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Tonight Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh will end with an impressive fireworks display. Thousands will be gathered there to see in the New Year -- many more will be at home watching it on the telly because we're introverts and that's the way we like it.

Historic Environment Scotland has done some research into when fireworks were first displayed in Scotland. Few will be surprised to find that 'Renaissance King' James IV (r 1488-1513) was responsible. He sponsored poets and alchemists and other scholars, but he liked a party as well as the next royal. The occasion was not New Years, however:

The Yuletide is a season of wonderment, with warm food and drink, songs of joy and peace, the soft lighting of hearth fires, candles, and strings of electric light, gifts and blessings. But there's a darker aspect: the nocturnal Wild Hunt, when the fierce spirits of the wilderness roam.

Someone on social media asked me what my favorite translations of [old/middle] Irish material where and I thought it would be good to answer the question here. 

Whether or not you believe in psychic abilities or in the predictive accuracy of fortune tellers, to my mind there is no doubt that in extraordinary moments of one's life there are definite messages that can come through to each of us.

In the early years of the 20^th century, my Dad was a young doctor in New York City. One morning he received a phone call telling him of the death of his older brother in a foreign country. We cannot conceive of the lack of communication in those days; there was no television or Internet and most homes didn't even have phone service. So my Dad-to-be went out to the subway, to deliver the sad news in person to his mother who lived in the Bronx.

We went out the door, wrapped in coats and scarves, with our paper lanterns lit. The streets were dark, but ahead of us, we could make out the shadows of other children and their parents, their faces softly illuminated by their own lanterns hung on sticks. The lanterns swayed gently as we walked. We went up the street, up the long hill, through the little Bavarian town we were temporarily calling home. It was the eve of Martinstag, November 10, and our neighbors who lived in the flat below ours had invited us to come along.

It wasn't a solemn ritual. There was laughter and chatter, an air of excitement. On the main street, a crowd gathered on either side, the lanterns brightening the darkness. A parade advanced and thundered down the street, roaring with music, vehicles decorated like ships, horses, and other modes of travel. Costumed celebrants called out, "Halloo!" a traditional battle cry, and tossed out candy that we scrambled for and stuffed into sacks.

The surrealist artist Ithell Colquhoun may not be a name on everyone's lips. Though less well known than their mail counterparts, painters like Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo and Leonor Fini have been getting their due much more lately. That will probably change after Amy Hale's book comes out in January 2020, but for the mean time she remains outside popular consciousness despite her long connection to occult and magic circles from the Golden Dawn to the O.T.O and the Society for Inner Light.

Colquhoun developed a completely unique and abstract vision of tarot that was inspired by colour. You can buy the book of her paintings from Fulgur Press.