Myths & mysteries
Discover facts about myths & mysteries. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Myths & mysteries
Pouring salt across a doorway stops bad energy
The ritual treats salt as a barrier against negative forces, though the line can leave a gritty trail across the floor.
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Paranoid outsiders started the ridiculous rumor that secretive Freemasons literally worshiped a goat
In the 19th century, anti-Masonic propagandists portrayed Freemasonry as satanic and spread a story about Masons riding a goat associated with Baphomet. Some…
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Fourth Way combines mind and body
The Fourth Way sought to develop the mind, emotions, and body together through intellectual work, emotional strain, and physical labor.
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Profile pictures require exact lighting
The joke is that a life-advice guru's profile photo needs purple LEDs and a candle to look suitably mysterious.
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Kenosis is the act of emptying out your divine privilege
In Christian theology, kenosis means self-emptying: surrendering personal will and ego to become receptive to the divine.
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Seaweed perfectly mimics the endless Piscean drift
Rootless and carried by currents, seaweed makes a fitting astrological metaphor for Pisces' fluid, boundaryless stereotype.
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William Blake faced serious legal charges for assault
Blake was arrested and tried after he shoved a soldier who had entered his garden.
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Pleroma stands as the ultimate esoteric VIP lounge
In some Gnostic traditions, the Pleroma is the realm of divine fullness, the original perfect state before the material world.
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Quietism was banned because it made peasants far too lazy
Quietism emphasized inward passivity and surrender to God. Some authorities condemned it, fearing followers would neglect church obligations and religious…
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Balsamic phases demand total rest
In astrology, the balsamic phase—the final sliver before a cycle renews—is associated with rest, though it may feel more like exhaustion than renewal.
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Venus never travels very far from the central Sun
Because Venus stays close to the Sun, astrology treats it as closely tied to a person's core identity.
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Midpoints reveal hidden tensions
In astrology, a midpoint is the exact halfway point between two celestial bodies. Practitioners interpret it as a sensitive point where their influences…
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Furniture turning into spiritual conduits
When several people rest their hands on a table, tiny unconscious movements can make it tilt, creating the impression that a spirit is moving it.
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Willow bark contains raw salicylic acid
More precisely, willow bark contains salicin, which the body can convert into salicylic acid, a compound related to pain relievers.
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used the ancient Chinese I Ching hexagrams to help develop the binary system
The I Ching’s broken and unbroken lines offered a striking visual parallel to binary’s 0s and 1s, though the ancient hexagrams did not themselves create…
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Early scientists confused bismuth with lead for centuries
Because bismuth looked like lead, alchemical writers often treated it as a form of that metal and discussed its properties without recognizing it as a…
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Ninth house pushes long distance travel
Astrologers associate it with higher education as well as long-distance journeys.
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Jaculus is a tiny dragon that throws itself like a dart
In legend, the jaculus is a winged, legless serpent that waits in tree branches, then coils and hurls itself at passing travelers like a living javelin.
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Alchemists believed heating glass could literally trap a soul
Alchemists believed sealed glass vessels were needed to keep a volatile spirit from evaporating during attempts to create artificial life.
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Quietists believed resisting temptation was a grave sin
They argued that a passive soul should accept whatever happened, because resisting an urge meant the ego was interfering with divine will; authorities…
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Scorpius only hosts the sun for a measly seven days while Virgo hogs it for forty-five days in the real physical sky
The constellations cover unequal stretches of the sun’s apparent path, while astrology assigns each sign an equal 30-day season. That mismatch is why the sun…
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Practitioners hoard expensive candles they never light
Some practitioners keep intricate, richly colored candles as display pieces and leave them unlit because they consider them too beautiful to burn.
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Fixed stars are utilized in advanced astrology to predict massive historical and personal fame
Astrologers treat stars such as Sirius and Regulus as fixed points in a chart, and believe their contact with it can signal fame, wealth, or even ruin.
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Melting base metals in acid is a metaphor for tears
In alchemical symbolism, dissolving a solid metal was part of the “dissolution” stage of the Great Work, a metaphor for breakdown and transformation.
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