Another place for the witches to rest their weary bones would have been Pompeii. The Greek mystics liked volcanoes. According to Peter Kingsley, they “saw volcanic fire as the light in the depths of darkness”; it was “purifying, transforming, immortalizing.” While the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79 was nothing but disastrous for the ancient residents, it has given modern excavators unparalleled insight into the past. The seventeen feet of volcanic ash kept the Villa of the Mysteries in pristine condition, allowing the German scholar Nikolaus Himmelmann to notice the similarities between the
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