Round the Herne

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.

Trying my best not to give any spoilers, but The Day of the Doctor was utterly wonderful and, for me, very emotional ~ almost all my positive memories of childhood are directly connected to that show. I have heard a fair few complaints from people about the 50th reversing the history laid down in the revived version of the show. Which it does, but personally I don't see this as a bad thing, given the way that they did it. The Doctor's character had become increasingly bleak and tormented, with many episodes dwelling on the idea that he is (to his enemies at least) a monster. Writers inspired, I dare say, by Nietzsche's view that, " He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you ." Whilst such sentiments are certainly true, I do feel the point had become somewhat over-laboured and the show was in danger of turning their hero into a self-tormenting neuroti...

Last night I went to a Halloween party at a local gay pub, where almost everyone was in costume ~ some of them quite elaborate. Thankfully I recognised a friend and was able to spend much of the evening chatting to him and, contrary to my expectations of such events, found that I really rather enjoyed the evening. Halloween is a very curious time of year, distinct from but intertwined with the ancient Gaelic feast of Samhain, and I was struck by the liminal nature of both the gathering and the date in general. Though British society is centuries ahead of places like Iran in its integration of sexual minorities, those attending were still people whose place in society is decidedly out of the mainstream ~ not only gays, lesbians and bisexuals but those whose gender places them as neither entirely one thing nor another, transsexuals and cross-dressers. There were also a small group of people with learning difficulties, who appeared to be loving every moment of the karaoke event and findin...

Well, with Halloween a couple of days away I thought I'd write a suitably horrible tale. Tommy Rawbones started as an idea on Saturday past, when I had hoped to tell it at an LGBT event - but it just wouldn't gel at the time. It has gone through a number of major changes, such as shifting location from central America to Ireland! I'm still not entirely happy with how it plays out, or the style of telling, and would appreciate some feedback. If you're wondering about the peculiar name, it's a traditional monster who appears in Irish and Northern English folklore, as well as undergoing a major mutation in American folk tradition. The Gaelic feast of Samhain appears in a great many myths, some beautiful ones such as the dream of Oengus Og, and others far more spectral and gruesome such as Fergus and the Hanged Man. More thoughts on Samhain shortly.

Last night I hosted a small fundraising event for the UK Wolf Trust with an evening of wolf-related stories told in front of a log fire. It was a nice crowd and the event seemed to work very well - so much so, I may try similar things again in the future. One of the stories was a Native American tale about the hunters realising the impact they were having on the local animal population, and finally deciding that someone had to speak on behalf of the wolf; someone had to step outside their own tribal loyalties to consider the consequences of their actions for other beings. As a species we're not very good at considering the needs of others. Frequently we don't even think about the impact our actions have on our fellow human beings, let alone other species. Though the upside of the globalisation process is that we are beginning to realise what happens when we destroy the world around us, or exploit it to the point of exhaustion. I think it's something that modern pagans ...

Today I went up to Norwich to give a talk at their Harvest Moon convention, held at the Puppet Theatre. It's a fascinating building ~ well, maybe not so much the building itself (which is a converted church of no especially remarkable nature), but the numerous puppets, marionettes and other effigies suspended from the walls. They were of all shapes and sizes, with warriors, kings, damsels, witches, animals and monsters. All staring down upon the proceedings. I cannot wax particularly lyrical about the Harvest Moon convention itself, largely because I missed a lot of it having got lost on the way and arriving late. My own talk (on poetry in early European polytheist cultures) seemed to go down fairly well. Aside from that I attended a short talk on nature spirits in Hinduism, which I found to be a fascinating topic, and a straightforward and humorous introduction to cabalism. One of the stalls sold rather good artwork, mostly painted on to slate. Puppets are a curious phenomena. O...

Returning on the train from Norwich's Pagan convention today (at which I was speaking, and more of which shortly) I had the opportunity to be sat across from a middle aged man and someone whom I presumed to have been a niece or possibly a future daughter-in-law. Their conversation was mostly insipid, but took a turn which distracted me from the spectral realms of Montague Rhodes James. For some reason they were talking about schools and the behaviour of some adolescent relative, when the fat man (let's call him McCabe, because I'm not feeling very imaginative tonight) started recollecting his own salad days. The salad presumably being a bit of limp lettuce in his greasy burger. With consider relish on that burger, he told various exploits involving reducing one teacher to tears, being part of a gang that drove another teacher into a nervous breakdown, locking another in a tool shed etc. Now lots of kids do grotty things and eventually grow out of it when they achieve some...