Katy Soar

“The first lines of “The Ruin”, an Old English poem of the tenth century CE, describe old stones as “Wrætlic”. Usually translated as “wondrous”, Peter Ackroyd has read the line as “wraith-like”: “wraith-like is this native stone”. While the poem itself discusses the masonry of a crumbling Roman town, the phrase itself is certainly apt for thinking about the megalithic monuments that cover the British Isles. These native stones—stone circles, stone rows, standing stones (or menhirs), and dolmens—are indeed wraith-like, spectral, haunted. Standing for thousands of years within the landscape, their physical presence is evocative but their original purpose is tantalisingly vague. With no written records to inform us as to how and why they were initially built, they become a nexus for stories.”
― Katy Soar, Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites

“The owl also has strong symbolic connections with Tezcatlipoca, one of the most important gods of the Toltecs and the Aztecs, and a god of the night who can roam freely between this world and the world of the dead. Tezcatlipoca’s name means “smoking mirror” or “dark mirror lord” which may relate to the obsidian mirrors used in Aztec necromancy. He is associated with the horned owl in the Mesoamerican calendar; Tezcatlipoca provides the souls of those born on the tenth day to the owl to carry to the afterlife.”
― Katy Soar, Return of the Ancients: Unruly Tales of the Mythological Weird