In this haunting and beautiful episode of Hex & Muse, we step into the storm that changed the world. Born of lightning and grief, Mary Shelley dreamt a monster into being and in doing so, gave birth to modern horror, science fiction, and a mirror for the human soul.

Through thunder over Lake Geneva, the ghost-story challenge at Villa Diodati, and the heartbreak that shaped Frankenstein, this episode traces how an eighteen-year-old woman stole fire from the gods and rewrote creation itself.

We explore her lineage daughter of revolutionaries, lover of poets, widow of fire and her quiet defiance in a world that feared the power of female imagination. Because Mary Shelley was never just the author of Frankenstein. She was the Modern Prometheus of gothic literature - the girl who gave the dark a heartbeat.

Featuring reflections on Guillermo del Toro’s forthcoming adaptation of Frankenstein, starring Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth.

⚡ Trigger Warning: This episode includes brief discussion of infant loss and grief, handled with tenderness and care.

✴︎ References & Further Reading

*Mary Shelley, * Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818 & 1831 editions).
William Godwin -An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793).
Mary Wollstonecraft - A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
Richard Holmes - Shelley: The Pursuit (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974).
Miranda Seymour - Mary Shelley (John Murray, 2000).
Fiona Sampson - In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein (Profile Books, 2018).
Anne K. Mellor - Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (Routledge, 1988).
Charlotte Gordon - Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (Random House, 2015).
Kathleen Stocking -The Villa Diodati Circle: Byron, Polidori, Shelley & the Birth of Frankenstein (Oxford Classics, 1999).
Frances Wilson - The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth (for context on the Romantic circle).
Guillermo del Toro - Frankenstein (Netflix / forthcoming, starring Jacob Elordi & Mia Goth).

For deeper gothic and Romantic context:
The British Library “Discovering Literature: Romantics & Victorians.”
The Morgan Library - Frankenstein Manuscripts Project.
The Romantic Circles Online Archive - University of Maryland.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus, Romantic poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori, Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva, gothic literature, science fiction origins, feminist writers, literary history, witchy podcast, Hex and Muse, women in literature, Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, creative myth, female imagination, poetic storytelling, art and alchemy, haunting history, dark romanticism.

Hex & Muse is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past and present - and to all First Nations people, whose stories and spirits continue to shape this land.

Follow along for more folklore, magic, and mythic musings:
Instagram: @hexandmuse
Website: www.hexandmuse.com

Hex & Muse is a spellbound journal of folklore, magic, art, and the sacred feminine - told through cinematic storytelling and whispered histories.
From my altar to yours… thank you for listening.

As spring blooms in the southern world and autumn deepens in the north, the veil thins across both. Tonight, Hex & Muse crosses that unseen border to meet Nicnevin - the Hallow Queen of Scotland.

She rides through centuries of poetry, persecution, and myth: from Renaissance verse to witch-trial confessions, from the moors of Fife to the snow-clad peaks of Ben Nevis. Part goddess, part ghost, part faerie queen, Nicnevin is the keeper of thresholds - a spirit who walks between life and death, storm and stillness, the sacred and the forbidden.

In this journey through folklore and history, we trace her lineage to the ancient Cailleach, whose storm-grey plaid blankets the mountains in snow, and rediscover the witch not as a creature of fear, but as a guardian of balance and change.

Light your candle.
Step into the dark.

The Hallow Queen is riding.

Primary Mentions

• The Flyting of Montgomerie and Polwarth (c.1585) — Alexander Montgomerie’s poem; earliest known mention of Nicnevin.
• Trial of Nic Nevin, St Andrews (1569) — later chroniclers link this woman to the legend; connection uncertain.
• Confessions of Bessie Dunlop (1576) & Andro Man (1598) — both describe serving the “Queen of Elphame.” See Robert Pitcairn, Criminal Trials in Scotland (1833).

Folklore & Literature

• Robert Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song (1808).
• Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1830).
• Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies (1976).
• J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860).
• Lizanne Henderson & Edward J. Cowan, Scottish Fairy Belief: A History (2001).

The Cailleach & Seasonal Myth

• F. Marian McNeill, The Silver Bough (1957–68).
• James MacKillop, Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford, 1998).
• Folklore of the Corryvreckan Whirlpool — the Cailleach washes her plaid white, signalling winter (see Popular Tales of the West Highlands; Scotland’s Wonder – The Cailleach: Hag of Winter).

Modern Analyses & Context

• Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear (Yale, 2017).
• Lizanne Henderson, Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment (Palgrave, 2016).
• Alison Hanham, The Flyting of Montgomerie and Polwarth: Text and Commentary (1960).
• F. Marian McNeill, Hallowe’en: Its Origin, Rites and Ceremonies in the Scottish Tradition (1923).
• Dictionaries of the Scots Language (dsl.ac.uk) — entry for Nicnevin.
• Wikipedia — “Nicnevin” and “Cailleach” entries for linguistic and mythological summaries.

Hex & Muse is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past and present - and to all First Nations people, whose stories and spirits continue to shape this land.

Follow along for more folklore, magic, and mythic musings:
Instagram: @hexandmuse
Website: www.hexandmuse.com

Hex & Muse is a spellbound journal of folklore, magic, art, and the sacred feminine - told through cinematic storytelling and whispered histories.
From my altar to yours… thank you for listening.

Once upon a midnight dreary...

In this special reading, Hex & Muse drifts through the flicker of candlelight to meet one of literature’s most haunting visitations Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven. First published in 1845, this gothic masterpiece still beats with the same dark music: grief, longing, and the ache of a soul that cannot let go.

Told in rhythmic, hypnotic verse, The Raven is a séance in language a lament that echoes between love and loss, dream and waking.
In this episode, Emily performs the poem aloud as it was meant to be heard: with breath, silence, and reverence. Every “Nevermore” tolls like a bell through the dark, a reminder of how beauty and despair so often share the same heartbeat.

So light your candles, draw the curtains, and listen close.
The air stirs.
A knock upon the chamber door.
And from the shadow, a voice - eternal, mournful - calling once more.

🕯️ Written by Edgar Allan Poe (1845).
🎙️ Read and produced by Emily Esen for Hex & Muse.

Hex & Muse is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my deepest respects to their Elders past and present - and to all First Nations people, whose stories and spirits continue to shape this land.

Follow along for more folklore, magic, and mythic musings:
Instagram: @hexandmuse
Website: www.hexandmuse.com

Hex & Muse is a spellbound journal of folklore, magic, art, and the sacred feminine - told through cinematic storytelling and whispered histories.
From my altar to yours… thank you for listening.