@wyrdwednesday.bsky.social
Here's to spread the Wyrd - join us for a different theme every Wednesday!
George Meliere’s 1902 silent and fun sci fi classic ‘Voyage dans la Lune’
Strange spaceships and strange aliens on a strange journey into the unknown
@wyrdwednesday
#wyrdwednesday
1/7 Odysseus was a hero of the Trojan war who had a 20 year journey to get home to his rightful place as ruler of Ithica and husband of Penelope. www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/4434... #WyrdWednesday #art #homedecor #mythology #vintage #illustration #giftidea
08.10.2025 18:32 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
‘Hera has sent us a pilot; let us follow the cunning bird’
How the Argonauts sailed to Colchis
Heroes or Greek Fairy Tales
1898 #wyrdwednesday
#WyrdWednesday
King Arthur's quest was in search of the magical Cauldron of Dyrnwch - folklore said that the cauldron would only boil to provide food for the brave, it would never boil for those who were cowardly.
A map of the island of Balnibarbi, from "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift.
In “Gulliver’s Travels" by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver encountered many inventors with foolish inventions on Balnibarbi Island, including a device for randomly creating sentences so that even people with no talent can write books. Thus predicting generative AI several centuries early.
#WyrdWednesday
The Arctic itself is a haunted expanse. Franklin’s doomed expedition sought the Northwest Passage, but ice and scurvy swallowed the crew. Their ghosts linger in stories and naval lore alike. #WyrdWednesday
08.10.2025 17:33 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Thanks to @cwreeve.bsky.social for the last round!
@prairiebones.bsky.social is ready for your Wyrd and scary odysseys on today's #WyrdWednesday
Image of knights in blood red cloaks, a black cloaked Mari and scarlet swords suspended from the ceiling. The Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead (2024). 'Into the Wyld' was an exhibition exploring the legacy of the medieval poem 'Gawain and the Green Knight' Gawain journeys through the wilderness of the Wirral so the topography of the north west was a major theme of the collaborative exhibition and day long conference
Sir Gawain must journey through the 'wyldrenesse of Wyrale' to fulfil his quest - the beheading contest with the Green Knight: "Sometimes he warred with dragons & with wolves/sometimes with the crag haunting woodwose/with bears, bulls & boars, or pursued by giants across the fells" #WyrdWednesday
08.10.2025 16:38 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Art from Affiche: "De Bokkenrijder of het skelet." Opdrachtgever: Het Hollandsch Tooneel. Shows a buckrider riding through the sky. Castle in the far distance. Clouds.
1/3 According to a Flemish folktale, bokkenrijders or buckriders, who were said to be thieves, ghosts, or sometimes even witches, and rode through the sky on the backs of goats in Flanders and the Netherlands, had stolen the Queen's laundry.
#WyrdWednesday
In poetry, Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner makes the sea a haunted stage. Albatrosses, curses, ghostly crews; it is a voyage where the unknown punishes hubris. #WyrdWednesday
Art: Gustave Doré
Illustration depicting Psyche encountering Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld, a three headed dog with fiery eyes and snakes on his back. Psyche is clutching the honey cakes that she has brought to throw to Cerberus as a distraction.
Psyche and Cerberus
by Edmund Dulac
#WyrdWednesday
#wyrdwednesday
John Q. Adam (6th US president) approved a mission to investigate the hollow earth theory, due to Army officer, John Cleves Symmes, Jr.’s idea “that there were openings thousands of miles wide at the Earth’s poles through which one could venture inside our planet”
An unknown artist's depiction of the final battle between Thor and Jormungandr, showing Thor leaping with a massive, too-long instead of too short handled Mjolnir from a stormy mist into the Midgard Serpent, a massive snake with pointy teeth and a long tongue, with horns all over the serpent's back.
Thor took a short voyage with Tyr's father Hymir, meant to be a fishing expedition, but the Thunderer knew better. He eschewed gentle seas to fish to the harsh churning waves and used an ox head for bait: he caught Jormungandr the World Serpent, who got away. #WyrdWednesday
08.10.2025 12:08 — 👍 13 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Artist energy69's depiction of the Voyage of Bran, showing in very stylized form a galley full of oars and a man hailing a coming chariot on a blue, green, and orange sea, the man within shirtless and looking like Leonidas from 300: he is Manannan macLir, and two other horses run on the other side of the ship, wildly greeting the voyagers. In the far distance, the silver light of Tir na nOg can be seen and a mountain beyond; the sun is setting around Mannanan's head.
Bran's Voyage was to find the Otherworld, so moved by a song was he. He sailed west with three companies, meeting Mannanan mac Lir, losing a crewmember to the Isle of Joy, and finally landing on the Isle of Women, where one year is countless decades. #WyrdWednesday
🖼: energy69
"The natives over there are cannibals. They eat liars with the same enthusiasm as they eat honest men" ~ Captain Nemo
#WyrdWednesday #conceptart #film
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954
Dir. Richard Fleischer
Color illustration by Charles R. Knight of a brontosaurus submerged in water in the foreground. Another lighter-colored brontosaurus is approaching the water in the background.
Clotilde Graves/"Richard Dehan"'s story "The Great Beast of Kafue" (1917) tells of a perilous journey to southern Africa to find the last surviving brontosaurus. #WyrdWednesday
08.10.2025 13:06 — 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
A photo of a book titled Speak Bird, Speak Again, opened on pages 86 and 87, with the title of the story The Golden Pail on the top right of the page.
