​Dear Reader,

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Tacitus once observed that “when a nation is most corrupt, then its laws are many.” In 1973 the great Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran wrote that “as art sinks into paralysis, artists are multiplied.” William Stirling lamented in 1897 that his was a day “when all write books but few read them.” Similar remarks have come like grain turned out from beneath the same millstone, for a thousand years. 

Seldom have the academic bureaucracies been larger or as far-reaching as they are at present. Rarely has the business of higher learning been more enthralled to materialistic dogma. And yet, at the same time, independent research is more profuse and shallower than ever. In print and online throngs of average people vie, daily, for even a moment’s passing attention from the opaque algorithms that control independent forums. Another bureaucracy, though directed by corporate institutions rather than academic ones.

 

Often in his writings, Manly P. Hall reminded the reader that the greatest problem they will face is finding any useful information at all, in the first place. Most available literature on these subjects is useless; either desperate for aesthetic appeal at the expense of substance, or so far off-the-rails that coherent ideas are precluded by stylistic mania.

 

To all this—to all of these circumstances, Fulmen is offered as a polemic. 

Each original paper represents a few months’ concerted effort from the author, to produce clarity in an area where there seemed to be none. And in-turn, each historical paper is typically something that one or both of us encountered as we worked. In many ways these are our personal notebooks. We present them in the hopes that, in the course of making your own way, it might be productive to walk together a while. So:

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Fulmen is a periodical journal devoted to the independent study of the following tapestry of subjects: Western esotericism, ancient architecture, ancient philosophy, the history of warfare, and on occasion, Tolkien scholarship. Much of Fulmen comprises the original works of its two editors, together with peculiar works of historic authorship.

 

We are delighted as well to publish writing from guest authors when the opportunity arises. We prefer to entertain scholarly oddities which, although rigorous in the quality of their research, are otherwise considered hardly publishable by academic institutions for one reason or another. Fulmen is issued online four times seasonally; on-or-around the equinoxes and the solstices (as circumstances permit). Our entire catalog is, and always will be, available to read digitally on our website—at no cost.   

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Considerately,
The Editors

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​Youtube: @FulmenQuarterly

Email: Fulmenquarterly@gmail.com

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Alexander J. Ford (b. 1990) is an American author, architectural designer, and illustrator. He earned his Master’s in Architectural History from Columbia University in New York, 2016. He earned his Bachelor’s in Architecture from the University of Arizona in Tucson, 2014.

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Jack R. Parnell (b. 1991) is an American author, architectural designer, and weapons instructor. He earned his Master’s in Architecture from the University of Colorado in Denver, 2016. He earned his Bachelor’s in Philosophy from the University of Arizona in Tucson, 2013.

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Writing and design-works by Ford and Parnell have been published by Prav Publishing, the Princeton Architectural Press, the Culicidae Architectural Press, and numerous scholarly journals. Their drawings, both together and independently, have been awarded and exhibited across the United States.

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Books by Ford and Parnell:

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​A Slow Death

or, the Silence of the Old World

Prav Publishing, 2024

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