Modern Occultist News

 A MODERN OCCULTIST VALENTINE'S DAY SPECIAL "THE LOVERS" Bringing Magic into a Healthy Relationship A Valentine’s Day Special (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.) Today in Modern Occultist , we are taking the time to stop and celebrate the truest and most universal of all spiritual energies—love. In wishing all our readers a happy and beautiful Valentine’s Day, we would like to showcase just one of many couples out there who have found creative, romantic, and healthy ways to bring their personal esoteric and occult beliefs into their relationship. Newlyweds currently living in Amsterdam, Ben and Thelia admit that the individual paths which led them into each other’s lives were often tricky and winding. Originally from the U.K., Ben works as a research nurse with an emphasis in Respirology, who, for years, had been nurturing pagan rituals his daily life; Thelia—a l...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY February 13 “Galileo Arrives in Rome to Face the Inquisition” (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 February 13, 1633, Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome. He was not dragged in chains, as he had not yet been condemned. But he had been summoned—and during the time of the Inquisition, that could be enough for freethinkers to face a cruel destiny. The seventy-year-old mathematician, physicist, and philosopher—once celebrated across Italy for his telescopic revelations—had come to answer for a book. That book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems , compared the Copernican heliocentric model with the traditional Ptolemaic universe. On its surface, it was framed as a neutral conversation. In tone, however, its sympathies were unmistakable. The Earth moved. And Rome was not pleased. A Summons Years in the Making To understand why Galileo’s arr...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY February 12: "The Passing of Gerald Gardner, Father of Modern Wicca" (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 1964, Gerald Brosseau Gardner died quietly at sea. He was seventy-nine years old, returning from Lebanon aboard the ship Scottish Prince, when he suffered a fatal heart attack at the breakfast table. His body was buried in Tunisia, the next port of call. Few attended the funeral. There was no grand procession, no state recognition, no headline mourning. And yet, by the time of his death, the modern world had been permanently altered by his life’s work. Gerald Gardner—planter, civil servant, folklorist, Freemason, museum curator, occultist—is remembered today as the man who brought Wicca into public view. Whether one views him as reviver, innovator, synthesizer, or architect of a new religious form, there is no question t...