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Judaic Incunabula: An Evening’s Encounter With Survivors From My Distant Pastrare books

Judaic Incunabula: An Evening’s Encounter With Survivors From My Distant Past

By AlternativeApproaches on July 7, 2022

by Sally Wiener Grotta

rare books
SOURCE: Pixabay

I recently spent an evening of wonder and reflection in the company of several Judaic incunabula (printed books in Hebrew from the 15th century) at Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum & Library. Each was a personality and story, bound by hand and laden with transmitted memory. My guide through their histories, typography and quirks was Judy Guston, the Rosenbach’s curator and senior director of collections, who also happens to be a fascinating storyteller. I was entranced, and the time went by far too quickly.

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Fulcanelli and the Mystery of the Cross at Hendaye

By Vincent Bridges on August 30, 2014

In 1926, a mysterious volume issued in a luxury edition of three hundred copies by a small Paris publishing firm known mostly for artistic reprints rocked the Parisian occult underworld. Its title was Le Mystère des Cathédrales (The Mystery of the Cathedrals). The author, “Fulcanelli,” claimed that the great secret of alchemy, the queen of Western occult sciences, was plainly displayed on the walls of Paris’s own cathedral, Notre-Dame-de-Paris.

Vincent Bridges
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The Man Who Sees Dead People

By Jill Wellington on August 13, 2009

Psychic/medium Joe Power: “I see dead people.”
The film The Sixth Sense scared the heck out of movie-goers a few years ago. This so-called horror story dramatizes the eerie life of a young boy who sees, hears and feels spirits. Dead people invade his bedroom at night and blow in at school confusing and frightening the boy. Psychic/medium Joe Power knows the story well – he lived it!

“My boyhood was a nightmare,” Power says. “Just like in The Sixth Sense, spirits raided my life starting at a young age.” He remembers the first time he saw a dead person. He was three years old lying on his back in the soft grass of his stepfather’s magical garden. As he stared lazily at the sky an image appeared. It was hazy and fleeting yet Joe saw the image of a face.

An old, rusting car was parked in the middle of the garden and Joe often played inside pretending to drive to faraway places. Many times he felt a presence beside him riding along on his imaginary adventure. Young Joe sensed it was a man and was comforted by his company.

Jill Wellington
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Why Did You Write Your Book?

By Philip Smith on February 1, 2009

author of Walking Through Walls: A Memoir

It never fails. On every author’s book tour, every interviewer, every moderator, every talk show host always asks the same question, especially when the room goes silent and they need to rescue the interview — “Why did you write your book?” This is a failsafe method to get the author chatting again. Hopefully, after the author spends the next three minutes answering this question, other people will finally be inspired or emboldened to ask yet another question to keep the momentum going. I’m sure most authors have a compelling answer for why they invested so much of their precious time in putting words on a page.

Philip Smith
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