I draw on a lot of resources for my own practice of witchcraft, and at this point I’ve moved away (for the most part) from looking at how other modern practitioners do things and instead draw on ideas about how historic witchcraft was likely done. I combine that with folk magic practices and the Fairy Faith to create the practical system that I use for my witchcraft.
Here is a list of some of…
So I’m recently running into this idea that all fairies are the human dead.Let’s unpack that because its complicated.
I have written about the intertwining of fairies and the dead before in a blog that was an excerpt from my book ‘Fairies’. The subject is very convoluted and there really is no direct answer to the question “Are the fairies human dead?”. Ultimately we would have to say yes, no,…
In a lot of the pagan community I see an approach to spirituality that is a bit like a video game: you start and you achieve different levels as you go, until you beat the game and win. This bothers me on a couple levels which I’d like to address before I get into the meat of today’s blog which is going to be about my own experiences of living as a priestess of the Good Folk. Firstly the idea…
This past weekend I flew down to attend the second Mystic South conference in Atlanta Georgia. As I understand it the conference is focused on an appreciation of uniquely southern magic and practices but also open to looking at the wider pagan community, and includes a special track for academic presentations. Quite frankly they had me at the idea of academic material because that isn’t something…
The entrance is in a field, beneath a hawthorn.
It is an unassuming opening into the earth, but there is something intimidating about it. The darkness beyond the stone and grass is deep and full. It invites you in at the same time that it warns you away. But this is why you have come to this place, seeking this cave, seeking this darkness, and you won’t be deterred now.
You move into the…
To begin, nothing I am going to say here is groundbreakingly original. But this is a topic that comes up from time to time and I want to address my own opinions on it, as within the community of people who believe in the Good Neighbours there tend to be a couple schools of thought. Suffice to say that the people who hold the opposite opinion to mine use the exact same evidence but argue the other…
I’m seeing an upswing in ads online for fairy doctor courses. It’s a simple premise and one that we see in other practices and spiritualities as well: pay your money and get certified as a fairy doctor.I have some problems with this, and it bothers me enough that I feel that I should probably say something about it here.
My usual caveats stand: I am not telling anyone what to do or what terms to…
I’m excited to announce that the 7th book in my Between the Worlds series ‘Desire and Ashes’ is out today in paperback and on ebook. From the back cover:Bookshop owner Allie McCarthy is settling into life as a new mother along with her two spouses. She’s got her hands full with an infant and a business to run, trying to walk a fine line between the human world she considers her home and the…
I often talk about my concerns with modern fiction and its portrayal of fairies, particularly the way the end up being humanized. While I understand why this happens and I can even appreciate it when reading it I see a lot of material from fiction that is clearly purely from an author’s imagination making its way into modern pagan belief as if it were genuine folklore. Obviously that’s a concern…
Recently I had written a blog about viewing Fairyland as modern and reassessing our conceptions of it and its inhabitants. Following on that I saw a post by Chas Clifton on his blog at Letters from Hardscrabble Creek ‘In the Land of Fairy Don’t Eat the Pentagram Pizza’ which touched on my blog as well the post by John Beckett that had inspired mine, but Clifton also went further to talk about…