Books published by Mutus Liber

Issue 32 of the journal of the Traditional Cosmology Society. Editor: Louise S. Milne. This issue (2018, dated 2016) contains papers from the colloquia, Thinking About Celtic Mythology in the 21st Century, organised by the Schools of Celtic & Scottish Studies, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, at the University of Edinburgh.

A monograph devoted to Paul Holmes's video work Outside the Box, featuring jazz musician Haftor Medbøe and his band. Contains an essay on the work by Louise S. Milne, photographs by Alkistis Terzi, and the artist in conversation with Rory MacLean.

Witches and ghosts, dream medicine, women's carnivals, masquerade, monsters, rebel angels, the ship of fools and the dance of death: Carnivals and Dreams explores the extraordinary world of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Renaissance surrealist, student of folklore and painter of dreams. In the generation between Rabelais and Shakespeare, the Reformation shook the foundations of the collective imaginary. As the old visual cultures of carnival, dreams and the dead were fragmented and demonised in the minds of Europeans, Bruegel became the first artist to make popular culture the subject of serious art. In his hands, it became an inexhaustible medium through which he could address the new anxieties of his contemporaries. Louise Milne shows how Bruegel's inventions express the shifting mental landscapes of the sixteenth century, arguing that his art marks nothing less than the genesis of the modern nightmare in art and culture. This is a book that can be read on many levels, a ground-breaking cultural history of art and the visual imagination, explored in clear lucid prose, through a dazzling range of new sources. Louise S. Milne is a Lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University and Edinburgh College of Art. "Wonderfully rich and thought-provoking... Essential reading for anyone interested in culture in general and the work of Bruegel in particular." Lynne Holden, Cosmos "One of the most searching and imaginative studies of Pieter Bruegel's art ever published... Milne takes seriously the idea that art is or can be a kind of continuation of dreaming. Marvellous and long awaited." Christopher Wood, Yale University

When two unpublished 18th century manuscripts are re-discovered, they appear to authenticate the events described in Sunsphere, the most recent mega-selling novel by Mark Arden, the author of blockbusting historical conspiracy thrillers. Had Arden inadvertently stumbled upon a genuine great secret when he wrote his multi million seller? And is there, as the manuscripts seem to suggest, a real mystery to be unravelled? Convincing themselves there must be, three investigators set out to follow the trail of clues that begin in the country house where the first manuscript was discovered. Here a secret code is unearthed, the solution to which points them in the direction of Venice and more specifically the Customs House on the Grand Canal where, it seems, there is a great secret hidden within the golden globe of Fortuna that stands high above the building, exactly as Arden wrote in Sunsphere. But while in the city it slowly dawns on them that there maybe more to this than just coincidence. Does Arden know more than he's letting on and who are the strange people that seem to follow their every move? When the mystery is solved a shocking secret is revealed to the world, and one that is set to blow apart Christianity. But it soon becomes clear, at least to the most cynical member of the team, exactly what has been going on and all is not what it seems.