In Palestinian folktale "The Golden Pail," a prince undertook a quest after his father said, "prove yourself worthy of the throne through hardships." With Ballan, a djinn horse, he overcame grueling feats, escaped murder, and outwitted evil minister, earning skills to be a good ruler.
#WyrdWednesday
Green colored statue of Leif Erickson with axe, chain mail, helmet and sword
#WyrdWednesday The voyage of the Ice Viking, or, Entombed in an Iceberg for Centuries
Drifting for ten centuries through the uncharted seas north of the Arctic Circle, the body of a Viking king a thousand years old has been returned at last to civilization.
hauntedohiobooks.com/death/12708/
TITLE PAGE: The Totall Discourse, Of the Rare Aduentures, and painefull Peregrinations of long nineteene Yeares Trauayles, from scotland, to the most Famous Kingdomes in Europe, Asia, and AFFRICA. Perfited by three deare bought Voyages, in surueighing of Forty eight Kingdomes ancient and Moderne; twenty one Rei-publickes, ten absolute Principalities, with two hundred Ilands. The particular Names whereof, are Described in each Argument of the ten Diuisions of this History: And it also diuided in Three Bookes; two whereof, neuer heretofore Published. Wherein is Contayned, an exact Relation, of the Lawes, Religion, Policies, and Gouernment of all their Princes, Potentates, and People. Together with the grieuous Tortures he suffered, by the Inquisition of Malaga in spaine, his miraculous Discouery and Deliuery thence: And of his last and late Returne from the Northerne Iles Cælum non Animum. BY William Lithgovv. Imprinted at London by Nicholas Okes, and are to be sold by Nicholas Fussell and Humphery Mosley at their shops in Pauls Church yard, at the Ball, and the white Lyon. 1632.
See Rome discover’d, Italy made playne,
The Roman Library, a golden gaine:
Hunns old Parthenope, with Venice met,
And strong Brundusium, in Ottranto set…
—from the RARE ADVENTURES & PAINEFULL PEREGRINATIONS of William Lithgow, AKA “Lugless Will” (c.1582–c.1645)
#WyrdWednesday
1/3
Erik the Red, Leif’s father, had already braved exile to colonize Greenland. His own saga is one of banishment and survival, showing how perilous journeys often begin with broken ties. #WyrdWednesday
Art: Carl Rasmussen
Leif Eriksson awareness being promoted on Leif Eriksson Eve.
Leif Eriksson Day is October 9th and honors the Vinland voyage, but the norns decreed that I shall promote Varangian Guard awareness tomorrow instead. Just like fate, wyrd goes ever as wyrd must!
#WyrdWednesday
"If that machine can do what you say it can do, destroy it, George! Destroy it before it destroys you!"
#WyrdWednesday #fantasy #film
The Time Machine, 1960
Dir. George Pal
Leif Eriksson sailed west around the year 1000 and found Vinland, a land of grapes and forests. The sagas make it sound both wondrous and dangerous, a liminal shore where luck could turn to doom. #WyrdWednesday
Art: Christian Krohg
When it comes to tales about strange things happening on a journey, this one is hard to beat. Being transformed into a human candle so he couldn't return home probably wasn't in this guy's travel plans.
🎨Toriyama Sekien
#WyrdWednesday #yokai #JapaneseFolklore
William Blake's illustration of Dante and Virgil at the gates of hell
"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
William Blake's 1826 illustration of Dante and Virgil at the gates of hell from Canto III
#WyrdWednesday
Bluesky seems to be having some issues with showing us posts for #WyrdWednesday this week. Must be gremlins in the machine!
Rest assured, we will find them! And when we do, we will repost them, by Jove!
Pages from "The Mysterious Cobbler, Being the Story of Arthur Spray of Bexhill who has natural magnetic powers; told by himself." 1935. "Leo Greenhill's Journey.
"...sent him off on his "journey round the universe."
"Leo Greenhill's Journey" from
"The Mysterious Cobbler, Being the Story of Arthur Spray of Bexhill who has natural magnetic powers; told by himself." 1935.
#WyrdWednesday #Bexhill #Sussex #ArthurSpray #MysteriousCobbler #Hypnotism #Journey #1930s
A man and a woman in outfits like those of deep sea divers examine ape-like skeletons at the foot of a pyramid.
In 'Stories Of Other Worlds' by George Griffith (Pearson's Magazine Jan-June 1900), the Earl of Redgrave takes his new bride Lilla on an inaugural flight round the solar system in his gyroscopic spaceship. On the Moon they find the remnants of an ancient civilization.
#WyrdWednesday #scifi #sci-fi
#WyrdWednesday
Perilous journeys
The Rime of the Eldritch Mariner (Spectral Realms 5, Summer 2016) by @adambolivar.bsky.social . Collected in The Lay of Old Hex (Hippocampus Press, 2017). Two perilous journeys combined into one great ballad.
Full poem:
adambolivar.com/bibliography...
One of the most well-known tales in #JapaneseFolklore is of Urashima Taro and his journey on the back of a magical turtle to the palace of the dragon king under the sea. Unfortunately when he returned home, 300 years had passed and everyone he knew was gone.
🎨Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1882
#WyrdWednesday
