{"id":14101,"date":"2026-02-17T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14101"},"modified":"2026-02-16T19:39:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T02:39:03","slug":"are-the-house-wights-studying-the-renaissance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14101","title":{"rendered":"Are the House Wights Studying the Renaissance?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Most of my stories about how the “critters,” the house wights, the Borrowers (to borrow a term), or whatever they are like shiny objects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was the still-missed Norwegian salad-serving fork<\/a>. Corkscrews vanished a couple of time. Another big serving fork disappeared and then reappeared, lying in plain view in an empty dish rack. Two rings of keys vanished from a spot on top of a filing cabinet. One later reappeared elsewhere (and there might be a naturalistic explanation, I admit), while the second was gone for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months ago they branched out into books. It was a one-time thing as far as a I can tell. (Well no, what happened to that Allan Kardec <\/a>book?) There is a kind of a switcheroo in this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I was musing about the history of the Tarot, and I wanted to look for something in Joscelyn Godwin<\/a>‘s The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance<\/em>,<\/a> but I could not find it on the shelf where it was supposed to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance <\/em>recounts the almost untold story of how the rediscovery of the pagan, mythological imagination during the Renaissance brought a profound transformation to European culture. This highly illustrated book, available for the first time in paperback, shows that the pagan imagination existed sidebyside often uneasily with the official symbols, doctrines, and art of the Church<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I looked and looked. No book. No problem, I’ld order a used copy from the Big River. In due time, it arrived. I opened it and left it on my desk. Shortly after, it disappeared, leaving only the wrappings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I ordered a third copy, and in a few days it arrived, as seen the photo. Meanwhile, the original book “re-appeared” — I put that in quotes because because it is quite possible that this was nothing paranormal but just me mis-remembering where I had put it. Every little weirdness does not bear the fingerprints of The Other. Sometimes I outsmart myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But somewhere there is a copy of The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance<\/a><\/em>, and I would like to know who is reading it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of my stories about how the “critters,” the house wights, the Borrowers (to borrow a term), or whatever they are like shiny objects. There was the still-missed Norwegian salad-serving fork. Corkscrews vanished a couple of time. Another big serving fork disappeared and then reappeared, lying in plain view in an empty dish rack. Two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[57,159,22],"class_list":["post-14101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-tarot","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-3Fr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":866,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=866","url_meta":{"origin":14101,"position":0},"title":"The Wight-Hand Path","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 28, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Robin Artisson has an interesting posting on house-wights and land-wights:Land wights and house wights are kin to humans, in many ways. They are another population of sentient beings that share our world, and we spring from the same source, the same web of life. The same Gods that preside over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14073,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14073","url_meta":{"origin":14101,"position":1},"title":"Did an English Children’s Author Describe the House Wights?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 23, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A miniature wood stove for sale on eBay. When I was 5, my older sisters were 12 and 15. Sarah, then 12, was reading Mary Norton's \"Borrowers\" books, as her older sister probably had before her. Don't confuse this English Mary Norton (1903\u20131992) with the prolific American SF\/fantasy writer Alice\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"children\"","block_context":{"text":"children","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=children"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sample-woodstove.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sample-woodstove.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sample-woodstove.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sample-woodstove.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/sample-woodstove.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2278,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2278","url_meta":{"origin":14101,"position":2},"title":"Around the Pagan Blogosphere","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 Ways of leaving offerings for land wights, at Golden Trail. \u2022 Hermes versus the Internal Revenue Service (and a great poem) at The Alchemist's Garden. \u2022 \"Animist Human Diplomats\"\u00a0 at Adventures in Animism. Are you asking more than you are giving? \u2022 Still on the theme of place: Dealing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6646,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6646","url_meta":{"origin":14101,"position":3},"title":"A Horned God in Oklahoma?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting story \u2014 a year old, but I just ran across it \u2014 about \"deer men\" in the 59,000-acre\u00a0 Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma. \u201cWe moved to another observation site to the northeast at the base of Mount Scott, the highest point out there,\u201d Heying said. \u201cWe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14085,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14085","url_meta":{"origin":14101,"position":4},"title":"The Case of the Paranormal Pincushion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 1, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"In my last post, I mentioned the English writer Mary Ann Norton's \"Borrowers\" books, which my sisters and I treated as enjoyable kids' books. It was a long time before it occurred to me that possibly she made up a story around actual events. I have had a quite a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"paranormal\"","block_context":{"text":"paranormal","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paranormal"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pin-cushion.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pin-cushion.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pin-cushion.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/pin-cushion.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10399,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10399","url_meta":{"origin":14101,"position":5},"title":"Pixie Problems, or Working Things Out with the ‘Cousins’ (1)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"It all started with a fork, an antler-handled serving fork of clean Scandinavian design, part of a spoon & fork set that my parents bought while visiting Norway in the early 1990s and later gave to M. and me at Christmas. We liked them and used them nightly for salads\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"fairies\"","block_context":{"text":"fairies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=fairies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/norwegian-spoon.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14101"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14208,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14101\/revisions\/14208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}