Emma Willard, the First Female Mapmaker in America, Creates Pioneering Maps of Time to Teach Students about Democracy (Circa 1851)

in History, Maps | August 6th, 2025

We all know Mar­shall McLuhan’s pithy, end­less­ly quotable line “the medi­um is the mes­sage,” but rarely do we stop to ask which one comes first. The devel­op­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies may gen­uine­ly present us with a chick­en or egg sce­nario. After all, only a cul­ture that already prized con­stant visu­al stim­uli but gross­ly under­val­ued phys­i­cal move­ment would have invent­ed and adopt­ed tele­vi­sion.

In Soci­ety of the Spec­ta­cle, Guy Debord ties the ten­den­cy toward pas­sive visu­al con­sump­tion to “com­mod­i­ty fetishism, the dom­i­na­tion of soci­ety by ‘intan­gi­ble as well as tan­gi­ble things,’ which reach­es its absolute ful­fill­ment in the spec­ta­cle, where the tan­gi­ble world is replaced by a selec­tion of images which exist above it, and which simul­ta­ne­ous­ly impose them­selves as the tan­gi­ble par excel­lence.” It seems an apt descrip­tion of a screen-addict­ed cul­ture.

What can we say, then, of a cul­ture addict­ed to charts and graphs? Ear­li­est exam­ples of the form were often more elab­o­rate than we’re used to see­ing, hand-drawn with care and atten­tion. They were also not coy about their ambi­tions: to con­dense the vast dimen­sions of space and time into a two-dimen­sion­al, col­or-cod­ed for­mat. To tidi­ly sum up all human and nat­ur­al his­to­ry in easy-to-read visu­al metaphors.

This was as much a reli­gious project as it was a philo­soph­i­cal, sci­en­tif­ic, his­tor­i­cal, polit­i­cal, and ped­a­gog­i­cal one. The domains are hope­less­ly entwined in the 18th and 19th cen­turies. We should not be sur­prised to see them freely min­gle in the ear­li­est info­graph­ics. The cre­ators of such images were poly­maths, and deeply devout. Joseph Priest­ley, Eng­lish chemist, philoso­pher, the­olo­gian, polit­i­cal the­o­rist and gram­mar­i­an, made sev­er­al visu­al chronolo­gies rep­re­sent­ing “the lives of two thou­sand men between 1200 BC and 1750 AD” (con­vey­ing a clear mes­sage about the sole impor­tance of men).

“After Priest­ley,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review, “time­lines flour­ished, but they gen­er­al­ly lacked any sense of the dimen­sion­al­i­ty of time, rep­re­sent­ing the past as a uni­form march from left to right.” Emma Willard, “one of the century’s most influ­en­tial edu­ca­tors” set out to update the tech­nol­o­gy, “to invest chronol­o­gy with a sense of per­spec­tive.” In her 1836 Pic­ture of Nations; or Per­spec­tive Sketch of the Course of Empire, above (view and down­load high res­o­lu­tion images here), she presents “the bib­li­cal Cre­ation as the apex of a tri­an­gle that then flowed for­ward in time and space toward the view­er.”

The per­spec­tive is also a forced point of view about ori­gins and his­to­ry. But that was exact­ly the point: these are didac­tic tools meant for text­books and class­rooms. Willard, “America’s first pro­fes­sion­al female map­mak­er,” writes Maria Popo­va, was also a “pio­neer­ing edu­ca­tor,” who found­ed “the first women’s high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tion in the Unit­ed States when she was still in her thir­ties…. In her ear­ly for­ties, she set about com­pos­ing and pub­lish­ing a series of his­to­ry text­books that raised the stan­dards and sen­si­bil­i­ties of schol­ar­ship.”

Willard rec­og­nized that lin­ear graphs of time did not accu­rate­ly do jus­tice to a three-dimen­sion­al expe­ri­ence of the world. Humans are “embod­ied crea­tures who yearn to locate them­selves in space and time.” The illu­sion of space and time on the flat page was an essen­tial fea­ture of Willard’s under­ly­ing pur­pose: “lay­ing out the ground-plan of the intel­lect, so far as the whole range of his­to­ry is con­cerned.” A prop­er under­stand­ing of a Great Man (and at least one Great Woman, Hypa­tia) ver­sion of history—easily con­densed, since there were only around 6,000 years from the cre­ation of the universe—would lead to “enlight­ened and judi­cious sup­port­ers” of democ­ra­cy.

