Modern Occultist News

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 16 Bashō Walks Into the Deep North   (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.) He’d given away nearly everything in the weeks before his departure; Matsuo Bashō had been slowly unburdening himself—distributing possessions to students and friends, settling his affairs in Edo, and preparing to step off the edge of the life he’d built. He was forty-five years old, not considered young for the time. The journey Basho was planning—north through the rugged interior of Honshū, along mountains and cliffs above the shores, and at least one sacred pilgrimage into legendary forest known as Oku, the “Deep North”—would cover some 2,400 kilometers, taking him take five months. At dawn on May 16, 1689, Bashō and his student, Kawai Sora, left the hermitage in Fukagawa by boat, crossed to the shore at Senju, and continued the rest of their journey on foot. B...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 15 The Birth of Jean-Baptiste Pitois, the Man Who Named the Arcana   (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 May 15, 1811, in the small town of Remiremont in the Vosges region of northeastern France, Jean-Baptiste Pitois was born. He never founded a magical order, never claimed initiation into an ancient mystery school, and never practiced magic. He was a journalist, and his 1870 treatise, Histoire de la Magie, du monde Surnaturel et de la fatalité à travers les Temps et les Peuples , introduced the terms “Major Arcana” and “Minor Arcana” to all generations of occultists to follow… The Arsenal and Its Ghosts The trajectory of Pitois’s life was shaped, more than anything else, by his early association with Charles Nodier—one of the most influential and least remembered figures in nineteenth-century French letters. Nodier was, by the time th...

  ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 14 A Hidden King: The Hūnākele of Kamehameha the Great   (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 May 14, 1819, Kamehameha I—the warrior king who had unified the Hawaiian Islands with strength, political genius, and an extraordinary spiritual life—died at Kamakahonu, his compound at Kailua-Kona on the island of Hawaiʻi. His last words, addressed to the chiefs and retainers gathered around him, were characteristically spare: “Endless is the good that I have given you to enjoy.” His most trusted companions took his bones and hid them, harnessing his sacred powers. Written in the Stars The Hawaiian word mana is often translated as “power” or “spiritual authority,” but that’s truly an understatement; to tribal believers, mana was the animating force of the universe itself—the divine energy that flowed through all things. The ancient Eg...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY May 13 From Pagans to Christianity: The Consecration of the Pantheon (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 May 13, 609 CE, Pope Boniface IV stepped through the bronze doors of the Pantheon and began the rite of exorcism. The temple of all the gods had become a church… A Building Too Beautiful to Destroy The chronicles that survive describe what occurred that day in May would not be out of place in a grimoire… Chaos erupting from within the building, chilling screams audible to the crowd outside, the assembled faithful so terrified by what they heard that many could not remain standing. The idols, ancient accounts claim, knew what was coming. The demons that had inhabited the temple for nearly five centuries of pagan worship were aware that their tenancy was ending—and they were not leaving quietly. Only Boniface, unmoved at the entrance,...