Category: Uncategorized
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Britain’s first atheist prime minister?
Originally posted on my Substack in July 2024 Sir Keir Starmer is the first British prime minister to identify publicly as an atheist. There has been some media comment on this, some of which you’ve probably seen. Humanists UK say that it’s no big deal. They point out that there have been unbelieving PMs before. Yet…
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The séances of Francis George Irwin
In a recent post, we met Francis George Irwin, a Freemason and occultist who ought to be better known for his role in the Victorian Occult Revival. Irwin was an associate of a number of leading figures in contemporary esotericism, including the founders of the Golden Dawn and Frederick Hockley. One of Irwin’s interests was…
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The Freemason and the sun gods
This is an article about an undeservedly forgotten figure of the nineteenth-century Occult Revival – a colourful character by the name of Francis George Irwin (1828-1893). Irwin was an Irishman who ended up living in Bristol in England. He probably came from a Protestant family. He spent his career as a soldier, but for present…
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Who were the Orphics? – In search of a lost mystical movement
In recent times, there seems to have been growing interest in the ancient Greek mystical tradition known as Orphism. This interest is evident in the academic world, with the appearance of studies such as Daniel Malamis’ The Orphic Hymns.* It has broken through into popular culture, with the Netflix series KAOS featuring Orphic themes prominently. It is…
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Religion in France before the Revolution
Posted on 21 June 2025 The Catholic historian Pierre de la Gorce paints a vivid picture of life in pre-revolutionary France in his Histoire religieuse de la Révolution française. The occasion that he imaginatively describes is the Fête-Dieu, also known as the festival of Corpus Christi (which took place on Thursday). The translation is my own,…
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Islamism and Khomeinism
Originally posted on 15 June 2025, after the Israeli bombing of Iran. Now seems like a good time to post about the political movement known as Islamism, and the variant of it that currently remains in power in the Islamic Republic of Iran. * Islamism can be defined as a movement which aims to implement…
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“All our ancestors were literal believers, all of the time”?
The quotation in the title comes from the historian Peter Laslett. It is brought up from time to time by historians of religion. Is it true? There is a certain core truth to it. If we could travel back in time to just about any period before the industrial revolution, we would be surprised at…
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The Jewish boy who was kidnapped by the Pope
“Signor Mortara, I am sorry to inform you that you are the victim of a betrayal.” The officer felt uneasy, but he had his orders. “Your son Edgardo has been baptised, and I have been ordered to take him with me.” The date was Thursday 24 June 1858, and the place was the Italian city…
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Polytheism in the Bible
The Bible teaches unambiguously that there are many gods. I’m not making some kind of tenuous linguistic argument here based on dubious translations of obscure terms. It is blatant. There are a number of verses in the Bible in which polytheistic gods are referred to using precisely the same set of Hebrew terms that are…
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The Seymour papers 8 – The Magna Mater
This is the penultimate part of my republication of the writings of Colonel Charles Seymour, an important Irish esotericist of the twentieth century. November 1937 to April 1938 Part 1 Notwithstanding the scanty nature of the records that have escaped the iconoclastic zeal of past ages, in most of the Mystery systems it is still…
Dr Robin Douglas 