Intrinsically, we know we can just take things we have written down, and if written well and right, they can happen, more or less.

The latest recension of the concept has been made popular by American technologists, using digital and, increasingly, precision engineered physical machinery as ritual tools to bring about the world they want to see.

This world is heavily inflected with Lord of the Rings themes, in particular.

In a line: This is a great folkloric banger book of genius loci stories, with intimations of a course of study and method of seeking out and working directly with them.

The slightly salacious inclusion of the provocative term “Demons” in the title notwithstanding, this slim text efficiently, elliptically ties together the shaggiest of dog stories into a tangential masterpiece.

I adore this guy's work, unreservedly. Lecouteux's work always makes me think. I'm always enhanced, in some oblique way, by reading one of his books.

As a myth worthy of exploring, and perhaps even inhabiting, the Story of Actaeon contains a heady witches’ brew: a hunt, the glimpse of beauty of the immanent body of a Goddess-in-flesh; a metamorphosis.

Then, a reversal: Another hunt, and a glorious death – and another metamorphosis.

There are versions, improvements and shifting details, as there usually are in any story worth retelling. Easier to abandon truth and purity for a compelling performance.

Sometimes, going out means going in.

Going through the Old World has recapitulated so many parts of my own development. All the facts learned in the classical studies classroom are attached to memories of growing up on a far edge of the world.

Athens, the famed city of the philosophers, and so much history, lends itself to these sorts of wankish ruminations.

Alexandria is my favourite place in Egypt.

The sensuous curve of the long waterfront is a delightful walk; not even the starving, fornicating stray cats or the constant pestering horse-and-cart touts detract overly from this lovely seaside stroll.

The place does feel different from the more inland parts of Egypt, somehow – whether the gentle Mediterranean breezes, or the faint echoes of its legendary founding and subsequent cosmopolitanism seems unclear.

There's a memorial in the middle of town, to the 20 people killed by the good people of Salem, during the witch craze in the spring of 1692.

It's an affecting site – especially when you look slightly more into the story. Further details that have since emerged that the allegations, trials and murders showed once again, the motives were more upon the earth, rather than under it.