#celt's notebook

[celticacademia]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Mission: Impossible (Movies) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Benji Dunn/Ethan Hunt Characters: Benji Dunn, Ethan Hunt Additional Tags: the relationship is more so implied than actual but still, im having a rough day so i cant think of more tags Series: Part 5 of whumpuary 2025!! Summary:

Whumpuary 2025 day nine

The hotel Benji's in blows up.

[acelynonix]

Thought of the day

Annibale (Hannibal) Barca's Roman Empire was Rome itself (not yet the empire, but still Rome). My Roman Empire...

(Half of Death Note's notebook is full of notes of Annibale's exhibition that took place in Piacenza some years ago)

Also, I may have an hyperfixation on Celts :D

For those who don't know:

[animystsoul]

"one of the order of priests among the ancient Celts of Gaul, Britain, and Ireland," 1560s, from French druide (16c.), from Latin druis, fem. druias (plural druidae), from Gaulish Druides, from Celtic compound *dru-wid- "strong seer," from Old Celtic *derwos "true" (from PIE root

*deru- "tree," especially oak) + *wid- "to know" (from PIE root *weid- "to see"). Hence, literally, perhaps, "they who know the oak" (perhaps in allusion to divination from mistletoe). Anglo-Saxon, too, used identical words to mean

"tree" and "truth" (treow).

The English form comes via Latin, not immediately from Celtic. Old English had dry

"magician," presumably from Old Irish drui. The Old Irish form was drui (dative and accusative druid; plural druad), yielding Modern Irish and Gaelic draoi, genitive druadh

"magician, sorcerer."

The tree, an enormous body between the fineness of its principles in the earth and the fineness of its aerial consequences. [Paul Valéry, untitled notebook, 1906, transl.

Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody]

From etymology online

[hidekomoon]

azana! Is that a name or is it a word I don’t know the meaning of? Either way would love to hear about it 💜

it is a name! i made it up when i started writing this story in 2018. the basic concept has stayed the same throughout the years but every year i start over again. and only now have i written a version that i really like & will probably finish in a couple of years. it's also the first time i've written over 30 pages of narration (so not counting the other documents + notebooks that are just about the worldbuilding/characterbuilding aspects).

so. where does it take place ? it's a fantasy-type setting, mainly inspired by the celts, the early christian times and the middle ages. no one seems to believe in supernatural creatures but there are some in the story. the whole plot takes place on a remote island and i'm in the process of creating gothic-style descriptions of the only building there, a citadel that is now being used as a home for the princess that owns the island & her servants.

about the plot now. the princess is called Kalli and she's lived away from the rest of society for a few years, since the death of her husband, the prince. his son is now ruling the city-state; he just agreed to leave her the island. Kalli's allowed to stay there and have a few female servants with her. the main character Azana is a 17yo girl who's hired to go work on the island and that's when the story starts. everything is from her point of view; at first she's a bit homesick but then she quickly finds herself happy to be on the island, since there's no expectations here (she's a lesbian and her parents want her to marry). she also likes working for Kalli, who seems to trust her. Kalli practices witchcraft, Azana is in awe of her, etc, after many repressed feelings and much longing they both fall in love and start a secret relationship.

BUT one day Kalli confesses her feelings & tells her that at first, she was just seducing Azana to sacrifice her to a colony of human-eating mermaids that lives in the waters around the island, because that's the pact Kalli made with them: they get fresh food and she gets the ability to practice witchcraft (since usually only mermaids can). so Kalli was going to convince Azana to sacrifice herself for her in order to keep her powers. Azana is completely disgusted and they break up, but Azana has no way of leaving the island+her parents will expect her to marry if she goes back. so she stays and tried to figure out a way to stop Kalli. and this is all i've written so far but it's just the beginning!

it's my most over the top story, with several plot twists that i won't write about here because they've just been planned, but as i've said i'm really inspired by gothic novels so it's fitting. i hope you had fun reading this!!

[duckandash]

“You’ve got your own library?!” He might’ve asked that a little too loud, quickly shrinking and giving a silent apology at anyone who shot a glare his way at the outburst. Eventually, he leaned in and continued in a much more hushed tone. “I’m so damn jealous. All the books in my place are ones I’ve bought and have just stacked where I could find a place for them.”

For the most part, Axel was able to follow along. He’d found a good chunk of the same information about the Celts and Erecura during his own work. The stuff about Oliver, though? That was all new to him. As soon as that was brought up, he had his notebook out and was scribbling as fast as his hands could move. He had to get what Atticus was saying verbatim as well as the his initial thoughts and theories. This was good. This was why he loved collaboration. He leaned over and looked at the offered page as he asked, “So, what, the mind controlled people were being harvested for something?”

Atticus felt a kinship with Axel, it was nice having another godling who seemed to always be in the library and who could get lost in the sea of books. Most of the other godlings at camp tended to rely on Atticus for help when it came to research on matters like this, so having someone he could bounce off of was nice. "Remind me to show you the library in my cabin." It was massive and was quite the collection, including multiple first editions that Atticus held in high regard. Getting up, the son of Athena went to the Celtic section and picked out several books before returning to the table and join Axel. 

