wicca

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Today is the Day!!!

A new chapter of my life has begun, with the release of the first book in my new fiction series, Witches of the New Forest. Hedge Witch is Book 1, and forms a trilogy before we move on to other characters, and their stories, throughout the rest of the series. I am so excited, and I hope you all enjoy this new series. And Book Two, The Veil Between the Worlds, is on track for a December release!

Paperback and Kindle editions are available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hedge-Witch-Witches-Forest-Book/dp/B0DLLFZDKM/

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It’s out tomorrow!

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New Book Coming out 8 November!

I am so excited for the release of my new fiction series, Witches of the New Forest. Coming out Friday, 8 November! Here is the back cover details:

Deep in the heart of the New Forest in England, lies the little village of Burley. Known for its modern connection to a famous Witch in the 1950s, Burley is now a tourist hotspot for those who are fascinated by the occult and the paranormal. However, there is a much deeper secret known to only a select few in the area.

Witchcraft is real, and there are very powerful practitioners of the art that still live in and around Burley. Magick runs deep within some family lines, passed on from generation to generation. There are also other magickal beings that have existed in the area for thousands of years. As a liminal place, Burley is where myth and magick come together. 

Two Canadian sisters, Hunter, and Ryder, inherit their aunt’s property on the edge of Burley. As they try to decide what to do with their inheritance, they make friends and begin to learn more about the secrets of this special place, and how it is linked to their own heritage.

This is the first part of Hunter’s story. Hunter is the careful and cautious elder sister. A university professor, she is familiar with some of the history of the area. However, Hunter’s world is turned upside-down when she discovers not only her family legacy, but also the extent of her own powers. Her guarded heart is opened by the love of a Druid whose life’s work is in dedication to the land, and whose encouragement to come into her own power, changes her life forever.

(Book 1 of the Witches of the New Forest series)

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Samhain: The Origins of Hallowe’en

This article is in response to an article in my local village newsletter, declaring the so-called “evils” of Hallowe’en. Hallowe’en is not evil and is, in fact, a very ancient British tradition that spread to North America.

Hallowe’en stems from an ancient British tradition of the Celtic peoples. It was, and still is known as the festival of Calan Gaeaf (Welsh) or Samhain (Irish) which begins at sunset on the 31st October and runs to sunset on the1st November accordingly. The Celtic year was divided into two halves, the light half and the dark half. The light half began at the beginning of May, which marked the start of summer. The dark half began at Samhain (Irish) or Calan Gaeaf (Welsh) which marked the start of winter. The word Samhain is thought to be derived from “summer’s end”, being a linguistic inversion of sam-fuin.  Samhain is a time that lies between times, and is a time that is not a time. It is the end of summer, and marks the time just before we enter the dark half of the year, often referred to as the Celtic New Year. It is a liminal time, and begins at dusk on 31st October on the calendrical year. (All Celtic holidays begin at dusk, the day before the calendrical date.) Some Druids follow a more agricultural or seasonal calendar, and celebrate Samhain when the first frosts appear. 

Samhain is known popularly today as Hallowe’en. This stems from the Christian Hallowmass. What is interesting to note is that the Feast of All Saints, which follows the day after Hallowmass used to take place in May. It was moved in 834 to the 1st November, presumably to compete with the more Pagan traditions in an attempt to move the common folk away from such beliefs and practices.

Samhain is a time to remember the dead, and to welcome them. The dead are never far from us, and the Celtic worldview comprised a sort of ancestor veneration found the world over in Pagan traditions. Deceased relatives could come and visit the home, and so door were often left unlocked so that they could enter. Some use the tradition of a “Dumb Supper”, where food and places are laid out alongside the family’s fare for the dead, and the meal is eaten in silence. These plates were then taken outside as offerings to the spirits and the Fair Folk. Hollowing out turnips or sugar beets, and later pumpkins (which were/are much easier to carve) and placing a candle inside could provide a lantern by which the dead could find their way. Candles may have been left in windows as well, to help guide the way. Apples as well have a place at this festival, for one of the traditions was for a maiden to peel an apple and throw the peel over her shoulder: the letter that it formed was the initial of the name of the man she would marry. The custom of bobbing for apples is also thought to derive from Samhain traditions, with the lucky (and wet!) winners receiving fortune for the rest of the year. Brushing your hair and eating an apple while looking in a mirror at Samhain was said to reveal in the reflection the face of your true love. Modern-day trick or treating is said to come from the ancient buachaillí tui, disguised people who characterised the dead and lead a white mare (hobby horse) called Láir Bhán. This horse was symbolic of the goddess of the land.

At Samhain, when we arrive at summer’s end, is a liminal time. The veils between this world and the Otherworld are thin, and so we see the custom of dressing up or guising to protect the living from the “unhappy dead”. It could also be seen as an acknowledgement of the dead returning, and as a sort of celebration of the fact.

