iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The surrealist artist, writer, and occultist Ithell Colquhoun was born #OTD in 1906. I was delighted to be able to include her painting ‘Lamorna Landscape with Antiquities’ in my most recent book, ‘Stories of the Stones,’ which also discusses her other megalith-themed art and writing.

0261

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Hope you’re having a Pan-tastic Friday! (Shirt design by @johnreppion.bsky.social)

0190

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

In the ballad ‘The Wife of Usher’s Well,’ a grieving mother is visited by her three dead sons. They wear hats made from a birch tree growing by the gates of Paradise and must depart before sunrise. #WyrdWednesday 🎨H.M. Brock

The three sons departing from the Wife of austere Well.

2254

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Sheep with standing stones at the Kerlescan alignments at Carnac in Brittany, June 2023. #StandingStoneSunday

1458

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

‘Both iron road and level highway are shunned by the rural Pan, who chooses rather to foot it along the sheep-track on the limitless downs … not without pleasant fellowship with feather and fur.’ — Kenneth Grahame, ‘Pagan Papers’ (1894) #BookWormSat 🎨 Norman Price 🇨🇦

0547

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Friday night listening: Fairport Convention, ‘Liege and Lief’ (1969). Sandy Denny’s voice is pure magic.

6230

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Currently watching. 📺 ‘Quatermass and the Pit’ (1958)

2230

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Arrived safely across the Atlantic today!

The journal ‘Folklore’ with a cover image of the Bromley stag dance

0130

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

🎨 Robert Lawson, ‘Young Pan Piping’

Pan plays his pipes while an elf listens from behind a stone.

05613

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

My great-great-grandfather Lessey Pedley Browne, who was a grocer in Coventry. He was born in Nantwich, Cheshire, son of a Welshman who had opened his own grocer’s shop in Crewe. His mother’s family, the Pedleys, were Cheshire yeomanry and the name was preserved for a couple of generations.

Historic photo of a man with a moustache.

090

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A rainbow in the east and deep red skies in the west ahead of tomorrow’s nor’easter storm here in southern New England.

0162

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

My current non-fiction reading is this excellent account of popular witchcraft belief in 19th and 20th century Britain by @drthomaswaters.bsky.social

Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times

4212

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Rosie has let me know that we aren’t going anywhere until she decides it is safe to do so.

0101

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Belbury Poly, ‘The Belbury Tales’ (2012; Bandcamp cover). The cover image alludes to the track ‘Goat Foot.’

Album cover showing goat’s foot and revellers

060

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

An unexpected late September bloom on our Princess Alexandra of Kent rose. #roses

0151

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I picked this up at the Salem Witchcraft Museum last month. In great detail, Gaskill compellingly tells the story of the witch scare in 17th century Springfield, Massachussetts. The Puritan combination of religiosity, acquisitiveness, and paranoia seem all too familiar in the US of 2026.

Macolm Gaskill, 'The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World'

2202

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Wishing you a blessed Autumn Equinox, Alban Elfed, and Mabon. 🍂

Japanese maple leaves starting to turn colour against a weakly shining sun.

4182

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

If you can find a copy, this is an excellent account (with many examples) of popular magic in the Welsh Borders. I was particularly interested as some of my 19th-century maternal forebears were from Montgomeryshire.

Welsh Border Witchcraft by Gary St. M. Nottingham

0262

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

‘The people reverence Pan (that is to say, the nature of things), a man who is half-goat, a god who is half-man.’ — Andreas Alciato, ‘The Book of Emblems’ (1531) #BookWormSat

Image of Pan sitting on a stump with his pipes, from Alciato's 'Book of Emblems' (1531)

0446

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The English artist Leonora Carrington lived in Mexico and was inspired by Indigenous mythology. She painted her mural ‘The Magical World of the Maya’ (1963-4) for the Museo Nacional de Antropología. The painting depicts imagery from the Popol Vuh, the sacred text of the Maya. #WyrdWednesday

14210

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Les Pierres Plats in Locmariaquer, Brittany, June, 2023. The menhir flanks an enclosed tomb with Neolithic carvings that is now closed to visitors to aid preservation. #TombTuesday

1161

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A centaur and Pan (or a satyr) with his pipes. Detail of the Orpheus Mosaic (3rd-4th century CE), found near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. #MosaicMonday

Centaur, Pan and some kind of animal in detail of mosaic.

14110

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

‘He can see the whole city now, a crystalline shape glowing on the shoreline where once had been nothing but forest and swamp.’ — Michael Redhill, ‘Consolation’ #BookwormSat #Toronto

Cover of Consolation, showing the Gardiner Expressway and the CN Tower in Toronto.

0182

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

An atmospheric photo of Rosie in today’s early morning light.

2130

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Seen on my walk today: skeletons riding a dinosaur.

