@pjrobichaud.bsky.social
Literature, myth, folklore • Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, & Brittany • Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return • Poems in NewPoetry.ca, The South Shore Review, and The Ekphrastic Review • Professor of English • /|\
Joining in the 400th birthday celebrations 17th century antiquarian and biographer John Aubrey!
Among his many discoveries, it was Aubrey who first recorded the local belief that Silbury Hill was the burial place of ‘King Zel,’ but no evidence of any burial has ever been found there.
📷 July, 2023
Happy John Aubrey Day – 400 years old today! The original stone botherer, who recognised the Avebury stones for the prehistoric marvel they are, and rightly commented that the site 'doth as much exceed Stonehenge as a cathedral doth a parish church'.
In 1926, as a member of the Irish Senate, W.B. Yeats enthusiastically took charge of the committee designing new coinage for the Irish Free State. Yeats decided the different denominations should be symbolised by different animals (was he consciously thinking of this as the “tails” side?) 1/2
So far today, I’ve worn a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a t-shirt again, a t-shirt and hoodie, and am now wearing a sweatshirt and hoodie. Fickle March weather!
Going Hebridean for this week's #HillfortsWednesday
There was nothing quite like the spectacular Dun Carloway broch on Lewis when I biked to it in 2024 😮
This well-built double-skinned drystone tower must have been a bewildering sight to any hillfort builder of the south. Extraordinary!
📷 My own
It's a bit traumatizing, honestly.
In Guillermo del Toro’s film ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ (2006), the young Ofelia journeys through a maze to an underground world where a Faun puts her through a series of daunting challenges. #WyrdWednesday
Fantastic new album from Squeeze.
Many years ago, we voted Melville’s ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’ the (un)official short story of our English department.
‘Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge where a man is a man
And the children dance to the pipes of Pan…’ — Spinal Tap
Once you realise many tombs are nothing more than dream incubation chambers for the dead, a walk in Ashcourt Necropolis becomes a navigation of visions. No amount of bricked thresholds stops them leaking. Stay still too long and you risk being caught in terminal ephialtes. – #CLNolan
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
Some days I just feel like this Edward Gorey bird gets it.
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.
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
‘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 misty morning at the horse rescue sanctuary where my wife volunteers.
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 and a standing stone at the Kerlescan Alignments at Carnac in Brittany. #StandingStoneSunday
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.
‘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
Action shot of me giving a talk yesterday on the folklore of prehistoric sites.
Beaver/Biber
#AnimalMarch #KleineKunstklasse