It must have been hours of Atticus flipping through pages, scribbling notes in his personal journal of things he thought be important or connected to what it was that they were looking into. "Christianity really... destroyed a lot of information on them." he frowned, Atticus couldn't imagine how much was out there about this seemingly dead religion and what came with it. "So what I did find, Erecura is a goddess from Central Europe and was an Underworld Deity as well as land goddess..." his mind was already piecing things together of what that could mean. "She's often associated with Prospernia.... the Roman equiavalent of Persephone. Oliver's sister." And then it all clicked, he already knew it but ran up to a book about the goddess of Spring and brought it back to Axel, flipping to a page with a pomegranate. "Ollie has a pomegranate choker. He doesn't really talk about it.... but this is what she pointed at, right?" Atticus' voice was filled with excitement as he connected the dots. "I don't know why she'd want it but maybe she mixed up her goddess with Persephone?"

"Can't find anything on the woman herself... she's a mystery." The son of Athena sat back in his seat, idly cleaning his glasses with the cloth he seemed to always have on his person before going through his notes. "Now, the Summer Solstice... it's a lot less... concrete." he looked up to Axel, finding the book and flipping to a page. "There's so many different sects of the Celts... but all of them seem to view the Summer Solstice as a time of harvest. Before the coming winter."

[celtichammerclub]

Fenrir drinking horns and leather journals. celtichammerclub.com ➖ #celtichammerclub #fenrir #fenris #wolf #wolves #journal #leather #leatherwork #drinkinghorn #merch #celt #celtic #norse #nordic #unique #collectable #journaling #notebook https://www.instagram.com/p/CcLN9rHrds5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[xf4iryx]

GIFTS FOR FRIENDS PT. 3

SNIPPET FOR @queerlilchinchin

Dear Han,

thank you for everything. You're one of the most talented, kind and encouraging people on this app. Your writing is absolutely stunning and do not get me started on your characters, wip ideas and world building. You're truly one of the best people and a good friend. I decided to do a small gift for you based on your description of Mercedes simply because I fell in love with the idea of her soaking up new topics.

~ Love, Leia

_________________________________________

It was silent in the library. No one was there yet except for the staff of the university library. No students filled the reading rooms and small workrooms yet. They were not yet searching for books, nor were they preparing for approaching exams or assignments. Granted, it was only 7:04 a.m. and the library had just opened its doors. Granted, the sky only now started to be coloured in the rising sun's colours which painted cirrostratus clouds in pale pink, peach and violet.

And yet one person had already passed the entrance and was now striding through the empty corridors of the library. Blonde hair with green strands had been tied up in a braid. Her heels echoed muffled off the floor as pale green eyes eagerly absorbed the titles of the books. In her left hand she held a basket belonging to the university library, which slowly filled with books about the long-gone advanced civilisation of the Romans and Celts and their architectural masterpieces, as well as other archaeological finds. Books about the universe were added before the young woman found a quiet place in one of the upper reading rooms near the window front. She settled down on the chair and placed a notebook and pen on the tosch before sorting the books by subject. When she picked up the first book, which dealt with ancient vase painting, she had to smile slightly. Some of her fellow students did not understand why she was dealing with a subject outside her field of study. Only a few could understand.

Reading broadened their horizons, made them educate themselves and develop an opinion on new topics. Learning something new and studying it intensively meant being able to ask and answer new questions.

Yes, Mercedes had understood how to use her curiosity for new things. Reading meant knowledge and knowledge meant power.

[detective-with-one-arm]

Do you remember what you did on Halloween last year?

(Everyone)

Rachel

Chuckling, her face goes a little red. “I went to a Halloween party with Simon...I was dressed as Carmen Sandiego and he went as the kid from Where The Wild Things Are.” She admits, taking another sip from her mug. “It was...it was really fun party.”

Connor

“I haven’t had a Halloween. This...is sort of my first, actually.” He says, quietly. “I don’t really have plans, but Markus has invited me to spend it there at New Jericho. Just a small get-together there with he, North, Simon, and Josh. Nothing major. But I’d also like to spend it with Lieutenant Anderson. I know that he’d like the extra company.”

Howard

He has a very stern face, eyes narrowed as he turns his nose up. “I don’t celebrate such a frivolous holiday. It’s meaningless to me and I prefer not to be paid attention to. That’s why my home is outside of the city. I like my solitude and the festivities around this time of year bore and annoy me.

Serena

“I don’t really have plans.” She says quietly. Though...an extremely small and subtle smile is on her face. “I’d...much rather stay inside and hand out candy. Draws less attention to myself and the interactions are short. And...innocent.”

Nathan

He looks up from his notebook and adjusts his glasses. “The origin of Halloween, or ‘Hallow’s Eve’ as it is sometimes referred to colloquially, is of Celtic pagan origin on the British Isles and the feast of Samhain. It was believed that when the ghosts and spirits came out to haunt, the Celts would appease them by offering them treats and the like. Some believed that the act of dressing up in costume was to confuse the spirits so that they couldn’t recognize the living and thus not haunt them. And when Christianity began to spread, they incorporated and assimilated the holiday into their culture in order to convert more people to their religion. Thus, the holiday as we know it began to properly take shape.”

Lisa

“My family and I don’t really do much except dress up, decorate the house, and give out candy.” She responds, smiling warmly. “We do that every year. Last year, we dressed up as vampires. I think we’re going to dress up as witches this time. Claire’s always really excited to celebrate Halloween.”