His­to­ry is rep­re­sent­ed lit­er­al­ly as a sacred space in Willard’s 1846 Tem­ple of Time, its prov­i­den­tial begin­nings for­mal­ly bal­anced in equal pro­por­tion to its every mon­u­men­tal stage. Willard’s intent was express­ly patri­ot­ic, her trap­pings self-con­scious­ly clas­si­cal. Her maps of time were ways of sit­u­at­ing the nation as a nat­ur­al suc­ces­sor to the empires of old, which flowed from the divine act of cre­ation. They show a pro­gres­sive widen­ing of the world.

“Half a cen­tu­ry before W.E.B. Du Bois… cre­at­ed his mod­ernist data visu­al­iza­tions for the 1900 World’s Fair,” Popo­va writes, The Tem­ple of Time “won a medal at the 1851 World’s Fair in Lon­don.” Willard accom­pa­nied the info­graph­ic with a state­ment of intent, artic­u­lat­ing a media the­o­ry, over a hun­dred years before McLuhan, that sounds strange­ly antic­i­pa­to­ry of his famous dic­tum.

The poet­ic idea of “the vista of depart­ed years” is made an object of sight; and when the eye is the medi­um, the pic­ture will, by fre­quent inspec­tion, be formed with­in, and for­ev­er remain, wrought into the liv­ing tex­ture of the mind.

Learn more about Emma Willard’s info­graph­ic rev­o­lu­tion at the Pub­lic Domain Review and The Mar­gin­a­lian.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joseph Priest­ley Visu­al­izes His­to­ry & Great His­tor­i­cal Fig­ures with Two of the Most Influ­en­tial Info­graph­ics Ever (1769)

The His­to­ry of the World in One Beau­ti­ful, 5‑Foot-Long Chart (1931)

180,000 Years of Reli­gion Chart­ed on a “His­tom­ap” in 1943

19th Cen­tu­ry Atlas Cre­ative­ly Visu­al­izes the Expan­sion of Geo­graph­i­cal Knowl­edge Over 4000 Years of World His­to­ry: From the Bib­li­cal flood to the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

When Medieval & Early Modern Europeans Cleansed with Poison: The Strange History of Antimony Cups and Pills

in Health, History | August 5th, 2025

The his­to­ry of med­i­cine is, for the most part, a his­to­ry of dubi­ous cures. Some were even worse than dubi­ous: for exam­ple, the inges­tion of anti­mo­ny, which we now know to be a high­ly tox­ic met­al. Though it may not occu­py an exalt­ed (or, for stu­dents in chem­istry class, par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable) place on the peri­od­ic table today, anti­mo­ny does have a fair­ly long cul­tur­al his­to­ry. Its first known use took place in ancient Egypt when stib­nite, one of its min­er­al forms, was ground into the strik­ing­ly dark eye­lin­er-like cos­met­ic kohl, which was thought to ward off bad spir­its.

Ancient Greek civ­i­liza­tion rec­og­nized anti­mo­ny less for its effects on the spir­it world than on the human one. The Greeks knew full well that the stuff was tox­ic, but also kept return­ing to it as a poten­tial form of med­i­cine.

Ancient Rome made its own prac­ti­cal use of anti­mo­ny, not least in met­al­lur­gy, but also kept up cer­tain lines of inquiry into its cura­tive prop­er­ties. As a sub­stance, it was well-placed to cap­ture imag­i­na­tions more intense­ly in the medieval age of alche­my. By the late sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, peo­ple were drink­ing wine out of anti­mo­ny cups, as unboxed in the video from the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um above.

“The pur­pose of it is to try and make you vom­it and have diar­rhea and sweat a lot,” says Angus Pat­ter­son, the V&A’s senior cura­tor of met­al­work. In the­o­ry, this would re-bal­ance the “humors” of which medieval med­i­cine con­ceived of the body as being com­posed. Fan­cy cups like the one in the video, which was once owned by a lord, weren’t the only anti­mo­ny objects used for this pur­pose: the met­al was also forged into so-called “per­pet­u­al pills,” meant to be swal­lowed, retrieved from the excre­ment, then swal­lowed again when nec­es­sary — for mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions, in some cas­es, as a kind of fam­i­ly heir­loom. “Not sure I’d fan­cy swal­low­ing a pill that had been through my grand­pa,” Pat­ter­son adds, “but needs must when you have a stom­achache in 1750.”

