When the Dead Come Home: Night Visits and Vigil Feasts in the South Slavic Balkans
Why the living set water for the dead, how households kept spirits at bay, and what village stories …
Slavic Sorcerers in Old Serbian Fairy Tales
Old Serbian fairy tales portray sorcerers, both women and men, as guides, healers, and …
Lilith: From Demon to Feminist Icon
From Mesopotamian spirit to Jewish myth to feminist icon, Lilith embodies the tension between …
Werewolf Woman from Croatia
A chilling 1888 tale from Pleternica, Croatia: a woman turns into a wolf, sheep vanish, and folklore …
The Lady of Secrets: How Isabella Cortese Made Science Go Viral in 1561
In Venice, 1561, a woman’s voice put practical alchemy, medicine, metallurgy, and beauty arts into …
The Medveđa Vampire Panic: Uncovering the Truth of the Arnold Paole Haunting
The 1731–1732 Medveđa inquiry turned local fear into continental lore. Austrian military doctors …
The Many Masks of Cagliostro: Alchemist, Trickster, Prophet of Light
A fast, fair tour through Cagliostro’s reinventions, Palermo to Paris, Bastille to San Leo, and why …
The Strange Experiments of Count Kuefstein: The Man Who Made Ten Homunculi
A deep dive into the curious legend of Count Kuefstein and Abbé Geloni, ten bottled spirits, Masonic …
Inside the Ouroboros of Cleopatra the Alchemist
Was this the first great logo of alchemy? A 10th/11th-century copy of Cleopatra the Alchemist’s …
The Philosophy of Music: Number, Myth, and the Song of the World
How Greek number theory shaped harmony, why philosophers linked modes to character and politics, …
Mazdakism: the Social Justice Religion of Late Antique Iran
Mazdakism taught a dualism of Light and Darkness, urged charity over hoarding, and briefly reshaped …
Tarot and Cartomancy: where the cards came from, how they evolved, and how to read them well
Tarot began as a fifteenth century Italian card game with a fifth suit of trumps. Divinatory use …
The Strange Power of the Placebo Effect
A brisk tour of placebos, nocebos, and the ritual of care, why expectations matter, where open-label …
The language of crows: what their calls mean, how they signal, and what science is uncovering
Crows do far more than caw. Their calls carry identity, recruit allies, warn of threats, and show …
The Science of Smell: A Journey Through the Olfactory System
Your nose is a direct line to the brain. Here’s how odor molecules become memories, why some …
The dog as a machine drive
How a 19th-century ‘dog engine’ used an inclined-plane treadmill to spin churns and centrifuges—and …
Inside the Mandrake: Root of Screams, Salves, and Story
From Babylonian tablets to monastery gardens and witch-trial lore, mandrake sits where pharmacology …
Artemisia (Wormwood): From Absinthe to Ancient Medicine
Inside the strange arc of Artemisia absinthium, from apothecary staple to the Green Fairy’s …
Ginseng: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Use It Without the Hype
From royal apothecaries to energy drinks to grandma’s soup pot, ginseng spans legend and lab. This …
Cardamom: Small Pods, Big Magic
Green for lift, black for depth: learn how to buy, store, and cook with cardamom, plus five quick …
Crazy Alchemist: Dark Academia
Candlelit library energy for long study blocks: steady 60–80 bpm pieces, narrow dynamics, minimal …
What to Watch: Penny Dreadful - From Victorian Street Serials to Gothic Prestige TV
A deep dive into Showtime’s Penny Dreadful, the series that brought Victorian horror …
Hackländer’s Fairy Tales: Rediscovering a Lost Treasure
A forgotten 1843 collection returns in a new English translation-Hackländer’s fairy tales mingle …
Satan as Storyteller: A Journey from Paradise Lost to Modern Times
From epic poetry to comics and TV, authors keep returning to a dangerous device: telling the story …