Beltane is, for me, a season, which started last week when the earth warmed up, the hawthorn came out and the house martins returned. The cuckoo is singing in the wood, the swallows are hunting in the horse paddocks, the bluebells are in full force and the bucks are about to drop their antlers. It’s Beltane here in Suffolk!
And so, with that, I’d like to wish each and every one of you a blessed Beltane season.
I was on the Intuitively Wild Podcast, and you can have a listen here!
Hello everyone! I’m so sorry that I’ve been away for a bit. I’ve had to take some time off because I developed carpal tunnel syndrome (again) and have been overdoing it workwise. The body just sometimes forces me to take a break, which is difficult when you’ve got deadlines approaching! But there you go; self-care is a necessity.
In this forced time-off, I’ve had the chance to mull over a few things, such as looking at where my focus needs to be right now. And all things point straight to my writing. I’ve stopped doing so much other media, such as making videos for my YouTube channel, because I just don’t have the time. As well, my photography has taken a back seat, because all the muses are screaming at me to write, write, WRITE!!! And when the muses call, I must listen.
I’ve thought long and hard as well about my Patreon site too. I tossed around a few ideas in my head last month already, about the different tiers and what people can expect from me on a monthly basis. And I’ve come to realise that it is still too much for me to take on at this moment. Therefore, there is going to be a re-structure of my Patreon page very shortly. Don’t worry, I’m not disappearing completely!
With the economic crisis worldwide, everyone is feeling the crunch. As such, I thought, well, why don’t I make my Patreon page accessible to EVERYONE? Having tiers means that not only are some people left out, but it also puts extra pressure on my time to deliver. And when the original idea for these tiers is now almost defunct, due to my need to write instead of providing other forms of media, I knew that I had to change the way I do things here on Patreon. Last month I had a go at doing a halfway-house of sorts, but it just didn’t feel right.
And so, now I’ve decided to just have three tiers: those who want to support me on Patreon, and another two for the divination tiers. For those who just want to support me on Patreon, and have access to posts about the writing that I am currently doing (and other writing-related things) then it is simply going to be $1 a month. This provides access to samples of the writing that I am working on, thoughts about writing, the joys and the struggles. The other two divination tiers will remain the same: one a basic divination and the other a full divination tier. In time, these divination tiers might also be removed, dependent upon my time constraints, but for now, we will see how we go!
And so there you have it: a Patreon page that is stream-lined and accessible for more people to partake in. If you are currently in a specific tier, you will have to switch to the $1 tier yourself, because I cannot do that for you as I don’t have access to your personal accounts. If you’d like to switch up to the divination tiers, the same applies. If you don’t switch, you will still pay the same amount that you are currently paying every month, and if that is fine with you, then great, thank you!
Things change, and I realized that I had to change alongside the demands of my schedule. Writing is, and always has been, my life’s passion, and I am so blessed to be able to do this, especially my fiction writing, which I love! It’s what I’ve always dreamed of doing, ever since I was a thirteen-year-old girl sitting in my room with an old manual typewriter that my mother had when she was in college. I was going to be a writer, I thought. And now I can tell that little girl who still resides in my heart that yes, you are!
Thank you so much for helping me to get to where I am now. My Patreon page helped to support me in the earlier stages of my writing career. When I fell in love with other forms of media, such as video and photography, it helped to fund the equipment that I needed, such as a better camera, gimble, and eventually a second-hand drone for beautiful aerial shots. Now, I just need your support to help me to continue to write books, and to keep them coming for many, many years.
You have all been on this journey with me, and for that, I am so grateful. Many, many blessings, and I hope that you will continue this journey with me for many more years to come!
P.S. For this month (April) I will still be providing the herbcraft and spellcraft sections, for those who have paid for this month. I shall also try to get another journal entry sorted for those in the $5 and $3 tiers. Thank you!
Click HERE to go to my Patreon Page.
I recently wrote an article for Llewellyn’s online journal, and it also serves as a little intro to my book that just came out last week! Here’s the link:
https://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/3236
It had been a busy couple of weeks. I finally finished the manuscript for the third book in my new fiction series, Witches of the New Forest. I also had another book published with Llewellyn Worldwide released on Saturday, which quickly hit the top of the charts in its category. I was absolutely thrilled, but I also needed some downtime.
I went to my special reading/relaxation room (our spare room is a devoted, sacred space) and rearranged my altar. I do so every few weeks, to match both my mood and my needs, and what I see reflected around me in nature. After I had settled down, I meditated for a while just to reset myself and find my centre. And then I opened my eyes.
I was instantly struck by the beauty and wonder of my spiritual path, of my religion. There on my altar, the candles flickering, the statues of my deities gathered round, the plants, stones, and tools of my Craft were laid out before me. The aesthetics of its hit me like a ton of bricks. And it was then that I realized the huge importance of aesthetics in both Witchcraft and Druidry, and how it shouldn’t be dismissed so easily.
Because too often we can dismiss these things as superficiality. “It’s all just surface, and the real stuff, the real work is what matters most.” But right then and there, I got it.
I got it.