Atlas

“Normally, I prefer to stay home or do an event at the school for Halloween.” She insists, tucking her hair behind her ear and smiling warmly. “But last year, Scout really wanted to go trick-or-treating, so I went with her. She dressed as a werewolf and we found a group of other children to go with. It was...nice seeing Scout branch out of her comfort zone a bit.”

Scout

“I trick-or-treated for the first time, last year.” She responded, twirling her slingshot in her hand. “It was...honestly kinda nice not being recognized for once. I could just be...a kid. Not just ‘an android kid’ or ‘that android kid.’ But just...a kid. Having fun. It was nice...”

[ryanccoleman]

"Summerland”: Review

“There is a place for escapism with an ethical backbone. More than ever, we need to be able to relax under the spell of fantasists we can trust not to poison us with irony or distort history to suit their ideology.“

Summerland is British dramatist and theater director Jessica Swale’s film directorial debut. It tells the story of Alice Lamb (Gemma Arterton), a misanthropic young folklorist who is forced to care for a child evacuated from London in advance of the Nazi blitz. The film opens and closes on the great Dame Penelope Wilton as older Alice in the 1970s, and flashes of the character’s memories of being an Oxford girl in the ‘20s run through the middle, but Summerland is primarily a sort of wartime conversion narrative. Alice’s nature, scarred over by love lost and gone bitter, is gradually healed by the slow emergence of maternal love for the bright-eyed and innocent child, Frank, played with preternatural nuance by newcomer Lucas Bond.

When Frank is dropped at the doorstep of Alice’s romantically isolated cliffside cottage on the outskirts of a town in East Sussex, he finds her in a bitter and recalcitrant state. For their first dinner she hands him an uncooked potato, raw ham, and a whole egg. “You don’t expect me to cook it for you? There’s the stove,” she points, and walks back to her life’s great pursuit—her writing. She spends her days laced into a rigid routine of researching and composing “academic theses, not stories,” as she corrects a prying town elder (Tom Courtenay), that use science to debunk narrative folkloric explanations for strange natural phenomena.

Her life is solitary, studious, and mercilessly subjected to the strictest self-imposed routine. The war’s sudden imposition, via Frank, on that routine brings with it other, more upbraiding interruptions. His inadvertent puncturing of the hermetic seal on her life stirs up vivid flashbacks of a time when she was, like him, looking toward the future with innocent hope. In that time, her twenties in the ‘20s, she met Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Vera at a spring concert at Oxford. The spark was immediate, the chemistry undeniable. So began the hushed and rapturous affair whose sudden break has cast a long, withering shadow over Alice’s life. It is out from under this burden that Frank’s childlike curiosity and unquestioning faith in the goodness of other people begins to pull Alice.

Alice’s emotional flowering begins to dovetail with the subject of her latest inquiry—the Summerland myth. In the film, what Alice calls Summerland is actually Fata Morgana, or centuries-old mariner’s yarns of floating islands materializing inexplicably on the horizon, thought of as conjurings of the wicked sorceress of Arthurian lore, Morgan Le Fay. In reality, Summerland is a term created by theosophists in the 19th century to refer to a concept similar to heaven in ancient pagan cosmologies. Swale has simply nested the one within the visual of the other. Called variously The Otherworld, The Shining Land, and the Land of the Young by Celts, Summerland is “a land of eternal summer, with grassy fields and sweet flowing rivers,” like “Earth before the advent of humans,” writes popular witchsplainer Scott Cunningham. He could well be describing the pastoral, soft and sunlit setting of Swale’s film—the southeast English coast, shot gloriously on location.

If it’s possible to resist Summerland’s principal hook, namely, Swale’s ability to tell an intricately plotted, politically engaged, at times bleak story in a way that feels as sublime, escapist, and low stakes as the folklore its heroine is investigating, then the locations which provide backdrop for it all prove irresistible. It’s simply impossible to look at Gemma Arterton with no makeup on, hair free and flowing down her back, clad in a warm wardrobe of rustic, earth-toned skirts and cardigans, scrawling something about wildflowers in her leatherbound notebook, emblazoned against the operatic white chalk cliffs being continually washed by the sparkling sapphire sea and not feel instantly soothed, regardless of what else is going on, in her life or yours.

Landscape is then not just backdrop, it is central to the film’s most potent attribute—its palliative effect on the weary and discontented viewer’s soul. Cunningham’s evocation of Summerland, as an oasis suspended in time, above and parallel to the conflicted world, where all pain is temporarily abolished, extends beyond how the film looks to how it feels, landing at this particular moment.

Like the floating islands that give it its name, Summerland hovers above real life without ever quite touching down. In the moments the film’s dramatic conflicts threaten to break through the amniotic stasis of its sun-drenched cinematography, romantic thematic pursuits, and effervescent dialogue, Swale vanishes the stakes. Only one line is spoken about what would have been the multiply illicit nature of Arterton and Mbatha-Raw’s relationship, for instance. “They think we should burn in hell,” Alice has to explain to Frank, who in all his totemic, childlike innocence, has managed somehow to avoid homophobic social inculcation. Never mind the fact that their relationship, in addition to being same sex, was cross racial. What would it have been like for Vera, as a woman-loving Black woman, to navigate a white ethno-nationalist empire during a time when homosexuality (though lesbianism was never targeted explicitly in the laws) was punishable by exile, hard labor, and even imprisonment? We can only imagine, because that’s not Summerland’s game.

