A Wisdom of Owls

https://youtu.be/lWNOLqs1IPQ?si=Mxf2WEtIGOm2whTy Female Fronted Friday ❄️Within Temptation - Ice Queen ❄️ From the album Mother Earth (2000) Of any genre, (aside from from runefolk/neofolk), Metal has kept a true pagan spirit, and you’ll often find a string of delightful witchiness in the bands with females in their lineup. I love symphonic metal and particularly metal with a female voice. I love this song, despite the corny as hell music video (it’s endearing Y2K corniness, though). The lyrics, while not mentioning any specific deity are very evocative, in my opinion of figures like the Callieach and Morana. 🦉🎤❄️

The Storm (1880) by Pierre Auguste Cot

https://youtu.be/xD5No_JRrZw?si=0vRlV4YbwFUCMS2M 💚August 12th, 1996 💚 Happy 30th anniversary to one of the greatest romantic gothic anthems ever penned. 💚🅾️🩸

I’m not terrific at making things look pretty, if I’m being honest. I’ve had a lot of breadloaves that I’ve spent painstaking time scoring come out of the oven with their score completely blown out, I’ve had soggy cakes, I’ve forgotten to add salt to things. A lot of things that come naturally to other don’t to me—I have bad eyesight, horrible depth perception and some difficulty with fine motor skills (when I was a kid, it took me a lot longer to learn how to write, or to tie my shoes or ride a bike without training wheels, for example; I also stuttered a bit and still do if I’m stressed or tired). But despite all that, I love baking, I love my wonky, missshapen loaves, I love my uneven pie crusts and my amateur cake frosting. And over the years, as I’ve kept at it, the loaves rose better, and came out more delicious and professional looking from the oven, I’ve learned how to not have pound cakes stick in the pan, just how much black powder it takes to make a gothic black cake for a birthday (a lot 😭), and most importantly, I had fun, and I fed family and friends. I’ve had people tell me that I should sell my sourdough loaves and focaccias, but the truth is, I don’t want to monetize a labor of love ( no offense at all to people that do want to monetize their hobbies). I just want to bake in the quiet night of my kitchen while my baby sleeps. Anyway, if you’ve been thinking about picking something up, but are afraid that you won’t be good—get over it. You won’t be. Not at first. You have to suck a little bit before you get better. You have to have a freakout because your sourdough starter doesn’t smell right, you have to stab yourself with an embroidery needle five dozen times, you have to have accidentally left a shade-loving plant in full sun. Just do it. Don’t be afraid, the gods are with you. Hail Sif! Golden haired, paitient Lady of Wheat, who stood by through every burst bag of flour and every accidental replacement of corn starch for baking powder 😭. 🦉🌾🍞🥖

How Nosferatu Changed the Myth of the Vampire Today, it is almost impossible to imagine a vampire without one defining rule: sunlight kills them. As soon as dawn arrives, the vampire retreats into darkness, and if the first rays of sunlight catch them off guard, they turn to ash or disappear into smoke. We are so used to this idea that it feels as though it has always been part of vampire mythology. However, when we look at older folklore and classical literature, we find something quite different. Sunlight was not originally the vampire’s greatest enemy. The Vampire of Folklore In older Balkan and Slavic traditions, the vampire was not an elegant aristocrat living in a dark castle, but primarily a dead person who returned among the living. Night was associated with their activity, but the arrival of dawn did not mean their death. In some traditions, a vampire could move among people, visit their family, return to their former wife, or even travel to another village. The boundary between the world of the living and the dead was much less defined than we imagine today. If a vampire needed to be destroyed, much more specific methods were used, such as a wooden stake, fire, decapitation, or certain rituals. Sunlight was not a weapon against them. It could mark the arrival of day and the end of their nighttime activity, but it was not deadly. Literary Vampires Did Not Burn in Sunlight Either When the vampire moved from folklore into literature, its image began to change, but the rule about sunlight still did not exist. John Polidori’s vampire from 1819 could move among human society, while Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla from 1872 was also far removed from the image of a creature that would turn to ash at the first ray of sunlight. Even the most famous literary vampire did not have this weakness. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published in 1897, the Count can move around in daylight. Sunlight limits some of his supernatural abilities and makes him weaker, but it does not burn or kill him. By the end of the nineteenth century, the vampire was already firmly associated with the night, but it still was not bound by the rule that it had to die with the rising sun. 1922: The Year Everything Changed Then came Nosferatu. In 1922, German director F. W. Murnau made Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens, an unauthorized film adaptation of Stoker’s Dracula. Dracula became Count Orlok, and the story received one of the most famous endings in horror history. Orlok remains with his victim until morning. When the first rays of sunlight reach him, the vampire disappears into smoke. Sunlight became deadly The idea was simple, dramatic, and visually striking. It quickly began influencing future portrayals of vampires. What was originally a cinematic choice for a powerful ending gradually became one of the defining rules of the entire genre. @OnReturningtotheOldGods

A slightly larger spider medallion with inlaid blood jasper. This one was custom made for a friend and I can't wait to get it out to her!

Oh, and can I tell you guys—pickle, Irish cheddar and dill is a banger flavor combination for focaccia.

Behold, Aphrodite

Hæl Beowa ᛄ Hæl Ing Under Ash & Oak Hearth Wotan-Erwache.com

Honeycomb mead-soaked spice cake (it’s just as sweet and decadent as it sounds) 🍯🐝💕 Hail Sif! Hail Lugh! Hail Beowa! Hail Freyr and Freya! Hail the gods of the Isles, of my mothers and fathers. Hail Lammas and Lughnasa time, the high bright peak of summer. 🍰🐝🌸🍯🌻🦉

Happy Frigga’s Day! I have one bottle of my husband’s plain honey mead left before we get into the triple berry batch he made two months ago. This was a fun project—and our first foray into mead making (we were too nervous to waste good fruit for our first ever batch, so we stuck with a dark local gallberry honey). I’m thinking it’s so time for a Saturday night mead honey spice cake…. 👹🐝🍯 Have a good weekend!