Modern Occultist News

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY June 20 The Interrogation of Galileo (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, 1633, Galileo Galilei sat in confinement at the offices of the Roman Inquisition, seventy years old, his health failing, with no idea precisely what the next day would bring. He knew it would be bad. Two days earlier, on June 16, Pope Urban VIII had personally ordered that Galileo be examined on his true beliefs regarding the motion of the Earth—and that if necessary, the examination should proceed under threat of physical torture. On June 21, that examination would take place. On June 22, he would be made to kneel in the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and renounce, under oath, the thing he knew to be true about the universe. June 20 was the held breath between the order and its execution. It was the last full day before Galileo Galilei, the man who h...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY June 19 Me and the Devil Blues: Robert Johnson at the Crossroads (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 today’s date in 1937, a twenty-six-year-old musician from Mississippi arrived at a makeshift studio on the third floor of the Vitagraph Building at 508 Park Avenue in downtown Dallas, Texas. The room had been improvised from a storage area, its acoustics shaped by beaver board panels: only a single microphone, some portable Presto disc-cutting equipment, and aluminum recording discs spinning at thirty-three and a third. Outside in the Texas summer, it was hotter than hell; some of the engineers recorded in their shirtsleeves (and, by some accounts, in their underwear.) Over the next forty-eight hours, Robert Johnson recorded thirteen songs—and changed music history. He was paid approximately ten to fifteen dollars per side, and never recieveda sing...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY June 18 Gervase Views the Moon Throbbing Like a Wounded Snake (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.) One day, he would witness balls of lightning ... but first, the moon the moon danced... Shortly after sunset on June 18, 1178, five monks of the Christ Church Priory in Canterbury stepped outside into the long English twilight and looked up at the crescent new moon hanging in the western sky. What they saw next, and later reported to Gervase of Canterbury, the monastery’s meticulous chronicler, has been debated by astronomers, medievalists, and occultists ever since… In Gervase’s own words, translated from his Latin Chronicle : “The upper horn of the Moon split in two. From the midst of this division sprang a burning torch, throwing forth flame, hot coals, and sparks over a considerable distance. Meanwhile the body of the Moon, which was below, writhed as...

ON THIS DAY IN OCCULT HISTORY June 17 The Death & Legacy of Jack Parsons (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 had a rush order of explosives to prepare for a Hollywood film and, on top of that, he and his wife, artist, Marjorie Cameron, were leaving for a vacation to Mexico the next morning. It was the morning of June 17, 1952, and John Whiteside Parsons—rocket engineer, chemist, Thelemite, co-founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Aerojet (whose technology would eventually power the Space Shuttle)—was working alone in the laboratory he had built in the laundry room of his Pasadena coach house. Much was on his mind; if things worked out, Mexico would be only the first international trip that would lead to a planned move to Israel. With any luck, there, he could restart a rocketry career the U.S. government had methodically destroyed. At approximately 5:00 PM, Parson...