Summerland isn’t a dirge-like, finger-wagging history lesson like The Imitation Game. Nor is it bright, confectionary, period-set escapism like Autumn de Wilde’s recent adaptation of Emma. It’s somewhere in between, more akin to Jonathan Levine’s Long Shot, which embraces contemporary cultural politics without really getting into them. The result is a kind of guilt-free indulgence in classical Hollywood narrative constructs, made possible not by inverting or deconstructing them, but by simply updating who gets to negotiate their terms. This sounds like criticism but I for one am fully on board. Long Shot was one of my favorite movies of last year, and Summerland is one of my favorite movies this year so far. There is a place for escapism with an ethical backbone. More than ever, we need to be able to relax under the spell of fantasists we can trust not to poison us with irony or distort history to suit their ideology. Spoiler alert, but Summerland has a happy ending. Would you expect that from a period film with an interracial lesbian couple at its center? You wouldn’t, but wouldn’t you like to?

copyright © 2020 Ryan Christopher Coleman

[auroraemoon]

How to Nurture the Fledgling Aesthetic-Vintage Soul in you:

(** I am continually adding to this list **)

1. Explore secondhand bookstores for old, pretty editions of novels you may or may not have heard of.

2. Light candles in your bedroom/bathroom, and read by candlelight.

3. Write during a thunderstorm, and why not make it extravagant, even a little flowery, and if it is poetry, scribble it on parchment.

4. Dress in turtlenecks, plaid coats, and occasional bright socks (but keep the socks hidden-yes, be a mystery, in real life and on social media).

5. Go on, make yourself tea in pretty teacups (you can find plenty in secondhand stores!)6. Listen to classical and/or mediaeval music (with a lute and possibly a hurdy-gurdy) as you sleep/read/study.

7. Button up shirts are a must (and if they have a high collar, all the better.)

8. Stay late at a university library studying topics that no one else would. Delve into the realm of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, poetry—broadening ones mind is never to be frowned upon.

9. Avoid the pretension and arrogance that can often accompany academia — it hurts no one to be kind, gracious, mindful, and humble.

10. Elegance and confidence walk hand-in-hand, and if mingled with the right amount of nonchalance, mystery, and whimsey, then you are halfway to wherever you want to go.

11. Certainly, you can debate metaphysical theories, spiritual oddities, theological conundrums. Be kind though.

12. One day go and pick wild flowers and sketch leaves as the honeyed glow of the sun kisses their tender skin—memorise all the colours of the forest.

13. Watch dawn arrive, tis the colour of a dark purple-red wine, a starless sky, adore her quiet arrival—give thanks.

14. I know you just want to wander a thorn-covered castle by candlelight, write a letter as a storm thunders outside, and drink red wine as you read poetry by a crackling fire. If you can, why not.

15. Sometimes you might need to be coy or charming - it can all add to the mystery.

16. Remember how you craved knowledge when you were young, you once dreamed of adventures, of 'slaying dragons', of mystery, of overcoming mortal peril.

17. Buy an expensive journal and write in it the things that set your soul alight, all those existential suspicions that there is something more waiting out there for you to find it; all those spiritual questions you would dare not ask anyone.

18. Yes, the nights are marvelous. The full moon, with her burning white embers and the gathering of her velvet darkness. This also is to be a place of contemplative beauty.

19. That awkward smile you give your friends, yeah, I know, they don't really understand you, do they. Big libraries, big forest, big ideas, big dreams, big words and messy handwriting that tries to capture some of it alive.

20. "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." - F. Dostoevsky. You may not have been this way before, have no fear...the angels are cheering you onward.

21. One of the skills you have is called daydreaming. From that psychotic state all good things flow.

22. Read some gothic literature, by candlelight.

23. The sound of wind and rain is calling you to leave your warm and cozy inside, and venture out into the wild and dark—and even there lies a metaphor for a light shining in a dark place.

24. On earth we are briefly gorgeous. Literature, ancient and modern, reveals it so like no other—surround yourself with books and words and poetry, all the fierce passions of the world bound in ink and vellum. They are eternal conversations with anguish and desire.

25. You long for the gentle strokes of your pen hitting the page as imaginations subtle hues rush through your mind. Your heart swells at the library of ideas now outlined in the mists, a bonfire of words, skyward ember fly , flickering thoughts on seraphim wings at the final push - and look at you - you've written a single sentence, you've conquered an Everest.

26. Delicate fairy lights wind their way along your bookshelves, an enchanting bouquet of light to draw your eyes to a thousand ideas.

27. In the morning you're still tying your shoelaces, it is a ritual, an act of faith, you often ask yourself: "Where are you even going?"

29. You like fonts, late nights you are sprawled in front of two monitors researching the aesthetic qualities of the dips and curves in a modified serif. 

30. You are a combination of dark and light, a rain stained window, a poem tapping out some internal crisis—the vintage soul finds solace here among the soul's quieter, more desperate hymns.

31. Reading books in the shade of trees with the melody of a harp in the distance would be exquisite. The keeper of the flame lingers in such moments.

32.  Perhaps you would like to go on little night picnics—bring fairy lights, imaginations, dreams, stories. The moon would love to hear your conversations, and she might just come down and tell you a story or two (Moon is like that).

33. Every day I wonder why I'm not living in a dark castle with secret passageways and rooms filled with books. Finance is one issue, howbeit a small one #sigh 

34. "Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world." - Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden. But you already knew that, didn't you.

