Dr Robin Douglas

Next month, I will be leading an online course on Ancient Greek texts in modern times for Cherry Hill Seminary. It will be exploring the use of ancient Greek texts by modern Pagan practitioners. Special guest will be Dr Sasha Chaitow, an expert on Greek religious and magical traditions. Please see here for more information.

I’m delighted to have appeared on Coming to the Center, the livestream show of Cherry Hill Seminary, together with Dr Sasha Chaitow, an expert in Greek magical traditions. You can see the show here.

At Treadwell’s Books in London on 21 May, Francis Young and myself will be talking about the paperback edition of Paganism Persisting. For more information, please see here.

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…