Candlemas

They also take a personal item from the victim to aid their ceremony.

They perform these sacrifices on two evenings, on Candlemas Eve and two months later on with the Witch's Sabbath, then drink the victim's blood for eternal life.

It just happens to be Candlemas Eve that night.

Lottie attempts to warn Nan while Newless and Jethro confer on the upcoming festivities.

In addition to finding her bracelet missing, Nan indeed discovers a dead bird and a branch on her door.

Right.

Newless invites Nan to join the others dancing, but she notes her book.

This is when Nan tells her all she's learned, how in 1692 Selwyn's coven took an object from the victim to lure her and placed a dead bird and a sprig of woodbine on her door, then sacrificed her on Candlemas Eve, February 1st, at the hour of 13, and drank her blood.

He thought of Wilbur, goatish and ominous, once again, and laughed mockingly at the village rumours of his parentage.

inbreeding armitage muttered half aloud to himself great god what simpletons show them arthur mackin's great god pan and they'll think it a common dunwich scandal but what thing what cursed shapeless influence on or off this three-dimensional earth was wilbur whateley's father born on Candlemass, nine months after May Eve of 1912, when the talk about the queer earth noises reached clear to Arkham.

What walked on the mountains that May night? What rudeness horror fastened itself on the world in half-human flesh and blood? During the ensuing weeks, Dr.

Armitage set about to collect all possible data on Wilbur Waitley and the formless presences around Dunwich.

Into this context came the brutal death of Charles Wharton on February 14th.

which, by the old Julian calendar, would be Candlemas straight in bulk, a traditional pagan festival marking the start of spring.

To those inclined to see patterns, the date seemed no accident, and Detective Spooner cannot ignore a disturbing historical parallel almost 70 years earlier.

He pulls Fabian aside one evening in the incident room.

No natural lord of mine, said the man in the smock.

I followed the Walsinghams, so we all did down Briarly way, till two years ago come Candlemas.

And now I must side with Brackley.

It was the law that did it.

A great annual festival called the Feast of Lamps was held by the Egyptians in the early part of the year in honor of the goddess Neith, during which lamps of oil were burnt all night before the houses.

This festival was renamed Candlemas, or the Purification of the Virgin, and was adopted by the Christian Church.

The ancient pagan inhabitants of Europe annually celebrated a spring festival which began with a week's indulgence in all kinds of sports and was called the Carnival, or Taking Farewell of Meat, because a fast of forty days immediately followed.

In Germany, this was held in honor of the Saxon goddess Herta, or Ostara, or Istra, as you may prefer to call her, whose name was adopted as Easter by the Christians, as the name to be applied to the end of their Lenten period.

And how on earth can I get along without it, I don't know, with six growing lads to find breeches for.

Five silver crowns my wheel cost my good man last Candlemas, said another, and there it goes up in flames and smoke.

What is a wheel if the burning of it saves our little princess, quoth a third.

Come, cheer up, mother, the king has reason for what he does, and he will not see us want.