Tradition / Region: Luxembourgish Mythology
Alternate Names: Gnomes of the Tillepetchesfels
Category: Gnome
The Myth
On the wooded slope above Schläderbach rises the Tillepetchesfels, a rocky outcrop long feared and avoided. In ancient times, people said the stone was not empty, but alive with hidden folk.
Within the rock lived gnomes, small earth-dwellers who shared the place with heathens of an older, forgotten age. They were rarely seen, yet their presence was felt: footsteps where no one walked, whispered sounds in the trees, and the sense of being watched by eyes that never showed themselves.
The gnomes were said to belong to the mountain itself. They moved through stone as easily as humans move through air, emerging only when the forest was quiet and retreating again into the rock before dawn. No one knew whether they guarded buried treasures, ancient rites, or simply the land itself.
Those who climbed the Tillepetchesfels without respect were said to return uneasy, confused, or ill at ease, as though the mountain had rejected them. For this reason, the people believed the gnomes still lingered there, bound to the stone, keeping the memory of the old world alive beneath moss, roots, and rock.
Gallery
Sources
SAGEN.at contributors. (n.d.). Wichtelcher. In SAGEN.at, from https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/luxemburg/wichtelcher.html
Interpretive Lenses
Religious Readings
- Christian Ascetic Deep Dive
Philosophical Readings
- Nietzschean Deep Dive
Psychological Readings
- Jungian Deep Dive
Esoteric Deep Dive
- Hermetic Deep Dive
Political / Social Readings
- Marxist Deep Dive
Other
- How to Invite The Tillepetchesfel Gnomes