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hun­dreds of Medieval Med­ical Man­u­scripts with Strange Cures Get Dig­i­tized & Put Online: From Leech­es to Crushed Weasel Tes­ti­cles

Sci­en­tists Dis­cov­er that Ancient Egyp­tians Drank Hal­lu­cino­genic Cock­tails from 2,300 Year-Old Mug

The Col­or that May Have Killed Napoleon: Scheele’s Green

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Sir Isaac Newton’s Cure for the Plague: Pow­dered Toad Vom­it Lozenges (1669)

The Archive of Heal­ing Is Now Online: UCLA’s Dig­i­tal Data­base Pro­vides Access to Thou­sands of Tra­di­tion­al & Alter­na­tive Heal­ing Meth­ods

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A Live Studio Cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Played from Start to Finish

in Music | August 5th, 2025

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is such a work of art that to split it up into nine tracks—like clas­sic rock radio has done for years—always sounds non­sen­si­cal. How can you just end “Breathe” on that final chord and not fol­low it with the ana­log drones of “On the Run”? How can you play “Brain Dam­age” and not end with “Eclipse”? And how dare you fade the long coda of “Mon­ey” and segue into a car com­mer­cial?

You can’t, moral­ly speak­ing, I’m telling you.

So that’s why I like the cut of the jib of the Mar­tin Miller Ses­sion Band, who com­mit to cov­er­ing the entire­ty of Dark Side of the Moon in this one long stu­dio per­for­mance. Accord­ing to Miller’s Patre­on page, this is the only full album they’ve cov­ered so far, and they pull through admirably.

And the thing that is refresh­ing here is that the band cov­ers the album up to a point, but not slav­ish­ly. It’s not the Flam­ing Lips’ decon­struc­tion or the sur­pris­ing­ly still lis­ten­able 8‑Bit ver­sion, but nei­ther is it the kind of trib­ute band like Brit Floyd (below). When Miller solos, he’s not aping David Gilmour. The key­boardist Mar­ius Leicht has his own knobs to twid­dle, so to speak. And drum­mer Felix Lehrmann will nev­er ever be con­fused for Nick Mason. (In fact, he gets a lot of grief in the com­ments for being too flash, but when you watch Miller’s oth­er videos and see him giv­ing Stew­art Copeland a run for his mon­ey on their Police med­ley, you see where he’s com­ing from.)

Know­ing what you’re in for, ques­tions arise: are they going to include the var­i­ous spo­ken sam­ples sprin­kled through­out (“I don’t know I was real­ly drunk at the time,” “There is no dark side of the moon real­ly…”). Answer: yes indeed, and fun­ny they are too. Does a sax­o­phon­ist turn up for “Mon­ey” and “Us and Them”? Answer: Yes, and it’s Michal Skul­s­ki. Who can pos­si­bly match Clare Torry’s pipes on “The Great Gig in the Sky”? Jen­ny Marsala does, thank you very much.

So I would set­tle in and try to unlearn your mem­o­ry of every note and beat on the 1973 clas­sic. By doing so, you’ll hear the album anew.

And after that, if you’re still han­ker­ing for that “even bet­ter than the real thing” vibe, enjoy this full con­cert, cir­cu­lar pro­jec­tion screen and all, by the afore­men­tioned Brit Floyd, play­ing Liv­er­pool in 2011.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dark Side of the Moon Project: Watch an 8‑Part Video Essay on Pink Floyd’s Clas­sic Album

Clare Torry’s Rare Live Per­for­mances of “Great Gig in the Sky” with Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

Bea­t­les Trib­ute Band “The Fab Faux” Per­forms Live an Amaz­ing­ly Exact Repli­ca of the Orig­i­nal Abbey Road Med­ley

A Deep, Track-by-Track Analy­sis of The Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd’s Musi­cal Jour­ney Through the Stress­es & Anx­i­eties of Mod­ern Exis­tence

Pink Floyd Plays in Venice on a Mas­sive Float­ing Stage in 1989; Forces the May­or & City Coun­cil to Resign

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

Watch Anémic Cinéma, Marcel Duchamp’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926)

in Art, Film | August 4th, 2025

Mar­cel Duchamp (1887–1968) made some heady art. His whole goal was to “put art back in the ser­vice of the mind,” or to cre­ate what Jasper Johns once called the “field where lan­guage, thought and vision act on one anoth­er.” And that’s pre­cise­ly what Ducham­p’s 1926 avant-garde film Anémic Ciné­ma deliv­ers. You can watch a restored ver­sion above.

