Storytelling, visual and multimedia art, poetry, song, ideas, yarn crafts, rituals, and magic: all of these creative forms help me to embody my experience in ways I can touch and feel, to mediate between my inner life and the outer environment.
All creation opens a space of liminality, possibility and risk. When we create something new — whether it’s a jumper, a cake, a painting, a storytelling performance, an altar, even a child — because it’s new and because it’s in process, there’s an element of the unknown. This brings a feeling of risk, and sometimes its reality, too. Creating is not a safe endeavour. For creation to happen, we need to be open to the risk of the unknown, to allow ourselves to be surprised.
I hope that, by sharing my creative process and what I create on this blog, I can make it a space in which we can connect with one another, with ways to be in relationship with the more-than-human world around us, and with our willingness to take risks and be surprised.
Read on to discover more.
What’s the best response to collective need? I was chatting with a friend and student on Friday, and we got onto the topic of the sense of urgency we both often feel, and which seems so common amongst our communities, in the face of the world, quite frankly, going to hell in a hand basket. The effect …
Many of us start January full of good intentions for the ‘good’ habits we’re going to develop in the coming year, and the ‘bad’ ones we’re going to leave behind. But by now (February), most of us have become a little lackadaisical about our new regimes. After the first week or so of effort, it …
Every year, the progression of flowers marks the coming of spring: the first tentative growth of light brings up the snowdrops, then the celandine and daffodils and coltsfoot. But the flowers which truly mean spring to me are primroses. Primrose lore The place of the primrose (Primula vulgaris) in British folklore is small, and some …
I started spring with an amazing conversation with Yarrow Magdalena of DIY Business Magic. We talked about building a small business against and beyond capitalism, the emotional labour involved in re-thinking our relationship to power and leadership, ways of building sustainable and regenerative communities and how that is related to how we trade with each …
“The enigma that is woman will therefore constitute the target, the object, the stake, of a masculine discourse, of a debate among men, which would not consult her, would not concern her. Which, ultimately, she is not supposed to know anything about.” Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman “…either I don’t have any “self,” …
Read moreWho and what is a ‘woman’… and what does it mean for feminism?
I got into an Argument On The Internet last night about what feminism is, and isn’t. A Person On Twitter (APOT) proposed that one feminism exists, and that it has core beliefs. I suggested that there are many feminisms, and that, as there is no one feminism, there can be no ‘feminist’ core beliefs. This …
Feri¹ makes powerful witches. It does not make healthy witches, kind witches, just witches, pleasant witches, compassionate witches, or any other sort of witches; just powerful ones. What the Feri witch is after initiation is what the Feri witch was before initiation, just with more oomph. Becoming a Feri witch is not a gentle process. …
Read moreSome thoughts on seeking, learning, and initiation in Feri Witchcraft
I recently went through a process of discernment around what I do, and if, when, and how I get paid for it. It began as a conversation with a friend about whether or not there was a fee if I took them on as a one-to-one magical/witchcraft mentor. Around that, I am very clear: I …
Read moreNot everything goes at the same speed; not everything goes in the same lane.
I wrote this piece, about my relationship to keeping up with current events, a year ago. Not much has changed since. After the anti-Poll Tax demonstration of March 1990, I gave up on newspapers, after the sole accurate source on what happened, out of all the print media in the UK, was Spare Rib. After …
Every now and again a discussion pops up about autistic people and empathy, often in the context of misunderstandings between autistic and allistic people, and sometimes, regrettably, used as an excuse for autistic men who sexually harass women of all neurological profiles. The discussion usually descends into the familiar round of ad hominem attacks which …
This week, I’m storytelling in a very different environment than my usual. Lavender Menace is bringing Cameryn Moore’s highly successful Smut Slam to Dumfries’s Big Burns Supper… and I’ll be one of the storytellers, sharing a true story of real life sex. Eep! It’s a ticket only, safer space event, but I’ll be recording an …
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