. I was expecting a tangential stunt when it first aired, but instead it's the turning point for the season's major plot threads. That expression on Willow's face when she finds out what she did to Buffy ... And so clever.
|
|