1211

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The Odin Stone at Stennis in Orkney was where ‘two persons, generally lovers, desirous to take the promise of Odin,’ would clasp hands through the stone, according to Sir Walter Scott in 1814. When a farmer later destroyed the stone, locals set his house on fire. #WyrdWednesday 🎨 Lady Stafford

Drawing of the Odin Stone by Lady Stafford, 1805

37524

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

St-Michel tumulus at Carnac in Brittany, built in the fifth millennium BCE. The chapel on top dates from the 17th century. #TombTuesday 📷 Personal photos, June 2023.

0202

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

A fascinating glimpse into a lost world of magical practice and belief. Smith provides deep context and commentary on what can be reconstructed of a 19th century book belonging to a Welsh cunning man (dyn hysbys).

Pages from a Welsh Cunningman’s Book, Ed. Andrew Phillip Smith

2194

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

‘“Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. “Afraid! Of HIM? O, never, never! And yet — and yet — O, Mole, I am afraid!”’— Kenneth Grahame, ‘The Wind in the Willows’ (1908) #BookWormSat 🎨 Arthur Rackham, ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ (1939)

The Piper stares at us while holding his pipes, a baby otter between his hoofs.

15710

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Rosie keeping an eye on the street for us this morning.

2200

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

In Saki’s story ‘The Music on the Hill,’ a woman who has offended Pan is terrified by a glimpse of a boy’s face ‘scowling at her, brown and beautiful, with unutterably evil eyes.’ In the end, she faces a charging stag accompanied by strains of ‘wild music.’ #Pan

A statue of a boy Pan or faun holding pipes.

0112

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

'This book made me feel like a witch on a broomstick, swooping over Britain, Ireland and Brittany to alight at the ancient circles, dolmens and barrows and hear their stories... an enchanting and completely fascinating tour through the megalithic imagination.' — Fiona Robertson #booksky #megaliths

Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany, on a bookshelf beside a standing stone from Brittany

0233

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

According to the 'Orkneyinga Saga', Earl Harald Maddadsson and his men had an eerie experience at Maeshowe in 1153: ‘During a snowstorm they took shelter in Maeshowe and there two of them went insane, which slowed them down badly, so by the time they reached Firth it was nighttime.’ #TombTuesday

Maeshowe in winter, photograph by Sigurd Towie

0214

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

It’s still Lake Ontario, as it has been for over 400 years.

16411

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I love Echo and the Bunnymen, but I think they were strongest at singles rather than whole albums. Never get tired of 'Songs to Learn and Sing,' a brilliant compilation that I finally have on vinyl. 'Bring on the Dancing Horses' is one of my absolute favourite songs from the 80s.

Album sleeve above yellow record playing.

4150

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Looking forward to reading the latest from @drdjohnston.bsky.social! I ordered my copy during the U of Liverpool Press sale, but the post office lost it — fortunately the press sent another copy at no charge.

Nigel Kneale and Horror, Ed. Derek Johnston

2176

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

A large and rather ominous looking recumbent stone at the Stanton Drew Stone Circles in Somerset. #StandingStoneSunday 📷 July, 2023

0316

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Enjoyed David Keenan’s ‘This Is Memorial Device’ (2017), a fictional account of the post-punk scene in Airdrie, Scotland (coincidentally the town my great-grandmother was from). Raunchy, tender, and elegiac all at once, the novel is also about memory and how it shapes us.

This Is Memorial Device by David Keenan. Cover showing teenage boys on bench.

290

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I blew out one of my tires on a metal pipe sticking out from the unpaved surface of a local road yesterday. My sporty little car doesn't come with a spare and I've had to special order the tire before having it towed to the garage. Hopefully I’ll be zipping around again soon! 🛞

Mr Toad in his motoring outfit by E.H.. Shepard

0100

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I'm from Toronto, a Canadian city on the shores of Lake Ontario. The name of the lake and province comes from the Wendat word Ontarí'io, meaning great or beautiful lake. And it is!

1554261796

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Thinking of the original French lyrics of 'O Canada' this week, for no particular reason.

150

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

In the Acadian settlement of Miscouche in Prince Edward Island, some villagers found the location of treasure buried by a sea-captain who had murdered his wife. When they went to dig, a monstrous black dog appeared. The locals fled, thinking it the Devil. #WyrdWednesday 🎨 Cze Pku

Giant red-eyed black dog in forest with man hiding behind tree

17213

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

My summer beer — just doing my bit from here in New England! Moosehead is Canada’s oldest independent brewery, founded in 1867. 🇨🇦

Case of Moosehead lager, from Canadas oldest independent brewery.

0151

Paul Robichaud 🪨🐐 @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Currently reading. An excellent overview of the relatively few witch trials in Wales and the distinctly Welsh perspectives on magic and magical practitioners.

A History of Magic and Witchcraft in Wales by Richard Suggett

1193