Beautiful and timely burst of creative might from the wizard of Danmǫrk, Stefan aka FPOA. May this see you into the weekend!

Haghænne, Tarot Reader, Lucus Queen, Green Mechanicvm

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Faint echoes of hissing transistors and ventilators filled the vaulted reading chamber. The ceiling disappeared into the damp darkness high above and the only visible light came from the bioluminescent moss that covered most of the thorny dais standing in the centre of the chamber.

All cards but one in the aged Deck of Thornes were placed face down on top of the dais in a layout that seemed to resemble the face of a green man with one of his eyes, the upward facing card, open. Moss-covered roots and iron black cables held the card in place as tiny thorns had sprouted from its edges like small needles. The card was covered in a translucent layer of sparkling frost that almost made the depiction of a gnarled tree on a wintery field of snow-covered thorns invisible.

For a fortnight, the face of the green man had stared, with his frost-glazed eye like a bright neutron star, into the darkness above the dais. The card had proclaimed the coming of Wynter. The Elder Ones had already assembled. But this night a tiny ripple in the Empyrean had been detected once again and even though the cards had never before been read twice in the same moon phase the robed figure tapped the designated card, the closed eye of the green man, with the end of a biomechanical haw staff.

With a hissing sound of pistons moving the roots and cables on the dais turned the card over, slowly opening the other eye, and the hunched figure now stared into both eyes of the green man; His left eye was the frost-glazed Wynter Tree proclaiming the coming of winter. His right eye, now, the Tree of Codes depicting a labyrinthine shaped tree covered in cipher and encrypted text that seemed to constantly change and transform in swirling shades of green.

Puzzled the figure stared into the eyes of the green man. The Tree of Codes seemed to signify that winter would bring with it the key to the green room, but never had the Deck of Thornes been so contradictory.

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Tonight, a thousand witches will burn on a thousand pyres.

In Denmark Midsummer is celebrated on the evening of June 23rd by lighting countless bonfires all across the countryside. As such, the coast along the fjord of my hometown will be dotted by pyres in different shapes and sizes in the early hours of the bright Nordic summer night in a celebration of the Summer Solstice, which occurred a few days ago.

Early beliefs saw Midsummers Night as a night where forces of nature where more potent than the rest of the year. In some parts of the country it was even a tradition to visit sacred trees on Midsummers Day and plants and springs were said to have healing powers on this particular night.

For some hundred years, it has also been a tradition to put a witch on the bonfire to scare the magical creatures roaming the Midsummer Night away. A tradition I have always found quite gruesome…

So, on Iron Sleet the evening of June 23rd is the Night of the Wytch!

Personified by Haghænne, the Tarot Reader of Huathe’s Crataegus Court on the Thorn Moon of Gheal. Haghænne is one of the most capable Green Mechanicvm Tarot Readers of the many Thorne Courts of Crataegus and her ability to read past, present and future in the Deck of Thornes was highly influential in formulating the entire plan of transforming the Golden Throne into the Green Seat of the Emperor Reborn.

Green Man Cometh!