TEUFELSKUNST Occult Art Blog
TEUFELSKUNST
Occult Art Blog

March 2025

A glimpse of spring. In focus: birch, bumblebee queens, cornel cherry

1st of March marks the meteorological beginning of spring. Nature is slowly but verily waking up. Like this bumblebee queen warming up in the midmorning sun. She found a place in the crevices of an old birch tree. If you look closely you may spot the birch lady’s facial profile outlined in the scales of her bark. Bumblebees are herolds of spring. They are among the first insects waking up and flying at temperatures as low as 6°C. She could start her new colony right beside this birch, in the former nest of a mouse or rabbit.

Bumblebees have ever since been considered emmissaries of witches, devils and the dead. Their drone sound signals the presence of underworld spirits. Caring for themselves and their own hive they produce only as much as honey as needed by them selves, so they always had a somewhat bad reputation compared to the altruistic (and domesticated) honey bee. However, bumblebees are important pollinators, adopted exclusively to the flowers of many traditional witch herbs, as well as food plants.

We have had bumblebee nests in our garden, right beside the lavender bushes, and I have photographed them on nearly all my witch flowers that I’ve grown over the years. I feel lucky and blessed whenever a bumblebee crosses my path and I am able to spend time observing it in nature.

On the green moss under the tree lay a birch polypore. This parasitic fungus may chime in the last quarter of the tree. Yet it carries a plentitude of medicinal properties, being anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-infallmatory. It was dropped right before my feet, and indeed I could need all of it after this winter. But I left it there. The simple sight of gleaming moss has its own salutary effects on the body, mind and soul.

Birch stands for new beginnings. Blossoming now is the cornel cherry. It is one of the slowest growing woods and therefore most resilient woods in Europe, and quite similar to Ironwood. Its sulphur yellow blossoms are evoking the spring sun. Its flowers are among the first to open in spring or late winter and open the buffet to bees and other pollinators. Its bloodred fruits provide food to jays, grosbeaks, nuthatches and bullfinches as well as dormice. Its heart-shaped root system reaches in all directions and stabilizes the ground.

Its hard wood was made into weapons. In Greek myth it is even metonymical for the speer. When Romulus thrust his speer into the ground upon which Rome was founded, it blossomed into a cornel tree. The Ziegenhainer cane is traditionally carved from cornel wood.

March 6, 2025

Posted In: Nature

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New “Flower Devils”

Or better said, postcards with new “Flower Devils” can now be ordered from me! The new cards feature newly captured impressions from the summer 2018 as well as some of my earliest photographs in this series, including the auspicious “Henbane Devil” on black henbane flower, which initiated and from which the series got its name.

“Henbane Devil”

In German folklore, witches and even the devil himself were believed to take on the shape of bumblebees. A bumblebee-wax candle was lit in church, if a witch was burnt at the stake. Evil people were cursed with having to return as a bumblebee after death. The sub-earthen drone sound of a bumblebee signaled the presence of the dead. Instead of consecrated wavers, bumblebees were allegedly served at black masses. Bumblebees were also superstitiously feared as carriers of sickness and ritually buried to drive out plague. On the other hand, a dead bumblebee worn in the pocket, was believed to ensure the purse would always be filled with money. And he, who managed to secretly steal the bumblebee’s honey, was destined to find a huge treasure. Hence bumblebees were both viewed as good and bad omens.

The other new cards are:

“Belladonna Devil” et al – large earth bumblebee entering a deadly nightshade flower, common carder bees on comfrey and viper’s bugloss flowers, wasps mating on our white lavender, bee inside crocus flower after a long winter


Impressions from recent trip to Crete – symbol laden honey bee among the ruins of the Minoan palace in Malia, a small wasp nest on prickly pear, protected sea daffodil flower with Mediterranean sea in the background


Last but not least, cards with unfolding flower of the “Black Devil” datura, blue Aconite and green Henbane “Dragon” and – upon request – myself among the green “devils” in our garden.

October 2, 2018

Posted In: Garden, Prints

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