Magical History, Alternative Pasts
“I first read The Art of Memory by Frances Yates somewhere around 1971. It introduced me to the strange ways in which people of the past – the Renaissance and after – conceived of the world and the mind. It also told me about the imagined or mythic Egypt that fascinated scholars and enthusiasts before hieroglyphics could be read. The difference between the actual Egypt and theirs – often spelled “Ægypt” – suggested a vast alternative history that took nearly forty years for me to compose.”