10.11.2023

“Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City” edited by Elizabeth Dearnley

Magick Matters
"Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City" edited by Elizabeth Dearnley
"As the smoky dark sweeps across the capital, strange stories emerge from the night. A sĂ©ance reveals a ghastly secret in the murk of Regent’s Canal. From south of the Thames come chilling reports of a spring-heeled spectre, and in Stoke Newington rumours abound of an opening to another world among the quiet alleys. Join Elizabeth Dearnley on this atmospheric tour through a shadowy London, a city which has long inspired writers of the weird and uncanny. Waiting in the hazy streets are eerie tales from Charlotte Riddell, Lettice Galbraith and Violet Hunt, along with haunting pieces by Virginia Woolf, Arthur Machen, Sam Selvon and many more."...>>
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10.11.2023

“The Deorhord: An Old English Bestiary” by Hana Videen

Magick Matters
"The Deorhord: An Old English Bestiary" by Hana Videen
"Many of the animals we encounter in everyday life, from the creatures in our fields to those in our fantasies, have remained the same since medieval times - but the words we use, and the ways we describe them, have often changed beyond recognition... Old English was spoken over a thousand years ago, when every animal was a deor. In this glittering Old English bestiary we find deors big and small, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the good, the bad and the downright baffling. From walker-weavers (spiders) and grey-cloaked ones (eagles) to moon-heads and teeth-tyrants (historians still don't know!), we discover a world both familiar and strange: where ants could be monsters and panthers could...>>
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10.11.2023

“The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English” by Hana Videen

Magick Matters
"The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English" by Hana Videen
"An entertaining and illuminating collection of weird, wonderful, and downright baffling words from the origins of English―and what they reveal about the lives of the earliest English speakers Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer’s Middle English, Old English―the language of Beowulf―defies comprehension by untrained modern readers. Used throughout much of Britain more than a thousand years ago, it is rich with words that haven’t changed (like word), others that are unrecognizable (such as neorxnawang, or paradise), and some that are mystifying even in translation (gafol-fisc, or tax-fish). In this delightful book, Hana Videen gathers a glorious trove of these...>>
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10.11.2023

“Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages” by David Keck

Magick Matters
"Angels and Angelology in the Middle Ages" by David Keck
"Recently angels have made a remarkable comeback in the popular imagination; their real heyday, however, was the Middle Ages. From the great shrines dedicated to Michael the Archangel at Mont-St-Michel and Monte Garano to the elaborate metaphysical speculations of the great thirteenth-century scholastics, angels dominated the physical, temporal, and intellectual landscape of the medieval West. This book offers a full-scale study of angels and angelology in the Middle Ages. Seeking to discover how and why angels became so important in medieval society, David Keck considers a wide range of fascinating questions such as: Why do angels appear on baptismal fonts? How and why did angels become normative for certain members of the church? How did...>>
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