50 Fun Facts About The Occult

Which bodily fluid was alchemist Hennig Brand boiling down in 1669 when he accidentally discovered phosphorus?

Urine fascinated alchemists, and Brand heated its boiled-down residue until glowing fumes filled his flask. He had been hunting for a substance that would turn base metals into gold.

Which toy company owns the Ouija trademark, having inherited the famous talking board from Parker Brothers?

Hasbro sells Ouija as a board game, and it was seen as a harmless parlor pastime until medium Pearl Curran began using one as a divining tool during World War I.

Which English scientist's secret alchemy papers were bought at auction by economist John Maynard Keynes?

Isaac Newton's alchemical notes went under the hammer at Sotheby's in 1936, and Keynes also took home the scientist's death mask.

Which rock guitarist bought Boleskine House, Aleister Crowley's former home on the shore of Loch Ness?

Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin collected Crowley memorabilia and thought the decaying house would be a good atmosphere for writing songs.

Which First Lady organized séances in the White House while grieving the loss of her young son Willie?

Mary Todd Lincoln turned to mediums after Willie died of typhoid fever in 1862, and President Abraham Lincoln himself sat in on the sessions.

Which escape artist attended séances in disguise during the 1920s to expose fraudulent spirit mediums?

Harry Houdini took a reporter and a police officer along, and sat on a Scientific American committee offering a cash prize to any medium who could show real powers.

Which British author championed the 1917 Cottingley Fairies photographs as genuine evidence of the supernatural?

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the coldly logical Sherlock Holmes, used the pictures in a 1920 Strand Magazine article. In the 1980s the two cousins admitted using cardboard cutouts.

Which First Lady secretly consulted astrologer Joan Quigley after a 1981 attempt on her husband's life?

Nancy Reagan kept the White House astrologer a secret until 1988, when ousted chief of staff Donald Regan made the arrangement public.

In which country did tarot cards first appear in the 15th century, as packs for trick-taking games?

Italy saw the first packs in Ferrara and Milan. Using the cards for fortune-telling began some three centuries later, after French occultists made unfounded claims about their origins.

Which French astrologer published a 1555 book of verse prophecies and won the patronage of Catherine de' Medici?

Nostradamus first worked as an apothecary, and was expelled from the University of Montpellier when that manual trade came to light.

Which adviser to Queen Elizabeth I used an Aztec obsidian mirror, now in the British Museum, for his magic?

John Dee was the queen's court astronomer and is credited with coining the term British Empire. He spent years trying to speak with angels through a crystal-gazing partner, Edward Kelley.

Which Russian-born mystic co-founded the Theosophical Society in New York City in 1875?

Helena Blavatsky later moved to India with co-founder Henry Olcott, where the society tried to ally itself with a Hindu reform movement.

Which Irish poet joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1890 and took a Latin magical motto?

W. B. Yeats shared the magical society with actress Florence Farr and revolutionary Maud Gonne, and went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Which religion did Aleister Crowley found on The Book of the Law, a text written in Cairo on his honeymoon?

Thelema takes its name from a Greek word for will. Crowley maintained that the text was dictated to him by a bodiless being named Aiwass.

Which modern pagan religion did retired English civil servant Gerald Gardner bring to public attention in the 1950s?

Wicca drew media attention after Gardner moved to London in 1945 and began writing about it, and a plaque on his gravestone calls him the father of the faith.

In which US city did Anton LaVey found the Church of Satan in 1966, at a home called the Black House?

San Francisco gave the group its start, and LaVey's book The Satanic Bible became its scripture. Members do not believe Satan literally exists, treating him as a symbol of personal freedom.

Which Siberian faith healer won influence over Russia's last tsarina by treating her son's hemophilia?

Grigori Rasputin stayed illiterate well into adulthood, yet his sway at court so alarmed a group of noblemen that they assassinated him in December 1916.

Which German doctor's theory of animal magnetism was tested in 1784 by a royal commission including Benjamin Franklin?

Franz Mesmer believed an invisible natural force passed between all objects, and the practice built on it became known as mesmerism. A Scottish doctor later reworked the technique as hypnotism.

Which goat-headed winged figure did French occultist Éliphas Lévi draw in 1856 as the Sabbatic Goat?

Baphomet was named in the 14th-century trials of the Knights Templar, when the order was accused of worshipping it as an idol.

Which secret society did law professor Adam Weishaupt found in Bavaria on 1 May 1776?

Illuminati members were outlawed by Bavaria's ruler within a decade, along with other secret societies, yet conspiracy theories have kept the short-lived group famous.

Which tarot card, numbered zero in the Rider–Waite deck, shows a young man walking toward the brink of a precipice?

The Fool is drawn with a small dog at his heels, and in almost every earlier deck the card carried no number at all.

Which traditional playing-card suit is called Pentacles in the Rider–Waite tarot deck?

Coins appear as Pentacles in the Rider–Waite deck, each disc marked with a five-pointed star, although the name has no basis in the suit's long history in ordinary card games.

Which part of the body does a practitioner of chiromancy study in order to tell a person's fortune?

The palm is the subject of chiromancy, better known as palmistry, which Renaissance writers listed among seven forbidden arts alongside necromancy.

Which ancient Chinese divination text is consulted by sorting yarrow stalks to build one of 64 six-line figures?

The I Ching calls each six-line figure a hexagram, and lists them in an order known as the King Wen sequence.

Which Norse god won the secret of the runes by sacrificing himself to himself, according to the poem Hávamál?

Odin is also said to have given up an eye for wisdom, and his verses credit the runes with powers of divination, healing and raising the dead.

Which constellation, known as the Serpent-bearer, has been proposed since 1970 as a thirteenth sign of the zodiac?