Draw­ing on his inher­i­tance, Duchamp shot Anémic Ciné­ma (almost a palin­drome) in Man Ray’s stu­dio with the help of cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Marc Allé­gret. The Dada-inspired film fea­tures nine whirling opti­cal illu­sions, known as Rotore­liefs, alter­nat­ing with spi­ral­ing puns and com­plex word play. Vision acts on lan­guage and thought, indeed.

Anémic Ciné­ma appears in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Mar­cel Duchamp Signed a Uri­nal in 1917 & Rede­fined Art

How Man Ray Rein­vent­ed Him­self & Cre­at­ed One of the Most Icon­ic Works of Sur­re­al­ist Pho­tog­ra­phy

When John Cage & Mar­cel Duchamp Played Chess on a Chess­board That Turned Chess Moves Into Elec­tron­ic Music (1968)

Man Ray and the Ciné­ma Pur: Four Sur­re­al­ist Films From the 1920s

Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches to Crushed Weasel Testicles

in Health, History | August 1st, 2025

If any dis­cus­sion of medieval med­i­cine gets going, it’s only a mat­ter of time before some­one brings up leech­es. And it turns out that the cen­tral­i­ty of those squirm­ing blood-suck­ers to the treat­ment of dis­ease in the Mid­dle Ages isn’t much over­stat­ed, at least judg­ing by a look through Curi­ous Cures. A Well­come Research Resources Award-fund­ed project of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Libraries, it has recent­ly fin­ished con­serv­ing, dig­i­tiz­ing, and mak­ing avail­able online 190 man­u­scripts con­tain­ing more than 7,000 pages of medieval med­ical recipes. These books con­tain a wealth of infor­ma­tion even beyond the text on their pages: a mul­ti-spec­tral imag­ing analy­sis of one of them, for exam­ple, revealed that it was once owned by a cer­tain “Thomas Word, leche” — or leech, i.e., a heal­er who made inten­sive use of the tools you might imag­ine.

Not that the prac­tice of medieval med­i­cine came down to apply­ing leech­es and noth­ing more. In the man­u­scripts dig­i­tized by Curi­ous Cures (which include not just strict­ly med­ical texts but also bibles, law texts, and books of hours), one finds a won­der­land of dove feces, fox lungs, salt­ed owl, eel grease, weasel tes­ti­cles, quick­sil­ver (i.e. mer­cury) — a won­der­land for read­ers curi­ous about medieval forms of knowl­edge, if not for the actu­al patients who had to under­go these dubi­ous treat­ments.

But as any schol­ar of the sub­ject would be quick to remind us, med­ical doc­u­ments in the Mid­dle Ages may have wan­ton­ly mixed folk and “offi­cial” knowl­edge, but they were hard­ly repos­i­to­ries of pure super­sti­tion: rather, they rep­re­sent the best efforts of intel­li­gent peo­ple to under­stand their own bod­ies and the world they inhab­it­ed, with­in the dom­i­nant world­view of their time and place.

That was a time in which health was thought to be deter­mined by the “four humors,” black bile, yel­low bile, blood and phlegm; a time when cer­tain parts of plants or ani­mals were believed to be in “sym­pa­thet­ic” cor­re­spon­dence with cer­tain parts of the human body; a time when repeat­ed­ly pray­ing while clip­ping one’s fin­ger­nails, then bury­ing those clip­pings in an elder tree, could plau­si­bly cure a toothache. And now, it’s eas­i­er than ever to get a sense of what it must have been like, thanks to Curi­ous Cures’ tran­scribed, trans­lat­ed, and search­able archive of all these man­u­scripts. The more out­landish reme­dies aside, what’s remark­able is how these books also acknowl­edge the impor­tance of what we would now call a good night’s sleep, reg­u­lar exer­cise, and a bal­anced, var­ied diet. Medievals may have under­stood their own health bet­ter than we imag­ine, but regard­less, we’re prob­a­bly not bring­ing back leechcraft any­time soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Urine Wheels in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Dis­cov­er the Curi­ous Diag­nos­tic Tool Used by Medieval Doc­tors

Behold the Medieval Wound Man: The Poor Soul Who Illus­trat­ed the Injuries a Per­son Might Receive Through War, Acci­dent or Dis­ease

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look Like Fun

in Animation, Health | July 31st, 2025

The Rea­gan pres­i­den­cy was prob­a­bly the gold­en age of anti-drug mes­sag­ing. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a fry­ing pan. The First Lady told America’s school kids sim­ply to “Just Say No.” The mes­sage was stu­pe­fy­ing­ly sim­ple. Drugs, like Com­mu­nism and tax­es, are bad.

