Behold the Renaissance: London’s refreshed Warburg Institute re-opens its esoteric library doors

This way to the weird, wonderful and refreshingly unconventional world of Warburg

The Warburg Institute, Bloomsbury, London (Wikimedia Commons)

Public Domain

A mysterious cosmic emblem hangs over the entrance to a building in Bloomsbury, at the heart of London’s university quarter. Depicting concentric circles bound by intertwined arcs, it represents the four elements, seasons and temperaments, as mapped out by Isidore of Seville, a sixth-century bishop and scholar of the ancient world, as well as patron saint of the internet. What lies within is not a masonic lodge, though, or the HQ of the Magic Circle, but the home of one of most important and unusual collections of visual, scientific and occult material in the world. (The Guardian, 25/09/24)

The Warburg Institute, a research institution associated with the University of London and member of the School of Advanced Study, concentrates on cultural history, role of images, the histories of art and science and their particular links with magic, superstition, and popular supernatural lore.

Just the ticket for a Paranormal Daily News reader.

From the Warburg Institute website:

‘Founded in Hamburg at the turn of the twentieth century by historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929), the Institute was established to trace the roots of the Renaissance in ancient civilisations and ended up changing the way we see the world around us.

Sent into exile when the Nazis came to power, the Institute was transferred to England in 1933 and became part of the University of London in 1944. It has served, during a turbulent century, as a creative crucible for scholars, curators, artists and all those whose work sits outside traditional academic structures. The Warburg’s unique Library, Archive and Photographic Collection form a holistic, associative engine for exploring the histories of the arts and sciences—linking the textual and the visual, the intellectual and the social, the scientific and the magical.

Building on Aby Warburg’s belief that the memory of the past activates the present, the Warburg examines the movement of culture across barriers - of time, space and discipline -to inspire, inform and connect.’

In 2022, major renovation and redevelopment began on the existing buildings, dubbed the ‘Warburg Renaissance’. £14.5 million later, the new, improved Warburg reopens in early October 2024.

Warburg Renaissance

Discover our new spaces and find out more about the Warburg Renaissance building project

warburg.sas.ac.uk

“It’s a building filled with literal magic,” according to novelist Naomi Alderman (The Power), who has spent long hours writing at the library. “A place to sit amid books that are almost definitely emanating auras of sorcery … One brief stroll through the shelves and I always find some new wyrd inspiration.” (Guardian)

Occult? Try upstairs! Inside the world’s weirdest library, now open to the public

It has folders marked ‘Grasping the victim’s head’ and now – after a £15m revamp and some help from Albert Einstein and the patron saint of the internet – the extraordinary Warburg Institute is letting passersby in to view its ‘books emanating sorcery’

www.theguardian.com

The Warburg Institute

The Warburg Institute is dedicated to the study of global cultural history and the role of images in society. It examines the movement of culture across barriers - of time, space and discipline - to inspire, inform and connect.

warburg.sas.ac.uk

So, if you’re in London this Fall, you have no reason not to pop in and take a peek at the esoteric world of the Warburg Institute. Their website states that the unique collections of the Warburg Library and Photographic Collection are open free of charge to academic researchers. They hope to have all their collections back in the building by mid-October.

The re-opening is particularly timely, considering recent weeks have seen the release of Disney+s Agatha All Along, a Marvel spin-off that concerns the Darkhold, also known as the Book of Sins, the Book of Spells, or the Book of the Damned, with spells containing transcribed dark magic based on ancient engravings carved by the demonic entity known Chthon. A powerful grimoire full of Eldritch magic.

Mystical literature in movies

Fictional books of mystic power/knowledge also feature in Beetlejuice (Handbook for the Recently Deceased), Bedknobs and Broomsticks, (The Spells of Astoroth), The Ninth Gate (The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows), Supernatural ( The Book of the Damned ), and the Evil Dead series of movies (The Necronomicon/Book of Souls). Not forgetting Harry Potter (Book of Spells), although personally I’d like to. A spell of forgetfulness, perhaps? à la Doctor Strange’s in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021).

The Château de Puivert (Aude, France), where The Ninth Gate appeared (Wikimedia Commons)

'Real life' tomes

And of course there are many 'real life' tomes that dabble in the occult, including The Grand Grimoire (1521, 1522 or 1421), Book of Shadows (Wicca, 1940s/50s),  Sworn Book of Honorius (1347), Calendarium Naturale Magicum Perpetuum (1619), Grand Albert (1493), Petit Albert (1706), Galdrabók (1600), The Magus (1801), de magia veterum (1575), Picatrix (1th century), Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (1577?), Magical Treatise of Solomon (15th century), and of course the Kabbalah (dates unknown, but first widely publicized in the Middle Ages), as well as many, many others.

These should all be examined with the appropriate caution.

Galdrabók: Helm of Ægir -It shall be made in lead, and when a man expects his enemies he shall imprint it on his forehead. And thou will conquer him. (Wikimedia Commons)

Aleister Crowley's The Book of the Law (1904): ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law’ forms the basis for Crowley's practice of Magick and his Thelema ‘religion’. He used to hang out at (in the basement) - The Atlantis Bookshop, still trading in Museum Street, which I covered in a previous post.

My own, purely academic activities in the area were confined to a thesis at the University of Hull, many years ago.

Other than the Warburg, what other institutions house similar fare?

The Senate House, London: The Harry Price Library of Magical Literature

The paranormal, the occult and the magical

Discover the strange and unexpected: traditions of belief, practice and investigation in the occult, unexplained and magical.

www.london.ac.uk

Senate House University of London Malet Street, London (Wikimedia Commons)

The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection

The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection

Cornell's Witchcraft Collection contains over 3,000 titles documenting the history of the Inquisition and the persecution of witchcraft, primarily in Europe.

rmc.library.cornell.edu

Cornell Law School Tower (Wikimedia Commons)

The University of Illinois Library's collection of occult materials

Materials Relating to Witchcraft and the Occult – Rare Book and Manuscript Library – U of I Library

www.library.illinois.edu

Library-University of Illinois (Wikimedia Commons)

University of Manchester -Magic, Monsters and Macabre

Magic, Monsters and Macabre

Magic, Monsters and Macabre collection.

www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk

The John Rylands Library - University of Manchester

---

Cambridge Library Collection - Spiritualism and Esoteric Knowledge

Cambridge Library Collection - Spiritualism and Esoteric Knowledge

Welcome to Cambridge Core

www.cambridge.org

University Library, West Road, Cambridge (Wikimedia Commons)

And, no doubt, there are quite a few more to peruse.

Some movies to enjoy whilst contemplating the reading of books that explore the forbidden arts...

The Stuff of Nightmares: Nightmarish Visions at the Warburg

The Stuff of Nightmares: Nightmarish Visions at the Warburg - History Collections

This post was written by Anna Buck and Annika Gialdini, Library Graduate Trainees at the Warburg Library. It is one of a series of blog posts on the theme of Magic and the Supernatural, as part of History Day 2017. Looking for the supernatural, monsters, myths or magic? You’ll find them lurking in the print and pages of the Warburg Library’s collections. […]

historycollections.blogs.sas.ac.uk

Stephen Arnell’s novel THE GREAT ONE, is available on Amazon Kindle now:

The Great One : The Secret Memoirs of Pompey the Great eBook : Arnell, Stephen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

The Great One : The Secret Memoirs of Pompey the Great eBook : Arnell, Stephen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

www.amazon.co.uk

Fright at the British Museum: where ancient artifacts aren't the only things stirring

Examine museum with caution

Reading-room of the British Museum (Wikimedia Commons)

What lurks within the British Museum

It is hardly surprising that such a venerable institution as the British Museum (which was founded in 1753 and opened to the general public six years later) has accumulated its fair share of spectral happenings, given the sheer tonnage of purloined ancient antiquities stored there.

Indeed the Museum has featured as a ‘character’ in Jacques Tourneur’s superb Night (Curse in the US) of the Demon (1957) and, more recently in the Marvel mini-series Moon Knight (2022).