Ophiuchus was put forward by Steven Schmidt as part of a 14-sign zodiac, but astrologers kept twelve signs by dividing the Sun's path into equal parts.

Which planet's retrograde spells, when it seems to reverse in the sky, do astrologers blame for miscommunication?

Mercury only appears to move backward, an optical illusion caused by its speed relative to Earth as both orbit the Sun. It happens three to four times a year and lasts about three weeks.

Which king of Israel, having expelled magicians from his land, secretly sought out the Witch of Endor?

Saul wanted her to summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel for advice on fighting the Philistines, after his attempts to consult God had failed.

Which Greek thinker from Samos gives his name to the numerology method that scores letters from one to nine?

Pythagoras founded a tradition that, Aristotle wrote, added up the number values of Greek letters, a forerunner of Hebrew gematria.

Which zodiac sign is the only one of the twelve represented by an object instead of an animal or a person?

Libra's scales are based on the Scales of Justice held by Themis, the Greek personification of sacred law.

Which real medieval Paris scribe gained a reputation, long after his death, for making the philosopher's stone?

Nicolas Flamel ran two shops as a scribe, and the alchemy legend grew from texts ascribed to him almost 200 years after he died. His tombstone survives in the Musée de Cluny.

Which Egyptian god of learning and writing was merged with the Greek Hermes to create the sage Hermes Trismegistus?

Thoth was usually drawn as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon. The blended figure, whose title means thrice-greatest, was named as author of the founding texts of Hermeticism.

Which Swiss physician and alchemist, credited as the father of toxicology, taught that poisons can cure in small doses?

Paracelsus was probably the first to give zinc its modern name, and he showed his contempt for conventional medicine by publicly burning the works of older authorities.

Which ancient symbol of a serpent or dragon eating its own tail was adopted by alchemists and Gnostics?

The ouroboros entered Western tradition through ancient Egyptian imagery and Greek magical writings, and appears in a 1478 alchemical tract as a dragon-like creature.

Which fictional book of magic did horror writer H. P. Lovecraft invent and credit to a Mad Arab named Abdul Alhazred?

Necronomicon requests have reached real booksellers and librarians ever since, and a student once smuggled a card for it into the Yale University Library catalog.

Which witch-hunting manual did German clergyman Heinrich Kramer first publish in 1486?

Malleus Maleficarum, usually translated as the Hammer of Witches, was first published in the city of Speyer, with Kramer signing under his Latinized name, Henricus Institor.

Which country's national library holds the Codex Gigas, the giant medieval manuscript nicknamed the Devil's Bible?

Sweden's army carried it off from Prague as war booty in 1648. Legend says a single scribe wrote the whole volume in one night with the Devil's help.

Which biblical king is named as the author of a famous grimoire called his Key, probably written in the Renaissance?

Solomon could not have written a spell book that probably dates from the 14th or 15th century. Medieval legend also gave him a signet ring with mystical powers.

Which scholar of German legend trades his soul through the Devil's agent Mephistopheles for knowledge and pleasure?

Faust is based on a real man, Johann Georg Faust, who died around 1540. Christopher Marlowe put his story on the English stage about fifty years later.

Which magic word did Roman physician Serenus Sammonicus prescribe on an amulet as a cure for fever?

Abracadabra was to be written out in the shape of a triangle. Sammonicus was physician to the emperor Caracalla, and the word's true origin is unknown.

Which movement grew from the Fox sisters' 1848 claim that rapping noises in their New York home came from the dead?

Spiritualism kept growing even after Margaretta Fox said in 1888 that the rappings were a hoax and showed in public how the sisters had made them.

Which US city was home to Marie Laveau, the renowned 19th-century practitioner of Voodoo?

New Orleans also knew her as a herbalist and a midwife, and her daughter, Marie Laveau II, carried on the practice.

Which king wrote the 1597 treatise Daemonologie on demons, witchcraft and necromancy?

James VI of Scotland drew on his own involvement in the North Berwick trials of 1590, and Shakespeare is believed to have used the book as a source for Macbeth.

On which festival did German folklore set a great witches' meeting on the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz?

Walpurgis Night falls on the eve of the feast of Saint Walpurga, which marks her canonization on 1 May 870, and it is still celebrated with bonfires and dancing.

Which great astronomer cast horoscopes for fellow students and later served as an adviser to General Wallenstein?

Johannes Kepler lived when astronomy and astrology were not clearly separate, and the same man went on to work out the laws of planetary motion.

Which NASA rocket center counts among its founders Jack Parsons, a devoted follower of occultist Aleister Crowley?

Jet Propulsion Laboratory co-founder Parsons also helped start the rocket firm Aerojet, and he died in an explosion in Pasadena in 1952, aged 37.

Which artist nicknamed Pixie drew the 1909 Rider–Waite tarot deck, whose usual name leaves her out?

Pamela Colman Smith also illustrated more than 20 books and ran the Green Sheaf Press, a small press focused on women writers.

Which angelic language was recorded in the 1580s by Queen Elizabeth I's astrologer and his scryer, Edward Kelley?

Enochian got its name from the claim that the biblical patriarch Enoch was the last human to know it. The angels supposedly said Adam had used it in Paradise to name all things.

Which mystical tradition pictures divine emanations called sefirot as nodes on a diagram known as the Tree of Life?

Kabbalah usually links the nodes of its diagram with 22 paths, and from the Renaissance onward its Jewish texts were studied by Christian scholars and occultists.

Which clay figure of Jewish folklore is, in the most famous tale, brought to life by Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague?

The golem in some tales has the Hebrew word for truth inscribed on its forehead, and erasing the first letter leaves the word for dead and stops it.