Uncover forgotten curses in the dark corners of Rokugan in White Feathers, Crimson Leaves, a new original novel by @jmreynolds.bsky.social set in the world of #LegendoftheFiveRings.
Read more: www.legendofthefiverings.com/white-feathers
Order now: books2read.com/WhiteFeather...
12–13th century BCE bronze Chinese Zun wine vessel in the shape of an owl. Image from Minneapolis Institute of Art promotional material.
this thing is amazing: 12–13th century BCE owl-shaped Chinese Zun bronze wine vessel! On display at Minneapolis Institute of Art, Gallery 214 🦉
Ancient Egyptian snake-god Apep (Apophis), a giant snake with human legs, snake-god of the underworld, illustration from the book "Pantheon Egyptien" by Leon Jean Joseph Dubois, 1824. From the New York Public Library
me if u even care
Japanese art showing two bats. One holding an umbrella.
Title: Komori no godan (bats)
Artist: Tsukioka Yoshitoshi
🖤🦇🦇🖤
Geology specimen photo
Look at this Beautiful Pink quartz geode from Patagonia, South America.
📷 Cave & Canyon
#minerals #geology
This image shows a rare Aztec or Mixtec turquoise mosaic mask, likely representing the god Tezcatlipoca, dated to approximately 1400-1521 CE. Known as the "Smoking Mirror" deity, Tezcatlipoca was a primary creator god associated with fate, night, and warriors. Such artifacts were often gifts or ceremonial objects, with similar examples residing in museums like the British Museum.
Mask of a Tezcatlipoca as a Jaguar
turquoise shell and obsidian mosaic
c. 1400-1521 CE
Aztec
Mexico
Tezcatlipoca was an Aztec creator deity associated with fate, night, and warriors.
#handmade #art #turquoise #mosaic #jaguar #tezcatlipoca #aztec #religion #ritual #precolumbian #mexico #mesoamerica
Feigning Death Part 3.
Read the bewitching conclusion to Gloria Goldberg's strange out of body experience in Tales from Nevermore.
Written by @sasidor.bsky.social, read it now:
www.arkhamhorror.com/news/tales-f...
Check out this new story I wrote! Oddities, Opossums, and the Occult abound!
www.arkhamhorror.com/news/tales-f...
Feigning Death - Part Two
Gloria Goldberg's strange tale continues in this extract from the pages of Tales from Nevermore and @sasidor.bsky.social.
Read or download today's issue now: www.arkhamhorror.com/news/tales-f...
Pavel Tchelitchew, 1949
Pavel Tchelitchew, 1949
My photo shows an ancient Egyptian Senet gaming board. It is a small rectangular box made of glossy bright blue faience with a separate sliding drawer at one end (shown at left) for storing the blue faience gaming pieces. Six gaming pieces are shown on the game board on top of the box. Three are reel-shaped and three are semi-conical. There are four reel-shaped pieces and one semi-conical piece on the display case surface beside the game board. The long side of the gaming board is decorated with alternating ‘Isis Knot’ and ‘djed pillar’ symbols. The gaming board dimensions are 5.5 x 7.7 x 21 cm. On display at Brooklyn Museum. Dated New Kingdom, Dynasty 18, reign of Amenhotep III c. 1390-1353 BC Here’s the Brooklyn Museum Catalogue description: “Top of board divided into thirty compartments with dividing lines glazed black. Four squares inscribed with numerals and a nefer sign. Long sides decorated with painted design of seven panels, each with alternating ankh and djed signs. Solid end bears painted Horus name (Amenhotep III?) ‘beloved of Amon.’ Open end pierced twice on one side. Base glazed black. Ends of drawer glazed dark and light blue in checkerboard pattern. Base and interior of drawer glazed dark purple-blue. Front of drawer pierced with four small holes (for handle?); sides pierced three times and two times - purpose not evident. Condition: Object has been assembled from fragments. Extensive scattered areas of plaster restoration. The drawer was probably originally much longer. Glaze worn in spots. Numerous firing cracks”.
A 3,400 year old Ancient Egyptian ‘Senet’ game board with gaming pieces.
Senet is one of the earliest known board games. Popular in ancient Egypt, it was associated with the soul’s journey through the underworld and was often placed in tombs.
Brooklyn Museum 📷 by me
#Archaeology
"The ceiling of the church is a decorative stone rib vault. Where the ribs meet in the middle are decorative roof bosses of which there are a number of different designs, including a Green Man, which is usually considered to be a pagan symbol of fertility. In the Christian church the Green Man is often used as a symbol for Easter and the Resurrection."
Green Man, a pagan symbol of fertility.
Nave Ceiling Boss.
Crowland Abbey was a monastery of the Benedictine Order in Lincolnshire.
#Easter #grotesque #monstrous
A wood carved devil figure. In the 1890's a decision was taken to extend St Mary's Church. A tender for the work was issued and the contract was awarded to the architect Sir Arthur Bloomfield. A local Swansea architect also submitted a tender but was unsuccessful. The local architect did not take the rejection well. When a row of cottages later came onto the market, he bought them, had them demolished and built offices, which would later become the offices of a brewery. The Swansea Devil or "Old Nick" as he is often known was carved and placed on the offices overlooking the church. By repute it is said that the architect predicted that his Devil would one day watch St Mary's burn. In February 1941 in the 3 night blitz, thousands of fire bombs were dropped on Swansea and St Mary's was largely destroyed. Following WW2 the Swansea Devil disappeared until found by local historian Rowley Davies in Gloucester and returned to the Quadrant Centre in the 1980s. In 2019 the owners of the Quadrant, Coal Pension Property Ltd kindly decided that as the site is to be redeveloped, the wooden carving should be transferred to Swansea Museum
Had a work trip to Swansea Museum earlier. Waiting in the foyer I overheard a school kid say to their group "Let's go and see the devil!"
