There’s a brief update of the page for Antagonists, discussing inspirations. I’ll be adding extra material as time allows in the next few weeks.
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Mythic Sicily: Sometimes the Web Just Hands it To You on a Plate
With my Sicily writing I’m kind of stalled because I didn’t study the geography enough going in. So, I started looking for Sicilian maps. Sometimes the Internet just hands you random awesome. Check out the second map at http://www.bestofsicily.com/roadmap.htm and note that each ancient site has its own minipage of description. So, that’s basically all I need to get…
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Ars Magica note: a charm, a curse, a villain and a vis source
Our final, and longest, visit to Arthur Machen’s The White People gives us a villainess, a hero, a vis source and a basic story outline. I hope you’ve enjoyed our visits to Machen’s novella. Nurse said there was once a young lady of the high gentry, who lived in a great castle. And she was…
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Ars Magica note: Making a clay figurine to channel faerie powers
Further material from Machen’s The White People: Then we went on a little way till we came to a little brake growing right down into the road, and nurse stopped, and looked up the road and down it, and then peeped through the hedge into the field on the other side, and then she said,…
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In Mythic Sicily, you need to know how to use your fists
Most magi, when they head out into the world, take shield grogs with them. The average shield grog has light armor and inexpensive weapons, but some go further. The point man may be sheathed in metal, to soak up damage. No-one calls them on this, because in most places, a nobleman’s retinue dresses and acts…
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Ars Magica note: folk magical ritual
Again, from Machen’s The White People: So when once everybody had come, there was no door at all for anybody else to pass in by. And when they were all inside, round in a ring, touching each other, some one began to sing in the darkness, and some one else would make a noise like…
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Ars Magica note: a folk charm against the fae, from Arthur Machen’s “The White People”.
Further notes from The White People by Arthur Machen: an example of a folk charm against faeries. I could not see any stones or flowers, but I was afraid of bringing them away without knowing, and I thought I would do a charm[137] that came into my head to keep the black man away. So…
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First set of Sicily notes
I’ve been working on some Sicilian material. based on a biography by an author named van Cleve. My notes are on a separate page. I’ve been transcribing these notes for a month or so, but I’ve been stuck on the last chapter for ages. My plan, rather than continuing to plod through the pages and…
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Ars Magica note: are some people blind to all faerie glamours?
This is a a brief tale of faerie that inverts some of the usual tropes, from Arthur Machen’s The White People (via Project Gutenberg). I’ll be posting another four excerpts from this book, over the next month. Machen’s narrator is a sixteen year old, writing in a journal. It reminded me of a tale my nurse had told…
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Intaglios
Have you ever kept reminding yourself to do something, and then realised, after the day is over, that you forgot it entirely? This happens to one of the knights at the Grail Castle. People keep saying to him “Don’t forget to ask the question!” and three times he says to them “Sure, I’ll ask him…
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Games From Folktales 