Augur

This is our five hundredth post on Instagram.

Thank you for the millions of views, likes, saves, and shares. They are the lifeblood of a small retail business, and we profoundly appreciate your support.

We have been incredibly lucky that the kind of imagery we like to produce has resonated with our customers and mostly pleased the capricious algorithmic gods.

As a thank you, we wanted this post to be a little bit special.

Some of you know that if the timing had just been a few days different, Hierophany and Hedge would’ve been in the old Brighton German Bank.

We are profoundly happy that we ended up where we did, but we still love that building, and love all the mythology packed into its tiny neighborhood.

This is one of the best tales that we collected when we were considering Brighton. We hope that you enjoy it.

Thank you to archivists at the University of Cincinnati Rare Books Library and the Cincinnati Public Library for preserving photography records, and to the little Ohio towns of Lockington (seriously) and New Bremen for preserving the ruins and working locks, respectively, of the Erie Canal.

The image of the rusalka comes from a book by Johan Egerkrans that you can buy in the shop. The terrifying tome that Coil pulls from the shelf was custom made for us by Stick-n-Rope (whose grimoires we plan to stock if the tariff nightmare ever ends). The paintings are by John William Waterhouse, who loved mermaids as much as we do.

For the science-minded among you, we realize that there are lots of other reasons why there may have been fewer drownings per capita in Brighton. We still prefer the version related to us by a beautiful rain-drenched punk rocker at The Rake’s End one night.

At least we think the rain is why she was drenched.

See the video on Instagram.