This is an Edo-period Japanese war fan from the first half of the 1800s, made out of paper and lacquer, and — the active ingredient — iron. Folding fans had been a part of Japanese aristocratic culture since the 600s. The paintings on them, the gold or silver foil that adorned them, and the mannerisms […]
Cthulhu was orange in the Middle Ages, evidently. (Jk this is Hildegard of Bingen – a famous mystic – being inspired by the Holy Spirit. Totally different primordial mind-influencing force.)
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One thing about history is that it can make you grateful for present times, and here to bring you an example of that is this painting from 1765 by John Singleton Copley, _A Boy with a Flying Squirrel_. Note the chain attaching the tiny neck of the squirrel to the boy’s hand. Folks, I bring
In the mood for a Medieval ghost story? In 12th century Europe, tales dealing with a procession of the dead (often aristocratic soldiers), who are doomed to wander the earth to atone for their sins and often appeared to be suffering,, became popular. One of these sorts of tails was recorded by an Englishman named
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The Goddess Diana above a group of women all reading. From “The Book of the Queen,” by Christine de Pizan, one of the most famous women authors of the Middle Ages, about 1410. Source: Digitised Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_4431
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“Have you thought of al-Lat and al-‘Uzza and Manat the third, the other?” . . . . “These are the exalted gharaniq, whose intercession is hoped for . . .” And these are the infamous Satanic Verses, passages in an Islamic tradition that most Muslims have rejected, but that an early source claims were lines
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Rocks! But wait, there’s more: the technology heralded by these Acheulean hand-axes that you see (noted for their pear and oval shapes) signify not just the very cutting-edge (groan) way to cut into bone developed between 2 and 1.6 million years ago, but also, the formation of human language and maybe even the genesis of
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Every year, I write a historically themed Christmas Carol because history geek. So here’s this year’s! “Wake up Ye Blinded Gentlemen/Greek Metaphysics” (from “Oh Come Ye, Merry Gentlemen”) Wake up ye blinded gentlemenChained up here in this caveSee that the shadows facing youCome from a fire that wavesBehind you is the source of lightFrom illusion
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Try as I might, I can’t find any sources that definitively link the “Upside-down” world of the show _Stranger Things_ to early Scandinavian myths about the land of the dead, but there are so many similarities it seems hard to believe that the content creators weren’t deliberately borrowing. To take the words of ethnographer Tim
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Look above the manager roof in this scene from Italian Renaissance master Giotto di Bondone’s _Adoration of the Magi_. The “star” that Giotto painted had been famous for centuries as the one featured in the Gospel of Matthew which inspired the wise men to travel to King Herod of Judea to inquire about the prophecy
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Potential happy post-extinction post! The drawing you see here is artist Nirupa Rao’s rendition of a plant that some believe to be an extremely rare survivor of Silphium (also known as silphion), an Ancient Mediterranean species so valued that it was hunted to extinction — but maybe, believe some plant historians, it’s been rediscovered. I
Here’s a Burning Man party of a completely different nature: this “Bal des Ardents” (Ball of the Burning Men) happened in late January of 1393, and the story encapsulates the place of French Medieval aristocratic culture with all its quirks. The event involved a big party, during which the French king staged a performance with
Holy hand miracle! On this Christmas Eve Eve, I thought it would be great to share a Medieval Christmas legend. Like Christians today, Medieval Europeans celebrated “Christ’s Mass” with community festivities that were connected to the story of Jesus’ birth. Illustrated here in this late fifteenth-century miniature painting is a special moment that with a
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So it’s Christmas Eve, and in the U.S., the green Grinch monster invented by “Dr. Seuss” is a well-known figure who tries to destroy Christmas. But in the 1640s, there was an actual Grinch-movement to ban the holiday. Most British people put the blame for this unpopular episode on the English military leader-cum-religious zealot Oliver
Check out this mag-ni-fi-cent mural of the northwestern deity Tyr, God of war, painted in Germany in 1850. Besides the fact that he is missing an arm and has the physique that epitomized Aryan masculine ideals of the 19th century, the other obvious feature is his horned helmet. It was from this milieu, my friends,
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This is the so-called “Buddha bucket” — one of the many great archaeological remains from the most important Viking burial ship ever discovered — the Osenberg ship, dating from 834 CE (says dendrochronological analysis). 70 feet long and 16 feet wide, the ship had been intentionally set up on high ground away from other settlements,
Werewolf stories existed in Europe as long ago as Ancient Roman times, but the ways people imagined them changed. Whereas for much of the Middle Ages, werewolves retained some of their sympathetic human nature, by the late 15th century they began to figure as evil servants of the devil. Some men were even executed for
Olifants were Medieval horns carved out of elephants’ tusks. Their artistry borrows from cultures across the Mediterranean east, and they were used for special ritual occasions. In literature, the rash hero Roland ends up causing his entire army’s slaughter because he refuses to call for help on his olifant. The horn pictured here is from
This is John Tenniel’s famous 1871 illustration of the poem “Jabberwocky,” the most famous nonsense poem in the English language. Linguists have long remarked upon the genius of the way Lewis Carroll’s poem explores questions about language and meaning. But Tenniel’s illustration better shows the new Victorian awareness of Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution and
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“Ostara” by Johannes Gehrts (1884). The word “Easter” comes from the name of a Germanic fertility goddess. Very little is known about her (as is often the case about western European pagan deities), but the English writer Bede recorded in the 8th century that pagans had been partaking in rituals celebrating the goddess during one
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