For the most part, such stories gave parents a bogeyman they could use to scare their young away from the dangers of deep water, for like fire, there is something alluring about water. There’s also a part of me, perhaps a more cynical part, that sees these stories as something else; our loss of connection to these wild spaces.

Isn’t this the power of music? To make us feel, to inspire?

Sometimes that music is beautiful, just like the singing of the birds or the wind through the treetops. Perhaps the music of the woods is my favourite. Standing there on that soft moss covered floor with warm, dappled sunlight on my skin with eyes closed, listening to the birdsong and the wind through the boughs is the most perfect feeling. Other times the music is louder, rougher, not unlike the wind atop of a high hill. Wild and invigorating. Both make you feel alive, albeit in very different ways.

There’s a magic that comes with connecting to the land. It can be quite a controversial subject, the land. It’s one of those areas that has been subjugated by the far right, all that blood and soil stuff and of course if you live on colonised or stolen land, well, you know how that narrative goes. But I wanted to talk about connection to land today anyway, despite those things already mentioned.

Mugwort grows here in the summer months, ragwort and wild rose too, the bare skeletons of the latter reach up from the winter grass, the hips bright red like oxgenated blood. The scent of fox urine fills my nose as I enter into the dog foxes territory. It feels like I’ve come home.

Animism is not about the projection of consciousness or agency onto non-human things, but about respect and reciprocity within a more-than-human community that transcends the subject-object dichotomy.

Samhain approaches. We enter the dark. Some hate the passing of the summer but I am ready, though summer already feels like a distant memory. A Ghost. We find ourselves in the twilight of the year, in autumn and already dusk has fallen. We stand on the brink of nightfall and as we head towards Samhain we find ourselves in that liminal time and space where the ghosts feel closer, the nights colder and darker, our moods a little more melancholic.

I place the root ball in the carefully dug furrow and close the earth over it, firming it down and move on to the next until there’s a row of young tomato plants, ready to extend their roots into the earth, to grow. And when it’s done I sit down and have a drink. There’s dirt beneath my nails and I think once more, I could do this forever.

The deep, dark wild woods, mysterious and magical, have an almost mythic status amongst Pagans. Indeed there is something so alluring about losing oneself beneath the canopy of the forest. However, for the beginner, the best place to start is somewhere close to you, somewhere you can visit daily or weekly. It can be a garden if you have one, or a local patch of trees, whatever. What is important is that you can get there as often as possible.

“Direct worship of natural phenomena is a powerful way to overcome our alienation from the world around us, and the linking of those natural phenomena to our minds and bodies is another way to make this connection more alive and real.”

Gods&Radicals published a book I have written: three linked essays about trancing, speaking to the Gods and hearing a response, and being a Believer/Animist. I wrote these essays with taken-by-me photos as part of the story but publishing, alas, puts an unacceptable price on photographs and they had to be left out when we came to it. Here they are-

The latest book from Gods&Radicals Press

The memories move slowly, languidly. Like syrup or honey, sweet and oh so good, but clear and distinct. I can even remember snatches of conversation, still catch the scent of summer; the early morning coolness, then the hot air of afternoon, tinged with freshly mown grass. I can still feel the shiny black water worm writhing in the palm of my hand as I unfurled my fingers, hoping to see a newt.

Traditions are kept alive through repetition. The gods are honored by honoring the cycles of the seasons, which dictate when offerings are given, and by honoring the process of life and death itself.

What is needed now is reconsecration, for there are no longer any paths for us to follow. Let us proudly declare to the mountains and the rivers: we renounce the cult of humanity, we renounce the world of techno-industrial society, and we bind ourselves in reverence and service to the living gods of earth and sky.

Death is not the enemy of life, but godlessness. The despair of humanity today is the product of centuries worth of both the denial of the spiritual life of the world and the suppression of the natural urge to reintegrate with that world.

The sword is the land. The sword is love and love for the wild. It is the love of waves that crash down upon the shore with an unquenchable fury, until it has ground cliffs into dust. It is the love of the mountain, whose heart is iron.