The idea to reduce, re-use, and recycle is not a modern phenomenon. Over the last few years, there have been several instances in which scientists and historians have found ancient texts being...
The Grand Grimoire, sometimes referred to as the ‘Red Dragon’ or the ‘Gospel of Satan’, is a medieval grimoire believed to possess immense powers. According to legend, it was written by an apocryphal...
The secrets within medieval manuscripts can be read once again, thanks to modern technology and new imaging techniques. Experts now suggest that computational imaging and signal processing advances...
The Voynich manuscript is among the most perplexing texts ever discovered as it has never been decoded despite over 25 analyses conducted in an attempt to decipher its meaning. As a result, many have...
Death, the ancient Egyptians believed, was not the end of our struggles. They believed in an afterlife and that the worthy would go on to paradise, but their dead didn’t simply pass over to the other...
For a long time, medieval medicine has been dismissed as irrelevant. This time period is popularly referred to as the “Dark Ages,” which erroneously suggests that it was unenlightened by science or...
When photos of the faux-book first began to circulate online it was considered a hoax. The image was featured on the ArtefactPorn subreddit and commenters quickly denounced it as a fake, a mere...
Even though paper would eventually come to be more popular, parchment was the preferred material for book making, and eventually printing, throughout the middle ages. Parchment, used before the rise...
An unusual pentagonal diagram with numbers and letters is found in some old texts. The oldest extant version is in a French book published in 1754, but the image and explanation that accompanies it...
Based upon historical analyses, it is unlikely that a person named Marco Polo who visited China in the 1200’s existed. Before presenting this argument, here is an analogy: if people do not know that...
The line between goddess and witch or witch and saint is very thin in ancient history. One example of this confusion is the legendary story of Aradia – a woman whose life has been explored in neo-...
Rauðskinna is a legendary book that was more terrifying than most of the black magic documents ever produced. It was so dark, that most people could not believe it was written by a Christian bishop...
In 1904, a copy of an ancient book which had been lost for more than 1400 years was discovered in India. A modest book written on palm leaves, its outward appearance was proven to be deceiving as the...
No English translation exists of The Buried Pearl , although it is a rather strange fact that in 1901, the French archaeological mission in Cairo made a regular French edition. Strange, because its...
Currently housed at the University of Cambridge Library, the historic Book of Deer is said to have been discovered by the University's librarian, Henry Bradshaw, around 1860. It is said to be the...
“In the beginning Egypt was not” The Sky Religion in Egypt: Its Antiquity and Effects by G A Wainwright; published in 1938, is one of the classic enabling texts of Egyptology, and I am going to use...
The Salem witch trials, which began in 1692 in Salem Village, Massachusetts bay colony, are one of the most well-known and notorious witch trials in history. Yet, this was not the only case of these...
The period from the 8th century until the 13th century AD is commonly referred to as the Islamic Golden Age. During this era, the Islamic world produced numerous scholars who contributed greatly to...
The Book of Soyga , or the Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor, was written in the sixteenth century as a possible treatise on magic. The illustrious occultist John Dee of the court of Elizabeth I owned one of...
Over the centuries many books have been written claiming that loyal readers and followers of the text will be bestowed with magical powers. In some cases these books are intended to invoke demons or...
On 22nd February, Ancient Origins will be celebrating Two Years since its launch. To mark the occasion, we will be giving all our subscribers a Free Ebook titled 'Unravelling the Mysteries of Ancient...
On 22nd February, we celebrated the Two Year Anniversary of Ancient Origins. To mark this happy occasion, and as our way of saying thank you to all our loyal readers, we held a book prize giveaway,...
The discovery of an unidentified text in Hungary has led to more than 200 years of attempts to determine who authored it and to decipher its contents. Many scholars have studied the text, known as...
The Arbatel de magia veterum ( Arbatel: Of the Magic of the Ancients ) is a Renaissance-period grimoire – a textbook of magic – and one of the most influential works of its kind. Unlike some other...
