#WyrdWednesday In Czech folk tradition, it's believed that the herbs collected during Midsummer Night have magical powers. They heal, protect, and they can also spark love. Each region has their nine favourite herbs for this time, but St. John's wort is popular everywhere.

“It is I who am evil. Since that night you have been an enigma luring me. I loved you before. But now something else in me worships before you. Oh, my adored one, my beautiful, cruel one." (Ben Hecht "The Florentine Dagger") 🎨 Wallace Smith (1923)

An abandoned (cursed) linocut print from my #folksongfebruary project. This one was for John Barleycorn which dates back to the 1600s in written form but is conceivably much older; a rural ballad that reads like an especially gruesome folk horror story.

"Just how and why we should have had that intensive period of unexplained phenomena for the year and a half in Mill Valley, gradually tapering off for three or four years more, and then never recurring, neither of us ever knew."

Plants which grow upwards should be planted by the waxing moon. Plants like root crops which grow downwards should be planted by the waning moon. Moon planting lore found by collector C.S. Wharton to be still current in Brailes in the 1970s. #LegendaryWednesday

Forbidden Planet, one of cinema's first sci-fi classics, and the spiritual ancestor to Star Trek, premiered SEVENTY years ago today 🤯

Operation occult and ufo magazine storage has begun. Hundreds of issues to catalog and file. Here’s a small example: German mags Prana and Psyche before and after the Great War, a 50s ufo contactee mag and the now extremely rare Inner Light, by Dion Fortune’s magical order.

Jeff Shanks talks occultism, Robert E. Howard, UFOs, and the origins of Reptilians. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8pR...

Alastor by Jack Vance I’ve still got the final book in the omnibus to finish (each stands alone), but it’s been another series of flamboyant adventures in lush settings and elaborate cultures. Petty characters, single minded revenge and dark humour throughout Loved it 🪐📚💙

Storm clouds approach Dunskey Castle. Said to be haunted by a ghostly piper and a servant girl, plus home to a brownie known as The Hairy Man, the castle's clifftop, wave-lashed location has seen turbulent times. #blackandwhitephotography #Scotland #Galloway #SouthernScotland

Spontaneous combustion was one of the many pop culture fascinations of the 1970s and 1980s. Does it still happen now. Did it ever happen?

My collection of the works of Leadbeater. I keep the first edition of his co-written 'Thought Forms' on another shelf. I also have a few Dutch first editions from the beginning of the 20th century in another bookcase, except the ones to the right. These were very specially made.

"Tell me,—don't move your arm,—tell me of battles, Louis." "There was once a King in Carcosa," I began. But the little maid was already asleep. —Robert W. Chambers, "The Silent Land"

Rachel Pollack was a science fiction, fantasy, & comic book writer, as well as a teacher and Tarot expert. She is most known to comic fans for her work on the Doom Patrol. #InternationalWomensDay #InternationalWomensDay2026

Sometimes the provenance of a book is as interesting as the book itself. I have in my library a copy of Jung-Stillings 'Theorie der Geisterkunde' (1808) that once belonged to Christoph Friedrich Landbeck (1840-1921). He was the publisher of Jakob Lorber, the Austrian mystic (1800-1864).

Today is a sunny day, and I like the way daylight plays over my book shelves (curtains drawn, of course). It gives new texture to these age old books, inviting dreams, curiosity and wonder.

This is quite an obscure occult novel involving the mystical powers of the mandrake root. In this book it enables the swapping of bodies with a dying man. Published in 1902.

One of my first childhood books was this one; I blame my aunt and uncle for my interest in the macabre.

The only known footage of Margaret Murray (1863 - 1963), the archaeologist and folklorist who penned The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).

So sad to share that legendary colorist Tatjana Wood has passed away at the age of 99. Her pioneering painterly touch graced scores of DC & Vertigo series. She was truly one of a kind and a special friend. May her memory be a blessing.

These arrived today, a Canadian ufo zine from 1969 and the 1970s. I love the nostalgic ufo mystery these long extant ufo zines once offered. Sightings, questionmarks, real people telling about having experienced truly anomalous events.

Capuchin Crypt, Rome

#ufosky #ufo #ufohistory Today in UFO History - Silos over Ontario February 23, 1975 — Matachewan, Ontario 1/Night. Glenn E. Bradley sees two large cylindrical objects like grain silos floating above Matachewan, Ontario.

Leah Gordon, photos of Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, 2010 (?)

Leah Gordon, photos of Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, 2010 (?)

Leah Gordon, photos of Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti, 2010 (?)

#ufosky #ufo #ufohistory Today in UFO History - Abducted by a Warm, Violet Light February 23, 1978 — Sesto Fiorentino, Florence, Italy 1/11:45 p.m. A couple hears interference on their car radio in Sesto Fiorentino, Florence, Italy.

