Topics
Initiatic orders, masters of esotericism, great texts and rites of passage: the history of initiatic paths told through the sources.
Initiatic orders
Templars, chivalric orders, speculative Freemasonry, Martinism and the Rosicrucians in history.
Masters of esotericism
Lives and ideas of the figures who shaped the history of Western esotericism.
Esoteric texts
Picatrix, the Clavicula, the Steganographia, the Monas Hieroglyphica and other great books of tradition.
Rites of passage
Thresholds, initiations and symbolic rebirths in ancient and modern cultures.
Featured articles
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite: 33 Degrees and 1801
From the Rite of Perfection to Charleston in 1801: how the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite arose, its 33 degrees, the two-headed eagle and Albert Pike.
Anna Kingsford and the Hermetic Society: an esoteric Christianity
Anna Kingsford, Victorian physician and mystic: her Paris degree, the fight against vivisection, The Perfect Way, Theosophy and the Hermetic Society.
The Arbatel: the magic of the ancients and the Olympic spirits
The Arbatel de magia veterum, printed in Basel in 1575: its forty-nine aphorisms, the seven Olympic spirits and a Christian magic of prayer and charity.
The ancient catechumenate: Christian initiation on Easter night
Years of listening, scrutinies, the Creed handed over, renunciation facing west and a bath on Easter night: Christian initiation in the early Church.
Court Orders of Chivalry: The Garter and the Golden Fleece
Why 14th- and 15th-century rulers created court orders: Edward III's Garter, Philip the Good's Golden Fleece and the Savoy Order of the Annunciation.
Court de Gébelin and Etteilla: how the tarot became Egyptian
Court de Gébelin and Etteilla in the eighteenth century: Le Monde primitif, the Book of Thoth thesis and the first tarot deck designed for divination.
Ficino's De vita libri tres: Saturn, spirit and the heavens
Marsilio Ficino's De vita libri tres of 1489: its three books, Saturnine melancholy, the spirit, celestial images and the accusations it provoked.
Cybele and Attis in Rome: the Galli and the taurobolium
From the Great Mother's arrival in Rome in 204 BC to the taurobolium described by Prudentius: a cult of mourning, blood and symbolic rebirth in history.
The Iberian Military Orders: Calatrava, Santiago and Christ
Calatrava, Santiago, Alcántara, Montesa and the Order of Christ: how the military orders of the Reconquista arose and what they took from the Templars.
Gerolamo Cardano: physician, mathematician and Renaissance astrologer
Gerolamo Cardano between science and astrology: the Ars magna and cubic equations, De subtilitate, famous horoscopes, his arrest and his autobiography.
John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica: a single sign for the cosmos
John Dee's Monas Hieroglyphica, printed in Antwerp in 1564 and dedicated to Maximilian II: its twenty-four theorems, the parts of the sign and its legacy.
Jewish mourning: keriah, shiva, sheloshim and the time of grief
The torn garment, the seven days sitting low, the thirty days and the year of Kaddish: how Jewish tradition paces mourning in gradual, well-defined stages.