There is a solitary witch in every wishing well

filling bucket after bucket with life’s blood.

As I write this, Beltane is so very close. You can feel it in the land, a surge of energy bubbling up through the earth and bursting forth with tremendous beauty, a mirage of sound, colour and scent. Spring is well under way now and where I live, the land is blooming.

Folk stories and folklore contain the shared knowledge of a collective. They may have their regional differences and several versions, but they convey truths and lessons, often hard ones. Folk stories and folklore are not some passive thing but instead form an active part of our lives today

It’s a beautiful place all year through but seems extra special in the autumn months. But it’s not just the beauty and the sense of spirit that draws me to the woods at this time of year, though I cannot deny that in itself is enough, anything else an added bonus. It’s mushroom season.

And as the cycles of nature begin that inevitable unwinding, it tugs at the corner of our nostalgia and perhaps we return to that stage of reflection where we can linger over our experiences, all of those events and happenings that have touched our lives.

This is what it is to be animist. We see and feel the spirit within the natural world and know we are not separate from it at all, but connected to it in every way.

With it’s backdrop of mist shrouded hills, lakes that reflect the sky, stretching further than the eye can see, stone circles and hidden waterfalls, it feels like you’ve stepped into the pages of some epic tale of magic and knights, monsters, dragons and witches.

For me that’s a major aspect to witchcraft and indeed obeah, the serving of people when they have nowhere or no one else to turn to and it’s here where the lines between healing plants and harmful plants become blurred.

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.

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.

Learning to cook from scratch and even trying to grow your own food is an act of rebellion and resistance. These skills and knowledge are quickly being displaced by convenience foods that are not good for us and so in this way then, magic in the kitchen becomes another tool in our arsenal we can use to reclaim ourselves from the clutches of Capitalism. And it’s easier than you might think as well, the trick is to start small. There is no other way, all rebellions and resistance start as a trickle. Resist beautifully folks!

As I write this, I’m sitting in my garden, drinking my morning brew in the dark and listening to the rain. At this time of year, there isn’t much of a dawn chorus. That melody is better than any orchestra of man, but even in these darker months, the birds are ever present; the chirps of the sparrows nestled in the thick ivy, the loud and melodic call of the blackbird, clear as a bell as is the robins song. It’s no wonder we, mankind, have a special fascination with these feathered creatures as shown in the vast array of folklore associated with birds.

As the pressure builds, we know we cannot carry on as we have been doing. We, as a species, will reap what we have sown, in one way or another, for I feel we are too far gone for anything else.

The latest podcast from Alley Valkyrie and Rhyd Wildermuth

We must make those who think that Paganism tolerates abusive, controlling behaviour aware that they have no place within our traditions.