More than a guidebook for aspiring wizards, Magic is also a veiled theory of religion. According to Henry Evans, whose introduction performs a kind of historiographical sleight of hand, spiritual miracles, paranormal experiences, and occult occurrences in ancient times point to a forgotten pre-history of modern stage magic. “Weeping and bleeding statues, temple doors that flew open with thunderous sound and apparently by supernatural means, and perpetual lamps that flamed forever in the tombs of holy men”, believes Evans, “were some of the thaumaturgic feats of the Pagan priests.” (Two hundred pages later, in Book II, Hopkins offers detailed schematics of “temple tricks” designed by the Ancient Greeks, discussing Heron of Alexander’s description of the Triumph of Bacchus, a mechanical shrine with self-moving figurines, and the dicaiometer, a jug that magically poured a perfect measure every time.) In the Middle Ages, continues Evans, the frequent reports of phantoms were a by-product of improvements in optics, for magicians with concave mirrors “were able to produce very fair ghost illusions to gull a susceptible public.” Witches burnt at the stake during the Enlightenment, he intimates, may have been magicians fully committed to their trade.

Source: Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions (1897) – The Public Domain Review

Another important part of the Candlelight story line is the culinary tradition. Servants worked tirelessly to prepare elaborate dishes for the governor’s table.

“As you read through cookbooks of the time period, you start figuring out, Oh, so this is going to take a very long time,” says Matt Arthur, Tryon’s living history program coordinator. “We think a gelatin dessert is easy; it’s just a box of Jell-O and boiling water. Back then, they were boiling calves’ feet, going through a purification process, using bladders of freshwater fish and deer antlers. It took a long time to do all of that.”

Arthur considers any 1700s recipe that involves gelatin to be a “power flex.” Those dishes demonstrated to the governor’s dinner guests that he had enough servants to pull off such complicated recipes. Food was a way for people of stature to show how wealthy they were without saying it.

Source: A Colonial Christmas at Tryon Palace | Our State

Before humans stored memories as zeroes and ones, we turned to digital devices of another kind — preserving knowledge on the surface of fingers and palms. Kensy Cooperrider leads us through a millennium of “hand mnemonics” and the variety of techniques practised by Buddhist monks, Latin linguists, and Renaissance musicians for remembering what might otherwise elude the mind. Source: Handy Mnemonics: The Five-Fingered Memory Machine – The Public Domain Review

Abigail Pogrebin was one of the young adults who performed in the first production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.” It was a famous flop, closing after only 16 performances. But the cast album was one of my most treasured recordings, it evokes powerful feelings among Sondheim aficionados, and it’s one of his most beloved scores – though the show itself never seemed to click.

The original cast reunited for a concert performance, and Abigail wrote a book about both experiences: as a young adult with the world wide-open to her and full of possibilities and as an older adult still unpacking that youthful gut-punching experience.

I highly recommend the documentary on that reunion performance, The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, directed by one of the performers.

This is a quote from Abigail’s memoir on the experience. 📚

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Elephants Can Remember was cited in a study done in 2009 using computer science to compare Christie’s earlier works to her later ones. The sharp drops in size of vocabulary and the increases in repeated phrases and indefinite nouns suggested that Christie may have been suffering from some form of late-onset dementia, perhaps Alzheimer’s disease.[5] Source: Elephants Can Remember - Wikipedia

Ostentatio genitalium (the display of the genitals) refers to disparate traditions in Renaissance visual culture of attributing formal, thematic, and theological significance to the penis of Jesus. That these images seem to have been created in good faith, with pious intentions, mystifies art historians, and many refuse to recognize the category as noteworthy or distinct from the nudity of angels and putti. Yet, as examples accrue, the conspicuous attention lent to Christ’s phallus cannot escape even the most disinterested gaze. “It is no exaggeration to say that this has probably been the most taboo topic in Christian thought for two thousand years”, writes Stephen Sapp. In contrast to classical sculptural conventions, which — with exceptions like certain herma and statues of satyrs — often showcase male genitalia in a state of flaccid modesty (akin to Michelangelo’s Risen Christ), these Renaissance images shock us because they are so frequently ithyphallic: Christ has risen, but not in the way we have come to expect.

Source: Ostentatio Genitalium in Renaissance Art – The Public Domain Review

Is there a German word for being surrounded by stacks of once-feted, now forgotten novels piled in a deeply haunted basement wondering, “What if this is where my book ends up?”

Three years of German in high school didn’t offer an ample enough vocabulary. Thankfully, English has a word for this: sadness.

Source: What Working at a Used Bookstore Taught Me About Literary Rejection ‹ Literary Hub