Dur­ing the ear­ly 1970s, how­ev­er, that anti-drug mes­sage was much more con­fused. Take for exam­ple Curi­ous Alice, a visu­al­ly stun­ning, deeply odd movie about the per­ils of drug abuse that makes the stuff look like a lot of fun. Cre­at­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tute of Men­tal Health in 1971, the film shows young Alice read­ing Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Won­der­land in a sun­ny dap­pled mead­ow before nod­ding off.

She soon finds her­self plung­ing down the rab­bit hole and in a won­der­land … of drugs. The King of Hearts is hawk­ing hero­in. The Mad Hat­ter is trip­ping on LSD. The hookah-smok­ing Cater­pil­lar is stoned out of his gourd. The Dor­mouse is in a bar­bi­tu­rate-induced stu­por and the March Hare, who looks like the Trix Bunny’s ne’er-do-well broth­er, is a fid­get­ing tweak­er. “You ough­ta have some pep pills! Uppers!” he exclaims. “Amphet­a­mines! Speed! You feel super good.”

The movie was report­ed­ly intend­ed for eight-year-olds. While it’s unlike­ly that your aver­age third grad­er is going to absorb Alice’s mor­al­iz­ing about acid, they will almost cer­tain­ly respond to the film’s trip­py, Mon­ty Pythonesque ani­ma­tion. The ani­ma­tors clear­ly had a blast mak­ing this movie, but their efforts didn’t exact­ly trans­late into an effec­tive mes­sage. After the movie came out, the Nation­al Coor­di­nat­ing Coun­cil on Drug Edu­ca­tion slammed the movie, call­ing it con­fus­ing and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. As an adult, how­ev­er, the movie is a lot of fun. So check it out above.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Reefer Mad­ness, 1936′s Most Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Hilar­i­ous “Anti-Drug” Exploita­tion Film, Free Online

The First-Ever Film Ver­sion of Lewis Carroll’s Tale, Alice in Won­der­land (1903)

Artist Draws Nine Por­traits on LSD Dur­ing 1950s Research Exper­i­ment

The Orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land Man­u­script, Hand­writ­ten & Illus­trat­ed By Lewis Car­roll (1864)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human Body as a Modern Factory

in Art | July 30th, 2025

In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a Ger­man gyne­col­o­gist and anato­my text­book author, pro­duced a lith­o­graph called Der Men­sch als Indus­triepalast (Man as Indus­tri­al Palace) that depict­ed the human body as a fac­to­ry, a chem­i­cal plant of sorts. Kah­n’s body came com­plete with mechan­i­cal lungs, a rock-sort­ing stom­ach, gears for a throat, and a switch­board for a brain, and it illus­trat­ed rather metaphor­i­cal­ly the degree to which indus­tri­al­iza­tion had tak­en over West­ern life, cre­at­ing deep anx­i­ety for some and curios­i­ty for oth­ers.

More than 80 years lat­er, Hen­ning Led­er­er, a Ger­man artist, brought Kah­n’s mechan­i­cal body to life with some gift­ed ani­ma­tion. To learn more about Led­er­er’s project, you will want to spend more time on IndustriePalast.com and par­tic­u­lar­ly with this help­ful PDF. Oth­er ani­ma­tions by Led­er­er can be found on Vimeo.

An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in 2011.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Hun­dreds of Issues of Jugend, Germany’s Pio­neer­ing Art Nou­veau Mag­a­zine (1896–1940)

Down­load Influ­en­tial Avant-Garde Mag­a­zines from the Ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry: Dadaism, Sur­re­al­ism, Futur­ism & More

Down­load 36 Dadaist Mag­a­zines from the The Dig­i­tal Dada Archive (Plus Oth­er Avant-Garde Books, Leaflets & Ephemera)

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist

in History, Religion | July 30th, 2025

“Do what thou wilt”: as the cen­tral prin­ci­ple of a world­view, it may not sound like much, but at least there are always a great many peo­ple ready and will­ing to hear it. So dis­cov­ered Aleis­ter Crow­ley, the ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Occultist now remem­bered not just for his uncon­ven­tion­al reli­gious prac­tices, but also for his knack for gath­er­ing cults around him­self. It was in Liber AL vel Legis, or The Book of the Law, the cen­tral text of his reli­gion Thele­ma, that he instruct­ed his fol­low­ers to act direct­ly on their own desires, ide­al­ly with the aid of some rit­u­al­is­tic black mag­ick.