#ufosky #ufo #ufohistory Today in UFO History - Upside Down Ice Cream Cone February 23, 1984 — Columbus, Ohio 1/4:00 p.m. Five witnesses, all with PhDs, report an upside-down-ice-cream-cone-shaped object over the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Ohio.

The Fascinating History of Tarot Card Decks: From the Renaissance to the Modern Day

Time to give this row of little books a new location in my library.

This arrived today, reading material for this weekend sorted!

#FolkloreThursday In Japanese folklore, eating the flesh of a ningyo, or mermaid, grants eternal life and youth. It was also said that Ningyo blood will cure any wound. Boxwood ningyo netsuke, Tadayoshi, 19th century collections.mfa.org/objects/19902

The ceffyl dŵr is a Welsh fairy horse that inhabits mountain pools and waterfalls. In south Wales, it is often benevolent. However, in north Wales, this horse likes to get someone to ride it, fly into the air, and then become mist, so that the rider falls to their death. #FolkloreThursday

A discreetly unnamed US university had, in the 19th C, a vast 'pickling vat' to store cadavers. One night anatomist Bernard Wolff MD, fell into this vat, struggling for hours in the briny deep while heads and other odds and sods bobbed around him. Alas for #WyrdWednesday, he was eventually rescued.

This beauty arrived today. I already had a copy but this was in such pristine condition I couldn’t resist. And, surprisingly for a title published in 1957, it’s incredibly rare. A true fortean classic!

PARUTION - 22/01/2026 Ella Balaert, LÉONA D. : LA FEMME CACHÉE DANS LE MYTHE DE NADJA « Qui se cache derrière la célèbre Nadja d’André Breton ? Cette œuvre poignante, entre littérature et enquête, ressuscite la figure oubliée de Léona Delcourt, plus connue [...] » www.desfemmes.fr/litterature/...

The Legend of Rabenstein: Deserted, circa 1877. Illustrated by Samuel Read

This Woman's Work covers women in hip-hop and reggaeton guest edited by Carina del Valle Schorske & Danielle Amir Jackson. it features work by Alice Arnold, Harmony Holiday, Jessica Lynne, Joy Priest, Kristina Kay Robinson, Michael A. Gonzales Miles Marshall Lewis and Sheila Maldonado.

It’s the 211th anniversary of an editorial in The Times which “deplores the credulity of Londoners”. Apparently, they’d fallen en masse for a rumour that there was a gentlewoman living in the capital who was unremarkable but for the fact she had a pig’s head 🧵

The Times, perhaps, was annoyed because this wasn’t the first time such a rumour had been heard — and was destined not to be the last. In December 1639, for example, it was a known fact that a Hog-Faced Gentlewoman from Holland called Tannakin Skinker was residing in the capital

In the early 18th century, there had also been reclusive, veiled Griselda Steevens. There could, of course, only be one possible explanation for her, too. Her mother had also encountered a beggar woman, and said “take away your litter of pigs!” Well, there you go, then: asking for it

Yes he was handsome. But give some credit to the meticulous attention his wife Anna Murray Douglass paid to his care, his home, & the presentation of his garments. It was Anna, a free woman who he met in Baltimore, who out of her meager savings gave FD the money for his train ride to escape.

Every day America gets closer to a 1980s dystopian SciFi movie.

14 February 1926 | Czech Jewish girl, Kity Kopecká, was born in Prague. She was deported to #Auschwitz from #Theresienstadt ghetto on 9 October 1944. She did not survive.

#ufosky #ufo #Ufohistory Today in UFO History - The 1915 Invasion of Canada February 14, 1915 — Ontario 1/9:15 p.m. The mayor and three city constables of Brockville, Ontario, see the lights of unknown aircraft crossing the St. Lawrence River heading for Ottawa.

This arrived: Jakob Böhme, ‘Alle Theosophischen Werken’, 1682. Böhme developed a unique vision of creation, the divine, and the concept of the Ungrund, the absolute indescribable origin of everything. The Ungrund is neither being nor non-being, existing before time and space. From it, God is born.

It's time for my annual library clean-up. I offer many obscure and rare titles like this one for sale. Interested? Drop me a DM.

Part of my Arthur Edward Waite collection. Golden Dawn member, famous for the Tarot deck he didn't design (Pamela Colman Smith did). The rarest titles pictured here are the first editions of 'The Book of Black Magic' and 'The Book of Ceremonial Magic.' I haven't seen these two for sale in decades.

Lovecraft had a correspondence with C. L. Moore—who never used a male pen name while they knew each other, just initials to hide her identity from the bank she worked at. Don't recall HPL voicing an opinion on the topic; he used a female pseudonym himself at times. deepcuts.blog/2020/08/26/h...