All articles filed in Ars Magica

Oh that it would come to this! 250 episodes in and we’re finally doing some WB Yeats. Yeats is a hereditary enemy of Ars Magica authors, because he was part of the Celtic Twilight, the late 19th century / early 20th century movement which made our fairies all twee and weird. However some of his…

I was listening to  Dragons of the Air: An Account of Extinct Flying Reptiles by H. G. Seele and a vis source emerged. In Bavaria, near Solenhofen, there is a layer of white, lithographic limestone which is deep within the earth. It contains the bones of small wyverns, perhaps three feet across. Their wings contain…

I was listening to Journeys to Baghdad by Charles S Brooks, and it reminded me of an idea I had for Ars Magica. In 1220 there are no modern, topographic maps. There are way-maps, which look, to me, a little like the route maps of subways, and there are portolans, which are sailing angles and…

There’s the fragment of a story – barely a folktale – about a kingdom on the shore of the Black Sea called “England”. It’s an odd little saga kernel. Basically, in the 11th Century, a group of Saxons fled the Norman invasion of England by putting to sea. They raided their way through the Mediterranean,…

This poem was originally recorded for the April Fool’s Day episode for 2020, but I’vew shifted everything forward so that people in the Corona lockdown have more material to enjoy. It’s by Horace Smith, and was recorded by a group of people at Librivox. Thanks to all of the recorders. Statistics eventually. The poem In…

This is the last episode in our series based on The Chronicles of Shadow Valley by Lord Dunsany. For the listeners who’ve been following these episodes, we have a sudden leap in the narrative. We’ve gone from about Chapter 4 straight to the end because I wish to particularly note only those things which can…

This episode follows on from some of our other explorations of the work of Lord Dunsany. ln this episode, Don Rodriguez is held up by some bowmen. In a previous chapter, which isn’t included in the series of podcast episodes, he has saved a man and, in exchange, was given a talisman or amulet, then…

This week, the second half of a pair of episodes dedicated the poetry of Sara Teasdale: a melancholy American poet whose writings I’m mining for monsters (well, spirits). Helen of Troy is still believed to be active in Mythic Europe. Many Greeks believe that she’s on one of these small islands in the Black Sea,…

This week, a lengthy poem from an American poet, Sara Teasdale. I’ve been looking at Teasdale’s work because in the Cornwall material I’m collecting together I have the Infernal Saint of Sorrow, but for her to be effective she can’t go around constantly being Dolores of the Seven Sorrows. She has to fool people by…