GHOST:
I am thy father’s spirit,
Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night,
And for the day confin’d to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature
Are burnt and purg’d away.
Shakespeare, HAMLET, 1.5
#bookwormsat #purgatory
Artwork of a doomed city surrounded by waves.
'The waves have now a redder glow—
The hours are breathing faint and low—
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.'
-Edgar Allan Poe
🎨Edmund Dulac
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"I saw there wading through rivers wild
Treacherous men and murderers too,
And workers of ill with the wives of men:
There Nidhogg sucked the blood of the slain ..."
The Völuspá [the fate of evil people in the Viking realm of Niflheim]
🎨JosedaBc & GENZOMAN [DeviantArt]
Devil with a mustache and goatee wearing a cap with two plumes, emerging from a rocky, mountainous landscape. One clawed hand is seen on a rock.
#BookWormSat
And what hills, what hills are those, my love
Those hills so dark and low?
Those are the hills of hell, my love
Where you and I must go
"The Demon Lover / The House Carpenter" Child Ballad 243
A recently fallen Satan explores Hell. One of Gustave Doré's illustrations for John Milton's "Paradise Lost."
"Here at least we shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence.
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."
- John Milton, "Paradise Lost"
🎨Gustave Doré
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#BookWormSat 📚
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
— Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy
Artist: Paul Gustave Louis Christophe Doré (1832–1883).
#BookwormSat 📚🔥
Theme: Hell & Purgatory
Detail from André Orsel’s 1832 "Good and Evil": Lucifer tempts a young woman, pulling her toward hell’s flames in the battle of good vs evil. 🎨👹
#BookwormSat 📚🪽
Guido Reni’s 1635 Baroque masterpiece: Archangel Michael pins contorted Satan underfoot as graceful Roman soldier, triumphing over evil. Housed in Rome’s Santa Maria della Concezione.
A red demon bureaucrat in a blue suit. Illustration by Tiffany Pai.
"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of 'Admin.' The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime'.... My symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
- C. S. Lewis, "Screwtape Letters"
#BookWormSat
Beelzebub Resurfaces James Robertson A girnin, greitin deil wis I – I wis auld, and feelin aulder. Syne the heatin system burst in Hell: It wis cauld – and gettin caulder. When the fires were doun tae reek and ash, And the cauldrons fou o ice, And imps and bogles hunkered roond Like cowrin, chitterin mice, And the wretched deid were truly deid, And had nae pain left tae thole – I kent that it wis time tae leave Yon dreich and dowie hole. I trauchled up the auld stane stair, Unsnecked the rousty yett, And hard upon the stoury grund Ma clootie fit I set. The Earth wis yince a paradise – It wis bonnie, bricht and braw, And a sulky soor-mooth like masel It didna please at aw. But noo I fund a different scene, That gart ma spirits lowp, For man had made his paradise A stinkin, scabbit cowp. The land wis deid, the oceans deid, The fush and wild beasts gane, The rainforests were hackit doun, And the rain wis acid rain; Deserts had smoored the green fields ower, The ice-caps were snaw-bree, Floods had drouned the straths and glens, And wild winds whipped the sea.
Fires bleezed that made aw Hell’s fires seem Mere skinkles in the nicht; And, in their bonnie, beekin lowe, O whit a glorious sicht! God’s craitur fechtin wi himsel For ile and land and food, For widd and water, graith and gear, And – best o aw – for God; Men busy killin ither men Wi guns and bombs and tanks, And slauchterin bairns and weemin tae – And the deid piled up in ranks. I minded whit I’d read langsyne And clapped ma hauns wi glee, For whit I saw looked awfie like A Judgment Day tae me. Sae aw ye princes, presidents And ither heids o state, Herrie and fyle, oppress, invade, And dinna be ower blate. And aw ye haly terrorists, Be bauld and fou o faith, And whaur ye ding doun tyranny Raise misery and daith. I am a stranger faur frae hame, But I fairly like yer style, Sae dinna mind me sittin here – I dout I’ll bide a while. A girnin, greitin deil wis I – A sair-faced auld doom-monger. But noo I’m happy, and whit’s mair – I believe I’m gettin younger!
A girnin, greitin deil wis I –
I wis auld, and feelin aulder.
Syne the heatin system burst in Hell:
It wis cauld – and gettin caulder…
—James Robertson, “Beelzebub Resurfaces”
#BookWormSat #poem #poetry
www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/beelzeb...
An illustration of a woman standing near a building with a depiction of the Adam and Eve apple scene on one of the decorations. She is looking up at a full moon and the stars seem to be tracing from her to it.