35. You're upset, I understand. You cannot go to sleep and wake up fluent in Latin, Elvish, or with an Irish accent.

36. Freshly baked lavender and lemon cake are necessary at times.

37. Folklore, legends, mysteries, secret poetry hidden behind castle stones, quiet on the outside, but filled with enough seismic activity that you might just create a new planet, complex theories about many things that never come out quite right, renaissance murals line the walls of your soul, spilling your deepest secrets to a bird at your windowsill. Sleep deprived, but still conscious. A mix of Clair de Lune and In the Hall of the Mountain King. 

38. Pinpricks of stars on a velvet night, glints of dust floating on a ribbon of sun-streak, droplets of rain weaving down a windowsill. All of this, and you, are the same. Behind your eyes and coffee stained pages lies a whisper and an ache of what you may become.

39. Buying that new special pen.

40. Buying that new special notebook.

41. Trapped inside is a wild inner celt staring over the cliffs of moher, waiting for a ghostly lover to return from the sea.

** This is apparently a work in progress...

Current mood: aesthetic, bookish, nostalgic - LOL  aesbookic (Some were gleaned from various blogs, bust mostly my own)

[celticacademia]

Whumpuary 2025 day 5

Rory gets stabbed, and an unfamiliar face helps him

[ferafailcam]

(This journal entry is written in Spanish.)

God, I hate writing these things. Figure it’ll do me some good though. I can’t trust my blog to keep track of things. Plus I found this sick notebook at Goodwill and I don’t want to waste it.

Alright, let’s see. I never know where to start. I came back to Earth, I miss my dad, I saw my mom, and now I’m in LA again.

Let me start better. I came back and went to LA first. I’d never been to California before and I wanted to check it out. So I go, and I live on the streets and I have no god damn friends. Didn’t consider that part. I also got no fucking money. I’m brooooooooke, bitch! So I’m living in my box, and it’s totally fine because at least I can stay warm and dry in there and I can eat rats no problem. Coyotes aren’t actually that weird to see in cities anymore. 

Oh, and I met fucking Yellowjacket, bitch! They’re pretty cool. Bought me dinner and let me use their shower/wash my clothes. Their kittens are cute as all hell. They’re named after breakfast. What the fuck. 

Anyways. Shit, I do make a friend. There was a garou there. Tall as fuck and chiller than anyone I’d ever met. Ronin, too, which made me feel better for some reason. I’m stupid as all hell apparently, because I told them I was a coyote right away (bad fucking idea according to every other yote I’ve ever spoken to). They’re nice to me. 

We barely know each other 2-ish days before they agree to make a pack with me. They tell me they’ve got a Pentex target on their back and honestly, the risk made it more appealing. Because I’m me and I know Xochipilli wants me to.

The first thing we do together is walk. Through California to the edge of Arizona, almost to New Mexico before we feel a kiba nearby. One of the ones that werewolves are allowed in.

Lucky thing and thank you Xochipilli, it’s guarded by the local Uktena. Now, the Uktena and the Nuwisha are tight. I actually introduce myself first and I do it in the dumbest way possible, but they’re cool with me. I introduce Elia next, and thank the stars they’re a Child of Gaia. They let us use their moon bridge to go to Texas, and we go straight to my mom’s house.

I missed my mom. She takes care of us, because of course she does, and I know she’s terrified of werewolves because of what happened with dad, but she’s still so nice to Elia. I still kind of feel guilty, but I mean… I missed my fucking mama.

We spent the night there and then we’re off. Walking, walking, walking until we find another kiba that Elia’s allowed at (I felt a few that they aren’t but I’m literally not allowed to tell them about them lol) and we jump to Ireland.

When I say it was gorgeous…

The sept there were all Fianna. The thing about Fianna is that they’re FUN AS HELL. We jump right into a festival, or whatever they call it. I probably should’ve asked, but I was druuuuuunk. God, it was so fun.

I met a girl there. On the stars and the moon and everything sacred, she was… Shit man, I actually fell in love with her for a second. Her name is Orlaith, and her hair was soft and may I just say, she fu-- NVM. SORRY.

We hang out with them for a few days. They’re a little stupid, because they actually thought I was a wolf despite me being short as hell and about 70 lbs lighter than all of them in dog form. But hey, at least it didn’t cause problems! Orlaith thought it was cute. They ask us a favor, and honestly, it couldn’t have been better.

They wanted us to heist a museum. No, really. The English stole a lot from the Celts. They have a tendency to do that. There was a Fianna fertility fetish of the goddess Danu just sitting on display there.

You would not believe how fucking easy it was. The thing about coyotes is that we’re sneaky, and the bangle that Elia gave me let’s me turn invisible in the shadows. Elia’s smart and I’m sneaky. Dream team.

We come in during the day, we hide out until night. It’s easy to hide when you’re dog-sized. Elia hides out in the Umbra until I can come in and get them. 

I’m latrani and Elia is lupus. We get to the display and I call on the raccoon spirit that gave me my fancy lockpicking gift and I crack that bitch open no problem. Scramble in there, get it out, and hand it to Elia to run. They’re holding it in their mouth and running for the back door as the alarm goes off. The guard is coming and I sniff him out. First I run up to him and he looks super confused, and then I sprint off and lead him in a few circles before I’m following Elia out too. I’m 100% sure that’s the most confused a security guard has ever been. I was laughing the whoooole fucking time so hard I almost tripped.

