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  • Long read

Our complicated love affair with light

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.

  • Article

Eels and feels

For Georgian Londoners, the allure of electric animals was both intellectual and sensual.

  • Article

A little wildness

To salve her longing for a dog, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan chose a puppy. She found that, despite centuries of domestication, her dog still retains aspects of her wild ancestry.

  • Article

Witches

Many of the women persecuted as witches in the 16th-century “witch craze” were over 50 and exhibited signs of menopause. Helen Foster suggests that the stigma of the wicked witch still affects older women and how they deal with menopause.

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Images

  • Dragons and griffins around a lone flowering tree in a landscape on the outskirts of a town; representing a stage in the alchemical process. Coloured etching after etching, ca. 17th century.
  • A dog looks on as a man and a woman smell a flower; representing the sense of smell. Engraving.
  • Dragons and griffins around a lone flowering tree in a landscape on the outskirts of a town; representing a stage in the alchemical process. Coloured etching after etching, ca. 17th century.
  • Dragons and griffins around a lone flowering tree in a landscape on the outskirts of a town; representing a stage in the alchemical process. Coloured etching after etching, ca. 17th century.
  • A goddess (Bellona?) surrounded by stags, rabbits or hares, demons and owls. Engraving by E. Delaune, ca. 1560.
  • Rivers running in the wilderness, with serpents and fire between them; representing the stage of 'multiplication' in the alchemical process. Coloured etching after etching, ca. 17th century.
  • A woman holds up a jug; representing the study of nature. Engraving by E. Delaune, ca. 1560.
  • A woman in a garden with some flowers; in the background God blows spirit into Adam's body; representing the sense of smell. Engraving by N. de Bruyn after M. de Vos.
  • God stands in the centre of Eden; to the left he breathes life into Adam. Engraving by Scotin, c. 1765.
  • Three-tiered symbolic diagram of the art of alchemy: top level, symbols of the states of matter; middle level, cabalistic diagrams; lower level, the two techniques of alchemy: distillation and calcination. Engraving by R. Custos, 1616.
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