Paul Robichaud
@pjrobichaud.bsky.social
Literature, myth, folklore • Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, & Brittany (Reaktion, 2026) • Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return • Poems in NewPoetry.ca, The South Shore Review, and The Ekphrastic Review • Professor of English
Delighted to see this endorsement of my forthcoming book 'Stories of the Stones' from archaeologist and author Duncan Garrow! You can pre-order the book here: reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/stories...
November 14, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Delighted to see this endorsement of my forthcoming book 'Stories of the Stones' from archaeologist and author Duncan Garrow! You can pre-order the book here: reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/stories...
‘Pan is not dead ... in every wood, if you go with a spirit properly prepared, you shall hear the note of his pipe.’
Robert Louis Stevenson was born #OTD in 1850.
🎨John Singer Sargent
Robert Louis Stevenson was born #OTD in 1850.
🎨John Singer Sargent
November 13, 2025 at 10:43 AM
‘Pan is not dead ... in every wood, if you go with a spirit properly prepared, you shall hear the note of his pipe.’
Robert Louis Stevenson was born #OTD in 1850.
🎨John Singer Sargent
Robert Louis Stevenson was born #OTD in 1850.
🎨John Singer Sargent
David Jones (1895-1974), ‘Merlin appears in the form of a young child to Arthur sleeping’ (1931). In Malory’s ‘Mort D’Arthur,’ the disguised Merlin tells Arthur, ‘King Uther Pendragon was thy father, and begat thee on Igraine.’ #WyrdWednesday
November 12, 2025 at 2:00 PM
David Jones (1895-1974), ‘Merlin appears in the form of a young child to Arthur sleeping’ (1931). In Malory’s ‘Mort D’Arthur,’ the disguised Merlin tells Arthur, ‘King Uther Pendragon was thy father, and begat thee on Igraine.’ #WyrdWednesday
One of my English great-grandfathers, Charles Pedley Browne, who served in the Great War as a sapper in the 123rd (Toronto) Battalion of the Commonwealth Expeditionary Force. Born in Coventry in 1883, he emigrated to Canada in 1905. 🇬🇧🍁 #RemembranceDay
November 11, 2025 at 12:08 PM
One of my English great-grandfathers, Charles Pedley Browne, who served in the Great War as a sapper in the 123rd (Toronto) Battalion of the Commonwealth Expeditionary Force. Born in Coventry in 1883, he emigrated to Canada in 1905. 🇬🇧🍁 #RemembranceDay
Capstone of the Er Grah tumulus at Locmariaquer, Brittany, completed c. 3,300 BCE. #TombTuesday
📷 June, 2023
📷 June, 2023
November 11, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Capstone of the Er Grah tumulus at Locmariaquer, Brittany, completed c. 3,300 BCE. #TombTuesday
📷 June, 2023
📷 June, 2023
Pan was a pastoral god, but he was also a god of the hunt. He is sometimes depicted wielding the lagobolon, a club used to hunt hares and rabbits, as in this Roman bronze from the 1st century.
November 10, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Pan was a pastoral god, but he was also a god of the hunt. He is sometimes depicted wielding the lagobolon, a club used to hunt hares and rabbits, as in this Roman bronze from the 1st century.
Looking down a row of the alignments at Kermario, near Carnac, in Brittany. The name ‘Kermario’ means ‘Place of Death.’ #StandingStoneSunday
November 9, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Looking down a row of the alignments at Kermario, near Carnac, in Brittany. The name ‘Kermario’ means ‘Place of Death.’ #StandingStoneSunday
A letter from my great-great grandfather in Airdrie to my great-grandmother in Toronto telling her he has received the memorial scroll and King’s Penny for her brother, Pte. Robert Stevenson Dines, killed in Italy serving with the Gordon Highlanders, age 22, in May 1918. 🏴🍁 #Remembrance
November 9, 2025 at 11:44 AM
A letter from my great-great grandfather in Airdrie to my great-grandmother in Toronto telling her he has received the memorial scroll and King’s Penny for her brother, Pte. Robert Stevenson Dines, killed in Italy serving with the Gordon Highlanders, age 22, in May 1918. 🏴🍁 #Remembrance
A very occasional reminder that ‘Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return,’ published by Reaktion Books, is available in paperback through your favorite bookseller.
November 8, 2025 at 4:01 PM
A very occasional reminder that ‘Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return,’ published by Reaktion Books, is available in paperback through your favorite bookseller.
‘Out of the vortex, rifling the air it came—bright,
brass-shod, Pandoran; with all-filling screaming the howl-
ing crescendo’s up-piling snapt. The universal world,
breath held, one half second, a bludgeoned stillness.’ — David Jones, ‘In Parenthesis’ (1937) #BookWormSat
🎨 David Jones
brass-shod, Pandoran; with all-filling screaming the howl-
ing crescendo’s up-piling snapt. The universal world,
breath held, one half second, a bludgeoned stillness.’ — David Jones, ‘In Parenthesis’ (1937) #BookWormSat
🎨 David Jones
November 8, 2025 at 12:04 PM
‘Out of the vortex, rifling the air it came—bright,
brass-shod, Pandoran; with all-filling screaming the howl-
ing crescendo’s up-piling snapt. The universal world,
breath held, one half second, a bludgeoned stillness.’ — David Jones, ‘In Parenthesis’ (1937) #BookWormSat
🎨 David Jones
brass-shod, Pandoran; with all-filling screaming the howl-
ing crescendo’s up-piling snapt. The universal world,
breath held, one half second, a bludgeoned stillness.’ — David Jones, ‘In Parenthesis’ (1937) #BookWormSat
🎨 David Jones
‘There was a sense of intolerable loveliness, of brimming life, of rapture. The thousand faces lifted like a cloud. They heard the piping close. And so He came.’ — Algernon Blackwood, ‘The Touch of Pan’ (1917)
🎨Arnold Böcklin, ‘Idyll’ (detail), 1875.