Samhain was celebrated by the Druids in Ireland high on the hilltops with fire, from an ancient ritual on Tlachtga or the Hill or Ward in Meath.  Tlachtga was sacred to the Druids, whereas Tara was the place of the High King. Tlachta could be viewed from Tara, and a fire on Tara may have been lit in response, allowing the Druid’s to light their fire first, in their role as advisors.  The Feast of Tara took place three days before and three days after Samhain. There is an alignment of the sun and moonrise from at Samhain from Tlachtga to a standing stone in Slieve na Caileach and also Lambay Island. Tara has an alignment from the Samhain sunrise to “Lugh’s Seat” at the “Pillars of Samhain” and a cairn dedicated to the goddess, Mór-Ríoghan above the Keash caves in County Sligo.  In Irish tradition many ancient hills and fairyforts were connected by paths which the Sidhe were said to travel. At Samhain, the Celts would be taking their cattle down from the high grounds to their winter lodgings, and so would the Fairy Folk. It was wise to avoid the fairy paths or alignments on this day/night for this very reason.

At Glastonbury in Somerset, England, the Wild Hunt is said to ride out of the hill of Glastonbury Tor, with Gwyn ap Nudd, the Lord of Annwn at its head. He collects the souls of those who have died over the past year, and acts in the role of psychopomp, leading the souls to their rightful place in the Otherworld or afterlife. Fire rituals may well have been a part of ancient ceremony on the Tor, being a hill that could be seen for many miles in the surrounding flat countryside. Recently, a Samhain fire festival honouring The Wild Hunt now takes place at Glastonbury Tor every year, and is hugely popular, with modern-day Druids officiating the ceremonies.

In County Derry in Ireland, they celebrate the Spirit of Samhain, or Spiorad na Samhna. It is a hugely popular event, with over 30,000 people coming to participate and enjoy the festivities today, with a parade and fireworks, acrobats, fire-breathers, stories, song and more. This is echoed in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the Beltane Fire Society also holds a Samhuinn event every year. This began in 1995 and has grown ever since, with street performance and theatre in the heart of the city. A large, dramatic ritual ceremony is created and re-enacted each year by different groups which include dancers, drummers, actors and more.

So as you can see, Hallowe’en is not evil. It is an ancient tradition which people across Britain are still practicing today. It is a celebration and veneration of our ancestors, much as others festivals across the world do at this time of year, such as Dios de los Meurtos, or the Day of the Dead in Mexico. Simply because something is not Christian, doesn’t make it evil.

Resources:

Baker, Des “Spiora na Samhna”, Underground Short Film Festival, 2015

Butler, Dr Jenny ” The Festival of Samhain & Halloween in Ireland “, Crypt Interview

Eastwood, Luke “Tlachtga and the Ancient Roots of Hallowe’en/Samhain”, Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids

Hutton, R. (2011) Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain: Yale University Press

Restall Orr, (2016) E. This Ancient Heart 2016 Moon Books

Restall Orr, E. (2004) Living Druidry: Magical Spirituality for the Wild Soul: London: Piatkus Books Ltd

Talboys, G. (2002) Way of the Druid: Rebirth of an Ancient Religion: O Books

Telyndru, J. (2005) Avalon Within: A Sacred Journey of Myth, Mystery and Inner Wisdom

van der Hoeven, J. (2014) The Awen Alone: Walking the Path of the Solitary Druid: Moon Books

van der Hoeven, J. (2021) The Book of Hedge Druidry: A Complete Guide for the Solitary Seeker: Llewellyn Worldwide

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Some Words about my new fiction series, Witches of the New Forest, and Book 1: Hedge Witch!

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The Struggle is Real

Pagan books sales have gone down radically in the last year and a half, despite the increasing number of books being made available. It seems to reflect what many of us authors have been worried about for several years now. The sales aren’t even made up with e-books, as those have dropped significantly as well. Audiobooks for non-fiction still aren’t that popular either, and the revenue from them has always been minimal. So why is there this sudden and sharp decline in books sales?

When I first started learning about and practicing various forms of Paganism in the early 1990’s, books and events were the go-to places to gather the information that I sought out. The choice of books available in the bookstores was only a handful stuffed somewhere in the “New Age” section. The internet didn’t exist, but you could order books from glossy catalogues that companies such as Llewellyn provided, which wasn’t too bad if you lived in the US but if you lived anywhere else, the shipping fees were astronomical. And so you just had to make do with what your local bookstore provided. If you were lucky to have a witchy type shop near you, the selection was a little better, but shelf space was always at a premium. And we didn’t even bother much with libraries back then, because they would never stock those sorts of books in the first place. Finding books to read was a real struggle, but such a joy when you did find one that resonated with you.

