Magic isn’t real, but people have believed it to be, and that makes quite a difference. For instance, at the seventeenth-century French court of Louis XIV, social anxiety among aristocrats jockying for power led to a tense and violent use of magic, fortune-telling, Black Masses, and secetive murders. Over 400 people were implicated in “L’affaire […]
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Meet Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin, a.k.a. “La Voisin.” Judging from her matronly countenance and placid expression, one might guess this late 17th-century French woman might have led a staid if uninteresting life . . . But nothing could be further from the truth. After her husband’s business collapsed, La Voisin turned to fortune-telling as a way
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Although popular culture promotes an idea that the belief in magic flourished mainly in the Medieval European past, maybe declining with the onset of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th-century, this is not necessarily the case. As Owen Davies, author of _Grimoires: A History of Magic Books_, relays, the so-called “Modern” era of Western history
The Modern Era’s Rise and Spread of Magic Read More »
There is an idea that personal hygiene declined along with the fall of Rome in Western Europe. Unlike the Romans, this line of thinking goes, the Middle Ages constituted “a thousand years without a bath” (as one popular textbook summarizes). In fact, Medieval washing is a well documented practice, and you can read all about
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Cosplay is not new: dressing up in character has a long legacy, and has been considered appropriate in different occasions. Whereas in current American culture, you go to special conferences or wait for Halloween, in seventeenth-century Europe you would try to hire a fancy portrait artist and make a subtle statement about your personality and
Dressing Up During 1600s Europe Read More »
Tomorrow on September 29, 2019, Americans can celebrate coffee day. But the introduction of The Greatest Morning Beverage was not a forgone conclusion in many parts of the world. In England, coffee-houses entered the scene in the 1650s, and quickly became popular — London alone had 82 by 1663. The image you see here suggests
Women’s Pushback on Coffee in Early Modern England Read More »
People have claimed to see ghosts throughout recorded history. Stories about the “revanants,” or “those who return,” commonly state that these spirits startle the living, but they have not always been associated with evil forces. The association of ghosts with malevolence really got going in Ealy Modern Europe with the emergence of Protestant Christianity. Hitherto,
Lavater’s “Of Ghostes and Spirites Walking by Nyght” Read More »
This stained-glass window from the Royal Society of London shows the Latin motto of one of the world’s most important science institutions: “NULLIUS IN VERBA,” which means “take nobody’s word for it.” This admonition is a central premise of the scientific method, stressing that knowledge should not be determined by unproven authority and confirmation bias.
The Royal Society of London Read More »
These two lovebirds are Shiva and the Goddess Bhairavi, from an exquisite painting dating from the Mughal Dynasty in India, c. 1630-35. Today’s yoga practices are very anesthetized relative to the ways undertaken by yogis, particularly in the left-handed Tantric tradition. The two figures dwell in the charnel grounds – you can see the smoky
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“The Lord and Lady of the Charnel Grounds/Pal Durdak Yab Yum,” 15th-c painting. Tibetian Buddhist traditions took much from Ancient India . . . As with the two Hindu deities featured in yesterday’s post, the juxtaposition of enlightenment with death and male-female pairings stands out. Tibetian art is highly symbolic, and the male-female, or “Yab-Yum,”
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Painted on a silk scroll by the 18th-century Japanese artist Maruyama Okyo, this image is one of Japan’s most well-known artistic creations. _The Ghost of Oyuki_, as it is known, was painted when the artist Okyo awoke from his sleep to see the ghost, or _yurei_, of his deceased lover. She had pale skin, disheveled
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Ghost stories have been an important part of China’s culture for centuries. As shown from this 14th-century Yuan Dynasty tomb, beliefs about ghosts can be seen in the visual arts, as well as in written sources. One of the most prominent types of undead spirits were the “Jiang Shi,” which were zombie-like reanimated beings. The
Jiang Shi Spirits from Chinese Culture Read More »
What drives us to learn? Are people with unusual intellectual capabilities also predisposed to want to use them? The case of Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-1799) raises these questions, because she possessed a rarified mind in an era when women of her social class were expected to marry and attend to domestic affairs rather than academic
Maria Gaetana Agnesi and the Desire to Learn Read More »
Yesterday (November 5) in the U.S. was voting day, but in the U.K. many people lit bonfires and threw in effigies of “the Guy” for Guy Fawkes Day. In fact, our slang word “guy” comes from the person who became the most well-known architect of the Gunpowder Plot. In 1605, Guy Fawkes, a discontent Roman
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The disembodied eyeballs you see on these two images represent the “eye of providence” or “the all-seeing eye” in art history. Floating eyes have made this appearance in visual media as far back as the Ancient Egyptian eye of Ra, but the Late Middle Ages in Europe saw a re-invigorization of the symbol, where it
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I adore Early Modern Science! Through no fault of their own — since genes hadn’t been discovered but everyone in Europe knew about horrible parasitic body worms — some biologists thought of sex and propagation in very different ways than we do now. For instance, _preformationists_ thought that there were very small people inside either
Early Modern Biologists and Ideas of Propagation Read More »
This is an ink portrait of the famed Chinese demon-hunter Zhong Kui. It was done by the Shunzhi Emperor Fulin in the mid 17th-century, and the fact that a Chinese ruler would find such a hero compelling enough to paint testifies to the importance of Zhong Kui’s legends. In myths stretching back as far as
Chinese Demon-Hunter Zhong Kui Read More »
So this is a post about a children’s nursery rhyme. The burning of Protestants by “Bloody” Queen Mary (d. 1588) made a mark on the English, and some of this legacy still lingers today in the children’s nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice.” Many folklorists believe the tune’s reference to a wife was actually code for
Historical Story of Children’s Nursery Rhyme “Three Blind Mice” Read More »
Here you see a ginormous “Foo Dog,” as the guardian lions of Chinese architecture are known in the West. These statues began to flank the entrances to homes of the elite during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (14th-20th c). Standing for strength and power, they appear in pairs, with the left lioness (as indicated by
Foo Dogs and Protection of Ancient Chinese Elite Homes Read More »
It’s a common joke that the human genitalia have their own minds that act like second brains, but some Early Modern scientists evidently thought the opposite was also true. The seventeenth- and sixteenth century anatomists Thomas Willis, Matteo Realdo Columbo, Isbrand van Diemerbroeck, and Thomas Bartholin named different parts of the body’s seat of intelligence
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