# mythologymonday fairytaletuesday wyrdwednesday folklorethursday superstitionsat swampsunday ireland folklore myths legends

In Slavic myth Leshy, tree spirit & forest guardian is a shapeshifter & trickster. He gets his kicks by leading astray unwary travellers, abducting naughty children & babies who are not baptised. Don’t annoy him! If you do, make him laugh to get on his good side.

7 33
2021-07-23

Ares assigned Alectryon to keep watch for other gods during his affair with Aphrodite, but Alectryon fell asleep, leading to their discovery & humiliation that morning. Instead of killing Alectryon, Ares turned him into a rooster, who crows to signal the morning.

4 18
2021-07-17

Hel is both death and a maiden. Here, Carl Ehrenberg shows her with an excessively vicious facial expression while Johannes Minkowitz shows her snacking on an unfortunate soul.

3 18
2021-07-17

The Valkyrie ride the skies, looking for the souls of the worthy to join them in Valhalla and Folkvangr. Their queen is Freyja herself, choosing the slain for her army and Odin's, and many ate the maidens who ride with her.

🖼: W.T. Maud

10 39
2021-07-17

Death changed Izanami, creator of the ten thousand spirits of Japan. She continued to create, her body writhing with new evil spirits tainted by death. She swears to kill more each day, and her husband swears to create more each day.

🖼: O. Kuznetsova

4 22
2021-07-16

But when my glass shows me myself indeed, Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity, Mine own self-love quite contrary I read; Self so self-loving were iniquity.

—Shakespeare, Sonnet 62 ✨

Unattributed 16th century 🎨 Hall's Croft in Stratford-upon-Avon.

8 21
2021-07-16

Le Fanu often plays with the Death and the Maiden motif. A. Milbank argues it’s fundamental to his theology. It forces us to see death materially and face its monstrosity. Carmilla is a clear example. So is Laura Silver Bell, seduced by a sinister fairy lord.

18 67
2021-07-16

Hel looks like death: half of her body is alive, the other half in decay. She reigns over the vast majority of the dead in Norse cosmology, giving them respite from a life of hard work and toil or misfortune; but she holds resentment in her heart.

🖼: IrenHorrors

19 70
2021-07-16

“Once upon a midnight dreary….”
When Gustave Doré illustrated Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” in 1884, it was like finding like. Poe died tragically young shortly after it was published, but what gothic images! “Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’”☺️🖤🖋#FaustianFriday

11 73
2021-07-09

The mythical patron saint of magic, St Cyprian, has “authored” numerous grimoires from Scandinavia to Portugal and onto the new world. Here in the unique Clavis Inferni are depicted Demon Kings Urieus (East), Paymon (West), Maymon (South) and Egyn (North).

10 53
2021-07-09

Altogether more erotic than Dracula and one of the many inspirations Bram Stoker drew from, "Carmilla" is a tale of sapphic friendship turned to dark seduction as the nameless Carmilla inches into the life of her victim.

🖼: IrenHorrors

15 64
2021-07-09



"Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;
...
Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?
“Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?
Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif?”"

From "Der Erlkönig" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

5 16
2021-07-09

I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! 

—Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights 

🎨 Edmund Dulac

9 38
2021-07-09

In Japan there are many gothic tales about yurei, or ghosts, particularly involving women who return to seek revenge on those who hurt or betrayed them. Some of the most famous tales are: 'Oiwa: The Ghost Story of Yotsuya', 'Okiku: The Manor of the Dishes'...

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29 117
2021-07-09

Beloved (1987) is a novel by Toni Morrison set after the American Civil War, that tells the story of a family of former slaves whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. "Like a classic Gothic protagonist, Sethe is haunted by a past wrongdoing."

7 23
2021-07-09

“By Hecate, the goddess I worship more than all the others, the one I choose to help me in this work, who lives with me deep inside my home, these people won't bring pain into my heart and laugh about it.” (Euripides)

Hecate is also the Queen of Witches.

44 190
2021-07-03

Tales sometimes portray Bilquis, the Queen of Sheba, as a bad influence, a dark foreign queen who influences Solomon negatively: but read the tales. She grows too. She finds love in her soul, and replaces material pleasure with devotion.

🖼: MoishPain

9 26
2021-07-02

Daji was not officially queen but she acted like one, ordering her subjects to do bizarre and outlandish things for her amusement. To deny her whims or fail was death for you and your loved ones, and for that reason, she was hunted down and killed.

🖼: QCreator

5 19
2021-07-02