My review of Frances Yates and the Hermetic Tradition, by Marjorie G. Jones is up on SpiralNature.com.

Though I had of course heard of Frances Yates before, I didn’t know much about her, having only read Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, and that only recently.

Published by Ibis Press, Jones’ Frances Yates and the Hermetic Tradition is the first full-length biography to be written about Yates, and it’s a fascinating read.

@djninjastar also pointed me in the direction of this interview with Jones about the book on the Occult Sentinel podcast.

Though allusions to her not being a properly trained historian are frequent, not being any kind of historian myself I’m still not clear on what the distinction is. Help with that?

Either way, I’d now like to read the rest of her works, The Art of Memory especially, as it’s been called one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.

Check out my review, and let me know if you’ve read Yates, and what your thoughts were about her work.

Saturday Signal: attempting to sift signal from the noise of the Internet’s occultural cacophony.

In our first Saturday Signal Beth asked “how our “fun day” (Saturday) got named after the least fun god/planet of the week”.  Last week we looked at one possible reason, and Gesigewigus commented on how the planetary hours align nicely with the days of the week: Continue reading »

Occult Sentinel is a new podcasts about things the host, Joe, finds “interesting in the occult-o-sphere”. The projected topics will include magick, metaphysics, Thelema, Paganism, and astrology, among others.

The first episode was released in February, and at present a total of five have been released, featuring interviews with Greg of the Occult of Personality podcast, Charles Papapetrou, IAO 131 of the new Journal of Thelemic Studies, Pagan author Christopher Penczak, and Lance Bauscher of the Maybe Logic Academy. Continue reading »