Adventures in the Unknown – an on-line book display

April 10th, 2011 § 0 comments § permalink

Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace

There’s an interesting online display from the Whipple Library at Cambridge University. Adventures in the unknown: mesmerism, spiritualism and the supernatural.

The general public wasn’t alone in their fascination with Spiritualism and occult phenomena in the mid-19th century through the beginning of the 20th.

During the ‘Age of Science’, many scientists were too.

This Whipple special collection includes books describing everything from ancient astrology to new age magic and ghost hunting.

Authors like Henry Sidgwick, Sir David Brewster, James Braid, and the other discoverer of evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace, are all represented.

And there’s a book by Raphael called, A Manual of Astrology or the Book of the Stars: being the art of foretelling future events, by the influences of heavenly bodies in a manner unattempted by any former author and divested of the superstitions of the Dark Ages.

Quite a title, I’d like to read it. And I love the picture inside of Mercury delivering King’s George IV’s horoscope.

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