The coming of the internet was a huge blessing for the Pagan community who wanted to connect with others, talk about authors and books and find solace with others when the community was so small and so widespread. Books began to be marketed online, which was a real boon to the publishing industry. And yet, with more people online than ever before, what has happened to book sales lately? Surely they should still be increasing?

Nope. I’ve talked to my publishers, I’ve talked to other authors and everyone is seeing a real downturn in books sales. We’ve been scratching our heads, trying to figure out why. As book lovers ourselves, it’s difficult to fathom how this downturn has come about so suddenly. So here is my take on what’s going on, and how it could very well spell the end of non-fiction books in the coming future.

  1. People can get information for free online. As people are online more and more and there are so many different channels to get information from, why buy a book? You could watch a video, read a blog and receive a ton of information anywhere for free. I know that if I was a youngster just starting out, the majority of my information would be garnered from this form of transmission simply because it is free.
  • People don’t have spare cash to buy books right now. Everyone I know is hurting more and more financially, and if it comes down to buying your groceries for the week or buying a book, you will buy the food. I hope.
  • You can find pirated copies of pretty much anything online. Need I say more?
  • Attention spans are waning. It’s a fact. “In the early 2000s, she and her team tracked people while they used an electronic device and noted each time their focus shifted to something new—roughly every 2.5 minutes, on average. In recent repeats of that experiment, she says, the average has gone down to about 47 seconds.” https://time.com/6302294/why-you-cant-focus-anymore-and-what-to-do-about-it/ (I actually had trouble reading this article, not because of attention span but because four different pop-ups kept interrupting my reading. Oh, the irony.)
  • When a book is released, it is competing will millions of other books these days. With so much choice, it’s wonderful for the reader out there. But for the author? It seriously dilutes the sales. Unless you have a slick marketing team that works for you.
  • Authors can’t afford slick marketing teams. The shift in lots of publishing has been to place the onus of marketing up on the author, as the publishers have to make cuts somewhere just to stay competitive. Most authors aren’t marketers. I spent nearly a decade in marketing for a world-famous music venue here in England. That has seen me in good stead for the last ten years, but even now I’m struggling against a tide of everything that I’ve mentioned above.

The struggle is real, folks. I hope one day that books will have a resurgence, that cosying up with a book on a rainy day will replace hiding under your duvet with your smartphone. There is just something about a book, something that feels like an old friend you can turn to, something that you can hold in your hands, that ages even as you age, the feel of something material rather than something immaterial.

 Go analogue for a while. Slow down. Smell the books along the way. Because who knows how long they’ll be here?

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The Season of Change

The Autumn Equinox is a brief moment in time where we are poised on the knife’s edge, about to tumble from summer into winter. It is a liminal time, where the transition from the long summer days to the long winter nights is keenly felt. The winds blow differently and stronger, the evenings are creeping in, the sun is not as high in the sky and offers a golden slant in the afternoons. The leaves are changing, the green is melting into golds and the riotous season of growth has ended. The deer have shed the velvet from their antlers and are fattening up, preparing for the rut. Acorns begin to ripen and fall from the oaks; beech nuts and hazelnuts too. Jays and squirrels are caching their nuts and badgers delight in the longer shadows and plentiful food.

For us humans, it is also a time of harvest. The apples are ripe and ready, the potatoes and onions form the second harvest after the cereal crops were gathered in August. Tractors rumble through the tiny village streets with loaded wagons full of produce, taking them to large storehouses or shipping trucks to dispense throughout the country. It is a busy time, with lots of dust in the air and the moon and sun often rising red in the lower atmosphere.

In an age when we can get almost any fruit and veg from a large superstore at any time of year, the importance of harvest is often lost to many. Why celebrate a harvest festival when we have supermarkets on our doorsteps? What need do we have to honour this important time of our ancestors? We live in the here and now, some may say. But all the food that is available in the supermarkets and stores comes from somewhere, from a place that had to work with the elements and seasons in order to grow the food, to take in the energy of that land to produce something that will sustain us. This is what is important, and why it is also important to remember this time for our ancestors of the not so distant past. It has only been in the last twenty or thirty years that all sorts of produce has become readily available throughout the year. When we forget the hardships of our ancestors, we forget a large part of their stories and where we came from, taking for granted many of the liberties that we live with today.

There’s a joy to be found in remembrance. There is also a joy in the turning of the seasons, from the light to the dark, from the harvest to the hunt, from summer to winter. Celebrating these turning points helps us to keep moving with the flow instead of getting stuck wishing that it was still summer. We allow the energy of the season to move freely through out bodies, as we should in any earth-based religion or spirituality. Nothing stays the same, and acceptance of that is perhaps the greatest gift that we can give to ourselves.

