Where the Map Ends

Oct 15, 2026

Punkie Night's Hollow Lanterns

In Somerset, children still carve lanterns from mangel-wurzel beets and parade them through the dark on the last Thursday of October, a custom older and stranger than Halloween's pumpkin.

Oct 12, 2026

The Bone Fires of Samhain

A look at Samhain, the old Gaelic turning of the year behind Halloween, and the hilltop bonfires once lit to hold back what crossed over on that night.

Oct 11, 2026

Candles for the Forefathers

A look at Dziady, the Slavic rite of laying food, drink, and candlelight for the ancestral dead, and its place among the old year's turn toward winter.

Oct 3, 2026

Whichever Way the Cat Turns

A look at the British and European belief that a black cat crossing your path is an omen, and why the same animal means ruin in one county and fortune in the next.

Sep 16, 2026

The Silence of the Stillhart

A record of hill-country testimony concerning the Stillhart, a stag so still that trees root in its antlers, and of the silence it lays upon those who see it.

Sep 15, 2026

When the Hunt Rides Overhead

A survey of the Wild Hunt, the storm-borne procession of masked riders and howling hounds that recurs across European folklore as a warning to those still walking the roads below.

Sep 14, 2026

The Threshold Must Be Guarded

A look at the old European practice of laying salt and iron at doorways to bar witches, spirits and the fae from crossing into the house.

Sep 1, 2026

The Bough He Carried Instead

A look at the holly bough carried by the Green Knight in the Middle English romance, the small green sign that turned an armed intruder's arrival into something closer to a game than a threat.

Aug 22, 2026

The Fox Who Outwitted the Court

A journal entry tracing Reynard the Fox through the medieval beast-epics of France, Flanders and Germany, and asking why a liar became the most beloved animal in European letters.

Aug 14, 2026

The Line Nothing Crosses

A short account of the salt circle, a protective boundary drawn against unwelcome spirits, and why so many unrelated traditions arrived at the same substance and the same shape.