The Elfin Diary Archives

Author: Val Dobson

  • New banner photo

    New banner photo

    After the Solstice, I decided to refresh the look of the site, starting with a new banner photo on the front page. It’s from Unsplash, a wonderful collection of free photographs. I did consider using an AI-generated image, but I hated the fake look of them. I’ve played around with making AI images in the past couple of years*, and I’m not against the concept. But so many are too smooth, too perfect. Real art, creative art, art that is human, is imperfect. Well, that’s my belief..

    And so, above is a real photo of real books on real shelves in a real archive somewhere.

    *You’ll find some on my personal Instagram.

  • Progress report…

    Making slow progress on the Psychic Guide. I’m dividing it into 4 pages (like the Chronicles of the 20th Century) , correcting errors, and adding to some entries to reflect the latest findings. I’m also adding lots of links, so that readers an find out more if they wish. With a few entries, I’m discovering so much more about the topic that I’m considering turning them into full articles. But that will have to wait until next year – I’m confident that I can get the Archives basically finished by mid-2026. Then I can write some articles of my own.

  • Update

    I’ve finished two more articles – The Tarot, The Chakras. Hope you enjoy them.

    I’m stil working on the Psychic Guide – some of the entries need updating; I’m also expanding some as I go along, now that I don’t have to worry about space!

  • Another article up

    Archaeology & the Cycle of the Year is now online. Written by an archaeologist, it’s an interesting – if frustratingly short – look at ancient pagan festivals and calendars.

    I’ve made a start on getting the Psychic Guide online, but it’s very slow going, and will be weeks before its ready to publish.

  • “Prophecies of the New Millennium” is now up

    I wrote an article on predictions and prophecies for the 2000 Elfin Diary. I’d forgotten all about it until tonight. I hope you’ll find it interesting.

  • “Chronicles of the 20th Century” now up

    Just finished the four-part series “Chronicles of the 20th Century”, listing the main events and achievements of 1900 – 1999 year by year. I think it was entirely written by Caroline herself; if not, let me know and I’ll be happy to credit the author. Proofreading, factchecking and editing it took ages (some posts had to be almost entirely rewritten)*, not helped by my arthritis and myalgia regularly driving me to lie down. Anyway, it’s done, now to get on with the Psychic Guide!

    *By the way – if you want somebody to proofread, edit, format etc your MS, I’m your woman! Go to OakleafDesignPrint.co.uk, leave a comment or email me at the address below.

  • Progress

    I thought I’d write an explanation of why progress on getting the Elfin Diary archives online is so slow.

    I’ve been intending to do this archiving project since the autumn of 2023, when I decided I could no longer carry on publishing the Diary. At the time, I optimistically thought that it would take me no more than a year – or maybe two – to complete.

    However, my husband had just passed and I was poleaxed for many months by what I now recognise as depression. In addition, I had (and still have) chronic health problems, including mylagia and arthritis, that limit what I can physically do (for example, I can’t sit in a chair for long, nor can I look at a screen for hours any more). So I just slog along, doing what I can do.

    At the moment, I am just finishing off the Chronicles of the 20th Century, published in the 1999 and 2000 editions of the Diary. What I thought would be a fairly simple copy-and-paste job is turning out to be much slower than I’d anticipated, because I keep finding so many errors and typos; Caroline, always something of a slapdash Sagittarius, didn’t spend too much time on proofreading. But me being the type (Saturn in Virgo opposite Pisces Sun) that cannot bear to let mistakes go uncorrected, have to proofread and factcheck everything.

    So, at least you, dear reader, will know that (most of) the facts here are correct.