So honour this wonderful time. Celebrate the shift from shorts to jeans, drink all the pumpkin spice coffee you desire, wear hats and scarves and kick up autumn leaves on the path. Drink in the scent of woodsmoke and decay, feel the fresh breezes on your face. Settle in with a good book on the longer nights, light a candle and let your imagination roam. Think of the ancestors as you bite into that freshly picked apple, and honour all the changes that you yourself have undertaken.

Blessings of the Autumn Equinox, Mabon and Alban Elfed to you all.

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The Mabon Debate

There is some debate in the Pagan community about using the word ‘Mabon’ to refer to the Autumn Equinox. In 1974, Aiden Kelly was looking for a name to put to the Autumn Equinox that had similarities to the descent of Kore or Persephone. He chose Mabon from Welsh literature, the son who was stolen away from his mother and which Culhwch was tasked to find to win the hand of the beautiful Olwen. With the aid of King Arthur he did indeed free Mabon from his imprisonment, as told in the Tale of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogi.

At first glance, it would appear that Mabon’s disappearance and rescue has very little to do with the equinox, and the similarities between his story and that of Kore can appear tenuous at best. However, there are other aspects to Mabon that do very much relate to the Autumn Equinox, which I haven’t seen discussed anywhere (but that may just be because I live in a cave deep in the woods).

I think the most important aspect of Mabon is that it was said that he was the greatest hunter of all time. And when does hunting season begin? For the majority of hunted animals which here in the UK are birds, it is around the Autumn Equinox when the season really gets underway. Deer hunting technically starts at the beginning of August, but the deer are hard to find as they are still hiding away from the summer’s heat until it gets dark. It is around the Autumn Equinox when you are able to see them out again during the day, from late afternoon onwards.

It is also when the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) becomes more visible in the night sky, albeit still in the east before dawn but slowly awakening and becoming more ‘upright’ so that he can stride across our skies followed by his hound during the winter months. As well, it’s when the temperature shifts, and the warmth leaves us as the cold northerly winds begin to blow, hinting at the Wild Hunt and winter’s reign to come. So yes, for me the honouring Mabon as the hunter does make sense at this time of year, though that may not have been the original intention.

Some argue that our ancient ancestors did not care about the autumn or spring equinox. To that, I would say look to our ancient megaliths.  In 1966, C. A. ‘Steve’ Newham found an alignment for the equinoxes at Stonehenge by drawing a line between one of the Station Stones with a posthole next to the Heel Stone. The equinox sunrise is beautifully framed by the Gossan Stones in the Wicklow Mountains, Ireland. Callanish in Scotland has an alignment with the equinox, and so does Newgrange in Ireland. Most of these places are famed for their solstice alignments, but they also do have other alignments which are not only solar, but lunar as well.

At the Autumn Equinox here in the rural British countryside we are also in the thick of harvest season, which begins at the start of August and runs through to the end of October. As such, some people argue that we should be celebrating Harvest Home. I love that name, but the origins are unclear. It may have been derived from Germanic Pagan traditions that have since been co-opted by the Christian Church, but we can’t quite be sure of its Pagan roots. Harvest Home services are held in many local, rural churches including the one in my own little village on the Suffolk Coast in the East of England. Today Harvest Home is now very much associated with Christianity. That’s not to say that we can’t incorporate it into our own festivals, because it’s what traditions from all over the world have done and still do over time. We learn, borrow and make stuff our own all the time. The Romans were masters at it. But that leads us to the argument of cultural appropriation.

The cultural appropriation argument against Mabon is that it is using a Welsh word/cultural hero and throwing it into ritual without awareness or regard for where it came from. And this is a wholly important thing to consider. However after you’ve done the research, and you find Mabon is known as the greatest hunter then the correlations to this time of hunting and harvesting make more sense, and seem less tenuous. As well, if we believe that we shouldn’t be using Welsh words in our Wiccan, Witchcraft, Druid [insert name of Pagan tradition here] then we really shouldn’t be using Samhain, or Beltane, or Imbolc, should we? We are using the words that have lasted through the years, but if we are not Irish or Scottish for instance, should we even be using these words in our traditions? I think of how many people today still say that Samhain is the Celtic New Year. On the flipside of that, I wonder how many people honour the god Belenus at Beltane? These are all Gaelic words that have been co-opted and given a different flair for various rituals in different Pagan traditions today that sometimes retain very little of the original source.

So should we rewrite all our traditions’ rituals and give them all new names?

Maybe.

But I still like Mabon.

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Witching Around Podcast

This month the Witching Around podcast features…. me! Do check it out, I had a great time with these lovely ladies 🙂

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New Video!