You can learn more about the life and pur­suits that even­tu­al­ly got Crow­ley dubbed “the wickedest man in the world” from the Hochela­ga video above. After liv­ing most of his child­hood under a Bib­li­cal-fun­da­men­tal­ist preach­er father, who died when Crow­ley was eleven, he was sent away to var­i­ous board­ing schools, then turned trou­ble­mak­er. At Cam­bridge, where he went to study Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture, he fell for the Roman­tics, then for the occult. After leav­ing with­out his degree, but with a con­sid­er­able inher­i­tance, he enjoyed the free­dom to trav­el the world, climb­ing moun­tains and attempt­ing to mas­ter the dark arts — not to men­tion tak­ing drugs and hav­ing affairs.

As he went from coun­try to coun­try, Crow­ley nev­er met an ancient reli­gion he could­n’t adapt to his own ends. But no gods made as much of an impact on him as those of ancient Egypt, specif­i­cal­ly Hoor-paar-kraat, or Har­pocrates in the Greek; Crow­ley claimed to have been con­tact­ed by the voice of Hoor-paar-kraat’s mes­sen­ger Aiwass, from whom he took the dic­ta­tion that became Liber AL vel Legis. Styling him­self as an Egypt­ian prophet, he preached one way for human­i­ty to push through to a post-Chris­t­ian age: “What­ev­er you feel like doing, go and do it, regard­less of pop­u­lar opin­ion or con­ven­tion­al moral­i­ty.” After all, it seemed to work for Crow­ley him­self, though the work of a noto­ri­ous occultist cer­tain­ly isn’t for every­body.

Nor could even the world’s wickedest man keep it up for­ev­er: “Even­tu­al­ly all the trav­el­ing, drug-tak­ing, and lib­er­tin­ism had caught up with Crow­ley.” His inher­i­tance dried up, and his addic­tions wors­ened. But he did­n’t give up on Thele­ma, even going so far as to estab­lish a com­mune in Sici­ly. Alas, the “respon­si­bil­i­ty-free lifestyle” advo­cat­ed by the reli­gion soon drove its head­quar­ters to chaot­ic dilap­i­da­tion. But just a cou­ple of decades after his death in Eng­land in 1947, Crow­ley’s glow­er­ing vis­age popped up again, on the cov­er of Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. He became the sub­ject of pop-music ref­er­ence not just by the Bea­t­les, but also David Bowie, Iron Maid­en, and the late Ozzy Osbourne. “Genius? Insane? Vision­ary? Fraud? Free­thinker? Cult leader?” We might grant Aleis­ter Crow­ley all these titles, and that of pro­to-rock star besides.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Aleis­ter Crow­ley: The Wickedest Man in the World Doc­u­ments the Life of the Bizarre Occultist, Poet & Moun­taineer

Aleis­ter Crow­ley Reads Occult Poet­ry in the Only Known Record­ings of His Voice (1920)

The Thoth Tarot Deck Designed by Famed Occultist Aleis­ter Crow­ley

The Sur­re­al Paint­ings of the Occult Magi­cian, Writer & Moun­taineer, Aleis­ter Crow­ley

How Aleis­ter Crow­ley, the Infa­mous Occultist, Led the First Attempt to Reach the Sum­mit of K2 (1902)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syllabus Asked Students to Read 32 Great Literary Works, Totaling 6,000 Pages

in Education, Literature | July 28th, 2025

Whether willed, invol­un­tary, or a mix of both, the declin­ing lit­er­a­cy of col­lege stu­dents is by now so often lament­ed that reports of it should no longer come as a sur­prise. And yet, on some lev­el, they still do: Eng­lish majors in region­al Kansas uni­ver­si­ties find the open­ing to Bleak House vir­tu­al­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble; even stu­dents at “high­ly selec­tive, elite col­leges” strug­gle to read, let alone com­pre­hend, books in their entire­ty. Things were dif­fer­ent in 1941, and very dif­fer­ent indeed if you hap­pened to be tak­ing Eng­lish 135 at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, a class titled “Fate and the Indi­vid­ual in Euro­pean Lit­er­a­ture.” The instruc­tor: a cer­tain W. H. Auden.

