Marvel’s Doctor Strange is just the latest in a long line of seekers after truth who have headed to the Mystic East in search of spiritual enlightenment and supernatural powers.CHRIS GOTO-JONES recalls the Western magicians who transformed themselves into turbansporting seers, and examines the continuing appeal of Orientalism’s magical myth.
After the car crash that leaves his hands shattered and ruined, Doctor Stephen Strange exhausts the possibilities of modern science in an attempt to repair the damage and cure his injuries. He endures all kinds of painful surgeries and experimental procedures; he spends his entire fortune. Driven by desperation and perhaps by providence, this paragon of scientific accomplishment – the brain surgeon – finally makes his way into the mysterious mountains of Nepal and Tibet. In the remote and exotic vastness of the Himalayas, Doctor Strange finally encounters an old master of wisdom, hidden away in an ancient, forgotten, and virtually inaccessible monastery.
The doctor struggles to let go of his hard-won and deeply embedded scientific scepticism, even when confronted by the evidence of Oriental magic that flows from the fingers of the ancient master – the sorcerer supreme. Being far away from NewYork and London, the monastery is apparently also far away from the conventions and laws of modern science. It is both in the world we know and beyond it.We can get there on a plane, but the real journey is a spiritual not a geographical one.
In the end, it is Strange’s desperation, suffering, and courage that break him free from his overly-rational Western mind, liberating him into an apprenticeship in Eastern mysticism that ultimately helps him to overcome his injuries but also transposes him into a bigger, more complex, more magical world.When Stephen Strange returns to NewYork, he finds it transformed by his new knowledge – the city is recognisable, but it is also profoundly different; it is interlaced with magic that only the initiated can see.
Denne historien er fra January 2017-utgaven av Fortean Times.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra January 2017-utgaven av Fortean Times.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Lightning Or Legendry?: The Chase Vault Moving Coffin Mystery Revisited
The moving coffins of Barbados have been a staple subject of books on the unexplained for over a century, and yet no one has so far provided a wholly satisfactory solution to the mystery. BENJAMIN RADFORD argues that we might have been looking in the wrong place...
The Haunted Generation
Bob Fischer Rounds Up The Latest News From The Parallel Worlds Of Popular Hauntology...
The House On The Borderland In Search Of William Hope Hodgson
In his new book, EDWARD PARNELL goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British Isles and explores how these haunted landscapes shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema. Here, he arrives in Cardiganshire to look for the house in which the neglected master of weird fiction William Hope Hodgson wrote one of his greatest works.
Fortean Traveller: 117. The Mediæval Crime Museum, Rothenburg, Germany Fortean Traveller
STEVE TOASE feels the thumbscrews tighten as he explores a grisly collection exploring the history of mediæval torture and its relationship with the law
Where Ghosts Gather
In 1977, Usborne published World of the Unknown: Ghosts, the children’s book that inspired a generation of junior forteans. Four decades on, following a concerted fan campaign, the book is back in print... and the perpetually haunted BOB FISCHER tracked down its pleasantly surprised writer, Christopher Maynard, to discuss its genesis and unexpected impact.
A Bang On The Head
MARK GREENER explains how traumatic brain injury can change personality, creating serial killers and even vampires.
Out Of The Shadows
In an extract from a new book celebrating the history of Boscastle’s Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Professor Ronald Hutton introduces the photographs of Sara Hannant, which aim to bring a range of enigmatic objects from the museum’s unique collection to life.
The Face In The Window - Windowpane Ghosts And Lightning Daguerreotypes
One of the most fortean of lightning phenomena is the “lightning daguerreotype,” where a face or figure, often recognised as a particular deceased person, is mysteriously etched upon a windowpane. Chris Woodyard traces some of the fenestral flaps of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Bodies On Ice
Couple who went missing 75 years ago ... found by chance in thawing Swiss glacier
happy old christmas
you thought it was all over, but due to the orthodox refusal to accept the new fangled gregorian calendar, many people – from margate to memphis – will still be celebrating christmas in january. ted harrison goes in search of some stubborn old traditions...
