The latest volume of Darklore is out, featuring my collected Strange & Norrell inspired articles (amongst lots of other wonderful stuff).
Paperback
Limited Edition Hardcover
The latest release has themes of magic and mysticism running through it, with essays from regulars including Mike Jay and Robert Schoch, as well as a conspicuous newcomer to our pages: the great Alan Moore!
We have a theme of magic and mysticism running through Darklore 9: Blair MacKenzie Blake surveys and reinterprets the infamous grimoires of centuries past; Alan Moore asks if magic is in any way relevant to the modern world, advocating a scorched earth approach and new beginnings; John Reppion uses a fictional work to illustrate the origins and practice of various magical traditions; and Cat Vincent looks at the origins and practice of various magical traditions and shows how many of them come from fictional works.
No Darklore release focuses on just one topic though. And so, along with the magical core of Volume 9, we have a number of fascinating articles on other topics of interest: Mike Jay reviews the ‘hidden history’ of the 19th century Club des Hachischins; Adam Gorightly looks at the amazing, controversial life of Kerry Thornley, co-creator of Discordianism and one-time JFK assassination suspect; Robert Schoch takes us beyond the Hollywood version of the werewolf to better understand the origins of this archetypal monster; Paul Devereux introduces us to the shamanic plants of the Americas; and Greg Taylor finds that the history of research into meteorites offers a valuable lesson to science on the value of listening to eye-witness reports.
We’ll be publishing some sample articles at the Darklore website in the coming weeks.