Dead, Mad, or a Poet

Today I'd like to introduce you to a demon of mine. The first time I saw him he was made of ice, all sharp yet brittle in his jagged edges. He was living in my arms, but his whispers and ice made it to my heart and mind all the same. "You can't do that!" he'd say, and pull my arms back from reaching out. "You can't dream that!" he'd command, then darken all the dreams from my mind. It's easy to hate a demon who traps you in this way. But hate will never make a person free. I may have introduced the demon, but he is gone now. Because as it turns out, he'd only ever wanted to keep me safe. When he took root in my arms, I had needed that wall of ice. But as even the most stubborn among us will come to learn should the president get his way, a wall can just as easily imprison as it can protect. All it ever takes to shift from one to the other is the slightest shift in the tides of fate. When I sat with my demon and felt his fear,

Would you like to hear a secret about magic? Well I mean, it's not really a secret because I've kind of mentioned this before. But just to reiterate: magic is about story, and stories are sometimes the most powerful acts of magic out there. As a culture, we do not have nearly enough respect for stories and the powerful magic they bring. Nor do we really respect the role of story in the magic we create. Some people stick to the tried and true pre-generated stories of grimoire rituals. Other people make their own magic and lean into teleology, or "the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise". In short, we create correspondence lists and talk about how "this does that" and never the *why*. We create long explanations about how materia magica exists on various levels and the rays of energy they have rather than considering the possibility that they too at some point had origins storie

The winds blow hard here. So hard that if you forget your hat your ears will hurt. She once had a dream about that, saw herself as both older and younger in clothes she’s never worn.  Walking across the bare-bone back of the open moor to the burial mound in the distance. She'd seen feathers in her hair, matted and wild, and heard the rattle of bones at her belt. Both younger and older versions were each the mirror of the other - only the younger carried the gear (as all good apprentices should). They’d sat on the mound and used the white noise of wind to enter trance. But that only ever hurt the sensitive skin of her ears when she tried it awake. In a pinch there are those little cottony whips of white that grow in the moorland grass. You can stuff in your ears and they can help with the soreness. But they do nothing for the whipping of hair and loss of warmth from the head. This isn’t Ilkley Moor, but you could certainly catch your death of cold up here, and the wo

I've been reading a book on animism recently. Well, it isn't actually about animism, but the author gets it in that kind of 'bone-deep' kind of way that very few European-descended Pagans do. The book is Silence by the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, and it has proven to be one of the best books I have ever read on animism in my life. I've seen a lot of modern (mostly European-descended) Pagans and Witches claim to be animist over the past couple of years, but for the most part their animism feels like an affectation to me. If anything, animism is something that seems to have become trendy. Thich Nhat Hanh probably doesn't see himself as an animist, and yet it shines through in his musings on how the trees on the banks of a river would feel if the sound of the river were to suddenly stop. It's there in the way he talks about acquiring a bell for practice - it is not simply a thing that is bought, but invited to come home with you. It'

I was in my late teens when I went to my first meditation classes. I'd been meditating at home for years before I first stepped through the doors of the town's community center where the classes were held. But life had gotten hard, and the mind monkey was no longer just restive but actively screaming rebellion. So I'd gone to the local classes. You see similar classes advertised all over England - usually with roadside signs saying 'Meditate now!' and a phone number. I'd seen these classes in the local newspaper, but the number told me they were the same as the ones on the signs plastered around town. Knowing what I do now about the group that puts on those classes, I wouldn't have gone. Some entanglements (no matter how benign they initially seem) are simply not worth the trouble down the line. But that's not the point of this post today, and so I return to that community center room with its wooden floors and chairs pulled from a waiting room.

I’m a fiery person - wrathful some might say. But that’s not entirely true. Passionate? Possessed of strong opinions? I don’t know. But if I have one saving grace, it’s that my anger is generally reserved for those who I feel are cruel and mean. That’s not to say that I don’t sometimes have mean thoughts or express mean opinions about the people who inspire that ire though. Sadly, I most assuredly do. But it’s something I’m working on - something I feel is important to work on. I’m a witch, and a wielder of words. I write to hopefully inspire and ensnare, to pull my readers along with me to places I want them to see or wish they’d go. At my best, I write to create fertile grounds of human hearts and plant seeds of compassion, wonder, and knowledge. I write, because I know that words have power, and that story can shape destiny and change the world. Almost two weeks ago saw the passing of Rutger Hauer during the same year as the year in which his character