👉 Okay, settle yourselves down for this, folks ā weāre about to delve into something wonderfully prickly and frankly, just a wee bitā¦atmospheric. Letās tackle that lovely, somewhat unnerving little word:
kaeri (ĪŗĪ±Ī¹ĻĪæĪ¹Ģ).
Now, the straight-laced stuff? Kaeri basically means "to peck, peck, peck. To nibble at a wound; to irritate a sore. Think of a very determined, possibly slightly judgmental, woodpecker obsessively attacking a really bad bruise. That's your kaeri." 1 Enoch, that rather dramatic and apocryphal book from the Dead Sea Scrolls (seriously, itās got someā¦vibes), is where the word originally surfaced in the late 19th century. Here's what makes it weird: It doesn't just mean a physical peck. That's, you know, obvious. The fuss around kaeri, according to Enoch and then a whole lotta Victorian occultists who latched onto it, is that this pecking isnāt entirelyā¦natural. There's an unsettling implication of something existing within the wound itself , a tiny, spiteful insistence. Almost like a miniature devil insisting on aggravating your pain. Essentially, kaeri is the feeling that there are very small, actively uną¦ą§ą§-ing things in your sorrow and misery. Itās the psychic equivalent of an insistent house splinter. You try
