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Smithsonian Magazine: Was This Ornament of a Knight Emerging From a Snail Shell a ‘Medieval Meme’?

                An 8th century text shows this early medieval tension. The Book of Monsters (Liber Monstrorum) describes many monsters, most inherited from the classical tradition, including the Plinian races. For example, the Bestiary mentions the manticore, a fierce “beast” with the face of a man. However, the texts show that people were concerned not only with surface characteristics that…

Naked Security: Search crimes – how the Gootkit gang poisons Google searches

Isidore of Seville [7th century CE] (Etymologies, Book 12, 4:4 5): The dragon is the largest serpent, and in fact the largest animal on earth. Its name in Latin is draco, derived from the Greek name drakon. When it comes out of its cave, it disturbs the air. It has a crest, a small mouth, and a narrow throat. Its strength is in its tail rather than its teeth; it does harm by beating, not by…

WKRN News 2: 150 missing Tennessee children recovered by law enforcement during months-long operation

Oddly, one does not find plague ascribed to witches in the inferior documents, though this also would be a crime against society in general. Probably the closest approximation to this notion is a charge against witches in or near Savoy: that they formed a powder from the innards of murdered children and the bodies of venomous animals, and scattered the concoction through the air during a mist.…

VICE: Internet Occultists Are Trying To Change Reality With a Magickal Algorithm

According to an old Anglo-Saxon law a sword or other object by which a man had been slain,was not regarded as pure (gesund) until the crime had been expiated, and therefore could not be used, but must be set apart as a sacrifice.  A sword-cutler would not take such a weapon to polish or repair without a certificate that it was gesund or free from homicidal taint, so as not to render himself…