Thea Prothero reviews  Black Magick: 13 Tales of Darkness, Horror and the Occult , which is edited by Raven Digitalis and published by Moon Books, here on Substack .

This article was first published in 2009 on Hubpages. I'm transferring my articles from there to here. Let's go for a walk! Well, almost... Looking at photographs is hardly the same as experiencing a place for yourself, but it can be a good starting point. So pull on your imaginary hiking boots and walk along the beach at West Kirby, Wirral, until you see the steep steps created up the side of the sand dunes. Up there, you can hear the low rumble of the Irish Sea, the lyrical fluting of skylarks and the occasional expletive from the golf course just over the wire mesh fence. As you pass over the lofty summit of the grass-covered dunes, you'll have a sweeping view of the beach - with its horse-riders, sand-yachters and kite-flyers and the distant sails of surf-boarders and apprentice sailors scooting along the marina - and on the horizon you'll see the three small islands of Little Eye, Middle Eye and Hilbre. You'll see butterflies and moths, which help feed the vast...

This article was originally published in 2013. I am continuing to transfer my old Hubpages articles to here. What is Numerology? Numerology is a method of divination which requires no particular skill to practice, beyond basic maths. It requires no psychic ability. All you need is a piece of paper and a pen. Numerology is also known as isopsephy. Isopsephy loosely translates from the Ancient Greek language as ' equal pebbles',  as students then used pebbles arranged in patterns to learn maths and geometry. Every letter of the Greek alphabet was assigned a numerical, mythological and symbolic value. Similar systems evolved with the Arabic and Latin alphabets so it seems unlikely that either system developed in isolation. The system of numerology given below has allegedly been developed to correspond as accurately as possible with the English alphabet. Did Pythagoras Invent Numerology? The name of Pythagoras is forever associated with Ancient Greece. He was born some time around ...

This article was originally published in 2010. I am continuing the process of transferring my old Hubpages articles to here.  Bad at Arithmetic? Did you have serious problems trying to learn basic maths in school, or do you know of a child who is experiencing this? Have you heard of dyscalculia? Whereas a dyslexic has word blindness - to over-simplify the condition - a dyscalculic person has number blindness. Number Blindness This means that anything requiring numbers, such as mental arithmetic, remembering phone numbers, using a calculator or understanding the mechanics of mathematics, is incredibly difficult. If a child, for example, is doing fine in other subjects like English, history, art, geography or biology, but struggles badly with scientific equations or the times table, then there is a possibility that dyscalculia may lie at the root of the problem. As well as having obvious numerical problems, a dyscalculic may also possess a poor sense of direction, be a poor judge of ...

This story was published on Hubpages in 2009. I am transferring my work from Hubpages to here. The story as it appeared in The Zine. the cartoon is a self-portrait, showing my camera on a tripod, plus a 'Home Sweet Home' sign with a UFO in it. Written in 1992, A Day in the Life of Ondole Andlifesabitch was partially inspired by my reading of A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It also  presents an accurate description not only of my own life at that time, but of life for millions of others who lived under Thatcher's Britain. Official figures at that time estimated there to be four million people unemployed. The real figures are still protected by the Official Secrets Act. However, as many groups of people were deliberately left out of the official calculations--such as anyone who had graduated from education, or who had been made redundant, or who had left the armed forces, or was aged over fifty, or who had completed a prison sentence, or who wa...