God, that was fun. I felt Xochipilli smiling on me, I swear.

So we bring it back to the Fianna, and, you’ll never guess what happened next-

They threw a fucking party. 

The sept let us hang out as honored guests for a bit. I got to chase some sheep, which I’ve wanted to do since a friend in the Tunnel told me how fun it was. Not important, just thought I’d mention it.

Alright, alright, catching up to the present now. Yellowjacket.. August. They’re graduating college and Elia’s mage honey Zed asks us to come to the ceremony. I fucking love August, so I’m totally in, except I remember my college graduation. They’re boring as fucking hell. And guess what, it was boring again. Super proud of them, though. College is hard.

I made them something. A feather out of balsa wood. I told them I put a wind spirit in it to help them with creativity, but I was definitely lying. I can’t make fetishes, but hey, as long as they believe it it might actually help. Like the kids’ show trope about self-fulfilling prophecies.

That’s really about it. I don’t know where we’re headed next. Wherever the next kiba takes us, or we might be able to get Zed to teleport us somewhere? Guess we’ll see.

My hand hurts now.

[adapembroke]

Reading Tarot Like The Empress

There is a story told about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Finding himself in a state that we would now call writers block, he got a job as a secretary to a sculptor he admired, Rodin. (You might know Rodin but not know you do. He is most famous for the sculpture called “The Thinker,” the guy sitting with his head in his hand like he’s nursing a headache.) Rilke was young when he went to work for Rodin, but not completely inexperienced. He had a couple of books of poems under his belt already. He had even developed a style and a method. Like the High Priestess, his process was an introverted one. He looked within. Inspiration came from his inner life and memories, and he waited around the shore of his unconscious for inspiration to strike. When he went to work for Rodin, this process was failing him. He didn’t want to sit around and wait for the muse anymore. He just wanted to get to work. Rodin had a reputation for being a craftsman, for setting his mind to a project and making it without theatrics, and Rilke wanted to learn how to do that. He hoped that by spending time around the artist, he would learn Rodin’s secret and become a craftsman of words. 

One day, Rodin asked how Rilke’s poetry was going. Rilke told him about his troubles, and Rodin gave him this advice: Go to the zoo. Choose an animal, and look at it until you really see it. It might take weeks, he said, but Rilke should be patient. 

Rilke went. He chose the panther and sat in front of its cage until he was inspired to write the poem “The Panther.” When I read that poem, I see this: That man is bored. He is so tired of looking at this big cat walking back and forth in front of iron bars, he can’t stand it anymore. There is nothing else in the world but this cat and this cage. He can’t move until he really sees this thing, whatever that means. The only thing he knows is that it isn’t happening. Every once in awhile, he thinks he has a flash of inspiration, but then it vanishes, and he’s not sure of anything anymore. 

I imagine Rilke walking away from the Panther’s cage clutching the notebook that will hold the collection that he will eventually call New Poems. The notebook is ragged from his constant handling it of but the pages are blank, all except for one, and that page contains only a single short poem about a panther. 

At least, after all of that, I got a poem, he must have been thinking. 

Turning Toward The World

In Rilke’s path through the Fool’s Journey, “The Panther” is the turning point between the High Priestess and the Empress. The High Priestess looks within. Just like your eyes need a moment to adjust when you have been staring at a book for hours and then look out the window, this poem is the process of Rilke changing the focus of his vision from his inner world to the outer world. 

In “The Panther,” he doesn’t quite escape the inner world. It’s hard to tell if the poem is about the poet or the panther. 

But then something extraordinary happens. 

He conducts the experiment again. This time, he looks at an ancient, headless sculpture of Apollo and writes “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” The poem begins with the same structure, a description of the sculpture, a poetic version of the type of work visual artists do when they are rolling around an idea and make a lot of sketches just looking at what they want to draw. Instead of focusing on what he sees, though, he cheats a little and focuses on what you can’t see, beginning his poem with, “We cannot know his legendary head.” 

Then he has an epiphany: 

From all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for there is no place 

that does not see you. You must change your life. 

His epiphany is the shock of recognition. The panther had eyes but saw nothing. The statue, despite the fact that it has no head, sees him, and in that moment Rilke’s eyes are opened, and he sees. 

What was that moment of recognition like? What burst like a star? He doesn’t say, and if you’re feeling in a particular mood you might make guesses in a certain direction. But. I’m going to take what he said about “stars” and go a bit further with it.

The process by which stars burn is called fusion. When stars burn, a practically infinite number of chemical reactions happen in which two atoms join—fuse—together and become a third thing. 

“The Panther” is, really, about Rilke. The panther is the object onto which he projects his inner world. It’s a great poem as a poem, but he’s trying to break out of that High Priestess mode, and he’s just not getting it yet. It’s still all about him. The panther is a metaphor for himself. In “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” it starts being about his gaze, and then his gaze and the statue’s gaze meet, and those deeper eyes, the ones that refused so frustratingly to open in “The Panther,” open wide in shock at the spectacle of seeing something that is not Rilke himself. In “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” he stops considering the statue as an object to play his own heart strings on and encounters it as an Other, what the philosopher Martin Buber called a “Thou.” The object of Rilke’s poem is not longer an “it,” an object to use or experience. The statue is a being with whom he can have a relationship of dialog. Rilke’s seeing talks to the statue’s seeing, and they (or Rilke, at least) find a mutual understanding. This Other sees him, and Rilke sees this Other, and, in really seeing, Rilke falls in love, and fusion happens. The resulting work is a love poem to a ruined work of art, a third thing that comes from these two seeing each other. 

