# gothicadvent yulefolklore poland folklore yulegoat yule swedish artist christmaseve christmascards ancientgreek mythology

According to Strabo's "Geographia" (1st century BC), ancient Galicians and Lusitanians performed divinatory practices examining the viscera of the animals they sacrificed, as well as those of the prisoners (whose right hand they cut off).
(Artwork by Manel Cráneo)

10 30
2022-01-14


He does not think that I haunt here nightly:
How shall I let him know
That whither his fancy sets him wandering
I, too, alertly go? -
Hover & hover a few feet from him
Just as I used to do.–Thomas Hardy

🎨Sulamith Wulfing

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2021-12-25

Happy Merry Whatever you choose to celebrate (or not), dearlings & darklings! 🖤


1 15
2021-12-24

In winter the Wild Hunt motif provides a spectacular set of ghosts, riding over the countryside stealing souls. In some stories Odin is the leader (leading to some tenuous associations with Santa Claus). Happy Christmas!

13 30
2021-12-24


Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.—Emily Brontë
🎨KinukoYCraft

4 23
2021-12-24

Styled on the ancient auroch, the shaggy Polish Turoń revels on Christmas Eve. He brings magic and mayhem, shaking up normally quiet households by bellowing his songs, chasing girls, jumping on furniture, only to fall dead, rise and begin again.

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2021-12-18

The Goat by John Bauer, (1917 & 1912). An integral figure in Scandinavian mythology, possibly linked to Thor & loved by children, the Yule goat is often involved with gift giving on & pulls the Santa-like Tomte’s sleigh.

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2021-12-17

Frau Holle appears in many different forms in Scandinavian mythology and legend. She is associated with both the evergreen plants of the Yule season, and with snowfall, which is said to be Frau Holle shaking out her feathery mattresses.

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2021-12-17

Julbocken, The Yule Goat by
1 & 4: John Bauer, 1910.
2. Robert Seymour, 1836.
3. Unknown artist

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2021-12-17

Hekate by Maximilian Pirner

I love Hecate from I thought of her for today's theme because of the myth of Persephone. She appears to Demeter and gives her the first clue to find her daughter, like a guide light.

3 11
2021-12-10

Wise Men guided by a star illustration by Gustave Dore

My first thought of light in winter (although I know that historically they must have travelled a bit later in the year) from the story of the three magi/wisemen following a star to find Jesus.

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2021-12-10

Lucia Day on December 13, is a celebration of light in the dark Scandinavian winter. The Lucia procession is led by a girl or a woman dressed in a white gown and wearing a wreath of candles in her hair, bringing hope and light into the darkness.

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2021-12-10

From November through the 12 days of Xmas,stay out of barns with opposite doors after dark. They're the kind through which the Wild Hunt is most likely to come riding.
If you do find yourself...


🖼️:Wild Hunt by Velamir on DeviantArt

7 25
2021-12-04

According to Italian folklore, female children born at midnight on Christmas Eve would become a witch (strega) and males would become werewolves (lupa manaru)
art by

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2021-12-04

Yule is a time filled with frightening folklore- possibly none more scary than some Sami tales of the Stalo, a giant creature who eats people and children.

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2021-12-04

In the children's fantasy novel "Silver on the Tree" by Susan Cooper, Welsh boy Bran Davies has a phobia of the Mari Lwyd - the Welsh Christmas tradition of carrying a horse's skull door-to-door - and his terror pursues him as a demon shaped like a horse skeleton.

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2021-12-04

Hans Trapp is another "anti-Santa" who hands out punishment to bad children in the Alsace and Lorraine regions of France. The legend says that Trapp was a real man, a rich, greedy, and evil man, who worshiped Satan and was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

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2021-12-04