Carswell (Niall MacGinnis) the Satanist cult leader and rationalist investigator John Holden (Dana Andrews) in NOTD

In pictures: Monster Weekend – Night of the Demon

Images from the outdoor screening of Night of the Demon, on the first night of our Monster Weekend at the British Museum.

www.bfi.org.uk

Frights, Camera, Action

Also filmed on the premises: The Wakefield Case (1921), Blackmail (1929 - photographic backdrops), Bulldog Jack (1935), Phaedra (1962), The Ipcress File (1965), Day of the Jackal (1973), Maurice (1987), Tale of the Mummy (1998), The Mummy Returns (2001), Possession (2002), Night at the Museum (2006), sequels Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and Secret of the Tomb (2014), Justice League (2017), Wonder Woman (2017) (but not actually set in the museum), Gold Digger (2019) BBC drama series, and Ammonite (2019).

Locations

Find out more about the Museum's many spectacular galleries and spaces.

www.britishmuseum.org

But back to the theme of this piece; hauntings at the British Museum:

Sutton Hoo helmet (Wikimedia Commons)

The Anglo-Saxon treasures discovered at Sutton Hoo appear be enchanted in some way - witness this claim of a warden there:

“Between galleries 42 and 41, the doors were notoriously old and warped and difficult to shut. We got the one door, but then it just wouldn’t quite meet the other, and so my colleague slammed it, and kept slamming it, and then all of a sudden, the door that was closed flung back open. He felt something push against his chest.” With this, the warder pantomimed his wrist thrusting forward, as if pushing his colleague’s sternum and launching him—“a big lad”—into the air. His supervisor watched helplessly as “He got knocked right back off his feet, and onto his backside. And then the doors slammed. Bang!”

Islamic Gallery at the British Museum (Wikimedia Commons)

Revolt amongst the spectral guardians

Patsy Sorenti, psychic medium and keen student of Anglo-Saxon England, claimed some of the happenings in Gallery 42 were caused by the conversion of the adjacent Medieval Christian Relics Gallery into an Islamic Gallery, causing a revolt amongst the spectral guardians against the custodians of the museum.

“Whoever was looking after that, whoever was linked to those objects, maybe more than one person, has got the hump, because you swapped Christianity for Islam, and in the Medieval world, in those times, that was the devil. Because you represent the people who work here [you] are responsible. That’s why the doors closed on you, and that’s why your man was thrown. That’s what it is – you’ve replaced Christianity, you have replaced it with something that’s a devil to us. You displaced us for that.”

The Sutton Hoo treasure is of the time when the Anglo-Saxons were still pagan, or at least semi- heathen, so maybe a (very) doubtful theory...

‘Sutton Hoo king’s lost temple’ discovered in Suffolk

The 1,400-year-old remains may be site of pagan and Christian altars said to have been built by King Redwald

www.telegraph.co.uk

Eerie areas of cold air have been felt near the winged bulls from Khorsabad at the entrance of the Assyrian gallery. They once guarded the entrance to the royal palace of King Ashurnasirpal II (883 to 859BC) in Nimrud, Northern Iraq.

The winged human-headed bulls from the North-West Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud (Wikimedia Commons)

Lower grade attendants usually bear the brunt of paranormal aggravation. According to Collections Manager Jim Peters, “There was a time when the cleaners refused to clean the cases in the mummy gallery because the mummies would move, so they refused. They genuinely believed that the mummies were moving, and refused to go in there. So, the museum had to do something about it, and get different people in.”

The British Museum, Egypt Egyptian Sculpture Room (Wikimedia Commons)

He continued, “The fact that the cleaners said they’d seen their wrappings rippling… The museum said, ‘Oh that was just the cleaners over-cleaning the cases! They’d caused a build up of static ‘cause the cases hadn’t been opened for awhile, so it built up the static charge in the air, and it meant things seemed to be moving, but they weren’t really.’ Everyone just went, ‘Ahh thanks for explaining that, we can go back to work now…’ But you know, you’d have to be quite close, and they’d have to be quite light fabrics, and you’d have to be really aggressively over-cleaning… I never really bought that, but that was the resolution.”

Egyptian mummy in the British Museum (Wikimedia Commons)

Jim Peters, from his LinkedIn page

Museum staff have seen visitors talking to the Statue of Goddess Sekhmet, believing it has supernatural power.

Sekhmet, British Museum (Wikimedia Commons)

Connected to the 'curse' of the ‘Cursed Mummy’ the priestess of King of the Gods Amen-Ra's tomb, an Egyptian revenant, was said to rise from it to wail and scream in the tunnels of the British Museum Station before it closed in 1933; she has now moved on further down the track, to Holborn station.

The Unlucky Mummy - Curse of the British Museum & Sinker of the Titanic? - David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen

If you were to wander into the Egyptian section of London's British Museum, you might notice – among the gloomy sarcophagi, huge stone pharaohs, bandaged mummies, sombre pillars and statues of aloof deities – a beautiful and striking coffin case.This wooden casket – depicting the enigmatic face of a woman –

www.davidcastleton.net

The Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles were reportedly heard ‘weeping’ in the crate as they were transported to the UK in the early 19th century. And who can blame them?

The Parthenon Marbles (Wikimedia Commons)

Museum-related ghost stories supposedly banned

Quite a few such experiences have apparently gone unreported, with an unnamed former museum director supposedly banning the collection of Museum-related ghost stories for publication. But they ‘live’ on, and are repeated on nightly patrols, in pubs and homes amongst those who say they have encountered the Museum’s unquiet spirits.

A female warden recounted an incident in one of the Museum’s many storage rooms for excess exhibits, “The only way I could perceive it was, someone had put their hand in, and grabbed my spine and sent the biggest chill up my spine… I kind of ignored it, and said to my colleague, ‘that was weird, you can unlock that in the morning. I refuse to go back there.’ When we got back to the same area again, I got the same chills but he actually had jelly legs as well, for no reason whatsoever… It completely put me off that whole area… It was that feeling of, ‘I’ll get up your back. I want you out my area’, we just went out of there as quick as you could say ‘boo.’ We were gone. We were gone.”

Interest in the paranormal life of the Museum has increased recently with talks, novels, and articles on the apparent phenomena which have occurred there, including an evening this April at Conway Hall entitled: London Fortean Society: Haunted London: Ghosts of The British Museum and Bloomsbury:

Haunted London: Ghosts of The British Museum and Bloomsbury - Conway Hall

London is an old and ghost ridden city. Join the London Fortean Society for an evening of talks on the ghosts that haunt some of London’s most famous landmarks: The British Museum and Senate House. Noah Angell - Ghosts of the British Museum: A True Story of Colonial Loot and…

www.conwayhall.org.uk

A lot of the mummies should be back in their graves

In May 2020, The Daily Mail published: A (spooky) Night At The Museum: Guards report doors unbolting themselves, midnight fire alarms and mysterious chills near exhibits that one investigator believes are desperate to leave the British Museum.

The article included the following observations, “Mysterious footsteps, music and ghostly crying have plagued the halls of the 18th century institution as night security teams patrolled the galleries, which are home to more than eight million artefacts from Ancient Egypt to the Aztec Empire. Glowing, white orbs have been spotted hovering above a staircase in the Great Court in the dead of night, only visible through CCTV footage.

Meanwhile foreign visitors have reported spotting the chilling ghost of a female dwarf in the reflection of a glass case after taking a photograph of a 16th century mechanical galleon. Lingering patches of cold air have been noted near a pair of winged bulls from Khorsabad at the entrance of the Assyrian gallery, 1843 Magazine reported. In the African galleries, a security guard also reported fire alarms sounding throughout the museum after he was compelled to point his finger towards the figure of a two-headed dog on two occasions. Others have noted hearing mysterious footsteps, music and crying throughout the halls of the tourist attraction, which receives more than 17,000 visitors per day when open.

Phil Heary, who worked at the museum for 29 years, added he once felt the temperature dramatically fall for no known reason in the Ancient Egypt gallery, where 19 mummies were on display. 'It was like walking into a freezer,' he said. 'My stomach turned over. The feel of the gallery was – you wanted to get out. I'm a great believer that, wherever you’re buried, you should stay there. A lot of the mummies there should be back in their graves.'

Along with The Parthenon Marbles, many other exhibits are the subject of dispute with their countries of origin, including:

The Rosetta Stone – claimed by Egypt

Wikimedia Commons

Benin Bronzes – claimed by Nigeria

Wikimedia Commons

Dunhuang manuscripts, from the Mogao Caves, including the Diamond Sutra – claimed by the People's Republic of China.