The Empress Of The Senses

If you read Tarot books, you’ll be told that the Empress is about the senses. The focus here immediately goes to pleasure. You are often told to savor sensual experiences. That’s great. Sometimes when the Empress comes up in a reading, all you really need is a bath with lots of sparkly things in it. 

But there is a tradition in many cultures of seeing empresses as divine. If the Empress was a goddess, what would that mean? What if you really held the senses to be sacred?  

The senses are by their very nature an encounter with the Other. You see seagulls. You taste the bitterness of your tea. You smell the heady, spicy, slightly trippy smell of frankincense. You hear the wind blow. You feel your lover’s hand on your leg, palm up, waiting for you to take their hand in yours. These encounters, if you are vulnerable and open yourself up to them, are sacred, encounters with the Holy Other. It is through these encounters that we experience the Holy Thou.

Empathy is a high-flying abstract word that has somehow managed in certain communities to become a burden and a point of pride. A similar, maybe better, term is ”resonance.“ Resonance happens when a thing that happens to one thing also happens to another thing. Andrea Gibson captures it beautifully in her poem, “Say Yes.”

When two violins are placed in a room

if a chord on one violin is struck

the other violin will sound the note. 

Resonance an essential element in divinatory readings. We’ve talked about how to read like the Fool, how to open yourself up to enchantment while working with the Magician, and how to tap into your own intuition in the High Priestess. The wisdom of the Empress in readings is the wisdom of relationship. There’s a huge Venus glyph in a heart on the RWS card as if Pamela Coleman Smith wanted to shake us and say, “It’s about love, people!”

When I do a reading for someone, I lay out the cards or pull up the birth chart. When I first look, the symbols are just “its” to me. They’re tools for me to use to work my craft. I stare at them for awhile. I make connections. I build associations. I connect what I’m seeing with what my intuition is saying. When I’m doing a past life reading, I’m reading the birth chart specifically with the goal of figuring out what a person’s mistakes have been. I take my little candle and set out into the darkness of the human heart, but when I really sit with a chart when I’m doing a past life reading, there never fails to be a moment when I snap into Empress mode. The experience is just like how Rilke describes it. It’s like a star suddenly bursts into life. An image comes to me—usually literally when I’m doing past life readings—and I see the person I’m reading for as a person. It’s no longer about the Hermit or the Star or Judgement. It’s about a very lonely person who wants so badly to shine but is afraid of being judged. I encounter them as a “Thou.”

The Peacemaker Queen

We discussed the High Priestess as participating in the Dark Goddess archetype. The Empress is the other divine feminine archetype in the major arcana. She is the Mother Goddess, an archetype she shares with Demeter, Gaia, and the Virgin Mary.

The archetypes of the RWS are deeply rooted in the roles of Medieval Europe. In Medieval Europe, the queen had two roles. The first was to make babies for the king. The second was to be an angel of mercy. It was the special right and responsibility of the queen to show compassion. A medieval king couldn’t be merciful, even if he wanted to. It would have made him look weak, and he would have been swarmed by his lords and assassinated as soon as they could get their weapons together. The queen had to carry all of the mercy for the two of them. She could appeal to the king publicly to spare condemned criminals. She could ask him to make peace in a time of war. He could listen to her without ruining his reputation and opening himself up to attack.

Much has been made of the sexism in this role, so I won’t dwell on it here. Instead, I will point out that this role is descended from a sacred office. The right to come between two armies and stop a war was one that belonged to the ancient Druids. They had to spend twenty years studying to earn that right—which says something, I think, about how much the Celts loved war. Much of that study was in learning to divine, and I suspect that in a warrior culture, no small part of that was about learning to find the Thou in the enemy and have the courage to show compassion. I doubt the monarchs of Medieval Europe remembered this old Druid role consciously when the queens took on this role—or I doubt the queens would have been allowed to take on that kind of power—but it is there in the cultural memory, the leader whose power comes from their ability to find that which is worth saving in the heart of the criminal, warlord, and traitor.

To me, this is the heart of the Empress. It’s about looking until you really see, listening until you really hear, touching until you really feel, tasting until you really taste, and smelling until…you get the idea; and through the senses encountering another self, finding what there is to love in the Thou you’re encountering. When you do that, you’re participating in the very force that makes the stars burn.

This post was originally published on Aquarius Moon Journal on 21 March 2020.

[susandwrites]

Fallen Through Time - Chapter 36

Greg felt as though his mind had been squeezed through a garlic press. All of this was way beyond his ken, but Chris had the patience of a saint. Time travel and the paranormal had never interested Greg, so the jargon was all new to him. But if Chris was willing to take the time to walk him through the desert, Greg owed it to him and to Sherlock to make it to the Holy Land. As it were.

They had relocated their research to the Central Library of Imperial College, where Chris was a student. Thankfully, the library was open twenty-four hours, so even though they had passed into the wee hours and were closer to dawn than dusk, they had the luxury of a full-service library at their disposal. 

“Alright,” a heavy sigh preceded Chris’s arrival back at their table and he dropped a large atlas-style book down in front of Greg. “Maps of ley lines around the globe.”