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way.
📜The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
🎨Kay Nielsen
#BookWormSat
The painting "Hecate, or Enitharmon's Joy" by William Blake: a composition in dark tones of three figures close together, representing Hecate, the Greek Goddess of the crossroads, the night and magic. They is accompanied by a donkey or mule, an owl, a crocodile, and a bat-like creature. They gaze at the animals while resting their hand upon a book.
#BookWormSat
🖊️Philip Pullman
🎨Wm Blake
"we... refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and learn things... if they come down here bringing nothing, we shall not guide them out."
A depiction of hell showing two men fighting where one has his mouth open on the neck of the other. behind them Virgil and Dante look on perturbed and a winged devil smiles in the background.
"...and hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times blacker with that guest than ever it was before!"
Emily Brontë
📖 Wuthering Heights
🖼️Dante & Virgil by William-Adolphe Bouguereau #BookWormSat
4pm TODAY on @SkyArts
Spymasters: The Great Spy Writers
Ep 1 of 4, Kipling to Graham Greene
The lives and secrets of spy authors in literature & film, featuring the work of Rudyard Kipling, John Buchan and Graham Greene, as well as film clips
#BookchatWeekly #BookwormSat #BookSky
“Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!”
(Lord Byron)
🎨 Eugène Delacroix “The Confession of the Giaour” (c 1830)
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"And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell... and for the first time glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf."
—Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
#BookWormSat
In some ways the most real and rooted people whom Sandy knew were Miss Gaunt and the Kerr sisters who made no evasions about their belief that God had planned for practically everybody before they were born a nasty surprise when they died. Later, when Sandy read John Calvin, she found that although popular conceptions of Calvinism were sometimes mistaken, in this particular there was no mistake, indeed it was but a mild understanding of the case, he having made it God’s pleasure to implant in certain people an erroneous sense of joy and salvation, so that their surprise at the end might be the nastier.
“In some ways the most real & rooted people whom Sandy knew were Miss Gaunt & the Kerr sisters who made no evasions about their belief that God had planned for practically everybody before they were born a nasty surprise when they died…”
—Muriel Spark, THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE
#BookWormSat 💙📚
"Fathers and teachers, what is hell? I think it is the suffering of one who can no longer love. Once, in the infinity of existence... a spiritual creature, upon its appearance on earth, is given the power to say: 'I am and I love.'"
—The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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A gaping red hot lion’s mouth is open demons throw souls into this entrance to hell. Above is castle decorated with skulls. At the bottom is a demon with scrolls of seven deadly sins
“You will flitter
invisible among
the indistinct dead
in Hell’s palace
darting fitfully”
Sappho
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🖼️ = Mouth of Hell, Final Absolution (1440) Book of Hours. One of my all time favorites from The Morgan Library
"The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n...
Here at least
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence...
Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heav’n."
—Paradise Lost, John Milton
#BookWormSat
The cover of Eric, by Terry Pratchett. A man in a turban riding a luggage with small legs coming out of it across a midieval cityscape. A tropical bird in the foreground and a figure with the sword in the background. The title Faust, is crossed out and replaced with Eric, scribbled in red.
Hell, it has been suggested, is other people.
This has always come as a bit of a surprise to working demons, who had always thought that Hell was sticking sharp things into people and pushing them into lakes of blood and so on.
#TerryPratchett, Eric
#bookwormsat
A book cover with a deep red background. Centered in large white serif text is the Italian title: “Favola di Belfagor arcidiavolo.” Above and around the title, there is a simple, cartoon-like white figure outlined in black. The figure has a rounded, ghost-like or impish shape with small horns, suggesting a devil. It has minimal facial features and is decorated with small pink hearts on its body, giving it a playful, ironic tone rather than a frightening one. The overall design contrasts the serious literary title with a cute, stylized depiction of a devil figure.
Belfagor arcidiavolo ("Belfagor the archdaemon") is a novella by Niccolò Machiavelli, written between 1518 and 1527, and first published with his collected works in 1549.
The story derives from Medieval Slavic folklore (and gave birth to a German and North-European
#BookWormSat 🧵
![So saying, he led the way out through halls and trances that were weel kenn’d to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlour; and there was as much singing of profane sangs, and birling of red wine, and speaking blasphemy and sculduddry, as had ever been in Redgauntlet Castle when it was at the blithest.
