Paganism
Vampires, werewolves and Sami sorcerers
Animism, divination and shape-shifting witchcraft continued to be powerful forces in the Baltic long after the conversion of Europe to Christianity
How pagan is Christmas?
Many people today feel an ambivalence towards the history of the Christmas festival. They sense that it has deep pre-Christian…
All or nothing
Pan’s name is thought to derive from ‘paean’, the ancient Greek verb meaning ‘to pasture’. His half-man, half-goat form reflected…
The pagan rites of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg succumbed to cancer, #RestInPower immediately trended. The ACLU, New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, actress Reese Witherspoon and the ostensibly…
Our appetite for ‘folk horror’ appears to be insatiable
This eerie, shortish book apparently had an earlier outing this year, when it purported to be a reissue of a…
How Christianity saw off its rivals and became the universal church
In the reign of Constantine, whose conversion to Christianity in AD 310 set the entire Roman world on a course…
The roots of witchcraft
Until the mid-1960s many historians believed witchcraft was a pre-Christian pagan fertility ritual, witches worshipping the Horned God, whose consort…
Magnetic north
The Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup has been unjustly overshadowed by Edvard Munch. But that is about to change, says Claudia Massie
Barometer
The spirit of 1945 No one would have been more surprised at the sight of 100,000 people marching in London…
Allah, Zeus and the Church of England
A ‘prominent liberal cleric’ in London has held an Islamic prayer service in his church, St John’s Waterloo. ‘We all…
Gods and fairytales
The rise of modern paganism – and the persistence of the real thing
Grimmer — and no better
Child murder, domestic slavery, abusive families, cannibalism and intergenerational hatred — what could be better for the festive fireside than…
