Kerria

After two surgeries and a scary battery of tests, #BookChatWeekly and #BookologyThursday will be returning this Thursday the 19th ❤️‍🩹

Thank you, thank you for your kind and thoughtful notes, they’ve meant the world to me! Ive missed you all and looking forward to being back!

Announcement for #BookologyThursday -BookCat is out for some minor surgery and hopes to return next Thursday. Thank you, and apologies💛

#bookchatweekly

One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

~C.S. Lewis
🎨 Thomas Cooper Gotch (1904)

#bookchatweekly

Glass is the most magical of all materials. It transmits light in a special way.

~Dale Chihuly
🎨 Mervyn Peake (1944)

Good day, dear Bibliophiles✨

🎨Franklin Booth (1874-1948)

Happy #WinnieThePoohDay 🎈

Time for a delicious smackerel from my vintage Pooh Cook Book to celebrate author A. A. Milne’s birthday #OTD (1882)

#BookChatWeekly

Fox.

🎨 Barbara Jane

Black winter truffles are harvested in the wild during winter and summer using specially trained pigs and dogs to locate them. Ancient Romans believed truffles were imbued with aphrodisiacal powers, though in the Middle Ages, they were said to be sinful.

🎨 Alexandre Decamps (1876)

The Korrigan are the Little People of Brittany. Anger them and you might be in for a very, very long winter stroll.

Our 12th #winterfolklore story is another cautionary tale, this time from the famed Forest of Brocéliande – read it below. At your own peril.

🎨 Serge Lassus

A small child in Breton dress sits on an enormous flat stone. The words read: '2383 - Les Alignements du Menec - La Pierre resonnante'. The postcard is published by Rennes and is numbered by them 134. This is one of several postcards of Carnac I picked up in a second-hand shop in North Wales of all places.

An old postcard of one of the gigantic 'resonant' stones of the Menec complex at #Carnac. This looks like a huge recumbent to me, but I'm sure at least one of you will know whether it's actually a fallen menhir. I guess Pierre refers to St Peter 'the Rock'.
#StandingStoneSunday #Neolithic

A delightful echo of Ainsworth's 'Windsor Castle' to add to the collection (will definitely be mentioning it in the upcoming talk on Herne the Hunter). He even has the owl!!!

Cauldrons have been used for rituals and food preparation since the Bronze Age for cooking, laundering clothes, bathing, brewing beer, medicines and rituals. The symbol of the cauldron, represents rebirth and continuous abundance.

George Cruikshank (1792-1878)

Good day, dear Bibliophiles✨

art by Arantza Sestayo

An illustration by Stephen Lawrence from 'Famous Fantastic Mysteries' (1951) of a small girl looking on in terror as a ghostly hand removes a large tome from a bookcase. Behind this image we see the bookcase and below it a book lying open beside a pen and inkwell.

"Nora said that Jean sometimes dreamed of a hand passing backwards and forwards over the dining-room bookcase until it found a certain book. At this point she was always so frightened that she woke up."
- Margaret Irwin's 'The Book' casts its evil spell in a suburban household.
#BookologyThursday

Black-and-white, high-contrast illustration of a vast, cathedral-like library corridor with towering bookshelves on both sides beneath an arched glass-and-iron roof. A small robed figure holding a glowing lantern stands near the foreground as the aisle stretches into the distance, the floor dissolving into a drifting field of white specks that pours toward a dark, starry doorway at the far end.

“Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.”
 
(Francis Bacon)
 
🎨 Evvie "Evvin" Marin

#bookologythursday

An original artwork of a crow with a full moon. Created using acrylic paints on A3 board.

Crows (and ravens) are deeply connected to the Mabinogion, primarily through Brân the Blessed, whose name means "Blessed Crow" or "Raven," a giant king from the Second Branch whose severed head guards Britain, linking him to the legend of the Tower of London's ravens.

#BookologyThursday #Folklore

Absolutely 🖤

#PhantomsFriday #BookChatWeekly

The Owl’s Ghost Story

🎨 Louis Wain (1890)

Most pleased you’ve enjoyed!

A report of strange activity from 1999. Sadly I don't have any more information. #PhantomsFriday

Moody, smoky illustration of a towering, sheet-draped ghost with a skull-like face and too many arms, its pale fabric body fading into mist. Below, a small, solemn figure with a blank white face and dark clothing stands in the gloom, while shadowy, flame-like shapes and fog curl around them in Mignola’s stark, supernatural style.

“Therefore, all the spirits and demons have one half from man below, and the other half from the angels of the supernal realm.”

(Zohar 3:76b-77a)

🎨 Mike Mignola

#phantomsfriday

An etching of a woman with a dog descending down the stairs. She holds out her candle to see the old armour of knights and horses downstairs.

'The Haunted Armoury'

#illustration by Percy Macquoid 1881 #PhantomsFriday

#PhantomsFriday #yokai

The Black Lady of Bradley Woods is a ghost which reportedly haunts the woods near the village of Bradley, Lincolnshire. She's dressed in a flowing black cloak and a black hood that covers her hair but reveals her mournful, pale, tear-soaked face.

#phantomsfriday

Gouache on paper. A woman with long red hair wearing a blue dress. She is partly recoiling and partly reaching out to an apparition appearing beside her between the trees. This figure is thought to be a ghostly double of herself.

'Frozen like a thing of stone
I sit in thy shadow – but not alone.'

🖋️‘A Silent Wood’
🎨'The Haunted Wood'
Art and poem by Elizabeth Siddal
#PhantomsFriday

A young woman looks on as a ghostly procession of mourners pass down a country lane.

Phantom Funerals are commonly found in ghostly #folklore. Sometimes they are the apparitions of real funerals which will shortly take place in the neighbourhood. But often the phantom cortege serves as an omen of death to the witness rather than to someone else.
#PhantomsFriday #ghosts #folktales

Atmospheric black-and-white illustration of a pale, veiled woman drifting above a dark, wind-ruffled sea clinging to a giant figure of death as the grim reaper. In the distance a lonely house sits on a cliff with two lit windows, while a hazy full moon glows through heavy clouds and a single bird silhouettes against the sky.

"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!”

(Edgar Allan Poe)

🎨 Gustave Doré

#phantomsfriday