Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐

Mound with door and person walking down hill.

White weather-beaten chapel.

St-Michel tumulus at Carnac in Brittany, built in the fifth millennium BCE. The chapel on top dates from the 17th century. #TombTuesday

📷 Personal photos, June 2023.

Franz von Stuck (1863-1928)
"The Vision of Saint Hubert", 1890,
Oil on canvas
#art #painting #oilpainting #drawing #illustration #FranzvonStuck #symbolism

An Edward Gorey drawing showing a morose looking black bird on a branch. He (and this feels very much like a he) is pointing downwards with one scraggly wing, and looking straight ahead with debt-filled eyes. His beak is long and sharp, like winter on the Great Plains. He is pointing with his right wing, but this means he is pointing to your left. Your wicked, sinister side. This is no accident. The Bird makes no such mistakes. But he is talking, and the text tells us that he is saying, "Beware of this and that." Honestly, you feel his message in your bones.

Some days I just feel like this Edward Gorey bird gets it.

Dion Fortune beside a tree. She wears a beaded necklace and has a slight smile on her face.

In her ‘Rite of Pan,’ Dion Fortune summons the god Pan as ‘a hidden god of elemental power: this we name the Pan within.’ According to Gareth Knight, the rite may have been performed by Fortune’s magical order, The Fraternity of the Inner Light, in the late 1930s at their temple in Belgravia.

Happy Commonwealth Day!
Originally known as Empire Day and observed on Queen Victoria's birthday (May 24), its focus shifted in the 20th century and it became Commonwealth Day in 1958. On this day in Canada, the Royal Union Flag flies alongside the Canadian flag.

Rosaleen Norton with a cigarette in front of a painting of a supernatural being.

Australian artist and witch Rosaleen Norton (1917-1979) was devoted to the god Pan, whom she believed ‘is the spirit whose body — or such of it as can be seen in these four dimensions (the fourth being time) — is the planet Earth.’ #InternationalWomensDay

A rather dashing looking Piper lounges in the grass, a baby otter at his cloven feet.

‘This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!’
— ‘The Wind in the Willows’ by Kenneth Grahame, born #OTD in 1859.

🎨E.H. Shepherd, 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn'

A brown horse with a wavy blonde mane, standing in a field of melting snow.

A misty morning at the horse rescue sanctuary where my wife volunteers.

Surrey couple tried claiming neighbour's land with garden gnome A Westcott couple claimed a small patch of grass outside their neighbour's home belonged to them.

And people say chthonic godlings and land spirits are no longer relevant in this day and age www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

And soon!

Two sheep, one black one white, by a standing stone.

Two sheep and a standing stone at the Kerlescan Alignments at Carnac in Brittany. #StandingStoneSunday

Album cover with Gord’s face above a spinning turntable.

My second-hand record store find this past week was a copy of ‘Gord’s Gold’ (1975) still in the original shrink wrap. My dad had a copy of this one. 🇨🇦

'The Offering' by Lithuanian artist MK Ciurlionis (1875-1911) who was considered a pioneer of abstract art in Europe. His subject matter was often enigmatic & esoteric with a suggestion of art nouveau & has lost none of its curious appeal with the passing of time.

It’s a great one.

Beorn listens to Gandalf tell a tale in his hall.

‘A very good tale! The best I have heard for a long while. If all beggars could tell such a good one, they might find me kinder.’

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit,’ Beorn is a Skin-changer who can transform into a huge black bear. #BookWormSat

🎨 Ted Nasmith

Art: Cyndy Salisbury

Sir John Betjeman takes us on a tour of the Stones of Avebury.
wyrdbritain.blogspot.com/2020/05/john...
#Avebury #sirjohnbetjeman #stonecircles #standingstones

Man at podium holding forth on folklore of the stones.

Action shot of me giving a talk yesterday on the folklore of prehistoric sites.

a crouched beaver on a rounded mound looking to the left, a black background with blue dots, the beaver's coat shining in shades of yellow, brown, white and black. Linedrawing, Japanese ink, oil pastels, Maria Strutz

Beaver/Biber
#AnimalMarch #KleineKunstklasse

Pan plays a pipe to a small child while a goat looks on; in the background, a pillar with the words 'PAN DEUS ARCADIAE'

‘Oh Great God Pan, I know Thee! — I thank Thee — I bless Thee ... for indeed beneath the mantle of the God whose name is Love, is there not room for all in His world to shelter?’ — Margery Lawrence, ‘How Pan Came to Little Ingleton’ (1926)

🎨 Nicoletto da Modena, c. 1500-1510

Thank you, Robin -- this one is just for an in-house audience but I'm hoping I'll have the opportunity to present a version of it to a wider audience in future!

Anonymous 19th century illustration of the stones at Callanish imagined as giants.

Looking forward to giving a talk at my college today on 'The Folklore of Prehistoric Sites'!

🎨 19th century illustration of the stones at Callanish imagined as giants.

Cover depicting Pan blowing on his pipes.

‘Pan was always friendly to Man. That’s you and me you know. We may have changed a lot these last two thousand years; but that’s you and me still. Why, I’d let him come nosing in.’ — Lord Dunsany, ‘The Blessing of Pan’ (1926)

🎨 S.H. Sime

Painting of a deer in the forest at night.

In a Flemish folktale, a woman who was said to have been a thief during life haunted a town in the shape of a deer. The ghost deer would knock on doors and wait. Between her horns she carried an illegible text. She stopped appearing when someone deciphered the text.

🎨Eugen Krüger
#WyrdWednesday

Photo of Entrance of a rocky cave carved with dozens of circular grooves. Moorland and hills in background

The moors of Northumberland are dotted with hundreds of cup and ring carvings from 3000-5000 years ago. We don’t know what they mean. Maps? Boundary markers? Rituals? Blood sacrifices ?
@wyrdWednesday
#wyrdWednesday

Dr. John Holden faces one of the uprights at Stonehenge, realizing the runes carved there are identical to the ones on the parchment he holds.

‘It has been written, since the beginning of time, even unto these ancient stones, that evil, supernatural beings exist in a world of darkness.’ — 'Night of the Demon' (1957)

In the film, Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews) visits Stonehenge, and realizes that he faces an ancient evil. #WyrdWednesday

It is so cold in my college office today that I am wearing my winter coat and scarf. The heat in our main academic building has either been shut off or isn't working.

I now have what are probably the two most important books about fairies of the 1920s (both bloody hard to get hold of) 📚

A somewhat grizzled me standing in front of a blue plaque on a pink house.

Weird fiction author Arthur Machen was born #OTD in 1863. I stopped by his birthplace in Caerleon during my most recent visit to Wales in 2023.

Happy Birthday to Arthur Machen (3 March, 1863 – 15 December, 1947).