“Wonder has no opposite, it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.” – Marina Warner.

When thinking about the original 7 wonders, it’s easy to get lost in the mythology behind them, partly because they all were created in a time before ours and verifiable information about them can be limited or sometimes non-existent, and partly because none of the wonders could exist without their origin story. Written and oral accounts are necessary, whether fiction or historical, to fill in the gaps.

Throughout the last century dozens of lists have sprung up claiming to present the new wonders of the world, often focusing on a specific region or theme. However, the fabled 7 original wonders of the ancient world are still the most iconic.

Working our way from the wonder with the most concrete information––the pyramids at Giza, which are still standing––to the most mysterious––the hanging gardens of Babylon, which may have never existed––we found that all seven share several commonalities. They’re all large in scale, they are all located in a similar region, and they are all monuments of some kind. Whether it’s love, loss, war, victory, power, honor, travel, guidance, the surreal, or sheer will.

The idea of a wonder stems first from the human imagination. It is the precursor to action or development, but wonder can also lead to nothing. By removing geographic constraints and using the original 7 wonders as a sort of rubric, Flint Magazine: Issue 3 aims to collect and present 7 new possibilities of wonder.

Flint Magazine is an unbound multimedia journal, modeled after Aspen Magazine, the highly influential art journal “in a box.”