Note to self: Do something with the notion that Mithraism began as a secret rite amongst the Cilician pirates.

"They also offered strange sacrifices of their own at Olympus, and celebrated there certain secret rites, among which those of Mithras continue to the present time, having been first instituted by them."
-- Plutarch, Life of Pompey, ( Read more... )

The ENnie Awards voting is now open, so it must be time to electioneer for the only candidate who truly believes what you truly believe, namely that I should get more ENnie Awards. Or as it usually shakes out, fractions of ENnie Awards:

Vote for a tenth of an ENnie for me for The Kobold Guide to Magic (Best Aid/Accessory ( Read more... )

"Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you can imagine."
-- Odin

If you recall our elegiac post from last year, you recall that Fields Book Store, once pound for pound the finest occult bookshop in the English-speaking world, had died. Its physical location closed, it had ascended into the Web, like one of Zeus' ex-girlfriends ( Read more... )

On the off chance that people might find it interesting or useful, here's the complete bibliography of sources I consulted while writing The Nazi Occult, available now wherever fine Osprey Books are sold or directly in ebook form from Osprey. Asterisks mark sensible (if not uncontroversial) history texts; one can generally sort the occult special ( Read more... )

So the good people at Osprey have begun spinning up the mighty publicity machine for my first book from them, The Nazi Occult. The question I am most often asked about this book is "is it fiction?" Well, that's a hard question to answer ( Read more... )

Since the beginning of modern record keeping, I have gone 4-5 against Fields Book Store, pound for pound the finest occult bookstore in the English-speaking world. Next year, I shall win by forfeit -- Fields is shutting down their physical location after 81 years. After the end of February, the oldest continuously operating bookstore in San ( Read more... )

In the eternal struggle between myself and Fields Book Store -- pound for pound and title for title the best occult book store in the English-speaking world -- I win some and I lose some. This time, I lost some. I just walked into the punch, and never walked it off. I don't even remember putting up much of a fight: I actually bought a book off the ( Read more... )

I think I've stumbled onto something again.

While looking into the nature of Niðavellir, as one does, I noticed that for one of the Nine Worlds, it's very little attested in the Eddas. (Indeed, Wikipedia doesn't even list it as one of the A-list Nine, implying that it's a mere synonym for Svartalfheim. If you're curious, I personally conflate ( Read more... )

There is a very common night-spirit in pretty much every Indo-European culture called a mare. It's what the "night-mare" is; not a horse, but a (usually) spectral old woman. Sometimes the mare comes from a living witch, other times not.

In Polish, it's the mora, which means "moth" in Slovak. The mora can turn into a moth, which makes sense -- ( Read more... )

* If you're one of those people who has an iPad on order, now you can have a Where the Deep Ones Are iPad App on order, too! Like the iPhone version, Appness performed by the legend that is Derek "Le SuperCool" Pearcy.

* At GTS last week, The Day After Ragnarok and Cthulhu 101 were both nominated for Origins Awards -- in Best Roleplaying ( Read more... )