Dr Robin Douglas

A further post in my series republishing The Folklore of Herbs (1946), a book by Katherine Oldmeadow, who was a significant figure in the British pagan revival. CHAPTER XI. SUNDIALS: GARDEN ORNAMENTS: DOVES: PEACOCKS: BIRDS AND BEES. The old-fashioned herb garden demands a sundial, for as Charles Lamb said: “Sundials are so ancient, Adam must have had…

“The late John Fransham was by many persons esteemed a madman or a fool. The eccentricity of his conduct drew after him a crowd of boys in the streets; he used to walk about with a cat under his arm, which he affirmed possessed a soul, and that cats would be saved rather than human…

New article from me on the birth of a form of religious bigotry: “Early Anti-Mormonism in Great Britain, 1837–1842”, published in the Interpreter journal. What happens when strangers arrive bearing a message of a newly restored gospel to an insular, hierarchical society whose incumbent churches are sensitive to any challenge to their position? This article…

I recently appeared on the Katharsios Press podcast to talk about the idea of the Great Goddess in ancient and modern paganisms.

During the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, several pagan intellectuals published works attempting to discredit the new faith. Three works in particular are worthy of mention: Celsus’ True Doctrine (c. 170s CE), Porphyry’s Against the Christians (3rd century CE), and the Emperor Julian’s Against the Galileans (362-363 CE).  For reasons of censorship, these texts survive only in fragmentary form,…

“When Jesus had been born in Bethlehem in Judea in the days of King Herod, behold, magoi arrived in Jerusalem from the east….” The magoi – the ‘kings’, or ‘wise men’ – who are mentioned in the second chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel have been the subject of much speculation over the centuries. Who were they? The New Testament…

A further post in my series republishing The Folklore of Herbs (1946), a book by Katherine Oldmeadow, who was a significant figure in the British pagan revival. CHAPTER X. HERB GARDENS OF THE PAST. A modern writer on gardens has described their architecture as “a roof of trees, an upper storey of shrubs and a ground floor…

A further post in my series republishing The Folklore of Herbs (1946), a book by Katherine Oldmeadow, who was a significant figure in the British pagan revival. CHAPTER IX. THE FOLKLORE OF HERBS. There is a tradition that Adam named the animals and Eve the flowers. An old bishop, who had no doubts about the truth of…

Asking Virgil’s ghost for advice Over the years, a number of scholars of classics have had an interest in the paranormal. Perhaps the best-known is E. R. Dodds (1893-1979), who is the only person in history to have served simultaneously as Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford and President of the Society for Psychical Research.…

The Antichrist is a character in the Bible who is destined to conduct a reign of terror at the end of time. He is Christ’s eschatological counterpart and enemy. Where does the idea of the Antichrist come from? Last month, I wrote about the tradition of apocalyptic literature more generally. The Antichrist fits comfortably into…