In his capac­i­ty as an edu­ca­tor, the poet threw down the gaunt­let of an “infa­mous­ly dif­fi­cult” syl­labus, as lit­er­ary aca­d­e­m­ic and YouTu­ber Adam Walk­er explains in his new video above, that “asked under­grad­u­ates to read about 6,000 pages of clas­sic lit­er­a­ture.”

Not that the course was out of touch with cur­rent events: in its his­tor­i­cal moment, “Nazi Ger­many had invad­ed the Sovi­et Union and expand­ed into East­ern Europe. Sys­tem­at­ic exter­mi­na­tion begins with mass shoot­ings, and the machin­ery of geno­cide is accel­er­at­ing. It’s no acci­dent that Auden takes an inter­est in fate and the indi­vid­ual in Euro­pean lit­er­a­ture” — a theme that, as he frames it, begins with Dante. After the entire­ty of The Divine Com­e­dy, Auden’s stu­dents had their free choice between Aeschy­lus’ Agamem­non or Sopho­cles’ Antigone.

From there, the required read­ing plunged into Horace’s Odes and Augustine’s Con­fes­sions, four Shake­speare plays, Pas­cal’s Pen­sées, Goethe’s Faust (but only Part I), and Dos­to­evsky’s The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, to name just a few texts. Not every­one would con­sid­er Dos­to­evsky Euro­pean, of course, but then, nobody would con­sid­er Her­man Melville Euro­pean, which for Auden was hard­ly a rea­son to leave Moby-Dick off the syl­labus. Walk­er describes that nov­el as rel­e­vant to the course’s themes of “obses­sion and cos­mic strug­gle,” evi­dent in all these works and their treat­ments of “pas­sion and his­tor­i­cal forces, and how indi­vid­u­als nav­i­gate those forces”: ideas that tran­scend nation­al and cul­tur­al bound­aries by def­i­n­i­tion. Whether they would come across to the kind of twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry stu­dents who’d balk at being assigned even a full-length Auden poem is anoth­er ques­tion entire­ly.

View the syl­labus in a larg­er for­mat here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

W. H. Auden Recites His 1937 Poem “As I Walked Out One Evening”

Dis­cov­er Han­nah Arendt’s Syl­labus for Her 1974 Course on “Think­ing”

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

Don­ald Barthelme’s Syl­labus High­lights 81 Books Essen­tial for a Lit­er­ary Edu­ca­tion

Carl Sagan’s Syl­labus & Final Exam for His Course on Crit­i­cal Think­ing (Cor­nell, 1986)

Mar­shall McLuhan, W.H. Auden & Buck­min­ster Fuller Debate the Virtues of Mod­ern Tech­nol­o­gy & Media (1971)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live Your Life”

in Archaeology, Food & Drink, History, Life | July 28th, 2025

Image by Dosse­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2012, archae­ol­o­gists dis­cov­ered in South­ern Turkey a well-pre­served mosa­ic fea­tur­ing a skele­ton savor­ing a loaf of bread and a pitch­er of wine, sur­round­ed by the Greek words “Be cheer­ful and live your life.” Dat­ing back to the 3rd cen­tu­ry BCE, the mosa­ic like­ly adorned the din­ing room of a wealthy vil­la in the ancient Gre­co-Roman city of Anti­och. It’s a kind of memen­to mori, a reminder that life is short and you should enjoy it while you can. Or so that’s how many have inter­pret­ed the mes­sage of the mosa­ic.

If you would like to delve deep­er, it’s worth read­ing the analy­sis and back­ground infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by The His­to­ry Blog. Mean­while, this sep­a­rate post on Tum­blr high­lights oth­er trans­la­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of the mosaic’s key inscrip­tion.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent 

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

A Rab­bit Rides a Char­i­ot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosa­ic (2nd cen­tu­ry AD)

How a Mosa­ic from Caligula’s Par­ty Boat Became a Cof­fee Table in a New York City Apart­ment 50 Years Ago

How to Make the 2000-Year-Old “Piz­za” Dis­cov­ered on a Pom­peii Fres­co