Ethiopian Tabots, Pre-Axumite Civilisation Coins – claimed by Ethiopia.

Irish artefacts such the Bell Shrine of St. Cuileáin, Londesborough Brooch, swords, half of the Dowris Hoard, part of the Mooghaun North Hoard, the Dunaverney flesh-hook, the Kells Crozier, torcs, four crucifixion plaques, armlets, seals, religious plaques, rings, and other assorted Gaelic bric-a-brac.

Bell Shrine of St. Cuileáin (Wikimedia Commons)

Hoa Hakananai'a – claimed by Chile on behalf of Easter Island.

Wikimedia Commons

Persian empire gold and silver artefacts from the Oxus Treasure - Tajikistan.

Wikimedia Commons

Aboriginal shield – claimed by Australia’s Aboriginal dwellers.

Welsh artefacts – claimed by the Cymru, including the Llanllyfni lunula, Mold gold cape, the Rhyd-y-gors Shield, and Moel Hebog shield.

Gold lunula from Llanllyfni, Wales, 2400-2000 BC (Wikimedia Commons)

The world’s oldest drawing of a ghost

From The Guardian in October 2021: Figures of Babylon: oldest drawing of a ghost found in British Museum vault - A 3,500-year-old image tablet of a ‘miserable male ghost’ gives up its secret

Its outlines are faint, only discernible at an angle, but the world’s oldest drawing of a ghost has been discovered in the darkened vaults of the British Museum. The back bears an extensive text with the instructions for dealing with a ghost that “seizes hold of a person and pursues him and cannot be loosed”. The ritual involves making figurines of a man and a woman: “You dress the man in an everyday shift and equip him with travel provisions. You wrap the woman in four red garments and clothe her in a purple cloth. You give her a golden brooch. You equip her fully with bed, chair, mat and towel; you give her a comb and a flask. “At sunrise towards the sun you make the ritual arrangements and set up two carnelian vessels of beer. You set in place a special vessel and set up a juniper censer with juniper. You draw the curtain like that of the diviner. You [put] the figurines together with their equipment and place them in position… and say as follows, Shamash [god of the sun and judge of the underworld by night].”

The text ends with a warning: “Do not look behind you!”

Figures of Babylon: oldest drawing of a ghost found in British Museum vault

A 3,500-year-old image tablet of a ‘miserable male ghost’ gives up its secret

www.theguardian.com

Sources include:

A (spooky) Night At The Museum

Those who patrol the London museum at night have noted several strange occurrences, with mysterious footsteps, music and ghostly crying plaguing the institution's halls.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Are ghosts haunting the British Museum?

Inexplicable noises, spectral sightings, sudden drops in temperature – something strange is going on at the British Museum. As the clamour over colonial restitution grows, Killian Fox investigates the collection’s restless objects

www.economist.com

Decolonial Hacker - Insurgent Spirits at The British Museum

Decolonial Hacker critically examines cultural institutions, their alliances, interests and behaviour. Born of a desire to entrench more consistent and collective engagement with institutional critique, Decolonial Hacker operates through a web browser extension that “hacks” institutions’ URLs with commissioned criticism, and an online platform that archives these texts. The extension activates when a user logs onto an institution’s website, dissolving their webpage to reveal an article that analyses certain problematics of that place informed by decolonial politics at large – for instance, pillaged colonial objects, funding sources and labour conditions.

decolonialhacker.org

‘My advice? Pray before you enter’: The ghost hunter investigating the British Museum

Strange lights, tropical heatwaves and a grinning dwarf: Noah Angell has spent years collecting stories from spooked staff

www.telegraph.co.uk

Is the British Museum Haunted? - Unseen Histories

Writer Noah Angell explains the unseen and unsettling history of the British Museum in London.

www.unseenhistories.com

Stephen Arnell’s Roman novel THE GREAT ONE is available now on Amazon Kindle:

The Great One : The Secret Memoirs of Pompey the Great eBook : Arnell, Stephen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

The Great One : The Secret Memoirs of Pompey the Great eBook : Arnell, Stephen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

www.amazon.co.uk