Modern Occultist News

  ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY February 1st “Imbolc: Fire at the Threshold” By the editors of Modern Occultist     (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) At the midway point between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, the festival of Imbolc arrives quietly, like the first breath of spring still caught in winter’s hush. For those who walk the path of esoteric tradition, Imbolc is more than a date on the Wheel of the Year—it is a threshold moment, a fire kept alive in the dark, and a ritualized hope for new growth. It does not announce itself with abundance, nor does it offer the visual drama of solstice or equinox. There are no guaranteed blossoms, no triumphant harvests, no solar declarations. Instead, Imbolc occupies a more precarious place in the ritual calendar: the midpoint between winter’s depth and spring’s promise. It is a festival of uncertainty, held at the...

 ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY January 31 “An Ozark Cryptid Enters the Record: First Report of the Gowrow ” (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.)   In the waning hours of January 1897, readers of the Arkansas Gazette encountered a report unlike any other printed in that long‑running newspaper—   tale of a beast in the Ozark hills so terrible that its roar gave it its name: the Gowrow . This January 31st article marked the first recorded reporting of a mysterious creature that would echo through regional folklore ever since, blending cryptozoology, frontier storytelling, and the imagination of a people living close to the land’s wild edges.  Though dismissed later by some as journalistic embellishment, the original Gazette account claimed that a fearsome creature was terrorizing livestock across Searcy County, Arkansas, until a posse tracked it to a cave where it ...

 ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY January 30 “The Calves’ Head Club: Satire as Symbolic Ritual” (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) As the deep chill of January nears its close, one of the most provocative—and controversial—annual events in early modern English history comes into focus: the Calves’ Head Club and its ritual feast on January 30, the anniversary of the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Unlike saints’ days or solstice feasts, this observance was rooted in political symbolism, ritual defiance, and social spectacle, blending mockery with the cultural tensions of a nation torn between monarchy and commonwealth.  A Feast of Heads and History The Calves’ Head Club—whether fully real in its early years or partly exaggerated by later political propaganda—was said to have been a secret society which gathered annually on January 30 th —the date Charles I was behea...

 ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY January 29 “Apocalypse by the Numbers: John Napier’s False Prophesy” (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.) When the name John Napier arises, most recall him as the brilliant 16th-century Scottish mathematician who gifted the world logarithms—a foundational advancement that made modern astronomy, engineering, and physics possible. But fewer remember that Napier also believed the world was hurtling toward imminent destruction—and that he’d calculated the exact window of the apocalypse using the Book of Revelation and his own mathematical methods. Yes: the father of logarithms was also a Protestant prophet of doom. On this date in 1593, Napier would make a prediction that, although false, would help solidify his dual legacy as a dedicated occultist—and his story is one of intense intellectual ambition, within of a mind daring enough to use numbers ...

 ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY January 28 “Jacques Collin de Plancy: Demonologist, Folklorist, and Biographer of the Invisible” (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.)   On this day in 1793, in the shifting era between Enlightenment reason and Romantic mystery, Jacques Collin de Plancy was born in Belgium—a man whose name would become inseparable from the study of spirits, demons, and the borderlands between superstition and scholarship. In his lifetime, Collin de Plancy became one of the most influential authors of occult and demonological literature, shaping how generations would perceive the unseen realms of folklore and spiritual terror. A nobleman by birth, Collin de Plancy was something of an anomaly: a thinker educated in a world of logic and Empire, yet irresistibly drawn to the whispers of myth, the lore of spirits, and the complex psychology of belief. His life ...

 ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY January 27 “John Fian and the North Berwick Witch Hunts” (Affiliate disclosure: Some links on this blog may earn us a small commission at no cost to you. Every bit helps keep the lantern lit.)   On January 27, 1591, a Scottish schoolmaster named John Fian met an infamous end—his life consumed by fire at the stake outside Castlehill, Edinburgh, following one of the most notorious witch hunts in early modern Britain. Fian’s story, entangled with royals, storms, and alleged demonic pacts, stands as a chilling testament to the collisions between fear, superstition, and authority in the twilight of Renaissance Europe.  Known also as John Cunningham or Johnne Sibbet, Fian was originally a teacher from Prestonpans, a small town east of Edinburgh. But in the witch‑hungry climate of 1590–1591, that identity would swiftly dissolve into something far darker. Accused of sorcery and dark arts during the North Berwick witch trials, he became one...