Ushering in the spooky season with lunch at Transilvania Restaurant this afternoon, excellent mushroom soup!

The tangled dead, root-pulled from above and below, feel scratches upon long vanished, phantom flesh. Their fancy houses have become cells where they wait on visitors who never come. Necropolis bounded and more than half-forgotten, many of them ache for hell. – #CLNolan

In ponds, pools and rivers, Stay Belows feel the cooling, notice the littering of acorns and leaves upon the surface. We feel the first chill as desire for gloves, hug of sweater. They feel it as a hunger. An instinct for one final feast before taking to the mud for the long sleep of winter.

Surrealist landscape showing figure-of-eight pattern of stones, half submerged and half on an island.

Surrealist painter, writer, and occultist Ithell Colquhoun was born #OTD in 1906. She was fascinated by megalithic sites, which she explored in painting and in her travel books 'The Crying of the Wind: Ireland' (1955) and 'The Living Stones: Cornwall' (1957).

🎨'La Cathedrale Engloutie' (1952)

Ghost ponces and phantom mongers would call it ‘psychic residue’. Me Nokes, I am a practical man. I call it collywobble echoes or if I am feeling little poetic, a place remembering. – #DICallaghan in conversation with #DSNokes

An illustration of mother Goethel, the witch from Rapunzel. She stands in the center, surrounded by thorny bushes and between two crooked trees, holding a baby wrapped in luminous white cloth and her eyes glowing a malicious golden color. In the foreground we see rampions growing from golden vines which intertwine like braids; in the background, in the distance and in the middle of a forest, we see a lone tower

mother Goethel, 2025

-{ #art | #illustration | #fantasy }-

The witch's calendar of harvest refuses ink-marked dates. She knows the turn year by berry swell, by movements through colour towards ripeness. She waits on the mistletoe drupe, not in hope of Christmas kisses, but future cures. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

The wood is a constant promise to the witch. It whispers of magics, wild harvest and omens to be found on its paths. It never breaks it oaths to her. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Some grave guardians are open to being stroked. Some will growl if your hand reaches towards them. It is wise to know which are which before one goes poking at tombs. – #CLNolan

Not an actual Calvin & Hobbes comic, but pretty funny just the same! And, in case you didn't already know how far gone I actually am, the Voynichese text in the last panel is from folio 15v... (h/t @theefantomas.bsky.social) #Voynich

There are certain moments of childhood which refuse to lose their strangeness. Like that morning you woke to knocked down trees on the common – despite the night being stormless. An overpowering sense that some giant walking the land had casually uprooted them. – Joanna Vickers #VOH

Opening of West Kennet Long Barrow

West Kennett Long Barrow, July 2023. #TombTuesday

A Pale Tussock never fails to impress. ⭐️

We are in that part of autumn where the wish to hurry home before dark becomes more pronounced and yet we can't fully articulate just why this is so. The redundant lamplighter phantoms come earlier and earlier. As does our unease in certain places. This season pokes with fingers of fear. – #DAKilroy

Those churches edging towards ferality often show the first signs in their boneyards. The sexton is absent. Visits to the dead lessen. Trees claim their territory, rude roots pushing aside long-settled bones. Ecclesiastical law weakens, wild sprits begin to hold sway. – #CLNolan

My heart is always happier when my feet – unsteady as they are – take their first few steps into the wood. For the woodland path curves to mystery, curves towards the possibility of feral strangeness. Each visit replenishes my store of wonder, whispers new stories. – #CLNolan,

Such a great soundtrack!

The tomb was designated the “Tomb of Cerberus” after the incredible mural of Hercules fighting the three-headed dog that guarded the underworld.

October 5: Apologies for the bad news, but today is one of the 3 unluckiest days of the year in the Roman calendar. Definitely let people know that the underworld opens up to the living today (mundus patet) and so you just can’t leave your house, especially to sail (also on August 24 & November 8).

There are some ghosts which haunt even though no-one living has seen them. They’ve become psychic cicatrix on the collective memory. They persist – even though they’ve been reduced to the generic names such the Grey Lady – and in this persistence, power. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

Dowsing at Avebury (oil on canvas) for #StandingStoneSunday

#Avebury #dowsing

Long Meg, a witch turned to stone, stands next to her many stony-hearted daughters (or, alternatively, her lovers or her fellow witches). If you break bits off her, she will bleed. A wonderful stone decorated with rock art, she marks the direction of winter solstice sunset. #StandingStoneSunday

Communal ossuary. Observatory of the dead. Possibly both, neither or more. There are portal dolmen which refuse us certainty. As archaeologists we are never immune to mystery. Our dance with it is delight. Our dance with it is the Long Neolithic manifesting. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

Group meditating among the stones at Stanton Drew.

Stanton Drew, Somerset, July, 2023. #StandingStoneSunday

My autumn mandrake bloomed this weekend, first time. So pretty! #witch #witchsky

Two New Books — The Merseburg Spells and Galdrstafir Today I’ll be covering two short books released by Hyldyr Press: The Merseburg Spells: Germanic Paganism (second edition) by a team led by…

I review two short books on Icelandic magic and the Merseburg Charms from Hyldyr Press! medium.com/@danharms_29...

Caloboletus calopus - Bitter Beech Bolete

Every day is #UKFungusDay for me.

The Piper looks bemusedly at Water Rat and Mole.

‘‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of HIM? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid!’’ — Kenneth Grahame, ‘The Wind in the Willows’ (1908) #BookWormSat

🎨Paul Bransom

Congratulations!

There used to dismissively call us cottage children. It implied among other things, a lack of learning. Of course we had a knowing which mushroom may be safely picked at the field’s edge, which manner of divination tells the truth of a lover best. - Vera Winterfield, Cottage Wisdom, 1970