740 results found for “dempus*”

Amulet and talisman are different wordsThey get used interchangeably and they historically meant opposite halves of the same idea.An amulet is defensive. It keeps something away: harm, illness, bad luck, the attention of things you would rather not attract. It works by warding.A talisman...

Purple fills the sky on one side of this curtain and warm amber on the other, and the wolf's face is lit to match. The left half of the head sits in near black shadow. The right half catches the light and turns gold...

The sigil of the NorthDirewolves were real animals long before they became a house sigil. Aenocyon dirus ranged across North America through the Pleistocene, heavier in the jaw and shorter in the leg than a grey wolf, and the tar pits at Rancho La...

Everything rests on the eye In a realistic wolf portrait the whole likeness hangs on one small area. Wolves have amber to yellow irises ringed in dark, set forward for the binocular vision every hunter needs, and the pale mask around the muzzle pushes...

A wolf at the start of the Mongol lineBlue and wolves have been linked for a very long time. The Secret History of the Mongols opens with Borte Chono, the blue grey wolf, who crosses the water with his mate the fallow doe, and...

Where the black coat came from Black wolves owe their colour to a single gene variant at the K locus, and that variant did not begin with wolves. It came from domestic dogs, carried across the Bering land bridge by early people and passed...

Dusk, held on the wrist Twilight is when wolves move most, and a howl sent up at dusk can carry for miles across open country. That is the moment held on this dial. The face fades from deep indigo at the top to a...

Four centimetres wideThis is a proper cuff rather than a strap. At 4 cm wide it covers a real amount of wrist and reads as a statement piece in a way a thin band never does.Wide leather also sits more comfortably than it looks,...

The Valknut above the wolfThe knot of interlocking triangles set above the wolf on this plate is the Valknut, and it is one of the few symbols genuinely attested from the Viking age rather than borrowed from later folk magic.It turns up on carved...

Possibly the first trade goodObsidian is only produced by volcanoes, so it occurs in a small number of specific places and nowhere else. Yet obsidian tools turn up hundreds of kilometres from any volcano, in Neolithic sites across the Mediterranean, the Near East and...

A wolf made of night sky Ink and starlight share this face. The crown, ears and outer ruff are deep black shot through with teal nebula and a fine spray of white specks, much like a long exposure of a clear winter sky. Below...

A face built entirely from line Every mark in this drawing is a line. It is pen work the whole way through, hatching and stippling and repeated pattern laid down until a muzzle, a heavy brow and two dark eyes come up out of...

Guard hair and undercoatWolves wear two layers of fur at once. Long guard hairs form the outer shell, stiff and water shedding, while beneath them sits a dense woolly undercoat that holds still air against the skin. The trapped air does most of the...

Where the blue comes fromSnow in shadow is never white. It reflects whatever sits above it, so on a clear winter day the hollows and the paw prints fill with a cold, saturated blue while the open surface stays bright. Anyone who has crossed...

A family at the centre of the designA wolf pack is a family. The two adults at the centre are the parents and the rest are their pups from the last few years, which is why packs keep breaking up and forming again as...