Latest editorial
ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
Books: Philosopher’s stone unturned
A classic work on alchemy and mysticism charts an ultimately doomed quest for spiritual enlightenment, says MICHAL BONCZA
Re-releases of the classics Gypsy Rhumba and Buena Vista Social Club, and a stunning album by Palestinian artist Faris Ishaq
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
The Hermetic Museum: Alchemy And Mysticism
by Alexander Roob
(Taschen £12.99)
MAKING sense of the world is hard enough in the 21st century, even with all the available paraphernalia of science, philosophies galore and contending religious beliefs to choose from.
Spare a thought then for the souls of the Middle Ages who had only the most rudimentary empiric tools to satiate their desire to comprehend the terrestrial and celestial universes.
Similar stories
BEN CHACKO unpicks the significance of the discovery, in 2015, of ancient texts about Confucius. Was he simply a teacher, or a philosopher, statesman and saint?
JAN WOOLF ponders the works and contested reputation of the West German sculptor and provocateur, who believed that everybody is potentially an artist
PAUL BUHLE recommends an eminently useful book that examines the political opportunities for popular anti-fascist intervention
ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher