Round the Herne

 The festival of Wolfenoot (November 23rd) was inspired by a child as a way of celebrating wolves and dogs and seems to have caught on in the way that things which touch a psychic pulse do. It had been my intention to get all techie, set up a live podcast and tell wolf stories as a fundraiser for The Dogs Trust. Sadly the combination of my own paucity of technical skills (the donations platform, which seemed mainly geared to businesses running taxable services rather than charity events, confused me no end) along with awkward life events at home and work made the live cast fall apart. Instead, now my throat is feeling a bit less raspy, here is recording to mark the day - with the request that, if you like it, you donate to The Dogs Trust directly (maybe add a message saying you have done so, to encourage others). The first story is of Ivan of Shiganska, allegedly a Russian village, who encounters a mysterious woman in the woods. This is followed by a spell-poem collected by Elliot O

 Recorded this spiel partially in response to a question asked about the Suffolk Jungian Circle recording on alchemy and partly because of various other things going on. Greek mythology has two related concepts for stories (or subsections of larger stories) of katabasis and anabasis - respectively the journey into the Underworld and the return to the land of the living. This is paralleled in the Christian tradition by notions of the Harrowing of Hell, in both versions a key feature is that the traveller is going into the Dark Place in order to retrieve something - a lost loved one, a treasure of some sort etc. As the recording hopefully emphasises, there are lots of different ways to understand what the Dark Place is and the nature of the voluntary journey there. A lot of people end up in Dark Places, but they rarely go there willingly so it is debatable whether the notion of katabasis applies to all such terrible experiences or only to ones of a voluntary nature (and ones with an inte

 This recording is mainly for members of the Suffolk Jungian Circle prior to a discussion at the end of November about Jung's notions around alchemy and its attendant symbolism. It may also be of some interest to other people who are not members of the Circle.

 This poem was written yesterday, to occupy my mind whilst at a very boring event, for an Interfaith gathering that now appears to have been postponed. Normally these events have some centralised theme, but this one does not appear to have any such focus to it so I decided to write a poem instead of the usual somewhat dry historical/theological overviews that I normally given when invited to Interfaith functions. Hoping this will give an emotional flavour of paganism (as I experience it) instead of an academic grasp. I'm not sure if the poem will ever get read at the event (given some ongoing issues), so thought I'd record it here just to get my mind away from work and various domestic burdens. 

 A Halloween story for 2023 about Mr Marengo's journey home from work on the London Underground, partly inspired by trips of my own on said train system. Beware of the things that live in the dark tunnels which were plunged deep into the earth by labourers... many of whom did not live to report what they found down there.