Literature, myth, folklore • Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, & Brittany • Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return • Hellebore contributor • poems in NewPoetry.ca, Ekphrastic Review, South Shore Review • 🇨🇦 in Connecticut • /|\
'This book made me feel like a witch on a broomstick, swooping over Britain, Ireland and Brittany to alight at the ancient circles, dolmens and barrows and hear their stories... an enchanting and completely fascinating tour through the megalithic imagination.' — Fiona Robertson #booksky#megaliths
I gave a talk recently about re-enchant as resistance. I didn't put enough mention of the cultural dislocation so many of us feel at the moment or enough mention the things that help resolve that. We are living through a period of engineered disorientation and it damn well needs opposing.
According to Scottish historian Hector Boece (1465-1536), an ancient king introduced new pagan rites in Aberdeenshire and 'to this day there stand these mighty stones gathered together into circles — the old temples of the gods they are commonly called.' #StandingStoneSunday
📷 Anne Burgess
The 2 granite menhirs on the Ile-de-Sein (Finistère) of Les Causeurs (The Gossipers) are 2.8 and 2.3m tall. People with fever could be cured by leaving 9 pebbles wrapped in a handkerchief by them; anyone picking it up would catch the fever instead. #StandingStoneSunday.
Stonehenge painted in the 18th Century by James Ross. I like the detail of the coach about to drive past and indeed between the stones. It looks like it's travelling at pace, too, so it may not be carrying sightseers just travellers en route somewhere.
#StandingStoneSunday#Stonehenge#Neolithic
In John Keats's 'Endymion,' the chorus addresses Pan as
'Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds,
That come a swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread opener of the mysterious doors
Leading to universal knowledge...' #BookWormSat
🎨 John Buckland-Wright, 1944
Well, it’s Friday and I am completely burnt out by the last few weeks of work. Massively fatigued. Hope to get some rest and maybe some fun as well this weekend — hope you can too!
‘Song of the woodlands, pan pipes are crying reeds / His maddened tune will lift the autumn leaves.’
In ‘The Great God Pan,’ from their 2011 album ‘Living with the Ancients,’ Toronto band Blood Ceremony celebrates the god’s ecstatic music.
🎨Ruth-Tay
I've been having in-class writing assignments in most of my classes, but I have one fully online class this Fall. Reading their online papers, I'm wondering if maybe the mass AI-plagiarism moment has passed?
Nothing posted on here yet, but received an email from the Society of Authors to say that they have withdrawn from the AI Charter in order to listen to members' concerns.
Two new things at vinepress.co.uk the Lost Occult Books of Victor Neuburg: these ltd-ed silkscreen prints of a drawing Austin Osman Spare made in 1915; & a zine of Neuburg's long-lost Sussex writing, incl this piece on English fairy lore, to go free with every book if we meet our stretch target!
Picked this up during our late summer trip to Salem — it’s an excellent account of changing perspectives on witchcraft through 13 trials across the centuries. Compulsively readable and highly recommended! May add it to a humanities course I teach.
I watched 'Vampire Circus' (1971) last night and while not one of Hammer's best horror films, it had its moments. Enjoyed an early performance by Lalla Ward (who would later play the 2nd Romana on Doctor Who) as one of the vampire twins. David Prowse (Darth Vader) and Mary Wimbush also appear.
Those of us whose have lives revolving around the ongoing Long Neolithic will tell you that certain stones sing to us. If you push us further, we may also admit that certain stones growl. They guard their territories, prowl our imaginations. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday
THE DEVIL RIDES OUT
Dennis Wheatley
London: Hutchinson (1935)
A rollicking occult adventure. This is an eighth impression, but its inscribed by Wheatley. And on the endpapers is a map—every good book needs a map.
Day 17/31 #Booktober#Halloween🎃👻
‘“The worship of Pan never has died out,’ said Mortimer. ‘Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last.”’— Saki, ‘The Music on the Hill’ (1911) #BookWormSat
´Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?’
— Oscar Wilde, ‘Pan’
Oscar Wilde was born #OTD in 1854.
Took the first step this week toward beginning work as a freelance editor and writing coach. Hope to be available to work with academic and non-fiction writers by late Spring 27.
As always, the magical creatures at @helleborezine.bsky.social turn words into art. Very happy to share this piece with @mjpcuervo.com Read all about ancient mysteries, secret cults, vulvae and phalli, and mind-altering drugs.
Michael Scot (c.1175–1232) was a medieval Scottish mathematician & scholar. He gained a reputation as a wizard after his death, & in Dante’s 𝘐𝘯𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘰 he is in the Eighth Circle of Hell, reserved for sorcerers & false prophets. Scottish legends tell of his dealings with the devil.
#WyrdWednesday
Pleased to report that I’ve signed a contract with @universitypress.cambridge.org to write ‘Uncanny Places: Folklore and Britain’s Prehistoric Sites’ for their Elements of Folklore series, edited by Francis Young and Tabitha Stanmore!
Bryn Celli Ddu for #TombTuesday. This place was designed so that the light would enter at midsummer, but the guardian stone would always stand in the shadows, observing.
English occultist Aleister Crowley was born #OTD in 1875. In his ‘Hymn to Pan,’ he urges the god to ‘Do as thou wilt, as a great god can / O Pan! Io Pan!’
Saw a post on Insta saying that this is the beginning of the end of the American empire. Oh dear, should someone tell them?
I feel like many US people, however well meaning, don’t really grasp how far along things are or how the rest of the world is already moving on without them.
The Long Neolithic lives as call to mystery, call to wonder. Whether we respond to those calls as archaeologists, ley hunters or stone pilgrims – we respond with stories. The Long Neolithic tithes in narrative. With typology or folklore, we all pay our dues. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday