Hall of fame FT correction

"How many divisions has the Pope?" Christopher Hitchens had it right: "More than you think."

Happy Easter to all who celebrate! 🙂

== The Harrowing of Hell == What did Jesus do between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? Back in history, Christians came up with surprisingly detailed answers to this question. robindouglas.org/2026/04/04/t...

== The Harrowing of Hell == What did Jesus do between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? Back in history, Christians came up with surprisingly detailed answers to this question. robindouglas.org/2026/04/04/t...

I can't emphasise enough how dangerous this trend of converting because Christianity evokes past securities is to the Church. Faith becomes an expression not of God's love (in which we participate), but of anxieties channelled into identitarian antagonism against the people privileged by that love

British Good Friday customs.... Creeping to the cross, hot cross buns, and cramp-rings. robindouglas.org/2025/09/08/b...

While David Frost explains why he has turned to Rome, historian David Starkey argues for seeing the value of the history of anti-Catholic legislation not as intolerance or discrimination but as a relevant model for dealing with what he calls Islamist supremacism today. He says this may offend some.

British Good Friday customs.... Creeping to the cross, hot cross buns, and cramp-rings. robindouglas.org/2025/09/08/b...

"good English beef" and ale

Maundy Thursday in Britain - a time for royal charity. Some old reports of the customs and rituals associated with the day. robindouglas.org/2025/09/08/c...

Hello, based department? "One Russian Orthodox priest noted that, at least in Russia, the continued insistence on performing religious services in medieval Slavonic, a language almost no one but clergy understands, has resulted in an extremely ignorant and ill-informed laity....

This is my favorite climate change chart. Japanese monks, aristocrats, and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years and accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset.

The traditional exorcism (sic) of the palms on Palm Sunday.

Well, Nick Timothy will have something to say about THIS.

A strange English Palm Sunday custom - The Caistor Gad Whip ceremony Every Palm Sunday, the lord of the manor of Broughton in Lincolnshire sent a man with a whip (with a leather purse attached containing 30 pieces of silver) to the Caistor parish church.

Palm Sunday in Jerusalem during Ottoman times (1906). Muslim guards salute the Franciscan and Assumptionist fathers.

Rare chance to see the 1913 Italian silent movie of Last Days of Pompeii. London, May 6. Details here www.bloomsburytheatre.com/event/2026/0...

🚨 New post on my Substack In the middle of the most important prayer in Christianity, there is a puzzle - a word whose meaning is unknown. What are we to make of this? Link in next post.

New short course coming up from Cherry Hill Seminary! @chseminary.bsky.social "Pathways to Ancestral Wisdom", on Sundays in April with Dr Sáde Gryffin

🚨 New post on my Substack In the middle of the most important prayer in Christianity, there is a puzzle - a word whose meaning is unknown. What are we to make of this? Link in next post.

I'm proud to be leading this online course next month, with Dr Sasha Chaitow as a special guest.

Christian nationalism is Britain is almost entirely America Brain. There seems to be no attempt to connect with actual traditions of conservative popular religion - Prayer Book / King James Anglicanism, the Welsh chapel tradition, Methodist evangelism, or even working-class Catholicism.

That this form of elite Christian revivalism is far more interested in John Henry Newman than John Wesley is telling in itself

1. Britain has very much *NOT* always tolerated minority faiths. Just ask Jews and Catholics. 2. The idea that religious expression should be "in conformity with our values, our norms, our beliefs" should worry every faith group, starting with Christians.

In response to Farage's awful speech, I'm going to make the point that there is a fairly long tradition now of advocating a British form of Islam which is compatible with our national culture. This is not some modern woke idea. It's a project that goes back before WWI. /1

A lot of Nick Timothy's thinking leaned in this direction even before he worked for Theresa May. As with Goodwin, a bit baffled at how anyone can be surprised by this direction of travel

I'm proud to be leading this online course next month, with Dr Sasha Chaitow as a special guest.

I'm very pleased to have appeared on @chseminary.bsky.social's livestream yesterday with Dr Sasha Chaitow, in advance of our course next month on the use of ancient Greek texts by contemporary pagans. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s4w...

Not many people know that Hermann Goering was a published author. He wrote (or had ghostwritten for him) a book on the virtues of the Third Reich. It was published in London in 1934, presumably to drum up British support for the Nazis.

Not many people know that Hermann Goering was a published author. He wrote (or had ghostwritten for him) a book on the virtues of the Third Reich. It was published in London in 1934, presumably to drum up British support for the Nazis.

This is William Douglas (1829-1905), the first of my ancestors of whom we have any pictures He was an Irishman who joined the British imperial forces Here he is as a young soldier and as an old man The images are colourised by AI (I know some people like this and some don't)

I'm delighted to be doing this podcast, together with Sasha Chaitow, for @chseminary.bsky.social next Saturday. The subject will be the use of ancient Greek sources in modern pagan religious traditions.

@robincdouglas.bsky.social has a book coming in our Equinox series on pre-Gardnerian British Pagan revivals, while Sasha is working mostly on Byzantine-era esotericism right now. Worth hearing! More details and Zoom link in comments.

1835 - The Archbishop of Tuam writes to his priests on the subject of Lenten fasting. A fascinating window into Lenten observances in pre-famine Ireland. robindouglas.org/2025/09/08/l...

1835 - The Archbishop of Tuam writes to his priests on the subject of Lenten fasting. A fascinating window into Lenten observances in pre-famine Ireland. robindouglas.org/2025/09/08/l...

@robincdouglas.bsky.social @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social hey, look! You made the top ten last month!

Announcement of a Requiem Mass for Hitler and Mussolini from Franco's Spain.

I've been using AI to trace shared patterns in wording (ngrams) in esoteric texts from the Renaissance to the early part of the 20th century. This gives the following map of relationships between key texts and authors.

It is not always appreciated how deeply implicated the Islamic Republic of Iran is in antisemitic conspiracy theories.

It is not always appreciated how deeply implicated the Islamic Republic of Iran is in antisemitic conspiracy theories.

I've been using AI to trace shared patterns in wording (ngrams) in esoteric texts from the Renaissance to the early part of the 20th century. This gives the following map of relationships between key texts and authors.

Happy St David's Day/ Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant hapus!

Book launch event coming up at Treadwell's Books in London on 21 May! Francis Young and myself will be talking about the paperback edition of Paganism Persisting. www.treadwells-london.com/events-1/pag...

Book launch event coming up at Treadwell's Books in London on 21 May! Francis Young and myself will be talking about the paperback edition of Paganism Persisting. www.treadwells-london.com/events-1/pag...

I looked in the clown book and the largest chapter by far was about you.

Some people are saying that Andrew could be barred from succeeding to the throne if he became a Catholic. But what does the statute (the Act of Settlement 1700) actually say?

I now have one too! Author copy of the paperback edition of ‘Paganism Persisting’, releasing on 21 April with @uexeterpress.bsky.social and priced £24.99! www.exeterpress.co.uk/products/pag...

It's actually real now!