Myths & mysteries
Discover facts about myths & mysteries. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Myths & mysteries
Paschal Randolph invented hashish-fueled sex magic
The 19th-century Black mystic and physician taught that sexual ecstasy and hashish could open a path to spiritual insight, and built an esoteric order around…
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Tenure track academics sanitized Kabbalah
Gershom Scholem helped establish Jewish mysticism as a subject of academic study, examining Lurianic Kabbalah’s trances, demonology, and cosmic ideas in…
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Minor museum artifact birthed a religion
An ordinary funerary tablet became a sacred object after Aleister Crowley’s wife pointed to it during a mystical trance.
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Taking cosmic dictation from a voice next to your heart
In 1840, Austrian musician Jakob Lorber said a voice near his heart told him to write. He spent the next 24 years recording what he called the “Inner Word,”…
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Famed ghost hunter caught secretly throwing spooky rocks
Colleagues later said he carried pebbles in his pockets and tossed them down hallways to make the haunting seem active when the press was present.
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Ancient Hebrew artifact copied from a Masonic dictionary
The Tennessee stone was presented as evidence of ancient Hebrew voyages because its inscription was read as “For Judea.” Researchers later found it closely…
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Rhine realized most poltergeists were just angry teenagers
In the 1930s Bridgeport case, flying pans and smashed plates centered on a stressed 10-year-old girl; Rhine attributed the disturbances to unconscious…
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Victorians literally ate this crusty Welsh wooden bowl
The Nanteos Cup was a medieval Welsh drinking bowl that local legend identified as the Holy Grail and credited with healing powers. Victorian pilgrims…
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Loudun nuns submitted a signed demonic contract in court
The nuns accused Grandier of causing their possession, and their evidence included a parchment written backward in Latin, supposedly signed by him, Satan and…
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Amsterdam nuns claimed demonic possession via cursed bread
In 1566, nuns at Amsterdam's St. Ursula convent said a local wizard had given them demonic bread. They reportedly vomited strange objects, climbed the convent…
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Ancient papyrus holds headless demon hacks
The Greek Magical Papyri include the Stele of Jeu, whose geometric diagrams and vowel chants were used in a ritual to summon the “Headless One.”
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Alien artifact turned out to be a valve part
After the Betz family found it in Florida woods in 1974, the sphere seemed to roll on its own and vibrate to guitar music. The Navy X-rayed it before…
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Shoemaker Jakob Bohme saw the cosmos in a shiny pewter dish
The vision came from sunlight reflecting off the dish; Böhme’s writings described God as a paradox of light and dark and later influenced Hegel and Newton.
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Ripley Scroll uses giant toad poetry to explain alchemy
Instead of offering clear chemical instructions, the 20-foot scroll describes a giant toad drinking the earth’s juices, bursting, and becoming a dragon. Its…
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Ramon Llull built paper logic machines to prove God exists
The 13th-century mystic’s rotating paper dials combined divine attributes into logical propositions, which he hoped would prove Christian doctrine…
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Royal scryer hid his mutilated ears under a cap
After his ears were cut off as punishment for forgery, Edward Kelley hid the mutilation beneath a tight skullcap while presenting himself as an angelic…
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Ancient wizards mixed Jesus and Anubis in spells
Spells in the Greek Magical Papyri could invoke figures from different religions in the same breath, including Jesus, Anubis, and Aphrodite.
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Spanish kids faked divine visions for media clout
After children in Ezkioga claimed to see the Virgin Mary in 1931, hundreds of adults joined ecstatic trances, sometimes delivering political messages against…
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An Islamic scholar abandoned wealth after doubt left him unable to speak, then sought God as a beggar
After spiritual doubt left him unable to speak, 11th-century scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali gave up his wealth and wandered as a beggar. He later argued that…
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Regardie saved astral magic by betraying everyone he knew
When Israel Regardie thought the Golden Dawn was collapsing under its leaders' egos, he published its secret rituals despite its oaths of secrecy. His books…
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Russian exiled thinker made art a holy weapon
Exiled from Soviet Russia for rejecting Marxist materialism, Berdyaev saw human creativity as a spiritual power. He argued that the unfinished universe calls…
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Paracelsus accidentally mapped out fantasy lore
In the 16th century, Paracelsus classified elemental spirits into four types: gnomes for earth, undines for water, sylphs for air, and salamanders for fire.
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Aleksandr Chizhevsky blamed human revolutions on the sun
Chizhevsky compared 500 years of solar activity with historical upheavals and argued that an active sun agitated the human nervous system, provoking…
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Hilma af Klint invented abstract art on ghost orders
In 1906, she said spirit guides called “The High Masters” directed her geometric canvases; she stipulated that they remain hidden until 20 years after her…
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