I followed them *of course* down to the lower ground floor and found The Swansea Devil...
>>> Hit Alt Text to Discover More <<<
A bug-eyed beige yam mascot poses with raised arms in a hallway in front of a shuttered store.
Jinenger, an eccentric, energetic mountain yam, is an unofficial mascot for Shiroi City.
A close up of the head and thorax and part of the abdomen of a Privet Hawk-moth.
A close up of a most magnificent Moth, a Privet Hawk-moth. #MothMonday #teammoth
Takato Yamamoto
Takato Yamamoto
Mace head depicting a jaguar, its open mouth revealing powerful fangs. The ears are raised and alert, while the eyes, set within circular cavities, intensify a fierce expression that gives the figure an immediate sense of tension, as if ready to leap upon its prey. The volumes are compact and powerful, reflecting a deliberately massive and expressive conception. The Chorotega were a powerful, culturally advanced indigenous group that migrated from Mexico to Pacific Nicaragua and Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula, forming the southernmost Mesoamerican culture. Famous for intricate, hand-polished ceramics and strong agriculture, they were fierce warriors with a complex society, featuring elected leaders and a strict religious caste.
Jaguar mace head
nephrite jade
500 BCE - 500 CE
Chorotega culture
Costa Rica
#handmade #ancientart #culture #chorotega #costarica #mesoamerica #precolumbian #prehispanic #carved #nephrite #jade #jaguar #macehead #weapon #ceremonial #ritual #religion #art #craft #oneofakind
A Moche stirrup-spout bottle with the form of a Tyto alba, the western barn owl. Orangish in color, with faded white stripes on the deep feathered tufting around its eyes, the owl looks down and slightly to its right. Incredibly realistic.
The goddess Athena herself would have coveted this stirrup-spout bottle in the shape of an owl. Created thousands of miles across the ocean from Greece, this bottle is typical of the work of Moche ceramicists of Peru’s North Coast. #MetMuseum 🏺 1/
200-500 CE. 📸 me
A rodent hand, with four short fingers with curved claws. The short thumb has a dirty, awkwardly human-looking nail.
Reminder: most rodents have thumb nails rather than claws.
In fact the ancestor of all rodents probably had nails.
They probably evolved independently from our nails but for similar reasons: nails are good for dexterous food handling.
📸Missagia et al 2025
The Mills of the Gods by Tim Powers: Review by Gary K. Wolfe locusmag.com/review/...
Photo of a Cladonia podetium that is comprised of a thick stalk that’s grey in colour and covered in green scales/squamules plus apothecia at the top that are brown in colour with a bubbly/lumpy surface.
Cladonia sp lichen. NWT, Canada.
Lichen is about 3cm high. #lichen #fungi #fungifriends
Near perfect cubes of Pyrite from a mine in Spain. These natural crystals have not been carved, cut, or polished and are shown just as they came from the earth.
This 1.8kilo specimen has 3 amazing cubes that sit attached to their original limestone matrix.
~ r/Damnthatsinteresting
The British Museum photo shows a six-sided, cube-shaped die carved from rock crystal on a grey surface. The six sides are numbered one to six. The numbers are represented by circular incised markings, which comprise of a dark outer ring with a dark dot at the centre. Length: 9 - 13 millimetres, width: 9 - 13 millimetres. Display lighting casts a shadow beneath the die.
Timeless design!
Roman rock crystal gaming die marked one to six like modern dice 🎲 1st-2nd century AD.
📷 British Museum www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...
#Archaeology
A paperback book: THE THING -- THE NEW CLASSIC OF ALIEN TERROR -- A NOVEL BY ALAN DEAN FOSTER -- BASED ON A SCREENPLAY BY BILL LANCASTER (1982). The turquoise cover art shows insectile legs and a glowing red eye submerged in an icy waste that reaches to a diffuse horizon.
Writing something about the new edition of The Thing Artbook, and I've finally traced the uncredited artist for the cover of the Bantam novelisation. It's Jim Burns. Rather vague where the film is concerned but it's still the best of the novelisation covers.
The Venus of Brassempouy (or Lady of Brassempouy) is one of the earliest representations of the human face. It was sculpted in mammoth ivory about 25,000 years ago. It was discovered in a cave at Brassempouy, France in 1892.
Statue of a monstrous creature say the basic body template is a dog but the mouth has big fangs and is opened almost as big as a frogs I think the statue is made of bronze but the eyes appear to be a different material in red glass maybe I don't know and this creature also appears to have spikes or spines or something coming out of its back
Spirit guardian, Henan or Hebei China, ca. 500-534
Close up of a section of a brown lichen with one big, round apothecium…looking a bit like an alien creature with one big eye. Blue sky (no pun intended) in the background.
Cetraria islandica, an edible #lichen, often called Iceland Moss…even though it isn’t a moss. Looks very Star Trek. Newfoundland, Canada. #fungi #fungifriends
Close-up of a hedgehog figurine. It is glazed in a bright blue, its eyes are black. The glaze is chipped in many places but remains mostly intact
A charming #Egyptian figurine of a hedgehog, made of faience, dating ca 1900 BC, from Thebes, #Egypt.
The Egyptians associated hedgehogs with rebirth.
On display at Neues Museum Berlin
📷 me
🏺
See, this is what the internet is really about: a lovely older gentleman showing off the massive purple cabbage he grew whilst wearing a purple cabbage print hat and coat.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRYw...
