# art 31daysofhaunting yokai ayokaiaday mythology greekmythology classics ofdarkandmacabre ancienthistory illustration digitalart digitalpainting fantasy fantasyart scottish scotland folklore supernatural fairytales illustrationart artist

The best way to sow stars is in the company of two gargantuan bull-rams.


by Valera Lutfullina

18 71
2022-10-04



In the 1800s Pennsylvanians tied red scarves onto mannequins to scare crows away from their crops. They named their new type of scarecrow, “Bogeyman.”
- Old Pennsylvania Folklore.

18 40
2022-10-03

Irish peat fae, Ballybogs are strange looking creatures with disproportioned bodies. They appear to have been dipped in mud & prefer to keep to themselves in their mud holes. They are known to prank unsuspecting human travelers & lead them astray from the path.

10 28
2022-10-03

A Cherokee earth diver creation myth tells how Dayunsi the water beetle dived below the sea to the sea floor and grabbed a lump of soft mud and returned to the surface. On the surface, the mud swelled expanding into an island called land https://t.co/YpGXhB3ppp

4 10
2022-10-03

If you ever wake up to find muddy little footprints around your bedroom, it might be because you've had a visit from a known as makuragaeshi (pillow flipper), which isn't always a good thing. More info in the thread below.
🎨Sophie Lupas
https://t.co/wvE7zFIz9s

9 27
2022-10-03

“I dream of rivers with a hundred mouths and mountains where the leaves turn over like silver fire. Take me there, Dionysus”
- Euripides, from ‘Bakkhai

5 21
2022-09-27

Waterhouse painted 'Sleep & his half brother Death' in 1874, after his two younger brothers died from T.B. The figures are based on the Greek myth of Hypnos (sleep) & Thanatos (death) Sleep holds poppies in his hand to show that he is dreaming.

16 45
2022-09-27

In Galician folklore, Pedro Chosco is an old man with a half-closed eye. He puts children to sleep with gentle caresses, although it prefers to seduce girls (especially maids)....

7 33
2022-09-27

Nightmares are more than just the horrors that fill our dreams: the mare is a Germano-Slavic haunt that terrorizes dreams and could cause sleep paralysis in addition to terror.

🖼️: H. Fuseli

35 147
2022-09-27


We forget just how powerful Hypnos is, but one of the Orphic hymns gives a good idea, calling him:

Sleep [Hypnos], king of Gods, and men of mortal birth, sov'reign of all sustain'd by mother Earth;

Art: Balthasar Beschey

2 8
2022-09-26

Sleep Paralysis is when your body has switched off, your mind half awake and your dreams still running - you lie paralysed and hallucinating (giant spiders in my case). In mythology there are descriptions of demons or hags suffocating sleepers

4 13
2022-09-26



Hypnos (sleep) and Thanatos(Death) were brothers or sometimes half-brothers in Greek mythology who lived beside each other in the underworld.

Waterhouse - Sleep and his half-brother Death

2 10
2022-09-26

How wonderful is Death,
Death, and his brother Sleep!

―Queen Mab, Percy Bysshe Shelley

🎨John William Waterhouse

12 45
2022-09-26

The son of Hypnos, the god of sleep, Morpheus had the power to enter the dreams of mortal men to deliver messages from the gods. Among his siblings, he was best at disguising himself as a human, though his true shape was a demon-like figure with huge black wings.

8 35
2022-09-26

"Here I am lying down to sleep;
No night-mare shall plague me
until they have swum through all the waters
that flow upon the earth,
and counted all stars
that appear in the firmament"

Westphalian charm to ward off a nightmare

🎨 Fuseli

22 113
2022-09-26

Re-worked an old piece for the upcoming release of Fragments of the Past - the TTRPG

3 13
2022-09-22

Arguably humans are often made like robots by gods: whether from earth and clay (Pandora, Adam), carved from a trees (Aski and Embla), flowers (Blodeuwedd), or blood (as Marduk does from Tiamat's consort), many humans are artificial.

6 34
2022-09-20

A powerful onmyōji can make a shikigami a physical form from anything, be it wood, paper, or wax, and all he has to do is impart it with some part of a soul to do their bidding. These constructs act as familiars, as onmyōji are similar to wizards.

🖼️: M. Meyer

7 38
2022-09-20

Merlin showed them how to construct engines and under his supervision the stones of the Giant's Dance were taken easily from the ground, transported to Britain and set up a monument to those fallen in The Treachery of the Long Knives. https://t.co/GJXGlNND9q

6 15
2022-09-19

Time to show off some of the creatures from Scottish folklore that has been working on for our various Origins-led projects!

3 5
2022-09-19