The magical mist surrounding these grimoires is not technically a special effect -- there was condensation on the camera lens.  Yes, these books are stacked in a shop window in the Wizarding World at Universal Studios, Orlando.  We can now reveal for the first time that it was this very window display that directly led to the rediscovery of The Young Wizard's Hexopedia.  One November morning, a stranger wrote from out of the blue, asking for assistance with an extraordinary book of magic.  The stranger was in search of a grimoire that didn't technically exist.  His own research had somehow determined that we possessed the know-how to bring this lost book back from the depths.  It seems that he had seen the esoteric window display at the Wizarding World and had noticed that the lost book in question wasn't there.  The problem was that no surviving copies of the book are known to exist.  Our task was to rediscover and recreate the entire document from quotations and implications in magical literature.  The stranger provided some crucial scraps, trusting that the whole work might be holographically contained within the parts.  Knowing the title and a rough idea of the table of contents, we set to work hunting through cryptic volumes in private libraries of magic (whose locations we're not at liberty to reveal, though we can perhaps mention Hollywood's Magic Castle).  Suffice it to say, we left no philosopher's stone unturned.  The process was very much like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in a dark room, with only a flickering candle for illumination.  To our own surprise, the lost book began taking shape almost immediately.  Restoring fragments into sentences and arranging them into paragraphs proved less challenging than one might suppose.  For example, you can surely divine what the last word of this sentence will [...].  Whenever a passage seemed to have something almost tangibly missing, like the absence of a vital book in an occult shop window, I knew to keep digging.  The moment it was clear that the entire Hexopedia was restored, I verified the accuracy of my work with three highly gifted wizards of words: a playwright in New Hampshire, a poet in Pennsylvania, and a teacher of magical arts in Nevada.  Then I sent the restoration to the stranger, who flabbergasted me by suggesting that the book should not come back into print at all but rather remain hidden in shadowy slumber until a more enlightened era.  (Apparently the trickster merely desired a copy for his personal use!)  Having worked so intimately with the text for so long, I felt convinced that the world was ready once again for the Hexopedia ... that it shouldn't rest only in the private library of one megalomaniac.  And the rest, as the former, is history.

Facts are actually people, and a book of factual information is peopled by thousands of minds.  This we learn in Enquire Within Upon Everything, 1856.

A question frequently asked by urban explorers is, why was this abandoned building never demolished?  Tim Powers reveals the surprising answer in Expiration Date: time doesn't pass where there's ruined architecture, or rather time has already passed and left that place behind.  That's why nobody tears it all down -- it's too late.

God's toes.  From Le Rire, 1908.

After an editor's note of no fewer than 142 pages, the editor presents the book itself, saying (presumably with a straight face), "I offer no remarks on it."  From The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, 1824.

Here is revealed the secret of how we get our very own books (see the list here) to look so fabulous.  From Jugend, 1929.

You've heard of the "top of the morning," but did you know that the last cubic inch of it sits upon a crest of ether?  From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.

We stumbled upon this vintage invitation to see "a real living incarnate devil" at a social event.  It took a few hours, but we managed to decipher the very poor scan that Google offered of the magazine page.  (But if there's something obvious that we mistranslated here, please do let us know.)  From The Living Church, Jan. 30, 1915.

THE DEVIL.

The Devil has arrived to attend the Church Social given by the representatives of Modern Christianity, and will form one of the most attractive parts of this Wonderful Occasion.

Attend this social and you will be permitted to see a real LIVING INCARNATE DEVIL who has been much lied about, by those who would have you believe that he has horns, cloven-feet, etc., whereas, as you may see him there, in fine dress and bearing he is the most polished of aristocratic gentlemen; and, in place of having the visage of a beast, he looks like

A Veritable Angel of Light.

In place of scales, he is clad in the very latest set of garments, made of the finest of sheep's clothing.  His voice is soft and charming, and his every gesture, simply exquisite.  He is very liberal in his views on religions, and believes in all the denominations of men, being the silent partner and controlling shareholder in every one.

BELIEVES IN SOCIALS.

He takes a most conspicuous part in all the church socials, fairs, Tom Thumb weddings, festivals, operas, entertainments, carnivals, etc., and if he can get the good church ladies to whip him around the stomp, he will hop, and step, and jump for their amusement, while he baites them on with hisses.  He fully indorses a salaried ministry, with all of it self-exalting titles of men, such as Rev., Dr., D.D., Ph.D., etc; and deals more in modern christianity than he does in saloon business, as he sees it to sugar-coat brazen imps and white-wash rascals to pass as christians.