It was what drew me to Witchcraft and Druidry in the first place. The tools, the beauty of the natural world, the images of deity, the rocks, stones, and crystals collected on my journeys, the sight of a plant sprouting new leaves, the flicker of a candle flame, the scent of the oil burner, the music gently playing in the background: I understood the importance of these things on a visceral level.
Because we need beauty in our lives. We need joy, and wonder, and creativity. We need that which makes our hearts sing, in order to continue this journey through life.
Many of us in the Western world are still under the influence of Protestant Christianity. Buddhists have their temples and incense, Roman Catholics have their mass and cathedrals, First Nations peoples have their art and their ceremonies. But the austerity found in many sects of Protestantism has been passed down through generation upon generation here in Britian and also throughout North America. The churches are stripped down to bare essentials, the incense is gone, the choirs are absent. The beauty of the rituals is harder to see with the naked eye, and stripping away all of that, I believe, has led us towards a reunification and a deep longing to reconnect with beauty and aesthetics. Much as I adore the beauty and simplicity of the functional Shaker style, my heart still years for more. More ceremony, more ritual, more pageantry.
We can get just as much out of these things as we can in one to one communication with our deities, the spirits, the land, or whatever it is that we work with and have deep relationship. While my own tradition still favours simplicity in all things, I can still appreciate the robed rituals, the poetic words chanted under the full moon, the drift of the incense smoke on the wind. These are the things that first caught my eye when I was seeking a religious and spiritual path that resonated with my soul. These are the things that still draw me back, time and again.
We are visual creatures; we cannot deny that. We see in colour. We need to indulge in that sense sometimes, to make our hearts sing once again. We need to feel the rich textures, to taste the indulgent flavours, to hear the sweet music, to smell the scents that fill us with passion.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying a ritual simply because it was visually stunning. What our eyes see, also goes to our hearts. Those memories will carry us through hard times. They will bring us back when we’ve lost our way. They will connect us to like-minded people. The aesthetics of our Craft and our tradition are not just surface value: they are essential.
Does that mean that every ritual has to be filled with these things? Of course not. We do what we can, when we can, and however we can. But in our hearts, we carry the feeling of those beautiful rituals into every other ritual that we do, that sense of wonderment and enchantment when we were truly moved in a previous experience. Although not every ritual will have that same result, we still have that within us, and can still seek it out, in both ritual and in our lives.
It’s not shallow to love the aesthetics of our tradition. It’s a part of our heritage, and instead, we should celebrate it, in all its various forms.
It’s been a busy week so far, and we are only Wednesday! But I’ve been working late into the evenings, getting my new fiction book series, Witches of the New Forest, up to date and ready for the third book, The Witch’s Compass, which is coming out in the late spring.
So, what have I been doing? Well, after much consideration, I decided to change the cover of Hedge Witch. This is so that the other books in the series can follow a theme: forest scenes. As the series is set in England’s New Forest region, it only makes sense to have all the covers correlate not only to that theme, but also to each other.
And so, here is the new book cover!
The colours work well with the second book, almost being a reverse of the greys, blues and orange/peachy tones. I’m pleased with it, but then, I designed it, so there you go!
Hedge Witch has been doing well in the book rankings, last week coming in the top 100 of three different categories: Women’s Fantasy Fiction, Magic Romance ebooks, and Paranormal Witches and Wizards Romance. But this book, and all the others in the series, are so much more than romance novels (though I do love a good love story). They tell the tale of coming into one’s own power, the different boundaries that exist both within ourselves and our society, and also contain a large portion of modern Witchcraft and Druidry thrown in for good measure!
It’s been getting really great reviews as well, for which I am super pleased. It’s so wonderful that this book and the second, The Veil Between the Worlds, is really resonating with folks. I’m two thirds of the way through writing the third book, which will round off Hunter’s trilogy, and then we can begin exploring Ryder, her sister’s story, in the fourth book.
Come and join me in the New Forest!
I was a call-in guest today on the Jeremy Vine BBC Radio 2 Show today, and we were discussing ‘romantasy’ as the new genre that’s getting everyone talking. Here’s a link to the episode, and for those who are unable to listen, please see the short transcript below.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0027mf4
Tina Daheley – Joanna is in Woodbridge, Suffolk – Joanna, ‘Romantasy’, what is your view?
Joanna van der Hoeven – “I think it’s wonderful that it is so prevalent now, because it is saying to women, ‘Don’t be ashamed to like, what you like’. You will see women on the trains, on the buses, reading these books, and it is allowing you to just say, ‘Yes! This is what I am going to consume, this is what I like,” and to not be ashamed of it, because far too often we are made to feel small, or ashamed for anything to do with sexuality, as women. And so, the whole ‘Fairy Porn’ thing, when I first heard that it made me laugh out loud, but then I thought, ‘Well, isn’t it the same thing as the patriarchy trying to tell women not to be sexual creatures?
TD – “So it’s reductive, you think, calling it “Fairy Porn.”
Joanna van der Hoeven – “Exactly, yeah. As an author myself, as a romantasy author, I find that it is empowering for women to say, ‘This is what we like, so let’s continue with it.’
TD – “Alright, Joanna, thank you very much!”
Down the Forest Path 