Dr Robin Douglas

This is the first of a series of posts in which I am republishing a book entitled The Folklore of Herbs by Katherine Oldmeadow. The book was published in 1946. Oldmeadow seems to have been a significant figure in the revival of pagan witchcraft in Britain: she was identified by Philip Heselton as one of…

Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817), also known as Sheikh Ibrahim ibn Abdallah, was a Swiss traveller and orientalist. Educated in Cambridge, his principal claim to fame was his rediscovery of the ancient city of Petra (in modern Jordan). Below is an account of premodern Mecca from Burckhardt’s Travels in Arabia. The account is somewhat critical, and it…

The Islamic holy city of Mecca is closed to non-Muslims. But this has not stopped various western travellers from visiting it clandestinely over the years. The following text is taken from an article entitled “Christians at Mecca” by Arthur Jeffery which was published in The Muslim World 19 (1929). The article is interesting, although not impartial: it…

This review was originally published on my old blog in 2011. This is a book by the distinguished Jewish American scholar David Kertzer exploring the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was published in North America under the title The Popes Against the Jews.…

These are two book reviews which I originally posted on my old blog back when the New Atheists were news. The first is a review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion; the second is a review of Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great. The God Delusion The editorial line of this blog is unsympathetic to…

I’m reposting this review, which I originally wrote in 2011. This, if you’ll excuse the metaphor, is the Bible of political Islam.  Originally published in 1964 as Ma’alim fi al-Tariq, it is the enduring legacy to the world of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian educationalist and a bitter enemy of the Nasser government, western democracy, secularism and…

Originally posted on my Substack More people should know about Apollonius of Tyana. If what we are told about him is true, he was pretty special. His birth was accompanied by miracles. A chorus of swans sang. A thunderbolt fell towards earth and went back up to heaven again. He was a healer and an…

Originally posted on my Substack In this piece, we are going to meet a strange Roman called Apuleius – a witty, learned man who may have had some dark secrets. His career takes us deep into the worlds of magic, witchcraft and fantastical literature. Who was Apuleius? Apuleius was Roman by nationality, but he was…

One of the odder episodes of George W. Bush’s presidency was the claim that he decided to invade Iraq on the basis of Biblical prophecies about the end of the world. It is said that Bush mentioned Gog and Magog – two names associated with the end times – in a phone call with the…

This article was originally posted on my Substack in July 2024 For several weeks now, various online Catholic communities have been buzzing with reports that Pope Francis is about to ban the Latin Mass. Why should you care if you’re not a Catholic? Or indeed if you are? I’m going to try to explain what…