Tudor Strawberry Tarts – Recipe Check out my Youtube Video if you would like to see me making these tarts: Exploring the Weird and Wonderful Customs of Midsummer This recipe is inspired by ‘A Tarte of Strawberyes’ from ‘A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye’, first published in 1545. Although instead of one big tart, I’ve …
Who is the Devil? He’s my handmade needle felted familiar, I made him a few years ago, with a wire armature, and a brain, heart, and spine of poisonous/enchanted botanicals and other materia magica. He is formed like a man, with the head of a goat, and inspired by old woodcuts, the feet of a …
Every now and again I am compelled to write a few lines of rhymes, because there is no other logical step to something that I have perceived as beautiful, or overwhelming, or soul-inspiring. Many a night, when I go to lock my chickens away in their coop, I look up and see the moon through …
Lincoln is an ancient city, dating back to the wooden round houses of the Iron Age, and later settled by Anglo-Saxons, Romans and Danes. In 1068 William the Conqueror ordered a castle to be built upon the hill, and 24 years later the first Cathedral had been completed. Not long after a Guild for Lincoln …
Dragon’s blood is an ancient and fascinating substance, with a vast history of uses, fantastical accounts and miraculous properties. First, I’ll go over a little of the history of dragon’s blood, and then on to descriptions of the different kinds of dragon’s blood resins we use in our occult and ritual practices. Dragon’s blood is …
White Bryony is a beautiful climbing plant that uses its curling tendrils to clamber up hedgerows and woodland verges. It has large tuberous roots, fuzzy lobed leaves, five-petalled flowers of green and white and shining red berries that cascade in clusters, tumbling out of hedges from late August onwards like forbidden grape vines. White Bryony …
In the week starting Monday 16th August and ending with the full moon on the following Sunday, I decided to have what I termed a ‘Witch Week’, 7 days dedicated to my practice; to studying, learning, working and incorporating the planetary associations and their influence to each day, as well as taking advantage of the …
A witch’s garden is a place of balance, a reflection of the witch’s soul, equal in light and shadow, in gleaming celestial heights and dark primordial depths. The garden of any occult practitioner should contain not only the beneficial herbs used for cooking, medicine and benign spells, but also the darker, baneful plants of the …
THE WITCH’S CAULDRON The Cauldron as a Tool in Your Magical Craft For centuries the cauldron has been a principal tool for a witch, but is perhaps underutilized in a lot of modern magical practices. From Cerridwen’s cauldron of poetic inspiration, to the cast iron cooking pots dangling in the stony hearths of Medieval cottages; …
The Wicker Man 1973, 91 minutes* of strangely bucolic folk horror set in the remote and windswept landscape of the fictional Hebridean island of Summerisle, whose inhabitants have forgone the dusty fabled bible and returned to older ways, to old gods and ancient rites. Where did the basis for these quaint village idiosyncrasies stem from? …
