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A Journey from Lurid Fantasy to Mundane Reality The Occultist The Occultist The Popular Imagination: Sex, Drugs, and Summoning Things Ask the average person what occultists get up to, and you'll receive a delightfully lurid catalogue of activities that would make even the most dedicated practitioner wonder where they're supposed to find the time. According to popular perception, occultists spend their evenings: Summoning demons in chalk circles whilst wearing dramatically hooded robes (always...

The Necronomicon - The Book of Dead Names The Necronomicon: Examining Fiction, Forgery, and Functional Magic The Necronomicon occupies a peculiar position in the landscape of Western occultism—a grimoire that shouldn't exist, yet somehow does. To address whether it constitutes a "valid system for occult practice" requires us to navigate the tangled waters between literary fiction, deliberate fabrication, and the curious alchemy by which imagined texts can acquire genuine magical significance....

The Vampire of "Romantic" Fiction The Undead Through the Ages: A History of Vampire Lore and Myth The vampire stands as one of humanity's most enduring monsters, a creature that has stalked the collective imagination for millennia. Yet the suave, aristocratic bloodsucker of modern fiction bears little resemblance to the bloated, plague-spreading revenants that terrorised medieval villages. The history of vampire lore reveals not a single coherent tradition, but a complex tapestry of beliefs...