A Popular Preacher.

Indeed he is himself one of the most popular of modern preachers, having a perfect form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.  He also preaches full salvation, sanctification, holiness, and sometimes divine healing, but denounces all who possess these things in reality.  Do not fail to see him.

A pendulum can tell whether you should have that drink.  From Lustige Blätter, 1914.

Fishing for rabbits is actually a Scottish sport.  We found photographic evidence here.  From Lustige Blätter, 1908.

"One could accumulate great wisdom and secure fortunes by studying his own finger-nails."  From Observation:—Every Man His Own University by Russell Herman Conwell, 1917.

Wittgenstein found that we cannot, in a certain sense, make mistakes in logic.  This is explained in Bruce Fleming's The New Tractatus, 2007.

"Jesus' use of exaggeration is not surprising.  What may be surprising are some cases where it seems he wants to be taken literally." —Herbert Basser and Marsha B. Cohen, The Gospel of Matthew and Judaic Traditions

Before the invention of the "talking stick," gags were employed.  From Fonar', 1906.

"There is no danger that we shall be drowned in books."  From Pearson's, 1902.

Two random horoscopes from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) Ya-Hoo, 1956.

And how true those words are, even today.

Hypochondriacs are best prone to see ghosts.  From Rhyming Reminiscenes in Comical Couplets by Geoffrey Grin, 1826.

There's a weird magick hack you can use to discover more favorite music.  You've heard the Faustian stories of musicians like folk legend Robert Johnson who stood at a crossroads and sold his soul to the devil for guitar-playing prowess.  Well ...

He's not the only one, and the stories get glamorized over the years, but you know beyond a doubt that musicians get inspired, that the very word musician means "art of the Muses."  (Needless to say, the Muses are the nine goddess daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, presiding over the arts and sciences.)  When you love a musical album as a masterpiece, what's happening on a more celestial level is that the Muse who inspired that music has made a connection to your own guardian angel, spirit guide, or demonic handler.  When you don't like an album, there's no connection like that, and what invariably happens is your intellect takes over and decides that the album fails to meet your expectations or falls outside your prescribed boundaries of taste.  The problem is obvious -- you get blocked from musical masterpieces that you literally can't hear properly because the celestial streaming, as it were, couldn't go through.  But as we said, there's a hack.

The hack requires a print-out of an old mystical diagram and an attitude adjustment.  The print-out is easy, and the attitude part is easy, too, if you'll simply be open minded.  It will sound like the simplest thing in the world, but it's a thousand-year-old occult secret that gets used for psychic entrainment for the purposes of genuine mind reading and (by practitioners of black magick) using others as puppets.  The attutide is to decide in advance that you like something, understand it, and are enriched by it.  To be clear, this is not auto-suggestion -- you aren't convincing yourself of something nor are you lying to yourself.  In the case of a new musical album, you haven't even heard the content yet, but you begin by negating any negative preconceptions that might be looming in your unconscious.  You hit the "play" button with a wholehearted expectation that you're going to be blown away.  This, in conjunction with the diagram you'll print out, makes for a clear connection to the album's Muse.  To be clear, you decide to come to any album in question without negative preconceptions but also with an expectation that it's the best album you've ever heard.

The mystical diagram is like an insurance policy for making that spirit-to-spirit connection.  Wikipedia tries to demystify it by calling it an "inadvertent mandala," but there's obviously nothing inadvertent about it.  The "Indian-Head Test Pattern" is a magickal diagram for fine-tuning a channel, and like a spirit medium you're "channeling" to the otherworld in which this music was inspired.  This diagram, developed by RCA in 1939, used to appear on TV channels prior to 1970.  Your great-great-great-great grandparents will recognize it.  Print it out and place it near whatever device you use for music listening.  If you have an LP sleeve, slip the diagram into it.  If you have a CD jewel case, lay the case atop the diagram.  The key is to formally associate, in whatever way you choose, the diagram with the music in question.  This confirms to your guardian angel/demon and the Muse of the album that you are "tuned in" to discovering a new masterpiece.

Eyeglasses wearers are sometimes called "four eyes."  But did you know that "four eyes" refers to a Cyclopian orgy?  The proof is in Lustige Blätter, 1899.