Tine Talon Claw

13/08/2026

In Haitian Vodou, Papa Legba is the lwa associated with the spiritual crossroads and communication between humanity and the unseen world. He is not merely a mysterious figure standing where two roads meet. He is the intermediary who makes communication possible, which is why he is traditionally addressed near the beginning of ceremonies so the way can be opened for contact with other lwa.

Papa Legba is often portrayed as an elderly man walking with a cane or crutch, sometimes accompanied by a dog. His appearance can seem humble, but his position is immensely important. He understands the languages of the spirits and humanity. Without the road being opened, the message cannot pass.

This makes the crossroads surrounding Legba more than a symbol of choosing between two directions. It is the meeting point between worlds, the place where the human and divine can communicate.

Popular culture has often transformed Papa Legba into a sinister “devil at the crossroads,” but this confuses Haitian Vodou with later fictional imagery and other traditions. He is not the Christian Devil, nor should he be reduced to a generic god of crossroads. Papa Legba belongs to a living religion with its own history, communities, and sacred practices.

His presence carries a powerful lesson: not every doorway opens through force. Some thresholds require permission. Some roads require respect. Some knowledge can only be reached when the proper relationship has been established.

Papa Legba stands at that boundary.

The keeper of communication.

The one who opens the way.

Before the message can travel between the visible and invisible worlds, the gate must open and Papa Legba holds the key.
Via Hex and Shadow Chronicles

12/08/2026

IT'S TIME.

19/07/2026

28/06/2026

Epona is the Continental Celtic Horse Goddess who proved so popular She was adopted by the Romans. Shrines to Her could be found in stables, and it is likely the Romans brought Her worship with them to Britain, where She was unknown before, even though the people there were also of Celtic stock.

Her name comes from the Gaulish word for "horse", epos, which derives from the same root as both the Latin word for horse, equus and the Greek, hippos. Her name means "Divine Mare". Though Her name is said to give us our word "pony", the actual source of that word is from the Gaelic ponaidh and/or Irish poni.

Epona is shown here in the so-called Imperial pose,the usual depiction of Her outside of Gaul. She is seated between two of the little wild horses known in the Camargue, the marshy area in the south of France. These horses (by modern standards, ponies, since they average about 13 hands high) are descended from ones that escaped from the Romans when they were in the area. They are a strange-looking variety, with square heads and a fay look, and though they are born dark brown or black they become white when they are adults, though some of them keep the dark mane and tail.

Epona and Her friends are depicted within the head of the White Horse of Uffington, in Oxfordshire, England, with the Horse stretching out behind them and White Horse Vale in the background. The White Horse is likely a little too early to have been originally associated with Epona, as it's pre-Roman, and it was probably carved by a horse-worshipping Celtic tribe as a boundary marker.

Epona may well be related to the Welsh horse-goddess Rhiannon, for one of Epona's titles is "Queen"—in the Latin, Regina, and in Gaulish, Rigatona, which later became the name Rhiannon.

16/05/2026

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.
The "Forbidden" Collection
Yale holds several famous and mysterious texts that fuel this "magic book" reputation:
The Voynich Manuscript: Perhaps the world’s most famous "forbidden" book. It is written in an unknown script with drawings of plants that don’t exist on Earth. Despite centuries of effort by codebreakers, it has never been deciphered.
The Mellon Alchemical Collection: This contains hundreds of manuscripts detailing the history of alchemy, hermeticism, and early chemistry.
Occult Grimoires: The collection includes various historical "black books" or grimoires from the medieval and Renaissance periods that outline rituals, folk magic, and early astrological beliefs.

27/04/2026

Aleister Crowley’s fascination with Egypt was neither casual nor merely aesthetic, but rooted in a conviction that its religious and magical systems preserved fragments of a perennial wisdom; one that predated and underlay all later occult traditions. To him, Egypt represented not a vanished civilization but a repository of living symbols, awaiting reanimation through ritual and will.

Aleister Crowley found himself in 1904, moving through Cairo as though through a palimpsest of forgotten rites. There, amid the charged atmosphere of temples half-ruined and wholly potent in imagination, the voice of Ai-Wass declared itself, not as a metaphor, but as an intrusion from a plane Crowley would insist was objective and exterior to his own mind.

The circumstances are by now well known, yet retain their peculiar disquiet. It was not Crowley alone who stood at the threshold. His wife, Rose Edith Kelly, far from a passive companion, functioned as the necessary medium through which the current first manifested. In a state that bordered on trance, she identified Horus as the presiding force and directed Crowley, with an authority he could neither dismiss nor explain, toward the stele that would anchor the reception of The Book of the Law. Her role was catalytic, she opened the door, as it were, through which Ai-Wass could speak, while Crowley, disciplined yet susceptible, became the scribe of a doctrine he scarcely comprehended at the time.

Thus Egypt, in Crowley’s experience, was not an antiquarian fascination but a living theatre of initiation, where the old gods were neither dead nor symbolic, but active intelligences awaiting the proper conjunction of will, circumstance, and receptivity.

21/04/2026

They tried to silence Ireland with a single law.

Between 1650 and 1660, Oliver Cromwell ordered the destruction of Irish harps and organs across Ireland. The harp wasn't just music. It was memory. It carried the genealogies of clans, the names of the fallen, and the history of a people who had no printing press. Destroy the harp, and you destroy the story.

They failed.

The Irish harp is the oldest national symbol still in use in Europe. It predates every flag, every crest, every coat of arms on the continent. It sits on the Irish passport, the presidential seal, and every pint of Guinness poured in every pub from Galway to Chicago. Your ancestors carried that symbol in their hearts across every ocean, through every famine, through every exile. It outlived every conqueror who tried to erase it.

That is what Irish identity is made of. Not just survival. Defiance. 🇮🇪

28/03/2026

Even a king wasn’t above the law.

Under Brehon Law, power didn’t protect you… it held you to a higher standard.

If a king broke the law, he didn’t escape punishment.
He was fined, just like anyone else, often more severely.

His honour price was higher.
His responsibility was greater.
And his failure carried real consequences.

A king who ruled unjustly could lose more than wealth.
He could lose his right to rule.

Because in this system, authority came with obligation.
Not control, but balance.

Imagine that today…
Leaders judged not by status, but by the same laws as everyone else.

No exceptions.
No immunity.
No escaping responsibility.

So what do you think?

Was this a system that truly kept power in check…
or just an ideal that rarely matched reality?
Retrobite Irish Mythology