A COUPLE FOR HALLOWE'EN

Claude Lecouteux. The Return of the Dead: Ghosts, Ancestors and the Transparent Veil of the Pagan Mind. Inner Traditions, 2009.

---

Linda Godfrey. Hunting the American Werewolf. Trails Books, 2006.

Lecouteux argues that the 'ghosts' of mainly Norse and German antiquity are not the wispy, ectoplasmic and probably hallucinatory images of modern day ghost stories and psychical research, but very physical revenants. The dead return in, if not quite the "earthly flesh and blood" of the ballad 'The Wife of Usher's Well', then something close to it. A number of old Icelandic and Norse ghost stories are quoted to demonstrate this point.
🔻

MYSTERY BANGS AND A EPISCOPAL MYSTERY

Yes, folks, Ye Olde Northern Echoes is back! The following piece from the Warrington Guardian of 14 October 1914, page 2, nicely illustrates many of the themes that we have set out in Magonia over the years. Remember this is in the opening weeks of the First World War:

AN INFINITE NUMBER OF INFINITIES

John Gribbin. In Search of the Multiverse. Allen Lane, 2009.

Time was, about 500 years ago, when the universe seemed simple, there was the earth at the centre, a few miles above it were the sun, moon and planets going about their orbits on celestial tram lines, pushed by angles, Beyond them was the crystal sphere on which the fixed stars were fixed, slowly rotating around, and beyond that heaven with God a bearded old gentleman on a throne with Jesus on his right hand side. In the centre of the earth was Hell, Satan in the exact centre, with Judas sat on his knee.

🔽

FALSE HISTORY, FAKE SCIENCE

Ronald D Fritze. Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-religions. Reaktion Books, 2009.

This book, by a history professor at the Athens State University in Alabama, examines a range of fringe ideas in history and archaeology, set out in a series of broad themes; Atlantis; early Old World discoveries of America; the racist cosmologies of Identity Christians and the Nation of Islam; the fantasies of Eric Daniken and their ilk, and the disputes around claims that classic Greece was greatly inspired by Middle Eastern, and in particular, Egyptian culture.
🔽

GHOSTLY ROUND-UP