How deep down the rabbit hole of magic history would you like to go?
Gibecière is the biannual journal of the Conjuring Arts Research Center, now located in Nashua, New Hampshire. For over 20 years, they have produced some of the most in-depth, well-researched, and cited historical content our community has seen. Recently, they became quite frustrating as the width of the collected issues surpassed the width of the standard IKEA bookshelf. As sources of annoyance go in 2026, count me in.
Longtime subscribers know that this is very much a “box of chocolates” publication: You never know what you’re going to get. I’ve been a subscriber for 15 years and have gotten into the habit of going to whatever century and part of the world the columnists are prepared to take me. The style is academic and data forward—there are well over 200 footnotes and citations to go with the text—and, definitely, it is an acquired taste. But the way these contributors dive into who-knows-what databases and libraries, and produce a neverending stream of places and dates like an archivist’s Miser’s Dream, is quite magical in its own way.