“And ley lines are where weird stuff has happened,” Greg confirmed, trying to remember all that he had learned with Chris in the past day.

“Right. Points all over the world where supernatural events have occured, connected by straight lines across the map.” He flipped through the pages until he came to a map of London. “This is just a possible theory ‒ I don’t know if any of the points line up.” The map was crossed all over with red indicator lines and a few large red dots that formed triangles over the city. A few of the points were familiar to Greg, spots where stories of weird events had taken place.

“The first place is Tower Bridge,” Greg leaned in, cursing himself for having left his readers sitting on his desk back at the Yard, and examined the spot through squinted eyes. “The line doesn’t cross exactly through the tower where Sherlock fell, but one does go through the bridge itself.”

“And there are a few lines that surround the area,” Chris said encouragingly.

“How exact does it have to be?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “But I’m sure there’s some room to… wiggle. We’re talking about energy, not guided missiles. I’m sure there’s a possibility for a flow or even a pool.” Greg chewed his lip in thought. “Where else?”

“Gower Street,” Greg said, running his finger along the map. “Again, it’s between three lines.” He paused, thinking as hard as he was able.

“Has it only been those two places?” Chris pressed.

Greg sighed, feeling defeated. “So far. And they were ages apart, so it’s difficult to determine a pattern.”

“When were they?” Chris sat down across the table and gave an exhausted stretch, arms over his head, and cracked his back against his chair.

“Erm…” Greg flipped through the notebook he kept in his jacket pocket for making case notes on the fly. “Twenty-second September and twenty-first December.” They were both growing tired and Greg could almost feel the drowsiness wafting off of Chris. He fought a yawn as Chris leaned forward again.

“Wait…” Every thought and sentence came so slowly. “The equinox and the solstice?”

“The what?”

“Many civilizations celebrate festivals at the turning of the seasons.” Sitting up straighter, Chris grabbed a book and pulled it forward, flipping through until he came upon an illustration of planets and their movements. Apparently it was some sort of calendar. “The Celts have Lùnastal and Samhain ‒ the first days of fall and winter. Their calendar is a bit earlier than ours, but the idea is the same.”

Greg was definitely in over his head. “What idea?”

“That at certain times of the year, supernatural events are more likely to occur because of an imbalance in the forces of the universe.” If Chris weren’t so nice and helpful and obviously intelligent, Greg would swear he was a lunatic. “The earth is either closest or farthest from the sun in its revolution.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“No one really knows,” Chris admitted with a shrug. “The earth is made of magnets that are constantly pulling and pushing things. Maybe when the earth is more or less magnetized, something happens.” Jeez, it’s all so vague, Greg thought. “Maybe the veil between this plane and another is made thin. Or even torn.” Chris gave Greg a look that suggested he really didn’t know, but believed it all the same.

Why not?

*-*

Read the rest on AO3.

[kagetsukai]

Cinnamon, Maize, Cocoa

cinnamon - if you had to live in a time period different than the present, which would you choose and where? 

Ugh. With my temperament? Probably early Viking era. Women could be warriors, had decent equality in their community, and there was cleanliness. I’d also settle for ancient Celts or maybe even ancient Slavic. Any era where I wouldn’t have to pretend to like petticoats and stroke a man’s ego all day.

maize - share the weirdest encounter you’ve had with a stranger on the street. 

I... don’t have encounters on the street? I’m a tall, thickly-built woman, which intimidates all men from trying to approach me (cuz let’s be honest, most strangers approaching you on the street are men), so I don’t generally get interaction. I once was witness to my bestie receiving a love letter about her shoulders? We were in Las Vegas at a restaurant and this guy came up to her and gave her a handwritten page out of a notebook, praising the shape and slope of her shoulders. Thankfully, the man didn’t stick around and we had a giggle about it for WEEKS.

cocoa - if you could have any type of hair, what colour and cut would you have?

Auburn, mid-length. I do have to preface it with the fact that I actually like my natural hair color and I regularly cut it to the length that I like, so... :P And I *have* gone red before. I just don’t like the hassle of keeping it up ;)

[arcanumofthorns]

Welcome to the magical world of Moonrose!

Since the round of new followers, I thought I’d post a quick intro so everyone can catch up with what’s going on.

What is Arcanum of Thorns?

“Arcanum of Thorns” is the Celtic fantasy/scifi series by S.K. Lumen. You can read the full sumary, facts and status,  read about the characters, check out the original artwork by the author herself, or go straight to quotes, excerpts, or articles on behind the scenes. If you’re a Celtic enthusiast, there’s a library of articles ready to quench your curiosity on topics such as mythology, the ancient Celts, the otherworld and many more.

Blog News

So that new followers can easily immerse themselves into the story, I will be posting fun character introductions and explanations in the coming days, alongside articles on general Celtic topics, so stay tuned!

Feedback

Meanwhile, I'm open to feedback regarding the website:

Do you feel the website is easy and accessible as a book platform?

Any suggestions on what would make it more user-friendly in your opinion?

What sort of content would you love to see here? Quotes from the book, excerpts from chapters, art (oil paintings, drawings, photography, captioned stills), articles about behind the scenes (ie. what inspired the book), sneak peaks from The Moonrose Notebook, etc?

Don’t be shy! Feel free to leave a comment in the askbox or PM me with any questions you might have.

💚 Lumen