But, Lord take us in keeping, what a set of ghastly revellers they were that sat around that table! My gudesire kenn’d mony that had long before gane to their place, for often had he piped to the most part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce Middleton, and the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with his bald head and a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with Cameron’s blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr. Cargill’s limbs till the blude sprung; and Dunbarton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country and king. There was the Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom had been to the rest as a god. And there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled locks streaming down to his laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance; while the rest hallooed, and sang, and laughed, that the room rang. But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to time; and their laugh passed into such wild sounds as made my gudesire’s very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes.
They that waited at the table were just the wicked servingmen and troopers, that had done their work and cruel bidding on earth. There was the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that […]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:vmd2oqboco524fhpqdu7pnbn/bafkreiadq44squsy2dlbwlv6mdak5td4wkegax2iojfzuqim7delhcxvie)
So saying, he led the way out through halls and trances that were weel kenn’d to my gudesire, and into the auld oak parlour; and there was as much singing of profane sangs, and birling of red wine, and speaking blasphemy and sculduddry, as had ever been in Redgauntlet Castle when it was at the blithest. But, Lord take us in keeping, what a set of ghastly revellers they were that sat around that table! My gudesire kenn’d mony that had long before gane to their place, for often had he piped to the most part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the fierce Middleton, and the dissolute Rothes, and the crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with his bald head and a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with Cameron’s blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw, that tied blessed Mr. Cargill’s limbs till the blude sprung; and Dunbarton Douglas, the twice-turned traitor baith to country and king. There was the Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly wit and wisdom had been to the rest as a god. And there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he lived, with his long, dark, curled locks streaming down to his laced buff-coat, and his left hand always on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from them all, and looked at them with a melancholy, haughty countenance; while the rest hallooed, and sang, and laughed, that the room rang. But their smiles were fearfully contorted from time to time; and their laugh passed into such wild sounds as made my gudesire’s very nails grow blue, and chilled the marrow in his banes. They that waited at the table were just the wicked servingmen and troopers, that had done their work and cruel bidding on earth. There was the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that […]
Steenie Steenson Demanding a Receipt for his Rent form Sir Robert Redgauntlet. Thomas Brown, engraving on paper. From "Six Engravings in Illustration of Redgauntlet. For the Members of the Royal Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland", 1876. A scene inside an antique chamber with panelled walls and bare floorboards. On the right, a man, soberly dressed in plain seventeenth-century clothes, holds a piece of paper in his right hand and his hat in his left. He gazes left, at a table full of sinister-looking drunken revellers sitting around a table in front of a smoky fireplace. The revellers have frock coats and long curled wigs. One has a bandaged, gouty foot propped up in front of him. Others wear armour or gaudy hats with feathers. A broken bottle and scattered playing cards lie on the floor. Behind the standing man are more revellers, arguing, waving bottles, and slumping drunkenly to the ground.
“Lord take us in keeping, what a set of ghastly revellers they were that sat around that table!”
In Walter Scott’s short story “Wandering Willie’s Tale”, Steenie Steenson needs proof that he has paid his rent. But to get a receipt, Steenie must first find his landlord in Hell…
#BookWormSat 💙📚 #C19
#BookWormSat
The Arthur of early Welsh mythology, of Taliesin and the Mabinogion, was a very different character to the later romanticised version more familiar today.
1/5
Oh Lestat, you deserved everything that's ever happened to you. You better not die. You might actually go to hell.
Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat
#BookWormSat
Pan playing his pipes surrounded by the damned.
'The Magician' is a 1908 novel by Somerset Maugham. It features an occultist named Oliver Haddo (modelled on Aleister Crowley), who seduces a young woman. In the 1926 film adaptation, she experiences a terrifying vision of Pan in Hell. #BookWormSat
📷 Hubert Stowitts as Pan.
Book cover for The Rebel by Camus
For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.
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🖼Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, John Singer Sargent, 1889. Painting of Ellen Terry in costume of blue, emerald and gold, she is holding a crown above her head. She has long red braided hair.
‘Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then
'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky.’ ~ Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare.
@DeeringRachel here now for a #BookWormSat thrust into the flames of a literary hell.
🖼️ Last Judgement and Hell c.1335–1340, fresco by Buonamico Buffalmacco (c.1315–1336).
‘O thou! whatever title suit thee,-
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie!
Wha in yon cavern, grim an' sootie,
Clos'd under hatches,
Spairges about the brunstane cootie
To scaud poor wretches!’ 1/2 Address To The Devil ~ Robert Burns. #BookWormSat
12:06pm TODAY on @bbcworldservice
World Book Club
Octavia Bright talks to Ragnar Jonasson about his thriller 📖 “The Darkness”
#BookchatWeekly #BookwormSat #BookSky
