Round the Herne

 Chapter the fourth in my serialised meander into the world of YA fantasy. I'm amusing myself if nobody else, so will write a little more before the q=burdens of the quotidian world get in the way, CHAPTER 1 is  here CHAPTER 2 is  here   CHAPTER 3 is here (if you haven't already read them) CHAPTER 4    “The Fourth House?” Dylan mouthed the words as if he were saying something obscene that he did not want overheard. “Who on earth told you about that?” Catriona recounted the scene she had witnessed in the bookshop. Her books were currently teetering on the dresser. She had opted to skip the hurley shop and acquired a sackful of herbs and a pocket-sized sickle at Demulcent’s Herbarium. The herbs were filling her room with a heady aroma. At Morwenna’s insistence she had gone into Stang and Treen’s stavewright shop to acquire a staff. A polished length of oak has caught her eye, engraved with a stag design. She felt rather silly carrying it home (catching...

Continuing the whimsy to a third chapter of this serialised (and outrageously derivative) YA fantasy, I am quite enjoying this even if nobody else is, so might go to at least a fourth chapter if I can settle on a name for the villain of the piece. CHAPTER 1 is here CHAPTER 2 is here  (if you haven't already read them) CHAPTER 3   Catriona sat at the long wooden table in the Refectory staring at the empty plate and wishing that her head would stop spinning. She didn’t think that she’d ever has to get used to so many shocks in a single day. She had screamed hysterically at the sight of Kai transforming into a dog, only stopping when he sauntered across and licked her face. After that the screaming had turned into equally hysterical giggling. Eventually Dylan explained that everyone is Kai’s family was capable of transforming into dogs. Whilst not common, he outlined how a fair number of people who lived within the Veil were able to shapeshift. The stories of selkies, werew...

  My reading of the twelfth and final chapter of Edith Nesbitt's (1904) children's book "The Phoenix and the Carpet". The poor old carpet really is worn out and, after a scare in which the nature of language is questioned, the magical bird makes a decision about its future. The power of magic is a huge responsibility, far too huge for children to bear (or, indeed, most adults) - such that a little of it goes a long way! The carpet itself responds to requests in a way very much in keeping with ancient understandings of magic that saw it as a vast and impersonal power that ought to be handled with kid gloves, before the New Age approach we have now that insists everything is about the intentions of the person rather than being anything external to their own massive ego. Without wanting to get sidetracked into 21st century obsessions with gender, I wonder if the phoenix is female or possibly some kind of hermaphrodite that reproduces without necessity for activities rega...

 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 ...

 The other week at work I ran a seminar on Jean Baudrillard's theories around the nature of hyper-reality in a world as immersed in mass media as ours is. Following a few questions and emails afterwards I started musing about how Baudrillard's ideas might apply within modern paganism. I've yet to more towards anything like a cohesive idea on this, but the podcast is part of the reflective process of toying with concepts. Hopefully viewers might provide some feedback and ideas of their own, which will help with reaching something a little more concrete. The French sociologist's ideas are merging in this meander with those of the Australian scholar of religion, Adam Possamai. He draws on a fair amount on Baudrillard and writes about hyper-real religions (ones heavily influenced or based entirely upon works of openly acknowledged fiction). Possamai regards paganism as decidedly hyper-real. On consideration I find myself rather agreeing with him (though I have hopes that th...

In September I gave a live talk via Facebook for my publisher (Moon Books), talking about Ancient Egyptian religion as a taster for the new book. Might be of some interest to people who tune in to this blog on occasion. 

The trouble is, once I start waffling it's very difficult to shut me up. This fifth part of the Introduction to Paganism series looks at ideas around magic (at an abstract level - it's not some kind of teen Wiccan's guide on how to cast spells!) and also touching a tiny bit on pagan metaphysics. I don't know whether to go into a bit more detail on the different types of paganism - I think it would be better to see Heathens, Wiccans, Kemetics etc. making their own recordings about what they do/believe rather than me recording something. Room for a collaborative effort, maybe?

I was asked to contribute a recording for a "virtual moot" organised by the Pagan Federation's Disability Team, on the general theme of magic in modern society. The recording below is a ramble about the practice and underpinning philosophy of cleansing both places of negative energy as part of a ritual and also cleansing oneself.

" The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St George to kill the dragon ." G. K. Chesterton Professor Dawkins has been in the news yet again, this time suggesting that telling fairy tales to children might be pernicious and encourage them to believe in the sorts of things which he has made a lucrative second career out of loudly disapproving of. I find anyone who rides their hobby horse with such interminable vigour gets a trifle wearing after a while, but that aside I am quite convinced that he is wrong upon this matter. Admittedly I must declare my own deep rooted bias. The world is a magical and wondrous place, and human society would be a great deal happier if we could all allow each other the freedom to experience that sense of awe in their own way (rather than railing because they too unscientific, or insufficiently Christian, or followers of the wrong brand of Islam etc.) Aside from his...

For those of you who like a short bit of nonsense , here's a story I wrote a couple of years ago.  If you've ever wondered what your pets dream of, then maybe this will help to answer  your questions. My dogs liked the story when I read it to them. The story is inspired by the witch trial accounts of the magical order of spirit-journeying Benandanti magicians and their battles against the evil crop-cursing Malandanti in 16th and 17th century northern Italy (of which you could read further in Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles.  Quite what those people who made their complex and involved confessions to the Italian Inquisitors were actually up to ~ and whether or not they were part of some very late surviving pagan cult, Christian folk magic, or something yet odder still ~ is open to a great deal of debate. However, the world is a deeply strange place and, just occasionally, some humans take a full and honourable part in that wonderful strangeness.

The cover of my next book has just been made up by the designer ~ I am sooo pleased! If anyone feels like pre-ordering then you can do so through any bookshop. The ISBN is 978-1-78279-211-6. It will also available as an eBook  but I am clueless as to how people can go about getting copies of that. If you missed the earlier post, this one is a collection of short stories, all historical murder mysteries set in different periods starting with the ancient druids and working into the present day. All the stories are united by themes of paganism, magic, faith and the supernatural. You can even get smatterings of philosophy, Ipswich history and spiritual meanderings amidst the whodunits. When it comes out I want to get some feedback as to which sleuths are the more popular with readers, so I can focus future fictional writing accordingly. Some characters are intended as one-offs with no intention of being revisited, but others I hope will interest people enough to get support fo...

Moon Books have given me a contract for my next book, 'A Dangerous Place', which will be my first foray into fiction (well, of the paying sort). It is an anthology of murder mysteries all set in Ipswich but spread over several thousand years, each one looking at a different era of local history. Each of the stories has a strong occult/mystical theme underpinning the crime that has taken place. More details of the release date and the cover art (I love it when the designs arrives from the publishers) will be posted here as soon as I hear.