The Energy Flickered And Sputtered Through Him, Less Like Electricity And More Like Remembering A Secret.

The energy flickered and sputtered through him, less like electricity and more like remembering a secret. It was strong, all-encompassing, and then fading, waiting. Sometimes he was nothing but it, and sometimes, it was nearly forgotten. 

And beneath it all, he felt the oldness of Cabeswater. The strangeness. There was something true and inhuman at its core. It had been there so many centuries before him, and it would exist for centuries after. In the relative scheme of things, Adam Parrish was irrelevant. He was such a small thing, just a whorl in the fingerprint of a massive being.

- The Dream Thieves, Chapter 50

Gansey was there. He must have been there all along, because now that she thought about it, she couldn’t stop sensing him there... The joy from her previous revelation overlapped slowly on to this joy. He was still alive, she had him with her, she was as close to him as she could possibly be.

Where are we?

We’re a tree. I’m a tree. You’re - haha I can’t say that. It would be filthy.

Are you laughing? 

Yes, because I’m happy. 

- The Raven King, Chapter 47

Image: Scott Lickstein,  It Feels Like, 2013.

Scott Lickstein painting

“Scratch a bit at the thin topsoil of Irish Catholicism,” the saying goes, “and you soon come to the solid bedrock of Irish paganism.”... paganism and Catholicism in Ireland are joined twins that can not be separated. They are not opposites, as archaeologist Proinsias MacCana has pointed out, for in Ireland pagan ways and beliefs formed an “extraordinary symbiosis.” ...paganism and Christianity in Ireland need each other to live.

Patricia Monaghan, The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog: The Landscape of Celtic Myth and Spirit