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Category: Mighty dead

Category: Mighty dead

A skull and a milk offering Caileachs herbarium

Category: Mighty dead

Ancestors
Scott

Scottish Folk Magic and the dead (part two) – The dead as a witch familiar

It is the familiar spirit of the place; It judges, presides, inspires Everything in its empire; It is perhaps a fairy or a god? (No, in fact it was a cat, ed) – Charles Baudelaire (the flowers of evil, 1857) The call of the desolate, dank and dead. Twilights veil settles thickly on a resting landscape. Nightfall’s gloaming orange light catching the harl, billowing mist unrolling like a generous feather duvet. Vapour peaks and troughs captured by the sinking Valium sunset form a myriad of grotesques as they rise and fall from sight. Unrelenting drizzle frames Scotland in driech endless

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a mossy gravestone - Cailleachs Herbarium
Ancestors
Scott

The good, the dead, and the fairy faith – Animism and ancestors in Scottish folklore.

Winter time is always a time for me to ponder on those who have passed. Their missing faces from the celebration table hit pretty hard at this time of year. I don’t mean to be maudlin but it’s a reality we will all encounter at some point. It got me thinking. As this is the darkest time of the year, what those who came before us thought of at this time of year? What were the beliefs of the folks who saw fairies and ancestors as ever-present. Is it animism? Is it fairy faith? This is a thought piece rather

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