🎨Arnold Böcklin, ‘Idyll’ (detail), 1875.
November 6, 2025 at 11:50 AM
‘There was a sense of intolerable loveliness, of brimming life, of rapture. The thousand faces lifted like a cloud. They heard the piping close. And so He came.’ — Algernon Blackwood, ‘The Touch of Pan’ (1917)
🎨Arnold Böcklin, ‘Idyll’ (detail), 1875.
🎨Arnold Böcklin, ‘Idyll’ (detail), 1875.
November rose. 🌹
November 5, 2025 at 3:50 PM
November rose. 🌹
The Orphic Hymns (2nd-3rd century CE) to the pagan gods seem to have been composed for ritual, each prefaced by the phrase ‘Fumigation from various odors’ (trans. Thomas Taylor). Hymn 10 invokes Pan as ‘substance of the whole, etherial, marine, earthly, general soul, / Immortal fire.’ #WyrdWednesday
November 5, 2025 at 1:26 PM
The Orphic Hymns (2nd-3rd century CE) to the pagan gods seem to have been composed for ritual, each prefaced by the phrase ‘Fumigation from various odors’ (trans. Thomas Taylor). Hymn 10 invokes Pan as ‘substance of the whole, etherial, marine, earthly, general soul, / Immortal fire.’ #WyrdWednesday
At Wayland’s Smithy, July 2023. A haunting and evocative place. #TombTuesday
November 4, 2025 at 11:04 AM
At Wayland’s Smithy, July 2023. A haunting and evocative place. #TombTuesday
Coincidentally, we’re reading ‘The Great Gatsby’ in one of my classes later this week. Might need to talk about how the novel has been misunderstood and misrepresented in American popular culture.
November 3, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Coincidentally, we’re reading ‘The Great Gatsby’ in one of my classes later this week. Might need to talk about how the novel has been misunderstood and misrepresented in American popular culture.
At Avebury, July 2023. #StandingStoneSunday
November 2, 2025 at 12:23 PM
At Avebury, July 2023. #StandingStoneSunday
In Breton folklore, the Ankou serves Death by collecting the souls of the newly dead. According to Anatole Le Braz, ‘The last dead of the year, in each parish, becomes the Ankou of his parish for all of the following year.’ The Ankou was depicted as a skeletal figure.
November 1, 2025 at 11:23 AM
In Breton folklore, the Ankou serves Death by collecting the souls of the newly dead. According to Anatole Le Braz, ‘The last dead of the year, in each parish, becomes the Ankou of his parish for all of the following year.’ The Ankou was depicted as a skeletal figure.
Tonight’s viewing.
October 31, 2025 at 11:26 PM
Tonight’s viewing.
Found at the record shop today: Vincent Price, ‘Witchcraft & Magic: An Adventure in Demonology.’
October 31, 2025 at 8:19 PM
Found at the record shop today: Vincent Price, ‘Witchcraft & Magic: An Adventure in Demonology.’
Wishing you a blesséd Samhain and Happy Hallowe'en, however you celebrate! /|\
🎨Lisa Laughy
🎨Lisa Laughy
October 31, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Wishing you a blesséd Samhain and Happy Hallowe'en, however you celebrate! /|\
🎨Lisa Laughy
🎨Lisa Laughy
‘And then there came to her the vision of Pan with his crook, Pan as the Shepherd; Pan with his pipes — the Nether Apollo — the harmoniser. She saw him, shaggy and wild and kind...’ —Dion Fortune, ‘The Goat Foot God’ (1936)
🎨Jean Baudoin, 1685.
🎨Jean Baudoin, 1685.
October 30, 2025 at 1:26 PM
‘And then there came to her the vision of Pan with his crook, Pan as the Shepherd; Pan with his pipes — the Nether Apollo — the harmoniser. She saw him, shaggy and wild and kind...’ —Dion Fortune, ‘The Goat Foot God’ (1936)
🎨Jean Baudoin, 1685.
🎨Jean Baudoin, 1685.
‘One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that — to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to one by others.’ — Sylvia Townsend Warner #WyrdWednesday
October 29, 2025 at 10:52 AM
‘One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that — to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to one by others.’ — Sylvia Townsend Warner #WyrdWednesday
Enjoying this selection of tales by John Buchan, underrated as a writer of strange fiction.
October 28, 2025 at 11:06 AM
Enjoying this selection of tales by John Buchan, underrated as a writer of strange fiction.
It was the 17th century antiquarian John Aubrey who first recorded the local belief that Silbury Hill was the burial place of ‘King Zel,’ but no evidence of any burial has ever been found there. #TombTuesday
📷 June, 2023
📷 June, 2023
October 28, 2025 at 10:36 AM
It was the 17th century antiquarian John Aubrey who first recorded the local belief that Silbury Hill was the burial place of ‘King Zel,’ but no evidence of any burial has ever been found there. #TombTuesday
📷 June, 2023
📷 June, 2023
Some Emily Dickinson street art seen in Amherst, Massachusetts.
October 27, 2025 at 10:32 AM
Some Emily Dickinson street art seen in Amherst, Massachusetts.