The squill (Urginea maritima) is a mediterranean plant with medicinal uses as a cardiac stimulant, diuretic, and expectorant. In ancient Arcadia, after a failed hunt, hunters would ritually beat an image of Pan with squills. #FolkloreThursday

📷l: squill; r: Pan as hunter (c. 362 BCE)

We walk with shadows. We walk with ghosts. The stories of place write themselves upon our inner landscape. Sometimes we hear a good angel whisper to pause, lest we stumble and fall through a weakness in time itself. – #CLNolan

"What so effectually proclaims the madman as the hollow thundering of words -- be they never so resplendent! -- which have no thought or knowledge behind them?"

-- Cicero, "On the Orator" I.xii.51

Once in a while it hits me fresh that all of those painfully gorgeous abbey ruins throughout England, are ruins because of the hubris of one man.

They're not supposed to be ruins. Their artwork wasn't supposed to be turned to dust & their libraries scattered to the winds.

One king did that.